Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, said Feb. 24 that it could have declared the reactor meltdowns at the plant much earlier than it did.
The utility said it discovered a guideline in its operational manual that would have allowed it to announce core meltdowns only three days after the plant was struck by the tsunami in 2011 instead of the two months it actually took.
In a Feb. 24 news conference, a TEPCO official said the manual had been discovered for the first time earlier in February.
But the company’s explanations about the delay in announcing the meltdowns, triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, and the recent “discovery” of the document are by no means convincing.
TEPCO initially maintained that the reactors suffered “core damage,” a condition in which nuclear fuel inside a reactor core is damaged, rather than a “meltdown.” It did not admit that meltdowns had occurred in the three reactors until late May 2011, more than two months later.
The utility claimed it had taken so long to acknowledge the meltdowns because there was “no basis” for making the judgment.
But this claim has proved false. At that time, TEPCO was suspected of concealing facts to make the accident look less serious than it actually was. The latest revelations revive such suspicions.
In a statement on Feb. 24, Niigata Governor Hirohiko Izumida called on TEPCO to conduct a thorough internal investigation to uncover the “truth behind its concealment of meltdowns,” including determining who gave the instructions.
Niigata Prefecture is home to TEPCO’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, which the company aims to restart. Izumida has every right to make the demand.
Even more baffling is the “discovery” of the manual nearly five years after the nuclear crisis broke out.
Back then, core meltdowns were clearly defined as nuclear emergencies under the nuclear disaster special measures law. Given that TEPCO has been very sensitive to the question of whether trouble at a nuclear power plant, no matter how minor, should be reported to the government, it is hard to believe that the company failed to remember the standard concerning meltdowns.
It is clearly impossible to directly confirm whether a core meltdown is taking place during a severe nuclear accident.
That’s apparently the reason why TEPCO established a clear criterion for a nuclear meltdown that required the company to declare a meltdown when damage to a reactor core exceeds 5 percent.
When a nuclear accident occurs, only the operator of the nuclear plant has access to detailed data about what is happening. Both the government and news media depend on information provided by the plant operator for related policy decisions and news coverage.
A utility’s failure to swiftly offer accurate information about the situation could cause the government to make misguided policy decisions and the media to distribute incorrect reports about the accident.
TEPCO’s report on its investigation into the nuclear disaster, released in 2012, defended the company’s use of the term “core damage.” The report argued that the company had tried to provide accurate information about the conditions of the reactors based on available data by avoiding the term “core meltdown” because there was no clear and widely shared definition of the term.
It cannot be said that TEPCO provided the entire picture of what happened based on exhaustive and effective efforts to identify all the factors involved.
The company’s guideline concerning core meltdowns was “discovered” during an in-house investigation into how the utility responded to the Fukushima nuclear crisis. That investigation was conducted at the request of a technical committee of the Niigata prefectural government.
The prefecture called for a fresh inquiry in connection with TEPCO’s plan to restart the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant.
TEPCO has said it will look into how it failed to notice the existence of the guideline through a probe involving outsiders.
The utility should determine who should be held accountable for that failure.
The company also needs to offer convincing answers to such questions as how it will prevent a recurrence and whether problems with its corporate culture played a role. Otherwise, its efforts to regain public trust are destined to fail. http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/editorial/AJ201602260057
Japan’s nuclear regulator has endorsed the safety of two reactors that have been in service for more than four decades.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) announced on Feb. 24 that the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors of Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Takahama nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture meet the new safety standards introduced after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The NRA’s verdict has opened the door to an extension of the operating lives of the aging reactors to up to 60 years, one of Kansai Electric’s key goals for its nuclear power generation.
A revision to a law following the catastrophic accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has set the legal life of nuclear reactors at 40 years. But one extension by up to 20 years is allowed with NRA approval.
To extend the operational lives of the two reactors, the operator must receive several approvals from the NRA. If the NRA decides that the reactors have fulfilled all the related criteria, this will become the first case of an extension of the legal life of reactors under the new system.
The 40-year limit was introduced by the government led by the Democratic Party of Japan, which was in power when the nuclear disaster occurred, to demonstrate its commitment to weaning Japan from its dependence on atomic energy. It was aimed at ensuring a steady phasing out of nuclear power generation through the decommissioning of aging reactors.
