…..”Preparatory work for the implementation of transfer voting in the nuclear power plant referendum would take between one and three months,” she said. “Citizens who intend to vote in a different constituency would be required to register 30 days in advance, and it will take another 20 days or so to review the registration.”
As the government is keen for construction on the much-delayed nuclear plant to proceed, the move lends a certain degree of weight to the opposition camp’s view that the ruling Kuomintang wants the referendum to fail….
Staff Reporter
2013-03-20
09:30 (GMT+8)
Central Election Commission chairwoman Chang Po-ya, right. (Photo/Wang Yuan-mao)
Lawmakers in Taiwan requested Central Election Commission chairwoman Chang Po-ya on March 18 to deliver a report on the implementation of absentee voting in national referendums and elections, a matter which has been brought under the spotlight after the Cabinet proposed a referendum to decide the future of the country’s Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
“The estimated coast of a national referendum is about NT$780 million (US$26.2 million) and the implementation of absentee voting would cost an additional NT$80 million (US$2 million),” Chang said.
The chairwoman said that establishing absentee voting for overseas citizens, especially Taiwanese businesspeople in China, would be complex. For this reason, the Cabinet for the moment is only allowing domestic residents to take part in the ballot.
“Preparatory work for the implementation of transfer voting in the nuclear power plant referendum would take between one and three months,” she said. “Citizens who intend to vote in a different constituency would be required to register 30 days in advance, and it will take another 20 days or so to review the registration.”
As the government is keen for construction on the much-delayed nuclear plant to proceed, the move lends a certain degree of weight to the opposition camp’s view that the ruling Kuomintang wants the referendum to fail.
….In a written statement made public Tuesday, NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane appeared to disagree with her colleagues’ decision to delay, saying the filters would be “a valid and important safety improvement.”…..
…Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has been a longtime critic of the nuclear regulator, said that the agency “chose to grant the nuclear power industry’s requests for more studies and more delays, and even after the study is completed there is still no guarantee that the NRC will ever make this common-sense requirement mandatory.”….
….NRC Commissioner William Ostendorff said that the agency’s post-Fukushima review didn’t initially recommend installing the filters. “This is an important, but not urgent, matter,” he wrote…..
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday delayed action on a proposed regulation that might have imposed hundreds of millions of dollars of costs on some of the country’s older nuclear power plants.
In a victory for the nuclear industry, a majority of the commission’s five-member governing body voted for more analysis of the costs and benefits of installing filters on reactor venting systems. The measure has been under consideration as one of the U.S. responses to Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in March 2011, during which significant amounts of radiation were released into the air.
The body has been debating the proposal for weeks, and the key question for the NRC commissioners was whether to make the filter requirement mandatory. The NRC’s expert staff had recommended moving forward with a mandate to install the vents, but the nuclear industry had been pushing the agency to do more research into the matter.
The commission said Tuesday that it was directing its staff to explore several options for the rule rather than issue the requirement immediately. It said that the agency would finalize a rule regarding filters by March 2017.
I thought it was a very well balanced set of speakers, who between them, covered the whole up-to-date nuclear story. From the facts and figures of how ridiculous it is to pursue nuclear power to the wonderful artwork from the children of Fukushima, who are having to deal with life within a nuclear disaster. (Jo, “South West Against Nuclear”)
Dr Paul Dorfman, Nuclear Consulting Group, Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust
nuclear policy research fellow and senior researcher at University of Warwick http://youtu.be/cb_TNIrBSfk
Prof Stephen Thomas, Energy policy researcher, University of Greenwich
…It’s one thing to keep forking out buckets of cash to clean up the wastes we already have – given how dangerous it is, the government doesn’t really have any other option. What would be utter madness would be to make any more of the stuff. Yet that’s exactly what the nuclear lobby wants us to do…. 🙂 Greenpeace
The conference will be bringing together 200 decommissioning experts for two days of business critical intelligence, unrivalled networking and stimulating discussion. With senior level business leaders from across the UK and Europe, leading contractors and equipment providers and specialist service companies, this is not to be missed!….. 🙂 Pro-nukes
March 19, 2013 10:41 AM
As part of its updated business plan, the NDA currently has an annual expenditure of almost £3 billion a year. £1.3 billion of this enters the supply chain at various levels below the SLCs, delivering massive opportunities for decommissioning service providers.
