A little good sense – Japanese and North Korean students make friends

Japanese and North Korean students forge bonds in rare meeting but remain apart over nuclear weapons, Japan Times, BY NATSUME WATANABE. 18 Oct 16 KYODO PYONGYANG – A group of Japanese college students made a rare visit to Pyongyang in late August — just before North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test on Sept. 9 — for talks on war and peace with local students.

But three days of social exchanges and intense discussions left the groups at odds on issues such as how best to achieve world peace and whether nuclear disarmament is feasible……..

The student-to-student program was initiated in 2012 by a group of Japanese nongovernmental organizations. Among them was Tokyo-based Relief Campaign Committee for Children, Japan, which conducts cultural exchanges.

Participants in the annual program have gradually become able to take up political issues over the years, organizers said, despite the isolated communist regime’s strict controls on speech.

Jinguji was one of eight Japanese students who took part in this year’s program. The 11 North Koreans were all in their early 20s and majoring in Japanese language at the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies……..

On the morning when the Japanese students were to return home, tears could be seen in the eyes of some of the North Korean students.

“I know that our current bilateral relations aren’t good, but I want to see you all again,” one North Korean student said upon departure at the airport. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/10/18/national/politics-diplomacy/japanese-north-korean-students-forge-bonds-rare-meeting-remain-apart-nuclear-weapons/#.WAaWA-V97Gg

1.This Month

PETITION

Free Julian Assange, before it’s too late. Sign to STOP the USA Extradition

United Nations: demasking the Torture of Julian Assange. Rico Brouwer and Nils Melzer

Three Mile Island (& Fukushima) Lies & Cover-Ups w/ Gundersen & Wasserman

Energy efficiency – theme for July 2019

Energy efficiency represents the single largest potential contributor to global emissions reduction, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA 2017). It should be a key part of the global energy strategy, for several reasons:

It could reduce global electric demand by more than 20 per cent, based on current rates in the U.S. power sector, while maintaining high levels of services such as heating and lighting.
It avoids the need for increased energy, capacity and grid services, making it the least expensive way to decarbonise at scale.
It can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by billions of tonnes.

A dramatic example of the power of energy efficiency is lighting. In 2017 the United States passed the milestone of 1 billion LED and CFL lights installed, avoiding 142 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide emissions, at a cost of about $7 per ton of avoided carbon dioxide. In contrast, the cumulative installed capacity of rooftop solar reached 8,000 MW in 2017, saving 8 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide, at a cost of $360 per ton. Lighting efficiency thus yielded almost 18 times the avoided carbon dioxide, at about 2 per cent the cost per ton of rooftop solar.

Google provides another example of the power of energy efficiency. Its data centers now use 50 per cent less energy than the average data center, according to the company. Google also developed an improved chip, the TPU, which performs 83 times better than standard CPUs. The new chip allowed Google to reduce power consumption at its data centers by a factor of 30—far exceeding the effect on Google’s carbon footprint of all of the company’s renewable energy purchases. ” – John Woolard, Eco Business, 10 June 2019

nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope