I had thought that meltdown meant "boom!" But it's long, slow poisoning, it seems, and it lasts a long, long time. Today's news seeped in. How could it not?
Dilution
Ninety paces from the sea, reactor tunnels overflow, a four-year dose of poison joining water every hour. The iodine isotope’s gone in just a week, but plutonium’s half life spans 300 lifetimes. It’s around and toxic for 24,000 years. Ingested, plutonium’s alphas turn healthy tissue rogue, but outside, skin or tissue paper, our origami armor, keep the rays away. The point is not to eat it. The point is to keep the rain, the kelp, the precious catch far from children’s lips—everything that once would’ve birthed their bodies from the sea. Peril lasts at least until dilution, the capaciousness of time and elements to render the deadly merely venial. Or safe right now, as experts say. Ningyo, goddess weeping white pearl tears, fills the seabed’s vents with grief. Containment vessels—slave ships, threats of hell, boxes locked against whatever tempts—always crack, she knows. Black the ruined night.
Photo by Ha-Wee, Howie Le, via Flickr.
