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Friday, March 20, 2026

FUKUSHIMA: A NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE

 I just watched on HBO Max, Fukushima:  A Nuclear Nightmare, a 2026 British-American documentary directed by James Jones and Megumi Inman, exploring the 11March2011 Fukushima nuclear accident.  A gripping film.  Too new to be rated by RottenTomatoes.  Read my Huffington Post article on The Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami:  The Aftermath.


The production features Ikuo Izawa, a Tokyo Electric Power Company supervisor at the nuclear site, who deserves an Oscar for his performance.  He was there from Day 1 as one of the Fukushima 50 and worked at the site until help came.  From Wikipedia:

  • There were 800 workers at the site when the tsunami struck on 11March2011.
  • These 50 volunteered to remain to stabilize the nuclear reactors for the crucial first few days
6 am  Wake up 7–8 am  Meeting at the anti-seismic building 

10 am Breakfast (biscuits about 30 pieces and one bottle of vegetable juice)

About 10 am  Commence tasks at the reactor building and boiler building

About 5 pm  Finish work  

5–8 pm  Supper (retort-packed rice and one canned food)

8–10 pm  Meeting at the antiseismic building

About 10 pm  Sleep, with blanket on the floor, except people who work at night.
  • The Fukushima 50 were present when hydrogen explosions occurred at the reactor buildings of units 1, 3, and 4. Five workers were injured in the unit 1 explosion at 15:36 on 12 March. Most of the injuries were not severe. Eleven workers were injured in the unit 3 explosion at 11:01 on 14 March. The explosion at unit 4 at about 6 am on 15 March did not cause injuries. The explosions scattered radioactive concrete debris around the buildings, which made the working conditions on the site more difficult.[32][33]
  • Media outlets lauded the remaining workers' bravery, and called them "heroes", and as a result they have become known in the media as the "Fukushima 50". France 24 called them "Japan's faceless heroes",[58] British newspaper, The Guardian wrote: "Other nuclear power employees, as well as the wider population, can only look on in admiration".[59] They have been compared to the Forty-seven Ronin.[60] 

I was enraptured by the film, for, in a minor way, I felt I also was there, in a chicken little manner.

  • I was in Singapore on March 10 and had MY BEST CHINESE LUNCH, EVER.  I then flew to Bangkok.
  • You need to go back to my posting of 11March2011 to learn that the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear cataclysm struck.
    • On March 12 I got confirmation at 4:30AM that my Thai Air flight to Narita was set to fly at 8AM.  
    • So I packed and made it to the airport at 6AM.  
    • I flew Royal First Class, which was extraordinary:
First, you don’t stand in line but sit in a lounge area.  Then, a staff member accompanies you through immigration and arranges for a Segway type device with driver to take you to their first class room.  The ride was quite lengthy.  There might have been five passengers for a room that could easily hold a hundred or two, and a staff of a dozen and more.

Various dim sums, soups, rice dishes, etc.  I asked for a chicken fried rice with an egg, which they prepared in a kitchen, and ordered a Bloody Mary and Singha Beer.  Yes, 7AM, but it was already afternoon in Honolulu.  The flight was delayed an hour, so I had a chance to spruce up my Huffington Post Hawaii Tsunami, Again article, and field a few concerned e-mails.

I was accompanied to the plane at 9AM, was served a glass of 2002 Dom Perignon and no more then ten minutes later, it took flight, the plane, not me, yet.  Bet you did not know that Dom Perignon was a Benedictine Monk, born in 1639, who invented champagne?


Early morning departures provide a breakfast, so it was not the usually extravagant meal.  I decided I was eating too much on this trip anyway, so only ordered a boiled rice soup with salmon accompanied by a rice noodle soup.  How’s this for deprivation:

It frankly occurred to me at this point, notwithstanding the immediate above, of my real life fantasy that, while drumming my feet on the floor to the beat of Ravel’s Bolero, I was at the peak of my life.  One wonders when this will be, sort of like Peak Oil, but, no doubt, this was it. Things can only go downhill from here, and certainly will when I land in the chaos of Narita.  But it was an incredible ride and I still think I was (am, yet?) the luckiest person in the history of Humankind.  Finally, I felt a kind of euphoria traveling at the speed of a bullet at 33,000 feet, maybe akin to a prisoner on death row having his last breakfast.  I was mentally prepared for the next stage of my life, the calmness before the catastrophe.

My plane landed at around 4PM after a flight of five hours from Bangkok.  I had four bags with me, one very large, for I'm on a six week trip in hot and cold countries.  After the customs check I looked around for the usual sign with my name.  Saw none, so walked around with my bags and asked questions.  Half an hour later after determining that there were no taxis, no airport limousines, no NEX, and no Tokyo Westin pickup, I tried to call the Westin, but failed.  There was only one option, the slowest JR trains from Narita to Tokyo: 

I finally arrived at the Westin at almost 9PM.  It took me as long to fly from Thailand to Japan as to travel from Narita to the Tokyo Westin.  What an ordeal!