The provision for an extension of the life span was added in response to concerns about possible power shortages due to insufficient capacity.
But no specific rules have been set with regard to what kind of circumstances should justify permitting extended operations.
What is vital for electric utilities is the economic viability of their nuclear power plants. Five small reactors that are not sufficiently cost-effective under the 40-year limit on operations have been set for retirement.
Of the remaining 43 reactors, 18 units have been in service for more than 30 years. Utilities will apply for permission to run aging reactors beyond the 40-year legal life span if it makes economic sense. Some applications for a longer license have already been filed with the NRA.
If an extension of the legal life of reactors is approved one after another, the 40-year limit could become meaningless.
With such decisions, we are concerned that the government’s nuclear energy policy and the energy future of this nation are being defined under the initiative of electric utilities focused on generating profits.
Where is the political will that transcends the profit equations of power suppliers?
If aging reactors are allowed to exceed the 40-year life span in rapid succession, the disturbing safety risk posed by a thick cluster of reactors in Fukui Prefecture will not be reduced.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has repeatedly pledged to reduce Japan’s dependence on nuclear energy as much as possible. The government should make it clear that an extension can be made as an exception.
Before the harrowing nuclear accident, there was no legal life for nuclear reactors. Initially, electric power companies said the operational life of their reactors was around 30 to 40 years.
Later, the former nuclear regulator, which has been replaced by the NRA, introduced a system that allowed utilities to operate reactors for up to 60 years if they submit maintenance plans every 10 years after the 30th year of service. The regulator cited progress in analysis technology as the reason for extending operational licenses for reactors.
The previous government’s decision to replace this system with the new 40-year rule reflected its will to phase out nuclear power generation in this nation.
Immediately after assuming the post, NRA Chairman Shunichi Tanaka was skeptical about extending the life of reactors, saying it was “considerably difficult.”
In assessing the safety measures Kansai Electric has taken for the reactors at the Takahama plant, however, the NRA has given the green light to the utility’s plan to cover electric cables with a fire-resistant sheet where it is difficult to replace them with flame-retardant cables.
The NRA’s move has greatly encouraged utilities seeking to gain permission to run reactors past the 40-year limit because this has been a major technical obstacle to meeting the safety standards.
In his policy speech at the beginning of the current Diet session in January, Abe made no reference to nuclear power generation. Does this indicate that the government will not do anything to stop the growing trend toward longer-term reactor operations?
If so, the government will act against both the past words of the prime minister concerning the issue and the wishes of many Japanese to see their nation free from nuclear energy. http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/editorial/AJ201602250031
This 2013 photo shows radioactive materials on a slipper from the Fukushima Prefecture town of Namie, which was evacuated after the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant disaster. The white spots in the photo indicate the presence of radioactive cesium and other materials, visualized on large-format film after the slipper was exposed to it for two months. (Photo by Takashi Morizumi)
A photo exhibition on the theme of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake will be held in Tokyo beginning on March 1, and will aim to convey the scars left by the disaster ahead of its fifth anniversary on March 11.
About 100 photos taken by 39 photographers will be on display during the exhibit, which will be held at the Bengoshi Kaikan building in Chiyoda Ward.
Specifically, photos featuring Fukushima Prefecture will provide visitors with opportunities to think about the matter of how to recover from the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant disaster.
The exhibition, which is being put together by organizations including the Tokyo Bar Association, will run through March 10, except for March 6, when it will be closed. Admission is free.
A gathering for disaster evacuees will be held at the same building on March 5. For more information, call the Tokyo Bar Association at 03-3581-2251.
Five years ago the Rainbow Warrior was in Fukushima and now we’re back to test the mess from the 2011 nuclear disaster.
Nearly a 100,000 people STILL can’t return back to their homes…It’s time to end this nuclear nightmare. Let’s switch on renewable
Five years on, Greenpeace assessing marine contamination off Fukushima
ONAHAMA, FUKUSHIMA PREF. – Fish market vendor Satoshi Nakano thinks he knows which fish caught in the radiation-tainted sea off the Fukushima coast should be kept away from dinner tables.
Yet five years after the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl there is still no consensus on the true extent of the damage — exacerbating consumer fears about what is safe to eat.
Environmentalists are at odds with authorities, warning that the huge amounts of radiation that seeped into coastal waters after the disaster in 2011 could cause problems for decades.
