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Black smoke rises from the damaged reactor number 3 at Fukushima. AP Photo/Tokyo Electric Power Co.

British government planned to play down Fukushima disaster

New emails reveal attempts by government departments to instigate a PR campaign just two days after the devastating earthquake and tsunami.

NEW DOCUMENTS HAVE revealed how British government officials approached nuclear energy companies to draw up a co-ordinated PR campaign to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan on 11 March.

The Guardian reports show how the departments of business and energy in the UK worked closely with multinational companies like EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse to ensure the accident did not derail plans for a new generation of nuclear power stations in  the UK.

Officials stressed the importance of preventing the incident from undermining those plans and public support for nuclear energy, according to the Guardian. In one email an official from the department of business warns: “We need to ensure the anti-nuclear chaps and chapesses (sic) do not gain ground on this. We need to occupy the territory and hold it.”

Read the emails on guardian.co.uk >

Read more from Rob Edwards on guardian.co.uk >

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    Mute Clan O'D
    Favourite Clan O'D
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    Jul 1st 2011, 1:44 PM

    Explains a lot. Like many Irish people I watch both British and Irish TV. I’ve said about ten times to friends that Fukushima “disappeared” off the air waves. Despite it getting worse and worse and rivalling — and then surpassing — Chernobyl in disaster size and danger. It’s been kept under wraps.
    But I’ve seen very little on the news here either?

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    Mute Tim O'Sullivan
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    Jul 1st 2011, 3:10 PM

    Surpassing Chernobyl?
    not even close, the amount of radiation released is an order of magnitude less coupled with the fact that no one has dies as a result radiation (unless you think there is a massive international conspiracy to cover this up)

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    Mute Tonacatecuhtli
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    Jul 1st 2011, 5:03 PM

    Totally agree Tim. The lies and hype around the reporting of Fukushima are shocking.

    @ Clan O’D – I read most of the main world newspapers online every day and Fukushima is constantly in the news. Just two weeks ago Al Jazeera English had a huge article on it in which their ‘expert’ lied over and over again and made incredible apocalyptic statements regarding Fukushima. AJE then pretty much tweeted the whole article – I had to complain to several editors about it. The article was then shredded on several blogs and websites by real nuclear experts some of whom also took the time to expose the hidden agenda of the AJE expert.

    Thorium power is the way forward. Clean, abundant, cheap and safe.

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    Mute Oisín Ó Dálaigh
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    Jul 1st 2011, 3:23 PM

    i can almost imagine the statement:

    “Right ho chaps and chapettes, seems our friends in the land of the Rising Sun are having a dashed difficult time of it with this reactor thingamajig. All really very barmy or so we hear. Its bally important that we keep mum about this to the oiks and yobs, don’t want them getting agitated and going all bolshie on us now, that wouldn’t do at all. Keep calm and carry on”

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    Mute John Mack
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    Jul 1st 2011, 2:40 PM

    can we do our bit by keeping this in the headlines, would the fact they extending shellafield be the reason they played this down? hopefully it won’t go ahead now that the Germans wont be supplying waste rods due to their downscaling of their nuclear plants.

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