there's some very strict censorship which doesn't let us understand the true future and that's not honking. and accidents in japan and assurances over radiation safety that are proving to be wrong. and disasters like this beg the question how can this be prevented but we want to take it one step further where is the seat for alternative energy plans i would prevent these issues from happening in the first. look we appropriate we have to be feared or as we've learned from a very naive very katrina we would leave the peer to peer no take and find out how these councils are preparing the people of california just california for the

nuclear fallout. it's wednesday march sixteenth seven pm in washington d.c. i'm christine they're watching our team well we're going to start off as evening with the worsening crisis in japan right throughout the day smoke could be seeing billowing out of one of the nuclear reactors reactor number four at the fukushima nuclear power plants after a fire there and this in addition to an earlier fire and explosion and high levels of radiation seeping into the air and there seems to be a bubble an undercurrent of anxiety and fear in the japanese people not knowing what to possibly expect next artie's i've orbit has more. people. trying to stop. this shelves. the people here are

getting ready to hide fearing an invisible killer radiation explosions at the fukushima daiichi power plant could the country on the cusp of nuclear meltdown one damage to react without a casing and a final two reactors have now lost cooling capability to radiation levels peaks near the plants at four hundred times the amount normally absorbed in a year if it is it will spread across the country. it's the same information and footage being broadcast on every channel you have just a guess many things for them and other places you can get them in the japanese sources there's some very steep censorship which doesn't lead as understand the true picture and that's not helping. residents prepared to go to ground for news crews of fleeing this team from new zealand is heading finegan to airport but flights from there to sucker in tokyo are already fully booked for the next two days the exodus as the gun here on the west coast. has already closed.

turning up get on the next available flight out of the country such as desperation to escape. we have to wait until morning to get the next flight to hardwire of what we have to wait outside but we will because we want to escape the radiation some though have nowhere to run to this was once a village those who lived here are returning to find there's simply nothing left the devastation just goes on and on. more than half a million people have been left homeless their belongings swallowed up and spat out by the tsunami relief workers are searching for survivors all along japan's ravaged coast what's now a sea of daybreak fifteen thousand have already been rescued but over seven thousand are still missing and some parts haven't even been reached yet over two and a half thousand relief centers are still packed and will be for several weeks it's

cold and uncomfortable but this is one of the few places these people can get food and shelter huge parts of the country have been completely wiped out but the threat of nuclear meltdown means they could still be more to come after bennett r.t. they got the job back. so here we have this devastated country still reeling from the earthquake from the tsunami and there is so much sadness and so much confusion as the people continue to search for friends and relatives their government is telling them to stay inside to shelter in place to tape of their windows did you see what i just saw some of the pictures that have been coming from japan show that many of these people don't have windows to tape and they certainly don't have shelters to shelter in place there are no homes for so many people you know i think back to friday when all of this happened you turn on most of the news stations here in this country or in japan and you hear this word over and over containment maybe

will evacuate a few thousand people just to be safe yes there's a slight problem but it's been contained at first so almost no one was saying the other seaward churn noble and i can assure you i'm not a rocket scientist or a scientist of any sort but we knew on friday at least three of these reactors were under stress we knew at one of them the radiation levels were a thousand times what they normally are and yet we heard it's not that serious you need to be concerned it's being contained come on people this is an area where there are one hundred million people living in an area the size of california of course there is reason to be concerned why were the owners of this power plant or the government for that matter letting the people know it's because they weren't telling you the truth so can we ever trust corporations to look after the public interest turns out in this case so now two hundred thousand people have been evacuated and the risks of health issues have not gotten better about verse don't

these people from all people deserve better to saying. if i want to look now at the issue of trust within japan and how it's affecting the people there are the correspondent. reports. with reactors at the fukushima nuclear power plants having gone up in smoke fears about a possible meltdown loom large japanese authorities give assurances there is no imminent threat to tokyo residents but past evidence suggests they are not to be trusted completely in a good many years the new calendar stream and the regulators in japan but also in every society every country that operates nuclear power you find consistently that there's a lack of transparency a lack of book. maybe he just thinks i think we can but that's too much information why should we cry the information so i think the situation in japan is absolutely

critical in fact just five years ago the plant operator tokyo electric power company or tepco admitted to falsifying temperature readings for cooling materials advocacy as early as in one thousand nine hundred eighty five and with the country now facing a leader disaster the government will be careful in choosing its words. i think what is going to happen in the juggler's government is not only accountable or student or what they are trying to change. but also the accountable to other countries and other nations which start in two thousand and two the governments disclose that at least twenty nine cases of damage to the reactor had been swept under the carpet that incident led zep because presidents and some senior officials to put in scandal in two thousand and three seventeen to have cooperated plants ordered to be shut down again because the operator lied about what was happening at

