nuclear-news

‘Dark tourism’ grows at 3/11 sites

Participants in a ‘dark tourism’ tour check out vacant Ukedo Elementary School in the abandoned town of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, in early February. As the fifth anniversary of the 2011 calamity approaches, a growing number of visitors are taking part in Fukushima-related tours

Shinichi Niitsuma is enthusiastic about showing visitors the attractions of the small town of Namie: its tsunami-hit coastline, abandoned houses and hills overlooking the radiation-soaked reactors of the disabled Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Five years after the nuclear disaster emptied this stretch of Honshu’s northeastern coastline, tourism is giving residents of the abandoned town a chance to exorcise the horrors of the past.
Like the Nazi concentration camps in Poland or Ground Zero in New York, the areas devastated by the Fukushima disaster have recently become hot spots for “dark tourism” and drawn more than 2,000 visitors keen to see the aftermath of the worst nuclear accident in a quarter century.
“There is no place like Fukushima — except maybe Chernobyl — to see how terrible a nuclear accident is,” Niitsuma said, referring to the 1986 disaster in Ukraine.
“I want visitors to see this ghost town, which is not just a mere legacy but clear and present despair,” he added as he drove visitors down Namie’s main street just 8 km (5 miles) from the stricken nuclear plant.
On March 11, 2011, a magnitude-9 earthquake off Tohoku’s coast spawned massive tsunami that swept ashore, leaving an estimated 18,000 people dead or missing.
Namie’s residents were evacuated after the tsunami tipped the nuclear power plant into meltdown, and no-one has yet been allowed to move back due to the radiation.
Niitsuma, 70, is one of 10 local volunteer guides who organize tours to sights in Namie and other communities in Fukushima, including the tightly regulated areas.
The volunteers take visitors through the shells of buildings left untouched as extremely high radiation discouraged demolition work. The guides use dosimeters to avoid any hot spots.
A tsunami-hit elementary school is another stop on the morbid tour.
The clocks in the classrooms stopped at 3:38 p.m., the exact moment the killer waves swept ashore.
In the gymnasium, a banner for the 2011 graduation ceremony still hangs over a stage and the crippled nuclear plant is visible through shattered windows.
Former high school teacher Akiko Onuki, who survived tsunami that claimed six of her students and a colleague, and is now one of the volunteer guides.
“We must ensure there are no more Fukushimas,” Onuki, 61, said in explaining the reasons behind the tours of her devastated home.
Tourist Chika Kanezawa of Saitama Prefecture said she was shocked by the conditions.
“TV and newspapers report reconstruction is making progress and life is returning to normal,” Kanezawa, 42, said. “But in reality, nothing has changed here.”
Dairy farmer Masami Yoshizawa is still raising about 300 cows in Namie that are subsisting on radiation-contaminated grass in defiance of a government slaughter order.
As Yoshizawa showed off his herd, he explained that he’s keeping the cattle alive as a protest against Tokyo Electric Power Co., which manages the plant, and the government.
“I want to tell people all over the world, ‘What happened to me may happen to you tomorrow’,” Yoshizawa said.
The disaster shattered the government’s carefully cultivated nuclear safety myth and kept its dozens of commercial reactors offline for about two years amid nuclear safety radiation exposure fears.
But the government is gradually restarting them, claiming the resource-poor country needs nuclear power.
English teacher Tom Bridges, who also lives in Saitama, said he could share the victims’ anger and frustration through the tour.
“It’s not a happy trip but it’s a necessary trip,” he said.
Some residents still grieving their loved ones and their inability to return to their homes, say they have mixed feelings watching sightseers tramping through their former hometown.
But Philip Stone, executive director of the Institute for Dark Tourism Research at Britain’s University of Central Lancashire, said recently that such tangible reminders of disasters serve as “warnings from history.”
Niitsuma, who is from Soma, a coastal city some 35 km (just over 20 miles) north of the Fukushima No. 1 plant, says he feels haunted by regret for not having been active in the anti-nuclear movement, even though he opposed reactor construction.
“I should have acted a little more seriously,” he said.
“I’m working as a guide partially to atone.”
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/03/06/national/dark-tourism-grows-311-sites/#.VtxHIfl95D8

March 6, 2016 Posted by dunrenard | Fukushima 2016 | Disaster, Fukushima Daiichi | Leave a comment

Japan taxpayers foot $100bn bill for Fukushima disaster

The Fukushima nuclear disaster has cost Japanese taxpayers almost $100bn despite government claims Tokyo Electric is footing the bill, according to calculations by the Financial Times.
Almost five years after a huge tsunami caused the meltdown of three Tepco reactors by knocking out their supply of power for cooling, the figure shows how the public have shouldered most of the disaster’s cost.
It highlights the difficulty of holding a private company to account for the immense expense of nuclear accidents — a concern for countries such as the UK that are building new nuclear power stations.
The Financial Times used Ritsumeikan University professor Kenichi Oshima’s estimate that the disaster has cost Y13.3tn ($118bn) to date relative to the loss of equity value for Tepco shareholders.
“The underlying cost is mainly being paid by the public, either through electricity bills or as tax,” said Mr Oshima.
Japan’s government gives no single figure for the cost of the disaster, but Mr Oshima estimates the biggest cost to date is compensation to businesses and evacuees of Y6.2tn, followed by decontamination of the Fukushima area at Y3.5tn, and decommissioning of the reactor site at Y2.2tn.
Cash for compensation and decommissioning comes from Tepco but it gets grants from the government to keep it solvent. In theory, this cash will come back via a levy on Tepco and other nuclear operators — but this is ultimately be paid by electricity users, making it a tax by another name.
There is are also doubts about whether the levy will be sustainable when Japan’s electricity market opens to competition from April 1. In a recent interview, Tepco chief executive Naomi Hirose insisted the company would make enough money to clean up the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
“We have to preserve that earning power,” Mr Hirose said. “Victory for us means having the money to meet our responsibilities in Fukushima. If we can’t, that’s failure.”
But one way to judge Tepco’s contribution is its share price, which should reflect past losses, as well as any levies the market expects in the future. Compared with March 10 2011, the day before the disaster, Tepco’s equity has lost Y2.6tn in value. Debtholders have not suffered losses.
That implies Tepco has borne slightly less than 20 per cent of the total cost, with taxpayers picking up the other Y10.7tn. The figure is rough, and ignores the cost of shutting down all Japan’s nuclear reactors, so it is likely to understate both the total cost and the proportion paid by the public.
Tepco, the finance ministry and the economy ministry declined to comment on the estimate. A government official insisted all costs would ultimately be recouped from Tepco and said it could not pass the burden on to electricity customers. “As a whole, Tepco is paying its own costs,” said the official.
Evacuees are now being allowed to return to some villages near the Fukushima Daiichi plant but decommissioning will take decades, with radiation levels still too high even to evaluate the stricken reactors. The final cost is unknown and Mr Oshima expects his estimate to rise.
“The government’s approach has worked in that Tokyo Electric has not shut down,” said Mr Oshima. “But with the costs increasing to this extent it’s hard to see the purpose of having kept Tepco alive.”
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/97c88560-e05b-11e5-8d9b-e88a2a889797.html#axzz428179eA0

March 6, 2016 Posted by dunrenard | Fukushima 2016 | Disaster, Fukushima Daiichi | Leave a comment