The government is confident it has stemmed the flow of radioactive water, but campaigners insist contaminated ground water has continued to seep into the Pacific Ocean, and the situation needs further investigation.
“It was the single largest release of radioactivity to the marine environment in history,” Greenpeace nuclear expert Shaun Burnie said, speaking aboard the campaign group’s Rainbow Warrior ship, which has sailed in to support a three-week marine survey of the area the environmental watchdog is conducting.
Fukushima is facing an “enormous nuclear water crisis,” Burnie said.
“The whole idea that this accident happened five years ago and that Fukushima and Japan have moved on is completely wrong.”
Fishermen are banned from operating only within 20 kilometers of the plant.
Although there are no figures for attitudes on seafood alone, the latest official survey by the government’s Consumer Affairs Agency showed in September that more than 17 percent of Japanese are reluctant to eat food from Fukushima.
Nakano knows it is best for business to consider carefully the type of seafood he sells, in the hope it will quell consumer fears.
“High levels of radioactivity are usually detected in fish that move little and stick to the seabed. I am not an expert, but I think those kinds of fish suck up the dirt of the ocean floor,” he said in his coastal hometown of Onahama.
Greenpeace is surveying waters near the Fukushima plant, dredging up sediment from the ocean floor to check both for radiation hot spots as well as places that are not contaminated.
On Monday, the Rainbow Warrior sailed within 1.6 kilometers of the Fukushima coast as part of the project — the third such test it has conducted, but the closest to the plant since the nuclear accident.
Researchers Tuesday sent down a remote-controlled vehicle attached with a camera and scoop in order to take samples from the seabed, which will then be analyzed in independent laboratories in Japan and France.
“It’s very important (to see) where is more contaminated and where is less or even almost not contaminated,” Greenpeace’s Jan Vande Putte said, stressing the importance of such findings for the fishing industry.
Local fishermen have put coastal catches on the market after thorough testing, which includes placing certain specimens seen as high risk through radiation screening — a program Greenpeace lauds as one of the most advanced in the world.
The tests make sure no fish containing more than half of the government safety standard for radiation goes onto the market.
The 2011 disaster was caused by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake off Japan’s northeastern coast, which sparked a massive tsunami that swamped cooling systems and triggered reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, run by operator Tokyo Electric Power Co.
Today, about 1,000 huge tanks for storing contaminated water occupy large parts of the site, but as 400 tons of groundwater a day flows into the damaged reactor buildings, many more will be needed.
Tepco’s measures to reduce the water influx include building an underground wall, freezing the land itself and siphoning underground water.
The government, too, insists the situation is under control.
“The impact of the contaminated water is completely contained inside the port of the Fukushima plant,” Tsuyoshi Takagi, the Cabinet minister in charge of disaster reconstruction, told reporters on Tuesday.
But Greenpeace’s Burnie says stopping the groundwater flow is crucial to protecting the region.
“What impact is this having on the local ecology and the marine life, which is going on over years, decades?” Burnie asked.
“We can come back in 50 years and still be talking about radiological problems” at the nuclear plant as well as along the coast, he said. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/02/26/national/five-years-greenpeace-assessing-marine-contamination-off-fukushima/#.VtBtWObzN_l
Nearly five years later, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Feb. 24 that it has discovered a guideline in its operational manual that would have allowed it to announce meltdowns in the nuclear disaster in only days instead of the two months it actually took.
TEPCO apologized for failing to be aware for such a long time of the guideline on how to declare meltdowns at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.
While the utility announced that reactor cores had been damaged at the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors by March 14 and at the No. 2 reactor by March 15, it did not admit that meltdowns had occurred in the three reactors until May 2011.
Based on its “nuclear disaster countermeasures manual,” which was revised 11 months before the disaster, the utility could have instead declared meltdowns at the three reactors by those dates, it said.
“We sincerely apologize for failing to confirm the presence of the guideline in the manual for five years,” a TEPCO spokesperson said Feb. 24.
The company will conduct an internal investigation to determine why it failed to promptly determine and announce meltdowns based on the manual.
In the few days after the Fukushima crisis unfurled, core meltdowns at the No. 1 to No. 3 reactors dispersed a large amount of radioactive materials into the environment.
Video footage of TEPCO’s in-house teleconferences around the time show that company executives recognized the possibility of meltdowns at the reactors from the early stages of the crisis.