(PRWEB) March 19, 2013
To advance the latest industry developments and learn from the first-hand experience of others, Sellafield’s supply chain experts will be meeting with key decommissioning organisations including the ONR, NIA, Dounreay Site Restoration, Babcock International, CH2M Hill, AMEC, AREVA, Atkins, GE Hitachi and Research Sites Restoration Ltd.
The conference is undoubtedly the best chance in 2013 for service providers to meet and network with the top decommissioning companies that are actively seeking new, innovative and practical solutions to aid their projects.
Furthermore, this will be the only nuclear decommissioning conference with exclusive industry updates from the NAO, ONR and the NIA and an exclusive key note presentation from the European Commission.
Tokyo Electric Power Company says it has restored all 4 cooling systems for the spent fuel pools at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. They had stopped working on Monday afternoon, raising concerns about a rise in the cooling water’s temperature.
A power failure suspended the cooling systems for the spent fuel pools of the No. 1, 3 and 4 reactors as well as a shared pool in the plant’s compound.
TEPCO repaired the cooling systems step by step.
The utility says it finished repairing the one for a shared pool early Wednesday morning. The shared pool contains the largest number of spent fuel rods that need to be cooled down constantly.
TEPCO officials said 3 power distribution boards had stopped working, leading to the halt of the cooling systems. The boards were using electricity from outside the plant.
The firm continues to investigate what caused the boards to stop functioning.
TEPCO says the temperature of the No. 4 pool was the highest among the 4 pools, and was 25 degrees Celsius one hour before the power failure on Monday.
The temperature rose above 30 degrees Celsius at 4:30 PM on Tuesday. TEPCO said this level will not affect cooling, as it is below the safety threshold of 65 degrees.
The firm says the power failure did not affect the water injection to the No. 1, 2 and 3 reactors. The reactors suffered core meltdowns in the early days of the nuclear crisis triggered by the March 2011 quake and tsunami.
The utility also says no change has been observed in radiation levels at monitoring posts around the plant.
Fukushima Prefecture has asked Tokyo Electric Power Company to restore the cooling system at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The cooling system was suspended after a momentary power outage on Monday evening.
Fukushima Prefecture sought an explanation of the problem from 2 TEPCO officials on Tuesday morning.
An official of Fukushima Prefecture, Shoji Furuichi, said TEPCO had not yet identified the cause of the trouble, fueling concerns among local residents.
He also asked the utility to ensure safety by installing multiple power-generation units at the plant and to step up its monitoring system so similar problems can be detected in their early stages.
He also asked TEPCO to swiftly provide residents with information on any problems that arise at key facilities and explain their estimated impact and risks in an easy-to-understand way. This time, the power outage was made public 3 hours after it took place.
A university student in Fukushima city said the delayed announcement, as well as the outage itself, causes her serious concern, as such delays could seriously affect residents if the situation required them to evacuate.
A company employee in his 60s said he is concerned that the prolonged outage could affect cooling operations at the plant, which is still storing a number of fuel rods.
(NOTE TO RETURNING READERS, THE UPDATE REBUTTAL IS HIGHLIGHTED IN BOLD LETTERS BELOW)
A truly shocking revelation has been uncovered in SONRIS files concerning the fragile and ‘too close to salt edge’, Occidental Geismar #1, as well as four other caverns on the east side of Grand Bayou.
Last week, it was revealed that Oxy #1 was found to be in potential jeopardy and possible collapse since it lies within 1-200 ft. from the Salt Dome’s edge.
Although no real shock to those in the know, what else was found regarding Occidental-Geismar #1 Cavern, turned out to be a real electrifying revelation.
