• BY:RICK WALLACE, TOKYO CORRESPONDENT 
• From:The Australian 
• June 27, 2011 12:00AM

A SELF-DESCRIBED “animal rescue guerilla” has made a daring raid to the centre of Japan’s nuclear crisis to pluck to safety two dogs seen wandering around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

In recent months, Hiroshi Hoshi has made a series of trips to the radioactive dead zone around the plant to rescue distressed and abandoned pets while dodging roadblocks and police patrols.

He has come across countless animal corpses, dogs that had become cannibals and even an ostrich strolling the streets of a village within the 20km perimeter around the plant.

But perhaps the most amazing was the discovery via a camera trained permanently on the Fukushima Daiichi plant of the pair of Japanese Shiba dogs prowling around the highly radioactive plant more than three months after the beginning of the tsunami and nuclear crisis.

In the footage, the two biscuit-coloured dogs stand out clearly against the grey backdrop of wrecked reactor buildings and tangled metal, and they were spotted by supporters of Mr Hoshi, who were monitoring the internet feed of the camera.

On June 5, he and several sympathisers donned protective suits and skirted police roadblocks in their car and drove right into the plant to where the camera is based. Before long, they had found the dogs, whisked them into their car and got them back to safety.

“For the past three months they have had such a tough time,” Mr Hoshi says. “When we got them, they weren’t even able to urinate or eat any kind of hard food. So we called up an emergency medical centre in Yokohama and they checked and treated them and then we took them to our home.”

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Posted on January 29, 2013 by stacyherbert

We discuss Japan where the latest source of monetary inspiration is Korekiyo Takahasi, described by Ben Bernanke as the man who “brilliantly rescued” his country from the Great Depression of the 1930′s, while neglecting to mention that Takahasi was then assassinated by the army, who were angered by cuts to their wages. They also discuss the biggest Aso in Japan, finance minister Taro Aso, suggesting old people just ‘hurry up and die’ in order to save money for government. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to former MI5 agent turned whistleblower, Annie Machon, about the global crackdown on the internet and the activists who live there.

A majority in the Danish parliament is prepared for the first time to repeal Denmark’s so-called zero-tolerance policy on the radioactive metal, according to media reports.

The world’s fifth largest uranium deposit, Kvanefjeld, is situated in the south of Greenland and if the Danish self-ruled territory makes a formal request to exploit it, Denmark could become one of the biggest exporters of the radioactive metal.

Uranium is created as a byproduct when extracting many valuable and strategically important metals used in for example mobile phones. Uranium is also used for nuclear power and atomic bombs.

Because of the security political significance, Greenland will have to ask Denmark for permission before the zero-tolerance policy can be repealed.

“We have to approach this positively. We would be caught in a very weird Danish role if we block Greenland’s wish,” foreign policy spokesperson Rasmus Helveg Petersen from the Social Liberals, one of the parties constituting the Danish government, told the newspaper Politiken.

New report to be published

Greenland, a former Danish colony, was granted home rule in 1979. Thirty years later, Greenland assumed self-determination with responsibility for judicial affairs, police, and natural resources, but the Danish government is still in charge of foreign affairs, financial policy and security.

In spring, a report by the Greenlandic Directory for Raw Materials on uranium’s effect on the environment and public health will be published. If the report doesn’t point to major issues, there is likely to be a majority in Greenland’s parliament for extracting uranium.

“We support uranium mines as long as these are handled in a proper way and in collaboration with Denmark,” said Greenland’s Deputy Prime Minister Jens Frederiksen, a member of the Democratic Party.

“If everybody else can sell uranium, then we might as well. There’s a lot of money in it,” he said.

[More on a failing uranium industrycan be found here https://nuclear-news.net/2013/01/29/petition-to-save-nuclear-news-net-and-antinuclearnews-net/ ]

Meanwhile, Greenland’s Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist said his party Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) wants a public debate in Greenland on uranium first.

“Until there is a good reason for repealing the zero-tolerance policy, we will keep our zero-tolerance policy,” Kleist said.

U-turn on uranium

Uranium is a toxic and radioactive metal and uranium exposure can affect a person’s kidney, brain, liver and heart. Many studies have also found workers working with uranium in mines to have a higher risk of developing lung cancer.

The main use of uranium in the civilian sector is to fuel nuclear power plants and its large-scale exploitation could potentially change Denmark’s position on the international stage.

“This is a huge turning point in the kingdom’s foreign policy,” said uranium expert Cindy Vestergaard from the Danish Institute for International Studies.

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TEPCO send the workers to Reactor 2 building on January 27 to drill a hole through the 1st floor to the torus room. The location was carefully chosen so that they would have a clear shot at the water accumulated in the torus room. Through the hole, the workers were to feed the camera, dosimeter, and thermometer.Surprise! When the workers managed to carefully drill a hole and looked in, huge pipes and gratings were in the way, and there was no way for the workers to do the planned work at that hole.From TEPCO’s Photos and Videos, 1/28/2013, “Drilling Holes for the Investigation of Unit 2 Torus Room at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station“:

From the handout, this was what TEPCO had planned:

How did this happen? TEPCO chose the location because there wasn’t supposed to be anything, according to the original drawings. However, as repairs and renovations were done over the years, the original drawings from the time the reactor was built became obsolete.

Don’t they have the drawings of those repairs and renovations? Yes they do.But those drawings were stored in one of the buildings that was devastated by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and declared too dangerous to enter. There is no information as to whether anyone has gone back in to retrieve any document or data from the main building. Probably not, because, as we know well by now, TEPCO carefully abides by the rules and regulations from the authorities:

(Photo of the 2nd floor of the main building, Fukushima I Nuke Plant)

Independent journalist Ryuichi Kino tweeted:

福島第一の現況の把握が難しいことは、以前からわかっていた。原子炉の基本的な構造は設計当初のままだが、配管や細かい設備などは後から追加、修正をうけて、元の状況とは大きく変わっている。だからこれまでも、構造物に手を着ける作業は慎重に進められた。

It has been known that it is difficult to completely grasp the condition of Fukushima I Nuke Plant. The basic structures of reactors have been the same since the plans were drawn up, but pipes and other small facilities were added and modified later, making the current condition vastly different from the original condition. Therefore, any work that has to do with the structures have been carried out very carefully.

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