nuclear-news

New Report: State of Affairs and Ongoing Challenges of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster

Greetings!  This is Komei Hosokawa, secretary general of the Citizens’ Commission on Nuclear Energy (CCNE), Japan.

I am pleased to inform you that a special English edition of the CCNE’s report will be launched on the occasion of the 4th anniversary of the beginning of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and also on the occasion of the United Nation’s 3rd World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR), to be held in Sendai, Japan, not very far from Fukushima.

The report, entitled The State of Affairs and Ongoing Challenges of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: a Civil Society Response Towards Recovery, intends to answer questions such as:

• –  What have been the impacts of the Fukushima nuclear disaster?
• –  What is the current condition of the victims of the nuclear disaster?
• –  What is going on at the nuclear plant site and what risks still exist?
• –  What mistakes did authorities make in response to the nuclear disaster?
• –  What countermeasures are now necessary to cope with the situation?

A PDF is already available for download from the CCNE website (www.ccnejapan.com/eng/policy_outline_0-2.pdf ).

 

This special edition is a provisional and partial translation of the comprehensive Japanese report, Our Path to a Nuclear-Free Japan: Policy Outline for a Nuclear Phaseout, published in April 2014 by the Citizens’ Commission on Nuclear Energy (CCNE), Tokyo. The full report comprises seven chapters, of which the first three chapters have been translated into English to meet the special interests of the WCDRR delegates as well as experts on disaster control and prevention tasks worldwide.

 

The translated chapters are as follows:

 

Prologue: Why Should We Aim for a Nuclear-Free Society?

 

Chapter 1: An Overview of the Damage Caused by the Fukushima Nuclear

Power Plant Accident and the “Restoration of Humanity”

 

Chapter 2: The Actual State of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant

Reactors and Issues Surrounding the Accident Settlement

 

Update information has been added to help readers understand more recent developments in the issues.

 

The remaining chapters deal with radioactive waste issues (Chapter 3), regulation standards, seismological issues and contingency planning (Chapter 4), financial considerations and sustainability issues (Chapter 5), and the democratic process towards the energy shift (Chapter 6).  The full English edition will appear by July 2015. An executive summary in English covering all the chapters is already available at the CCNE website ( www.ccnejapan.com/?p=2048 ).

 

The Japanese Government and the organisers of WCDRR 2015 are inclined to exclude topics related to the nuclear disaster from the conference agenda. This avoidance is quite inappropriate, unprofessional and unethical, given that the convention this time is being held in the region severely affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, which resulted in an unprecedented complex disaster of quake, flood and radioactive fallout. Even after four years now, more than 120 thousand people are still in exile from the nuclear disaster exclusion zones. It should also be reminded that the state of nuclear emergency declared by the Japanese Government in March 2011 has not yet been lifted. The disaster is far from over; the victims need care and support; and the Fukushima Daiichi plant is still in the middle of the hard struggle to bring the accident to an end (the question being when and how).

 

I hope the CCNE report will give you a clear idea about the actual state of affairs of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Please circulate widely; for more information, contact me or the CCNE secretariat in Tokyo ( email@ccnejapan.com ).

 

1. Hosokawa, MA, PhD

magpie@kyoto-seika.ac.jp

Professor, Dept of Environmental & Social Research,
Kyoto Seika University, 606-8588 Japan

Co-chair, Greenpeace Japan, Inc.
http://www.greenpeace.org/japan

Co-chair, Pacific-Asia Resource Center (PARC)
http://en.parc-jp.org:8080/en

 

Chief Secretary, Citizens’ Commission on Nuclear Energy (CCNE)

http://www.ccnejapan.com/?p=2048

 

Editor, MagpieNews, Nukes Headliner from Japan

March 11, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2015