
On Fukushima Beach - Nuclear Catastrophe
The Fukushima Daiichi plant's Unit 4 anchors this film's warning: former Japanese ambassador Mitsuhei Murata explains that the ground beneath the reactor has sunk 31.5 inches unevenly since the 2011 disaster, threatening a structural collapse that could drain the cooling pool holding over 1,500 spent fuel rods and roughly 37 million curies of radiation. A former secretary to Prime Minister Naoto Kan adds to the account, warning that even a moderate magnitude 6 earthquake could trigger the collapse Murata describes as an unprecedented crisis, one that would leave the plant unapproachable as it burns. The film argues mainstream media has largely dropped the story, and it turns to the United States, where 31 reactors sit in comparable spent-fuel configurations, to ask why officials stay quiet. It closes on an alternative it treats as a partial answer: Japan's solar feed-in tariff, which pays homeowners $0.54 per kilowatt-hour for power sent back to the grid, offered as evidence a shift away from nuclear power is already underway.