Adjusting the terror quotient on Japan’s nuclear nightmare.

By Tim Connor

When the tsunamis arrived on the northeast cost of Honshu it was mid-afternoon, March 11th in Japan. Here, on the other side of the Pacific, it was approaching midnight and those of us still awake could watch the surreal, live video from Japan of an ocean bulldozing its way inland, lifting cars and boats, and even piles of flaming debris.

Of the nearly 20,000 people killed in the 2011 disaster, nearly all perished as a result of the surging ocean. Yet, what soon eclipsed the news coverage of the natural devastation, is what we now refer to, simply, as Fukushima.

At the six unit Fukushima Daichi power station, 150 miles northeast of Tokyo, an avalanche of sea water disabled the power supply for the plants’ cooling systems, causing fuel melting in the cores of three, large boiling water nuclear reactors. Hydrogen explosions blew the roofs off reactor buildings. A pool filled with irradiated nuclear fuel at a fourth reactor (unit #4) captured at least as much attention as any of the reactors out of fear that it had boiled dry and was releasing vast amounts of radioactive materials to the atmosphere.

These were all harrowing developments, and most especially so for the people of northern Japan who were reeling from a natural disaster and an emerging nuclear catastrophe. Emissions from Fukushima caused dangerous radiation exposures to site workers and the public, and hundreds of square miles remain badly contaminated.

But what of the consequences beyond Japan? Is Fukushima a threat to the planet itself? Does it threaten the Pacific Ocean? Is it, or was it ever, a threat to people on the Pacific coast of the U.S.?
Continue reading Fukushima and the Long Reach of Fear →

A Journalistic Gem

Thirteen years ago, Larry Shook put himself in the right place at the right time to put a human face on Spokane’s most revealing political story.

There’s no easy way to set the context for Judge Guy Meets Cherie Rodgers, the artful and deeply revealing story that my reporting colleague, Larry Shook, wrote in early September of 2001 for our national award-winning Camas Magazine project. I don’t know of another single story that better exposes Spokane’s political bedrock, and so clearly frames the long struggle to transform the city from a cozily corrupt company town into something less cynical and more democratic. (Certainly a fuller treatment of this tale, going back more than a century, is available in Bill Stimson’s political history of Spokane: Insiders and Naysayers.) You can also listen to a short interview with Larry and Cherie recorded on September 11, 2014.
Continue reading Judge Guy Meets Cherie Rodgers →