When I balance the good and the bad of the day, and consider that I am actually in Tokyo only a day after their largest earthquake in history, I feel blessed.  Supposedly there have been two 6.0+ aftershocks the past hour (there have been 83 of these in a little more than 24 hours), but I didn't feel anything, and things are quickly coming together in this city.  So catastrophe?  Not really.  Life remains great.

Here is my posting of 13March2011:  THE GREAT SENDAI EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI OF 2011.   To quote:


3.  Oh, by the way, at least one report has radiation already in Tokyo, less than 150 miles from Fukushima.  Whoops, I'm in Tokyo.  I was in D.C. in 1979 when the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, 100 miles away, suffered a meltdown, killing nuclear power construction in the U.S.  So how do you get iodine pills in Tokyo, and what do they do?  Amazon. com  sells it for $13.50 (14 pills), although you get it used for $5.75, plus $4 shipping.

I guess I had two postings on March 13:  THE CHICKEN AND CHICKEN LITTLE SCHOOL OF REPORTAGE.

  • What I'm leading to is that, while TIME magazine reporters and CNN staff are trying to get into the Sendai area (and I talked to several of them), I am leaving town, for the second explosion at Fukushimaconvinced me that the French, indeed, must know something.  This is the Chicken and Chicken Little School of Reportage:  take no chances and assume that the sky could fall.
  • NOAA sent out a graphic of tsunami heights:
  • I had decided to leave Tokyo from Beijing:
I'll keep updating this posting until I board the plane, but this will be my final daily blog for five days, as China and Google are still sparring, and portals like this blog site, You Tube, etc., are blocked.  It is possible, though, that I could sneak articles through the Huffington Post, so you can check there.

I stayed a few days in Beijing, but heard that there was no radiation emanating from Fukushima to Tokyo, so I flew to Seoul to more closely observe what I would do.  

  • As this blog site was shut down in China, that photo to the right is just outside of the Forbidden City in Beijing.  I also on this stop walked the Great Wall.

I had my best lunch in Korea, even better than brunch yesterday.  But my experience at Jung Sik-dang today was so fabulous that I rank it among the very best of meals ever.  I now only review lunches, and JSK compares well with Noma (Copenhagen), La Terrazza (Rome) and Konigshof Restaurant (Munich).

I finally returned to Tokyo after this 11-day escape, and found that the Tokyo Westin only had a 12% occupancy rate.  But across the street was maybe the top international restaurant in Asia, and while this sounds profligate while the country was suffering, my next posting on March 24 was titled:  ROBUCHON IN TOKYO:  My Best French Dinner?

Across the street (view from my room above) from the Tokyo Westin is what was once Taillevent-Rubuchon, but is now only called Robuchon.  He has a dozen restaurants and has more Michelin stars than anyone.  At the age of 28 he was the youngest chef to earn 3 stars.  His only three star restaurants today are in Macao, Las Vegas and the one I went to tonight.  There are 27 Michelin 3-star (no such thing as 4-star) restaurants in Japan, 37 in France and 11 in the USA.  He was named chef of the century in 1989.  He mentored Gordon Ramsay, who you know from TV's Kitchen Nightmares.  Joel Robuchon actually retired 15 years ago at the age of 50 and is coasting, but doing well.

Anyway, the next day, I heard that the accident level at Fukushima increased to 6, so I left Tokyo on a Shinkansen for Fukuoka.

I'm now skipping my escape to the southwest of Japan, but pick up my timeline back to Tokyo, then up north through Fukushima all the way to Sapporo, then back south to Tokyo.


My hopping all around Japan finally ended on 10April2011:

  • I woke up at 6:47 this morning to another aftershock.  I thought I'd return to Shinjuku Gyoen, so, I thought, what would be a great final meal.  I went down to the buffet and got permission to make a giant sandwich of cold cuts, cheeses and vegetables.  The Tokyo Westin gave me a bottle of Copper's Crossing Cabernet Shiraz, so I poured some of it into a tonic water bottle.  I wanted to test the jacket strategy.

    I caught the Yamanote Line to Shinjuku, and walked to the park.  I noticed a soup stand, so I purchased a bowl of tomato/pork soup.  There were no checkers today, so I simply inserted my 200 yen admittance and walked to the nearest empty bench.  While unpacking, a cherry blossom petal fluttered into the soup:
  • Certainly, my most satisfying, and cheapest, meal of the trip.  Said goodbye to Pearl's ashes and took the following photo.
  • I then took the limousine bus to the airport.  But at Narita:
...when at 5:16 PM, the room began to shake.  I immediately ran away from the window, and so did everyone else.  I think this latest one was close to that aftershock of 4 days ago.  Early reports were 7.1, so same as the April 7 tremor.  What's the largest earthquake you ever felt?

  • After a couple more shakes:
Well, the flight took off almost on time and this was the United First Class that almost deserves the term.  This was a Premium Boeing 777, and the electronic entertainment was excellent, food okay and service terrific.  Not quite the earlier days of Beluga caviar, Johnny Walker Blue Label and Dom Perignon, but a definite improvement.

My flight arrived early and I was home by 8AM.  Nice to be home.

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