Many community meetings have been held in Assumption Parish with the residents affected by the ‘Great Louisiana Sinkhole’ formed by the failure of Oxy-Geismar #3 salt cavern known to be on the edge of…
….Keith Allott, chief advisor on climate change at WWF-UK, said: “Backing nuclear means shifting a huge liability to British taxpayers for the cost of building, electricity and, crucially, dealing with the waste.
“Unlike renewable energy, the costs of nuclear keep on rising, as witnessed by the fact that the only reactors currently being built in Europe are massively over-budget and far behind schedule. Focusing on renewables and energy efficiency, on the other hand, where the UK has huge potential to be an industrial leader, could deliver both huge cost reductions and a substantial boost to UK economic growth and manufacturing.”…. Guardian
[..]
…One part of this permit provides for the discharge of treated radioactive waste into the Bristol Channel via the outfall tunnel. No individual limits are specified for these disposal outlets. Meanwhile schedule 23 of the permit allows for both the disposal of radioactive waste on or from the premises and the receipt of radioactive waste for the purpose of disposal. This theoretically could result in waste from the entire country being shipped to Hinkley C. … Schnewz
Davey told the House of Commons the French energy giant EDF would be allowed to build two new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset, on the site of an existing power station, which is due to close in 2023.
“It’s vital to get investment in new infrastructure to get the economy moving,” said Davey. “[Hinkley] will generate vast amounts of clean energy and enhance our energy security. It will benefit the local economy, through direct employment, the supply chain and the use of local services.”
The two new 1.6-gigawatt reactors will become one of the biggest power plants in the UK, providing enough electricity for up to 5m average homes. The nuclear plant is expected to be the first in a series of new ones the coalition has proposed as part of its plans to replace ageing coal and nuclear facilities that are due to be closed over the next few years.
However, the symbolic decision on planning permission still leaves Davey’s department for energy and climate change and EDF locked in negotiations over how much subsidy the company will get during the life of the plant.
It is thought officials are discussing a contract that would guarantee the French company being paid nearly £100 for each megawatt hour of electricity produced over 30 to 40 years.
Under the system, called “contracts for difference“, if the market price, which is currently about half that level, is lower than the agreed minimum “strike price”, electricity suppliers will have to pay the difference by making a surcharge on customer bills; if the market price rises higher, then the company would forfeit the difference.
EDF and government officials also have to agree how much the company will pay for long-term storage of nuclear waste.
….“This is an unstable situation that will continue to be so for several years until fuel is removed from the plant to safe storage,” said Bellona’s nuclear physicist and General Manager Nils Bøhmer, who, with other Bellona staff, returned from Fukushima on Friday…..
Four fuel storage ponds at Japan’s tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were deprived of fresh cooling water for more than 20 hours due to a power outage, the plant’s operator said today, raising concerns about the fragility of a facility that still runs on makeshift equipment.
The plants owner said power has “partially” been restored at one of the cooling ponds, and that the others were expected to be back on line by later today and tomorrow.
The outage had hit ponds at reactors 1, 3 and 4, the statement said, but cooling to the reactors themselves was not affected. Fukushima Daiichi’s common storage pool was also affected by the outage, Japan’s NHK reported.
Power has been partially restored to the No 1 the cooling pond at about 2:20 p.m. Tokyo time, the plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co, or Tepco, said in a statement. The primary system of Unit 4 spent fuel pond alternative cooling system was started at 1:20 PM. The secondary system is planned to be restarted at 8:00 PM today.
The statement went on to say that power the No 3 spent fuel pond was scheduled to come back online by 8:00 p.m. today, and that the common pond’s cooling purification system is planned to be restarted at 8:00 AM tomorrow.
Tepco’s earlier announcement today about the power outage said it had hit at 6:57 Japan time on Monday. The nearly day long delay in reporting the incident has done nothing to settle the nerves of the Japanese public.
Tepco had been racing against a deadline of four days before the ponds heat up beyond safety limits, said the company.