But the company maintained that the reactors suffered “core damage,” a condition in which nuclear fuel inside a reactor core is damaged, rather than a “meltdown” at news conferences and in its announcements. In May it officially acknowledged that meltdowns had occurred.
The utility has explained that the delay was caused by the lack of a basis to assess meltdowns in the wake of an accident.
Early on May 14, 2011, TEPCO confirmed that the No. 3 unit had suffered damage to 30 percent of its reactor core and 55 percent of the No. 1 reactor’s core was damaged, based on rising radiation levels inside reactor containment vessels. It also determined that 35 percent of the No. 2 reactor’s core was damaged on the evening of May 15.
The newly discovered guideline in the disaster countermeasures manual, which was revised in April 2010, stipulates that the company should declare a meltdown when damage to a reactor core exceeds 5 percent, TEPCO officials said.
Company officials failed to announce the meltdowns because they were unaware of the guideline in the manual, according to TEPCO.
The existence of such a standard was confirmed earlier this month during an in-house investigation into how the utility responded to the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
The investigation is being conducted at the request of Niigata Prefecture where TEPCO’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, which the company aims to restart, is located.
In a statement on Feb. 24, Niigata Governor Hirohiko Izumida called on TEPCO to conduct a thorough internal investigation to uncover the “truth behind its concealment of meltdowns,” including determining who gave instructions. http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201602250043
Given the option of leaving their hometowns or risking radiation poisoning five years ago, families living near the Fukushima radiation disaster are falling apart, facing divorce, suicide, and cancer. The breakdown of Fukushima families comes as Japan faces a dwindling population it continues to struggle to replenish.
Mothers desperate to save their children from cancer or other side effects of radiation poisoning have been forced to choose between their husbands and their children, an in-depth report in Japan’s Asahi Shimbun notes. Many men stayed in the radiation-affected areas, unable to find jobs elsewhere. The mothers who moved as far from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant as they could afford say they made the decision to save their children from radiation, but have lost their husbands and families.
One woman tells the Asahi Shimbun that her husband mailed her divorce papers in 2014 after she fled the area in 2011. “I cannot send money to my family whom I cannot see,” he said in a letter. She has not told her two children their parents are divorced. She made the choice to risk her marriage, she said, because she “could not trust the data released by the central government.” She laments, “My family has collapsed.”
Residents of Fukushima were forced to evacuate the area after a March 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami caused a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The plant’s operators expect it to take up to 40 years for the site to be fully safe and usable again.
The new Asahi profile of Fukushima mothers reflects similar fears the Japan Times found in speaking to others who had fled and refuse to trust the government’s assurances that their hometowns are safe. In September 2015, the newspaper spoke to mothers who said on the condition of anonymity that their families – especially their husbands’ families – were pressuring them to risk exposing their children to radiation to keep families together. “Consciously or subconsciously, women are aware of the role we are expected to play in a family. After the earthquake and nuclear disaster, however, everything changed. … I can’t live up to those expectations any more, and society judges me,” a woman identified with the pseudonym Yukiko said. “Some were accused of abandoning or running away from their families, particularly those they married into. Relatives labeled the wives disloyal and overly sensitive,” The Japan Times noted of others who fled. Those judged harshest are the ones fleeing areas for which the government issued only a voluntary evacuation order.
Those who stayed face the opposite fear. “Sometimes when I’m alone in the house, I start to cry, imagining the future of my children,” a woman identified as Hiroko said. “I fear my children may become sick, and the ones who I love most will hold a grudge against me for failing to protect them. That is my biggest fear.”
Those who fled to neighboring towns fear radiation so much they refuse to allow their children to eat food they know has been produced in any part of Fukushima prefecture. The Asahi report highlights one mother who sends her 11-year-old to school with a specially made bento box, refusing to allow the school to feed her Fukushima-produced rice and vegetables. The girl has been bullied as a result, her mother mocked for being “neurotic.” A school official noted that other mothers make their children “wear surgical masks when they participate in footraces during outdoor school athletic meets.”
Asahi estimates that 70,000 people remain prohibited from returning home due to the Fukushima disaster, and another 18,000 have voluntarily chosen not to return.