these sites so when the japanese officials put on a somber face but give assurances everything's fine not everyone's convinced particularly when the country's already got enough other problems to deal with if you don't have the emergency resources if your employer strong. it has been destroyed and the further you go away from the reactor the more difficult the more diverse the population settlements are the more difficult it is to evacuate you don't want to panic the probably to get them to soap of arc you wait i may be on within we put themselves in harm's way but when thousands of lives are on the line such a policy can easily be counterproductive there's a growing distrust among people in japan that the information they were receiving is not informing us to the extent that we would like it to and it doesn't reduce anik it just makes people all the more uncertain when he can't trust for the information they're being as it stands japan appears to be balancing on the brink of a nuclear meltdown and the official version of events implores everyone to stay calm

history shows not all their words could be taken at face value in tokyo it even goes r t so when catastrophes like this happen there are a few questions that always seem to come up first how could this have been prevented and second what can we do moving forward to make sure it doesn't happen again with things now more than ever we are in need of some big ideas and big thinkers you know here in the us we've of course that steve jobs of course but his big ideas make our lives easier more fun and interesting what about those ideas that will actually sustain life give our future a better chance of well happening one of these ideas is fusion the bonding of atoms at extremely high temperatures to create energy i will not call the gas fusion to talk more about this i want to go down to marty harford in great neck new york he's a retired physicist from n.y.u. and also a senior fellow at the breakthrough institute. i guess the end that out of fear is

in and why an idea like this would be beneficial to the future let me just quickly of course i'm going to answer you but let me just quickly respond to something you said before which is why did this happen and is it have to happen again i mean i believe that in the near term in the next ten to fifteen to twenty years we're going to really need to explore in the nuclear option the fission action before we get to fusion and i but we also and many other engineers and scientists believe that we can make fission power plants a lot safer than they are right now and so we want to be devoting significant resources to doing that as far as fusion fusion has been a promise sense and early days when we realized we could make fusion weapons in the one nine hundred fifty s. the first nuclear reactor which was the one nine hundred forty three within ten years we had built

a commercial nuclear reactor if the fermi's experiments ten years earlier and yet it's been almost sixty years since the first hydrogen bomb and we still don't have fusion and everyone asks that question why is fusion and ten or twenty years in the future and all the reasons that for in the future the answer is it's a very tough problem but it's a problem and i think we're going to solve the eventually there is a program going on right now a project in the south of france to build a commercial fusion or that could build a commercial fusion reactor to understand the science of whether we can get energy from sea water by fusing hydrogen and you're talking about this i to apprise i thank the internet get all their nuclear experiments on reactor and it's correct it's an international project it's going to cost between ten and twenty billion dollars and i don't think we're going to be able to count on any power. from fusion

until twenty thirty we're beyond the problems we have an energy or our civilization runs on energy the way the roman empire when on slavery it is inconceivable that we can run a civilization without a sustainable source of energy is sufficiently warm lived and safe and if you look at the if you look at the options that are available nuclear fission is in the picture so in the near term we've got to improve work on improving nuclear fission but the fundamental issue in the united states is that we're not committing enough financial resources to this problem the u.s. department of energy has a budget of about twenty five billion dollars for all forms of energy and most of that is coal and nuclear whereas the chinese have committed three times as much energy that they were excuse me investment going to be devoting all of the order of

seventy five billion dollars annually to develop our normal energy sources and it is actually paid off for them in the sense that china has ramped up to about fifty percent the solar photovoltaic center sure time why do i want to get in i want to interject here just a second are you cause you made so many very interesting points here the difference between china and the u.s. in terms of their investment i want to talk about first of all this isn't how it's always been in the u.s. the u.s. has you know a few decades ago invested in things that they didn't understand that they didn't know where they were going to go. so when you talk about that sort of the change in the attitude both public attitude investors and in political leaders and leaders who no matter what are not going to see you know the benefits reaped by these programs in their terms but they still went for it before also i want you to talk about. sort of why you know here we're in washington as you know and so i want you

to talk about why you know or oil you i mean you talk about oil gas and coal so much being invested in these elements and not sort of the more i know and and how that could be really detrimental to the future. they may be surprised how i look at this obviously there's an enormous infrastructure in thoughtful fuels and i believe that we're going to have to phase fossil fuels out within the next fifty years and that's the president's position as well if we're going to reduce c o two emissions by eighty percent by the middle of the century and most scientists who are familiar with climate change realize that that's a goal that we should be pursuing why are we not pursuing it with enough. they are why are we really investing what resources we have and the answer i have that may surprise you is that i think there are image of the future our vision of the future is dramatically different now than it was when i was growing up in an earlier