The temperature in the hottest fuel pond, at Unit 4, was 30.5 degrees Celsius on Tuesday morning, Tepco said, well below the safety limit of 65 degrees. However Tepco did say that temperatures at the ponds had risen slightly.
Today marks the second anniversary of the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that killed 19,000 people in Japan, causing massive devastation and a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Two years later, a 19-mile area around Fukushima is still blocked off, and hundreds of thousands of residents may never return to their homes.
Souls of Zen — Buddhism, Ancestors, and the 2011 Tsunami in Japan is a new documentary that looks at Japanese Buddhism and the way it has chanced in the wake of the disaster. The directors, Tim Graf and Jakob Montrasio, traveled from Tokyo to the hardest-hit prefectures in Eastern Japan, interviewing scholars, clergy, and laypeople from the Soto Zen and Jodo Pure Land traditions.The film provides a complex portrait of Buddhism in the aftermath of the triple disaster, and looks at the changes that have happened in Japanese Buddhism both because of the disaster and because of demographic changes and religious pluralism.
Souls of Zen has been screened at several film festivals around the world and is now being screened at select locations around North America. Click here for a full schedule, and follow the film on Facebook for more updates.
Buddhist teacher Michael Stone is also at work on a documentary, called Reactor, about Japan’s response to the disaster. The film seeks to answer several questions, including “How are the old Zen traditions and cities of beautiful temples responding? How are the young rethinking the stories of their lives? How can we embody the Bodhisattva vow in this time?”
Abby Martin sits down with former NSA whistleblower, Thomas Drake, about his personal story as a whistleblower and what he describes as a ‘total betrayal’ by part of the government.
Prof Chris Busby was invited to make an Intervention by the Green Group in the European Parliament on 29th January 2013 over the proposals to the European Parliament by the Commission to adopt the new Basic Safety Standards Directive, which replaces the old Directive 96/29 which is currently Member State law. Prof Busby points out that the new Directive explicitly bases itself on the obsolete and dangerously inaccurate ICRP risk model.
He draws attention to a Petition sent by hundreds of individuals to the European Parliament Petitions Committee to ask the Parliament to force a re justification of all practices involving exposures. Details of the Petitions are on the website www.nuclearjustice.org where the powerpoint that he is referring to will also be posted soon.
Those people who sent the petition should get on to the Petitions Committee and ask what has happened. At least one individual has been informed in writing that their petition has been accepted and the matter transferred to the Environment Health Directorate for Action.
Urgent appeal to stop misuse of the medical based “radiation dose model” after nuclear accidents.
The ICNJ (International Commission on Nuclear Justice) has been appealing to the European population to sign up to a petition to challenge the ICRP dose model on permitted doses of radiation to the public.
This campaign was contrived and developed during the convention in Berlin 2011 and The “Alternate World Heath Organisation” Geneva 2012
For the independence of W.H.O.
«The World Health Organisation (W.H.O.) is failing in its duty to protect those populations who are victims of radioactive contamination.»
And out of those meetings of minds was born this organisation
The International Committée on Nuclear Justice was formed on the 7th of December 2011 by the attendees of the international conference of environmental NGOs and scientists in Vilnius, holding three day seminars in the houses of Lithuanian Parliament and Vilnius Municipality. The original 24 committee members were doubled after the Independent WHO Conference in Geneva 12-13th of May 2012, now collecting a full scope of globally acknowledged scientists fr Japan, UK, Switzerland, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Sweden, USA etc and environmental NGO leaders from France, Germany, Sweden, Finland…
Talks here about the realities of measuring nuclear contaminated lands against the “dose model” used by the IAEA and ICRP supported Chernobyl Forum group..
Early in the video Prof Yablokov states that he uses real data against mathematically derived data and that is how he can get a real estimate of damage done to the point where the data has stopped 2006 (approx)
A personal plea here from Prof. Chris Busby for europeans to sign the petition before the end of August 2012 to get the case moving.. he gives a clear explanation of the procedure! UPDATE ..The deadline has been extended..
