It’s hard to believe it was three years ago that the Fukushima disaster occurred, though recent reports suggest that the situation there is still no entirely under control, with several leaks of radioactive water. It’s also hard to be entirely sure that reassuring reports such as that recently published by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation which suggests the health impacts of the radiation leaks are likely to be fairly minimal except possibly for the 160 site workers accurately reflect the total risks, and I have a sneaking suspicion that there may be previously unsuspected pathways and dangers – as has happened previously with other forms of environmental pollution.
What I can be sure of, is that photographing a rather random moving group of people in costumes representing barrels of nuclear waste is harder than it looks! It would have been fun to have followed their progress around London from Hyde Park to Parliament, but there were so many other things happening too, and I only met them at the start of the march and close to Downing Street later in the day.
Photographing them would have perhaps been easier if there had been fewer distractions – sometimes positive and sometimes rather getting in my way, including an improbable nuclear waste fairy, whose magic wand somehow failed to work.
Of course I’ve nothing against fairies, but they really need to keep their wands in better order! The march started at Hyde Park Corner, and I rather liked the sight of them coming along in front of the arches there, though it was hard to get exactly the image I wanted.
It might have been nice to have been a little further out to the right, but I would then have got mowed down by the almost incessant heavy traffic. That road at the left may look empty, but just out of frame the ranks of cars were speeding towards me. After I’d taken this picture I did ask the leading barrel if he would turn his placard so I could see it, and took some more pictures as they came along the pavement, but this remained my favourite.
Sensibly, to cross Park Lane, the waste barrels took the pedestrian subway, and it might have been a good image as they emerged (I’d run across the two carriageways in the gaps between traffic to get there before them) but they didn’t really emerge in a suitable formation. This was life and not a movie set.
I caught up with the nuclear waste barrels later in the day, having waved goodbye as they went towards the Japanese embassy on Piccadilly (and I think they were also going on to the Berkeley Square offices of the Tokyo Electric Power Company) as they were approaching Downing St with the rest of the anti-nuclear protest.
I think that many voters might think have an answer for their question ‘How About A Nuclear Waste Dump Here‘ and feel it might be a rather better use for the site than its current occupants. Or that perhaps it is already one, and Cameron and Osborne are the result of some terrible mutation caused by the radiation. (No, that’s just a joke.)
But I’d certainly not feel happy about living near a nuclear power station, and have often felt a certain tension and dryness in the air around those I’ve visited, though I’m sure that it is purely psychological. I’d certainly not feel safe eating the crops from my garden if I lived close.
Not that I’m against nuclear power. There is a perfect location for a nuclear power plant, and we already have one there. It’s called the sun.
More pictures of those barrels and the rest of the event at Fukushima Nuclear Melt-down Remembered.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
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