Those who stay must live with the fear of radiation and the absence of those who do not return. Officials have marked a surge in suicides directly tied to the Fukushima disaster. Asahi reported in December 2015 that police confirmed 19 suicides in 2015 related to the disaster, up from 15 in 2014. A total of 154 people are believed to have resorted to suicide as a result of the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster.
Masaharu Maeda, a professor of disaster psychiatry at Fukushima Medical University, says torn families can account for many of these suicides and a significant rise in depression and other psychological problems in these communities. “The elderly may return to their homes, but the generation who are still raising children do not return, meaning families are torn apart,” he noted.
In one of the most prominent suicide cases related to Fukushima, a 102-year-old man hung himself after being told he would have to evacuate his home in 2011. The family sued the Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), which runs the plant, for 60 million yen ($485,000).
Mothers who fear radiation poisoning have been vindicated by a number of tragedies following the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor. Doctors in the region have found that children living in the area are 20 to 50 times more likely to develop thyroid cancer. The government confirmed the first cancer case related to the plant’s collapse in October 2015, a former nuclear plant worker who was diagnosed with leukemia.
The combination of family collapse and surging cancer cases is threatening an already dwindling Japanese population. Japanese officials have estimated that the population will diminish from 100 million to 80 million by 2065, leaving the nation without a reliable workforce. While some legislators have suggested making immigration to Japan easier, most appear reluctant to take that avenue. Raising the native birth rate would require significant cultural changes, many speculate, because of a Japanese work culture that pushes women to forego family life if they intend to keep their careers. Twenty percent of young mothers report experiencing harassment in the workplace, and many who wish to be mothers are encouraged to avoid pregnancy or abort.
Dr. Tetsunari Iida is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies (ISEP) in Japan. As such, one might have expected a recent presentation he gave in the UK within the hallowed halls of the House of Commons, to have focused on Japan’s capacity to replace the electricity once generated by its now mainly shuttered nuclear power plants, with renewable energy.
But Dr lida’s passionate polemic was not about the power of the sun, but the power of propaganda. March 11, 2011 might have been the day the Great East Japan Earthquake struck. But it was also the beginning of the Great Japan Cover-Up.
On the ISEP website, Iida extols the coming of the Fourth Revolution, following on from those in agriculture, industry and IT. “This fourth revolution will be an energy revolution, a green industrial revolution, and a decentralized network revolution”, he writes.
But in person, Iida was most interested in conveying the extent to which the Japanese people were lied to before, during and after the devastating nuclear disaster at Fukushima-Daiichi, precipitated on that same fateful day and by the deadly duo of earthquake and tsunami.
“Shinzo Abe says ‘everything is under control’”, said Iida, speaking at an event hosted by Nuclear Free Local Authorities, Green Cross, and Nuclear Consulting Group in late January. It was headlined by the former Japan Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, who was at the helm when the triple disasters struck. “Yes – under the control of the media!”
A trial for Tepco like post-war Tokyo Trials
The media may have played the willing government handmaiden in reassuring the public with falsehoods, but in July 2012, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission concluded that the disaster was really no accident but “man-made“. It came about, the researchers said, as a result of “collusion” between the government, regulators and the nuclear industry, in this case, Tepco.
“There should be a Tepco trial like the post-war Tokyo Trials”, Iida said, referring to the post World War II war crimes trial in which 28 Japanese were tried, seven of whom were subsequently executed by hanging.
Hope for such accountability – without advocating hanging – is fleeting at best. In 2011, while addressing a conference in Berlin hosted by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, I suggested the Tepco officials should be sent to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, (a body the US still conveniently refuses to recognize) to answer for what clearly amounts to crimes against humanity.
The remark caused a bit of a stir and earnest questions about the mechanism by which Tepco could be brought there. Needless to say, nothing of the kind ever happened, or is likely to.
Instead, the Abe’s government’s preferred tactic is to go full out to restart reactors and move everybody back home as soon as possible, as if nothing serious had happened. Just scoop off a little topsoil, cart it away somewhere else and, Abracadabra! Everything is clean and safe again!
Normalizing radiation, a policy and now a practice
Of course radiological decontamination is not that easy. Nor is it reliable. It is more like “pushing contamination from one spot to the next”, as independent nuclear expert, Mycle Schneider describes it. And radiation does not remain obediently in one place, either.