Published on Aug 6, 2012 by radioactivebsr (12 minutes long)
A quick breakdown here
http://www.nuclearjustice.org is the site dedicated to a new project to force the governments of the world to realise that the radiation risk model of the International Commission on Radiological Protection is unsafe. This will stop further nuclear contamination of the environment and show the military use of Uranium to be illegal. The first part of this is to use existing legislation in Europe, the terms of the EURATOM Basic Safety Standards Directive. What we want you to do is to download the Petition asking for re-Justification from the website, sign it and post it to:
European Parliament The Petitions Committee of the European Parliament Rue Wiertz B-1047 BRUSSELS Belgium
EDITORS NOTE: Please note that little marketing is possible with this campaign as the IP`s seem to have some way of blocking links etc to this campaign pages so please pass around far and wide .. if we get this done in Europe it will be possible to get it done in Fukushima too! the children of Fukushima and Chernobyl are relying on us Europeans to do the right thing.. I sincerely hope we do..
And welcome to a world where all of this, and everything else that you do or is done on a computer, is saved, correlated, studied, passed around from company to company without your knowledge or consent; and where the government accesses it at willwithout a warrant.
Welcome to an Internet without privacy, and we’ve ended up here with hardly a fight……
Two: Hector Monsegur, one of the leaders of the LulzSac hacker movement, was identified and arrested last year by the FBI. Although he practiced good computer security and used an anonymous relay service to protect his identity, he slipped up.
Bruce Schneier
And three: Paula Broadwell,who had an affair with CIA director David Petraeus, similarly took extensive precautions to hide her identity. She never logged in to her anonymous e-mail service from her home network. Instead, she used hotel and other public networks when she e-mailed him. The FBI correlated hotel registration data from several different hotels — and hers was the common name.
The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we’re being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks us on our iPhones and iPads. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him; 105 companies tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period.
Increasingly, what we do on the Internet is being combined with other data about us. Unmasking Broadwell’s identity involved correlating her Internet activity with her hotel stays. Everything we do now involves computers, and computers produce data as a natural by-product. Everything is now being saved and correlated, and many big-data companies make money by building up intimate profiles of our lives from a variety of sources.
Facebook, for example, correlates your online behavior with your purchasing habits offline. And there’s more. There’s location data from your cell phone, there’s a record of your movements from closed-circuit TVs.
This is ubiquitous surveillance: All of us being watched, all the time, and that data being stored forever. This is what a surveillance state looks like, and it’s efficient beyond the wildest dreams of George Orwell.
Sure, we can take measures to prevent this. We can limit what we search on Google from our iPhones, and instead use computer web browsers that allow us to delete cookies. We can use an alias on Facebook. We can turn our cell phones off and spend cash. But increasingly, none of it matters.
There are simply too many ways to be tracked. The Internet, e-mail, cell phones, web browsers, social networking sites, search engines: these have become necessities, and it’s fanciful to expect people to simply refuse to use them just because they don’t like the spying, especially since the full extent of such spying is deliberately hidden from us and there are few alternatives being marketed by companies that don’t spy.
This isn’t something the free market can fix. We consumers have no choice in the matter. All the major companies that provide us with Internet services are interested in tracking us. Visit a website and it will almost certainly know who you are; there are lots of ways to be tracked without cookies. Cellphone companies routinely undo the web’s privacy protection. One experiment at Carnegie Mellon took real-time videos of students on campus and was able to identify one-third of them by comparing their photos with publicly available tagged Facebook photos.
Maintaining privacy on the Internet is nearly impossible. If you forget even once to enable your protections, or click on the wrong link, or type the wrong thing, and you’ve permanently attached your name to whatever anonymous service you’re using. Monsegur slipped up once, and the FBI got him. If the director of the CIA can’t maintain his privacy on the Internet, we’ve got no hope.
