The great nuclear silence

Obsessed with all things ‘now’ and ‘today’, the media are distinguished by a hopelessly short memory. Yesterday is ages ago, and anything that occurred last month might as well have happened in 1837, or not at all. When the news is no longer new the circus leaves town and a deep silence sets in. This is what happened after Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear meltdown at Fukushima plant. Following a fast and furious frenzy of media coverage, Fukushima’s fate and victims have disappeared from the radar, apart from on one day, May 20, when Masataka Shimizu resigned as President of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which owns the Fukushima plant, as it reported a net annual loss of $15 billion. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how much Tepco will have to pay in compensation. Due to the radiation leaked into the atmosphere, some 50,000