“The mountains and forests that cannot even be vaguely decontaminated, will serve as a permanent source of new contamination, each rainfall washing out radiation and bringing it down from the mountains to the flat lands”, Schneider explained. Birds move around. Animals eat and excrete radioactive plant life. Radiation gets swept out to sea. It is a cycle with no end.
Nevertheless, efforts are underway to repopulate stricken areas, particularly in Fukushima Prefecture. It’s a policy, and now a practice, of ‘normalizing’ radiation standards, to tell people that everything is alright, when clearly, there is no medical or scientific evidence to support this. And it was an approach already firmly and institutionally in place, even on March 11, 2011 as the Fukushima disaster first struck and much of the decision-making was left to individual judgement.
“We were told that evacuating poses a greater risk than radiation,” recalls Hasegawa Kenji, a farmer from Iitate, a village situated 45 kilometers from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Featured in the Vice documentary ‘Alone In The Zone‘, Hasegawa criticizedIitate’s mayor for making what he called a terrible mistake.
“Even when the scientists told the mayor that Iitate was dangerous, he ignored them all. He brought in experts from around the country who preached about how safe it was here. They said we had nothing to worry about. They kept telling us that. Eventually the villagers fell for it and began to relax. And the mayor rejected the idea of evacuating even more. That’s why nobody left, even though the radiation levels were so high.”
The nuclear industry did not tell the public the truth
The confusion surrounding evacuation was so profound that, as Zhang et al. noted in a September 11, 2014 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health: “Unclear evacuation instructions caused numerous residents to flee to the northwestern zone where radiation levels were even higher.”
All par for the course, said Iida. “I must emphasize, the people in the nuclear industry did not tell the public the truth and keep us informed.”
Next in the ‘normalization’ process came the decision to raise allowable radiation exposure standards to 20 millisieverts of radiation a year, up from the prior level of 2 mSv a year. The globally-accepted limit for radiation absorption is 1 mSv a year.
This meant that children were potentially being exposed to the same levels of radiation that are permitted for adult nuclear power plant workers in Europe. Some officials even argued that zones where rates were as high as 100 mSv a year should be considered ‘safe’. Writing on his blog, anti-pollution New Orleans-based attorney, Stuart Smith, observed wryly:
“Instead of taking corrective measures to protect its people, Japan has simply increased internationally recognized exposure limits. It seems that the priority – as we’ve seen in so many other industrial disasters in so many other countries – is to protect industry and limit its liability rather than to ensure the long-term health and well being of the masses. Go figure.”
The great repatriation lie
All of this set the perfect stage for the Great Repatriation Lie. “It’s the big cover-up,” Iida told his Westminster audience. “People are being told it’s quite safe to have a little [radiation] exposure.”
Indeed, at a recent conferences of prefectural governors, young people in particular were urged to return to Fukushima. “If you come to live with us in Fukushima and work there, that will facilitate its post-disaster reconstruction and help you lead a meaningful life”, said Fukushima Gov. Masao Uchibori.
Young people in Japan, however, appear not to be cooperating. Where evacuees are returning, the majority are senior citizens, who have less to lose from a health perspectiveand are more traditionally tied to the land and their ancestral burial grounds.
“They want to die where they were born and not in an unfamiliar place”, said Yoshiko Aoki, an evacuee herself who now works with others, and who also spoke at the London conference.
All of this impacts revenue from the inhabitants’ tax which constitutes 24.3% of all local tax sources and is collected by both prefectures and municipalities. It is levied on both individuals and corporations but with the bulk of revenue coming from individuals.
Senior citizens who have retired do not contribute to income tax, so the onus is on governors and mayors to lure as many working people as possible back to their towns and regions in order to effectively finance local public services.
Radioactive areas are hardest hit economically
Late last year, the Asahi Shimbun looked at tax revenues in the 42 municipalities affected by the triple 2011 disasters of earthquake, tsunami and the Fukushima meltdowns.
Unsurprisingly, the areas hardest hit by radiological contamination had suffered the biggest economic blows. Those areas free from radioactive fallout could simply rebuild after the tsunami and earthquake, and had consequently recovered economically, some even to better than pre-3/11 levels.
“On the other end of the scale, Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, marked the biggest decreasing rate – 72.9 percent – in tax revenues for fiscal 2014”, the Asahi Shimbunreported. “All residents of the town near the crippled nuclear plant remain in evacuation. Although tax payments from companies increased from decontamination work and other public works projects, income taxes paid by residents and fixed asset taxes have declined.”
