Analyze

Given the vastness of Formosa Plastics' influence, there are many ways to tell its story to the world. As environmental justice activists and researchers, how do we describe a company and its negative impact when there is so much to say? Limited by time, word count, and the audience's attention span, we must decide what goes unsaid. As a result, we could write countless answers to the same question, "What is Formosa Plastics?"

In this published academic case study, I introduce Formosa Plastics through a local lens--specifically, through the eyes of a grandmother-turned-activist in the small town of Welcome, Louisiana. Her family's history with social justice activism, as well as the area's connection to centuries of slavery, make the environmental racism of Formosa Plastics' Sunshine Project especially salient. Although Formosa Plastics is a global force, telling its story on the microscale is an equally important perspective. After all, in Sharon Lavigne's eyes, her small town is her world. How many of these little worlds have Formosa Plastics destroyed as they wreak havoc across international borders?

On July 16th 1979, the largest by volume radioactive spill in US history took place in Church Rock (Kinłitsosinil), which is located in the southeastern “checkerboard area” of the Navajo Nation (Diné Bikéyah) and northwestern New Mexico. Due to a breach in the former United Nuclear Corporation’s uranium mill tailings dam, an estimated ninety-four (~94) million gallons of radioactive, toxic, and highly acidic effluent spilled into the Puerco River (Brugge et al. 2002; SRIC 2009).

The Church Rock Uranium Mill Tailings Spill marked the disastrous beginning of the end for the uranium mining industry in the Navajo Nation and New Mexico. Ironically, the spill occurred on the very same day as an event 34 years prior that marked the beginning of the uranium boom and the dawn of the atomic age: the Trinity Test of July 16th 1945, “the day the sun rose twice.” (Szasz 1984) Unlike the world’s first nuclear explosion in southern New Mexico, the Church Rock mill spill remains relatively underreported and has not yet registered at a national scale of collective memory.

The central argument/narrative of the film is explaining what the Fukishima nuclear meltdown was and what was done to contain the explosions and the subsquent radiation that was leaking into the atmosphere. How to restore power to the plant in order to contain the fuel rods and prevent meltdown. Indirectly the argument was to persuade the public to be more informed about nuclear power and the affects it could have on the world- to learn how to prevent nuclear disasters; make emergency nuclear response teams.

It is made and sustained through interviews of people who were there in the powr plant during the event, the surrounding citizens in the villages, Americans who came to intervene on their citizens, and people in Japan's government. Film footage is used to support the argument. The scientific information that is provided for support in the film was saying the levels of radiation around the plant as the situation became better and worse, the structure of the power plant (briefly), how to stop a nuclear meltdown.

The stakeholders that are described/portrayed in the film was the fate of Japan, the nuclear disasters in th past that shaked Japan, preventing the same thing from happening. The kinds of decisions they had to grapple with before the aftermath is the powerfailure, the lack of generators, and the affect the water had on the plant, and the future of the fuel rods. During the event they had to figure out how to stop the meltdown, how to restore power to the plant, how to help the engineers who had no choice but to be stuck inside, how to save Japan from nuclear fallout,etc. The aftermath was how to get the plant up and running again, the future of nuclear power in Japan, how to clean up and prevent further contamination of the land surrounding the plant. Also the health,safety and preperation of further nuclear power plant endeavors.

Emergency response was portrayed in the film through the team of engineers who tried to contain the problem, those who laid pipes to attempt to pump water into the reactors, the team of firefighters who sprayed water into the reactors, and the miltary crew who dropped water over the exposed fuel pools.

Very little in this film failed to convice me. The information was well thought out and put together, the resources that were in this film were vaild and cannot be refuted because they are first hand accounts. This film does shine a negative light on nuclear power, which made me a little concerned because nuclear power is not always dangerous, but other then that nothing was done sloppily or had incorrect information

I was compelled and convinced by the whole film, the footage and the interviews with first hand accounts provided compelling and persuasive evidence that the film was well made and valid.

The audience the film best addresses is the public who knew about the nuclear event, but were not informed to the extent of what had happened or its ramifications on the future.