In today’s world, governments and corporations are working together to keep things that way. Governments are happy to use the data corporations collect — occasionally demanding that they collect more and save it longer — to spy on us. And corporations are happy to buy data from governments. Together the powerful spy on the powerless, and they’re not going to give up their positions of power, despite what the people want.
Fixing this requires strong government will, but they’re just as punch-drunk on data as the corporations. Slap-on-the-wrist fines notwithstanding, no one is agitating for better privacy laws.
So, we’re done. Welcome to a world where Google knows exactly what sort of porn you all like, and more about your interests than your spouse does. Welcome to a world where your cell phone company knows exactly where you are all the time. Welcome to the end of private conversations, because increasingly your conversations are conducted by e-mail, text, or social networking sites.
And welcome to a world where all of this, and everything else that you do or is done on a computer, is saved, correlated, studied, passed around from company to company without your knowledge or consent; and where the government accesses it at will without a warrant.
Welcome to an Internet without privacy, and we’ve ended up here with hardly a fight.
Marine Mammal Center Manager Sue Andrews: “This year they are for some reason coming out of the rookery underweight, underfed and emaciated, low energy some with already having infection.” http://enenews.com/reports-from-calif…
Japan Diplomat: We don’t know what’s happening underground of Fukushima reactors — Potential accident remains now http://enenews.com/japan-diplomat-we-…
The declaration specifies four concrete fields of action:
Universal access to modern energy supplies in conjunction with the formulation of positive targets for energy efficiency and the use of renewable energies, such as the doubling at least of the proportion of renewable energies in the global energy mix and a significant increase in energy efficiency. Progress should be monitored by an international agency.
Accelerated development of sustainable innovations in the fields of energy efficiency and renewable energies which have global significance, in other words, those which are relevant to people. The technologies in question are generally already in place, for example, energy-efficient buildings and electrical appliances, solar-powered cooling systems, solar-powered desalination facilities for the production of drinking water, efficient public transport systems, zero-emission vehicles, highly efficient and economical renewable energy systems and storage technologies. First and foremost, these are products which are targeted at the needs of poorer regions, such as simple power supplies and water purification systems. The convention cites international business competitions such as the “Golden Carot” program in the US and highly effective market-stimulating feed-in tariffs started in Germany and adopted in more than 60 countries worldwide as positive and particularly successful examples of suitable incentive programmes.
Financing of innovation and infrastructure development by the abolition of environmentally harmful subsidies, the introduction of financial transaction taxes and green taxation such as a CO2-tax, reductions in military spending including the abolition of nuclear weapons, and an exclusive focus on sustainable innovations and infrastructure in future economic stimulus programmes.
The acknowledgement by the planet’s leading corporations of the environmental and social impacts of their business practices, and their subsequent adoption of the systems and technologies necessary for a sustainable and equitable future.
The environmental laureates participating at the convention see the current critical situation as a failure of imagination. It is not the dream of a sustainable society that is unrealistic, but the blind belief that the status quo can be prolonged with marginal adjustments…..
Laureates from 44 countries propose two-speed model instead of search for the lowest common denominator within the international community
Freiburg, Germany, 16 March 2013 – Until this coming Sunday, the 2nd International Convention of Environmental Laureates is being staged by the European Environment Foundation EEF in Freiburg, Germany. Today a declaration in which the participating environmental laureates urge a fundamental change in environmental and climate policy was signed. The constant search for the lowest common denominator within the international community must be replaced by a two-speed model. The participants at the convention specify four concrete fields of action in their declaration.
What distinguishes the EEF International Convention of Environmental Laureates from other conferences and summits is the diversity of its participants. Eighty winners of internationally renowned environmental prizes have come together from 44 countries. The conference delegates cover a wide spectrum, from scientists to environmental and civil rights activists, from successful ecological entrepreneurs to publicists and critics of capitalism. The EEF is convinced that such a broad base is necessary to put global environmental and climate protection on a new, workable footing.