To return or not to return is the question of the hour – or it will be come March 2017, when the Abe government has announced it will revoke many evacuation orders. At that point, government compensation to evacuees would be lifted, putting them under financial pressure to return. Cue more confusion.
People are confronted, said Iida, with “two extreme views, either that it’s very dangerous or quite safe. So it’s very difficult to decide which is the truth and it has been left up to individuals.”
One of those towns that could be declared ‘safe’ is Tomioka, Japan’s Pripyat, formerly home to close to 16,000 people but now uninhabited.
“It’s like a human experiment, that’s how we feel,” said Aoki in London, herself a former Tomioka resident. “The Governor of Fukushima spoke about a safe Fukushima. We want it to become safe, but our thoughts and reality are not one and the same.”
Observes Kyoto University professor of nuclear physics, Koide Hiroaki, in the Vice film, who has been outspoken for decades against the continued use of nuclear energy:
“Once you enter a radiation controlled area, you aren’t supposed to drink water, let alone eat anything. The idea that somebody”, he pauses, ” … is living in a place like that is unimaginable.”
In the third installment of Fairewinds’ Japan Speaking Tour Series, Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen recounts his visit to a resettlement community of displaced refugees from the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi. Meeting with 22 women, ages 17 to 60, Arnie is the first person who has met with them to talk about the effects of radiation during the 5-years that they have been evacuees. Nuclear industry reports from TEPCO and the local newspaper have been the only information available to the isolated groups of victims from the atomic disaster.
A woman introduced herself to Arnie, “I am 6A.” Stigmatized and reduced to a numbered identity, these women have suffered radiation poisoning, and been told that their symptoms are simply due to stress. Their homes destroyed, their health in jeopardy, and their future unknown – this is the outcome of nuclear risk.
Dismantling the (Nazi) German Nuclear Reactor (Pile) at Haigerloch, 50 km SW of Stuttgart, in April 1945
As Germany is currently trying to dump radioactive waste from failed Pebble Bed Nuclear reactors upon the US – moving it from comparatively secure bunker-like buildings in Germany to sit outside, or under tarp, in the sweltering heat of South Carolina, using the lie that these were experimental reactors (whereas they were attached to the grid) and that this somehow makes the US liable for Germany’s nuclear waste (even though the US had rejected this type of nuclear reactor multiple times), it is instructive to recall that alarm at (Nazi) German nuclear research IS the reason that the US developed nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors in the first place. This is what motivated the scientists, and some opted out of the project once Germany was no long involved in World War II.
¶ Five years on and the Fukushima crisis is far from over • Five years ago the Rainbow Warrior sailed along the Fukushima coast conducting radiation sampling. Now, as we approach the fifth anniversary of the Fukushima Disaster, it’s back, and has Japan’s ex-Prime Minister on board. [Greenpeace International]
Greenpeace Ship Rainbow Warrior Sailing past the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
World:
¶ The reactor meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in 2011 should have been announced much sooner, the operator has admitted. In a statement, TEPCO said that a public declaration of the meltdown should have been done within days of the disaster, but took almost two months. [CNN]
¶ The World Trade Organization dispute settlement panel has struck a blow to India’s solar power program, ruling that New Delhi violated global trade rules by imposing domestic content restrictions on the production of…
“A Journey of Injustice
Remember and commemorate the survival of the Cherokee people, forcefully removed from their homelands…” http://www.nps.gov/trte/index.htmThey were forced westward to make room for European and Other Nuclear Waste?
How the US Handles Its Plutonium And Other Transuranic Waste (WIPP in 2014)
When will Europe and the rest of world stop seeing the US as its dumping ground – first of unwanted people and now of its unwanted radioactive waste? What sense does it have to steal a land from the Natives only to…
Fukushima – Deep Trouble CounterPunch, FEBRUARY 22, 2016 by ROBERT HUNZIKERThe Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster may go down as one of history’s boundless tragedies and not just because of a nuclear meltdown, but rather the tragic loss of a nation’s soul.