geologic era which was right after world war two and the one thousand fifty's and sixty's when scientists had actually performed what seemed to be miracles of of technology development and when people were planning to go to the moon and colonize the solar system there was a basic aletha future was going to be a better place for our children and for of the senate so we were going to get there through science and technology we don't see science and technology like anymore we don't have the best and the brightest the bright young people in the united states at least studying science and technology and that that's something that has to change party themes that the best and the brightest at least in this country do one of two things they go to wall street or they go if they stay in technology they're developing things you know like i pods and i pads and you computers things that make our lives you know more fulfilling and fun but not things as you say the same

life but i think we've just seen what the effect of having this generation of people going what you know aspiring to be a hedge fund managers rather than engineers and technologists work the thing that's made the united states great over the. yes two hundred years has been a history of science and technology and technological innovation and i know this is that your network is affiliated with russia formally the soviet union and i believe that many great things were invented in russia there was a time when there was a competition of who is inventing more but that's been the strong point that the us you're mentioning apple which is a place of my son actually worked that for seven years and knew steve jobs and i think that if the united states is going to be successful and emerging from this economic malays that we're involved in right now we're going to have to create in tar new industries industries that were created similarly during world war two for

example by f.d.r. when we were in the depths of the depression the ratio of debt to g.d.p. in the depression was about fifty percent about the same as it is right now and by the end of world war two it went up to or better hundred twenty percent much more than it is right now and that was because the american people were borrowed from their self from themselves to completely reinvest it was the united states by the end of the war the united states was the most economically powerful country in the world we had almost fifty percent of the world's g.d.p. if it's such a bad thing to spend money because the economy is in terrible shape how do the opponents of increased spending increased investment in alternative energy explain that. it's nonsense economically and that's the economic part other part which i mentioned before is the vision for how do we imagine a future everything that exists in this world had to exist first in the manmade

world and to exist first and somebody has money and that's probably the most important resource already unfortunately we are out of time at some really really important questions that you raise an important ally. back and see how different it is now from just a few decades ago marty hoffert senior fellow at the breakthrough institute and retired and why you physicists well now i want to turn the clock back just for a few days i want to take a deeper look into what was known and what was not known this is verity of the nuclear crisis in japan is still not known of course but there were some simple dots that should have been connected that were not and i'm not just talking about some of the media outlets in japan here in the united states the mainstream media turns out as many vested interests in the way it reports what's happening and it may come at the safety of the people in japan are taken from either an investigative journalist wayne madsen is here and i want you to help me connect these dots we've got a.b.c.

news a very popular news network it's owned by disney will disney has a vested interest in keeping the fear down because they have tokyo disney and then we've got general electric which owns n.b.c. m.s.n. d c c n.b.c. all of these you know they've for days really played down what was happening at the fukushima daiichi nuclear plant take a listen to one of the experts that they had on it when they said it was one of their government experts and the idea that this should possibly be compared to churn noble. comparing them is just not sensible one is very very serious incident as we know the very worst case scenario for japan is meth is massively less serious than that and in fact the most likely event we believe in japan is to actually use the authorities money by using seawater to keep the reactor cool so things will gradually. so massively less serious than chernobyl we've got words like containment what's going on well we know it's

a level six. heading to level seven which was the chernobyl event what's going on here is we've general electric even after the comcast merger still has a significant a stake in n b c we see the nuclear lobby through the nuclear energy institute and all their other page fills an astounding putting a full court press on every possible media outlet in addition to members of congress to make sure that nothing happens to affect the growth of nuclear power plants in this country and president obama i would add not only has jeffrey immelt as his jobs and competitiveness of adviser on that white house panel buddy he took a lot of money from exelon a chicago based nuclear power plant company so we have all kinds of conflicts of interest basically what admiral said many decades ago get the corporate board room

out of the news room now we see the effects of that this even three mile island in one nine hundred seventy nine the corporate media did a fairly good job even as they were being stonewalled by people like governor dick thornburgh of pennsylvania who waited three days before telling pregnant women to get out of the area. who are they now going to and asking for his thoughts on this thornburgh but i mean the these you can always rent an expert you can rent a shill they come some of. some are more expensive but that's what's going on here right now and i did know to take their anger on several of the networks so let's not just blast the t.v. networks this is also happening in print journalism right oh absolutely you look at the washington post and warren buffett we know with his you know financial portfolio is probably invested heavily in some of these companies the washington post running op ed after op ed pro-nuclear in industry nuclear energy industry even in the free papers that the post prints that you pick up at the metro station they