The EEF does not see its convention as a contrary model to the major international environmental and climate summits. The laureates are of the opinion, however, that developments have reached a point at which the field should no longer be left entirely to career politicians. “The environmental and climate summits in the international political arena scarcely go beyond mere bartering over emission limits and volumes”, explains Eicke Weber, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the EEF and Head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE). As Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Member of the Board of Trustees of the EEF and Co-President of the Club of Rome points out, “These international negotiations must continue, however, since they have indeed long been generating important impetus for initiatives in individual countries, bilateral agreements and vital technological developments. If we continue in this way, though, we are unlikely to succeed in finding the lowest common denominator within the international community on the subject of global environmental and climate protection.”
In their declaration, entitled “Call for Action to Policy Makers and Pioneers of Change”, the participants at the convention express their alarm in the face of the current accumulation of crisis situations. These, in their opinion, are closely related on various levels and mutually detrimental. They are the imbalance in wealth and poverty, the problem of hunger and malnutrition, climate change and other ecological crises, financial crises and excessive debt in many countries and, finally, high unemployment particularly among young people. According to Rainer Grießhammer, Member of the Board of Trustees of the EEF and Head of the Institute for Applied Ecology in Freiburg, “These undesirable global trends can no longer be tackled in isolation. The current standard growth model does not deliver the necessary control information and impetus for a sustainable future.”
After a full week of intensive activities in Oslo during the Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, major anti-nuclear campaigners moved Monday to the Bahraini capital, Manama, in yet another step towards the abolition of atomic weapons.
“Nuclear weapons – the most inhuman and destructive of all tools of war – are at the peak of a pyramid of violence in this increasingly interdependent world,” said campaigners during the presentation of an anti-nuclear exhibition held on Mar. 11 in Manama.
“The threat of atomic weapons is not in the past,” the organisers said. “It is a major crisis today.”
Organised by the Tokyo-based non-governmental civil society association Soka Gakkai International (SGI), with the support of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), together with the UN Information Centre in Manama and promoted by the Bahraini and Japanese ministries of foreign affairs, the exhibition — “From a Culture of Violence to a Culture of Peace: Towards a World Free from Nuclear Weapons” — will be held in Manama from Mar. 12-23.
The First Ever in an Arab Country
“This exhibition –the first ever in an Arab country – (represents) a step further toward making the human aspiration to live in a world free from nuclear weapons a reality,” SGI’s executive director for peace affairs, Hirotugu Terasaki, told IPS.
“The very existence of these weapons – the most inhuman of all – implies a major danger,” said Terasaki, who is also the vice president of this Buddhist organisation that promotes international peace and security, with more than 12 million members all over the planet.
Asked about the argument used by nuclear powers that the possession of such weapons is a major guarantee of safety and security – the so-called “deterrence doctrine” – Terasaki said, “The world should now move beyond this myth.”
“Security” begins with basic human needs: shelter, air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat. People need to work, to care for their health, to be protected from violence, according to the SGI exhibition.
According to Terasaki, nuclear weapons differ from other, so-called “conventional”, weapons in two main regards.
Nuclear Bombs Are Now Several Thousand Times More Powerful Than the One Dropped on Hiroshima
“One is their overwhelming destructive power. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 delivered a blast equivalent to about 13 kilotons of TNT,” he said.
Some 140,000 people lost their lives just at the end of that year, he said.
“Since then nuclear weapons with yields of more than 50 megatons have been developed, several thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”
Whereas conventional weapons can, at least to some degree, distinguish between military and civilian targets, nuclear weapons kill indiscriminately, destroying all life on a massive scale, according to Terasaki.
Central Election Commission chairwoman Chang Po-ya, right. (Photo/Wang Yuan-mao)
The directors, Tim Graf and Jakob Montrasio, traveled from Tokyo to the hardest-hit prefectures in Eastern Japan, interviewing scholars, clergy, and laypeople from the Soto Zen and Jodo Pure Land traditions.The film provides a complex portrait of Buddhism in the aftermath of the triple disaster, and looks at the changes that have happened in Japanese Buddhism both because of the disaster and because of demographic changes and religious pluralism.
nuclear-news 