Imagine the following scenario: 207 million cardboard book boxes, end-to-end, circumnavigating Earth, like railroad tracks, going all the way around the planet. That’s a lot of book boxes. Now, fill the boxes with radioactive waste. Forthwith, that’s the amount of radioactive waste stored unsheltered in one-tonne black bags throughout Fukushima Prefecture, amounting to 9,000,000 cubic metres
But wait, there’s more to come, another 13,000,000 cubic metres of radioactive soil is yet to be collected. (Source: Voice of America News, Problems Keep Piling Up in Fukushima, Feb. 17, 2016).
And, there’s still more, the cleanup operations only go 50-100 feet beyond roadways. Plus, a 100-mile mountain range along the coast and hillsides around Fukushima are contaminated but not cleansed at all. As a consequence, the decontaminated land will likely be re-contaminated by radioactive runoff from the hills and mountains.
Indubitably, how and where to store millions of cubic metres of one-tonne black bags filled with radioactive waste is no small problem. It is a super-colossal problem. What if bags deteriorate? What if a tsunami hits? The “what-ifs” are endless, endless, and beyond.
“The black bags of radioactive soil, now scattered at 115,000 locations in Fukushima, are eventually to be moved to yet-to-be built interim facilities, encompassing 16 square kilometers, in two towns close to the crippled nuclear power plant,” Ibid.
By itself, 115,000 locations each containing many, many, mucho one-tonne bags of radioactive waste is a logistical nightmare, just the trucking alone is forever a humongous task, decades to come.
According to Japanese government and industry sources, cleaning up everything and decommissioning the broken down reactors will take at least 40 years at a cost of $250 billion, assuming nothing goes wrong. But dismally, everything that can possibly go wrong for Tokyo Electric Power Company (“TEPCO”) over the past 5 years has gone wrong, not a good record.
And, Japan is hosting the 2020 Olympics?
Yet, Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant remains totally out of control with no end in sight. As far as that goes, Olympic events alongside an out of control nuclear meltdown seem unfathomable.
As recently as October 30, 2015, The Japan Times reported: “Extremely high radiation levels and the inability to grasp the details about melted nuclear fuel make it impossible for the utility to chart the course of its planned decommissioning of the reactors at the plant.”
On the other hand, according to TEPCO, preparation is underway for removal of the melted nuclear fuel, scheduled to begin in 2021. “But it is difficult to know what is happening inside the reactors, and there are no established methods for doing so… It is not difficult to get a camera inside the reactor. The problem is the camera breaks down due to high levels of radiation,” according to Toru Ogawa, director of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s Collaborative Laboratories for Advanced Decommissioning Science (Kiyoshi Ando, senior staff writer, Long Road Ahead for Fukushima Cleanup, Nikkei Asian Review, Feb. 19, 2016)……….
“Sporting events at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are to be held in the Japanese region of Fukushima… Spectators and athletes in the Olympic village will be served with food from the region as part of an effort to restore the reputation of Fukushima, formerly one of Japan’s richest agricultural regions,” Fukushima to Host Olympic 2020 Events, The Times, Feb. 25, 2015.http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/22/fukushima-deep-trouble/
PRO NUCLEAR PROMOTERS AND THEIR MASS MEDIA SHILLS KEEP ON REPEATING THE PR PROPAGANDA THAT NO ONE DIED DUE TO FUKUSHIMA AND NOTHING BAD HAPPENED
The standard and official declaration one hears constantly from the mass media and the pro nuclear apologists, is that no one died due to Fukushima radiation, and no one will ever die from it. But how much reality is there to this statement, as opposed to a fairy tale wish?
Worst Case Scenario Around The Fukushima Mega Nuclear Disaster, Vs Best Case Scenario Presented By Nuclear Industry
Whatever happened to the Fukushima 50, the small skeleton crew that stayed on site while everything was blowing up, melting down and radiation levels were spiking up to astronomical levels that went off the radiation meter scales? No one seems to talk about those guys.. Are any of them still alive?
What happens to the workers who are messing around at the tank site, where very high radiation liquids are stored, piped around and processed? Who works on the water filtering equipment, fixes the leaks and changes out broken or worn out pieces and parts in this high radiation environment? What happens to the tanks where the strontium, cesium and other deadly radioactive liquid waste is filtered out? Who checks them for leaks as they emit deadly radiation levels at anyone coming within 10 feet of them?
How much radiation are these workers being exposed to, and how deadly is that radiation exposure?
The EVIDENCE in the above link based on actual radiation readings is that many workers are and have been exposed to lethal levels of radiation, but this is also being covered up.
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