had two opinions both were pro-nuclear this is what the nuclear power in industry and lobbies doing right now they're really pushing against any bad news from japan even though everything we get from japan is bad news right now that's totally true it's really interesting to see all of these interests but how how do we move forward i mean there was even if i understand right i think on capitol hill today that the three hearings on nuclear energy we've got the corporate media certainly they've got to pay their bills how do we continue to move in this direction when anything everything seems to be connected make sure the regulators who the f.c.c. grants licenses broadcast licenses to those who broadcast over the public airwaves not cable but the public airwaves make sure they're they're meeting the common good the public interest they're not right now they should be under pressure but unfortunately these regulatory agencies like the nuclear regulatory commission are

in the hands of the corporate interests that the supposed to regulate and govern so i wouldn't hold my breath on the f.c.c. applying pressure on these broadcasters but that's one way that they could be pressured is to threaten their broadcast licenses i think it's an important point that you bring up what are morrow and keeping the boardroom out of the newsroom how often do you think that this happens today oh it happens all the time we know that a.b.c. when disney took them over they were doing something on. pedophiles work working at the disney world in orlando they spike the story this is what happens on every even down to the local news level on local issues if it has any effect on their corporate interests the corporate ties we've seen stories spike we've seen stories we've seen retractions in some cases and this is what goes on unfortunately this is not an isolated case of this happening and people like rachel maddow and edge shots on m.s.n. b.c.

i know they're trying to report the news but they ought to look to see what happened keith olbermann they have a line if they cross it i think they could be gone i think it's a really interesting thing because what you heard. friday saturday sunday regarding japan and now you're hearing today they're starting to have to say by the way two hundred thousand people have been evacuated this is getting dangerous but time has made that essential for them to do that what do you think we're going to see moving i think we're going to see more evacuations they can't keep the lid on this any longer we have infrared spy satellites over japan and they know the situation there at the u.s.s. ronald reagan nuclear powered aircraft carrier pulling out u.s. navy ships now going to the western side of japan to get out of the downwind area and we have and i think it's funny admiral rickover the father of the nuclear navy in one thousand nine hundred two basically stated that nuclear use of nuclear reactors for power was a bad idea he said i'd seen carrying nuclear powered navy ship and get rid of these

reactors because radiation does not sustain life on this planet and on that note are you contributor investigative journalist wayne madsen thanks so much. so had your r.t. japan isn't the only place gearing up for a nuclear fallout. over. doors and wind loading up on racing green story water across the pacific ocean the people of california harry. john berman here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

the in. the in the way to. to. to. to. to. really be low when you think of all that is where many people are so you can't speak she's love her you know she says she's a strong. well

the nonstop coverage of the problems that japan's fukushima nuclear plant is causing panic in some parts of america despite assurances that we face no danger from radiation cloud correspondent ramon glenda looks at the coverage and how the nuclear preparedness business is booming right now. he's alert three counties officials now warning of a possible meltdown one hundred seventy thousand people have been evacuated or hearing of multiple explosions he could trigger a worst case scenario a full blown meltdown meltdown meltdown fears of a nuclear catastrophe in japan are being shared by people on america's west coast up and down california we've been getting reports of people taking extra precautions in case a radioactive cloud is able to make it a couple thousand miles across the pacific people have been stockpiling these iodine pills in order to protect their bodies from radioactive exposure now one of those people that is taking that extra precaution we met at

a health food store this is aaron gonzales now tell us why you felt that it was so necessary to go out and buy these pills just for my own protection and i've been following several subscribers on you tube that broke the news early so i go i was able to make it to a whole foods in the crowd in i was able to get a hold of several. bottles of potassium iodine pills so i can distribute to my family and friends besides the pills have you heard of any other people taking extra precautions to prepare for a possible radioactive cloud coming this way yes i've heard of people saran wrap in their doors and windows loading up on racing during storing water repeatedly we've been hearing from u.s. government officials who say that america poses no problem however we also heard from the u.s. surgeon general recently who was here in california and asked about the possible teenagers of radioactivity coming to california when asked if people were ok to buy

plenty of these i thank catholic she said that she did not think that he was overreacting and she thought it was completely fine for people to be prepared with a rehab. program we have to be prepared we've learned from many. here to. up and down the street we've been getting reports from pharmacies that the iodine pills meant to protect against radioactive exposure have been flying off store shelves the same can be said for online retailers who have told those numbers that they may have to wait weeks for the next shipment now that doesn't mean you can still find them online even selling ten dollars bottles for hundreds of dollars these days just because they know better the man is there so there's definitely people who are profiting off of this panic in los angeles. r.t. . and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we cover and go to our .