Hiroshima

Today, Shinkansen took us to another, not at least historically, interesting sight.
Hiroshima was devastated by atomic bombing on August, 6th, 1945. An inhuman act of war crime in my eyes.
Certainly, war crimes have been commited by all parties involved and I dont want to get into further discussions, so I stop and refer to this site for further reading.

Nevertheless, the city has recovered from the nuclear holocaust and is prospering and rather beautiful. Nicely surrounded by green hills and built on islands of the Õtagawa river delta.

We were wondering and perhaps some of our readers as well how people can live here again after the radioactive fall-out while Tschernobyl still is a place of death. I will get to that later.

Think about the shape of this fountain.

So we grabbed some breakfast, jumped on the train and were almost beamed to Hiroshima. Here, we went directly to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park by streetcar (Tram, sporvogn).

The Hiroshima Industrial Promotion Hall as it was after the blast - today 'The Atomic Bomb Dome', a UNESCO world heritage site.

The park is beautiful and quiet, surrounded by two arms of the river. After ringing the 'Bell of Peace' we visited the Cenotaph, a memorial site for all known victims of the bomb and the museum with an exhibition of drawings and notes of survivors. Heavy stuff...

Selma and Rikke sending out a reminder to the world to make peace.

In one line the Cenotaph in front, eternal flame in the back and the atomic dome in the background.

Coming back to the difference between Hiroshima and Tschernobyl.
With my little understanding of physics I appreciate that the energy released by the bomb is coming from enormous nuclear fission (breakdown of atoms in uranium) that takes place in less than a second creating a firestorm and massive irradiation. The radioactivity declines relatively fast as the breakdown is shortlived.
For nuclear power plant you rather want to have less energy to handle, so the material used breaks down slower (longer half-live). Drawback here is of course if an accident occurs like the explosion of the Tschernobyl Power plant, you distribute long-lived radioactive material over a big area that then is contaminated for decades or longer.
Nuclear fission is a terrible monster!

Another thing. Traveling with Shinkansen is such a relaxing experience that we would probably visit every corner of Japan connected by the 'Bullet-train'. Unfortunately in that sense we have to go back home soon. The trains are incredibly fast, connecting all greater areas on mainland, extraordinarily clean and depart frequently to our convenience. Biggest difference to and where german Bundesbahn could learn from it is that Shinkansen is always on time!!!

Anyway, it was a worthwhile trip, impressive and contemplative...

See you soon,
Kristian