Nuclear plant official’s widow: ‘Monju was not worth dying for’ Asahi Shimbun By KEISHI NISHIMURA/ Staff Writer January 12, 2017 A question has haunted Toshiko Nishimura since she saw her husband’s swollen body in a hospital 21 years ago.
“What did he die for?”
Her husband, Shigeo, was a deputy chief of the general affairs department at Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp. (PNC).
His duties changed significantly after a fire and sodium leak occurred at PNC’s Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, on Dec. 8, 1995.
Shigeo was put in charge of the internal investigation of the suspected cover-up over the accident.
PNC, now the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), entered the plant twice on the day after the incident and took video recordings of the damage.
However, the company only released the second video to the public, and that footage was heavily edited to cover up the extent of the accident.
On the morning of Jan. 12, 1996, Toshiko made a cup of coffee for her husband as usual, but he left for work without drinking it.
That evening, Shigeo appeared at a news conference to explain the sodium leak. Through his investigation, he and others knew the truth about the videos, but he gave false statements to the media about when the video footage came to the knowledge of PNC managers.
After the news conference, Shigeo is believed to have jumped to his death from the eighth floor of a hotel where he was staying. He was 49.
Toshiko, now 70, could not believe her husband would kill himself. Just days before his death, during the New Year break, their son announced his wedding plans.
Shigeo left a letter to his wife, but it did not mention the reason for the suicide.
PNC could not provide a satisfactory explanation to Toshiko, so she asked police officers, hospital workers, hotel staff and people at other places.
In 2004, she took legal action against the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute, the successor of PNC, thinking that the testimonies of workers would give a clear account of what Shigeo was going through before his death.
But no details were revealed, and she lost the case.
She also joined an “anti-Monju movement” because she “could not forgive Monju for continuing to run at the sacrifice of human life.”
The Monju reactor, plagued by numerous problems, has proved a costly failure in the government’s plans for a nuclear fuel recycling program…..
Toshiko, meanwhile, is still involved in a lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court, demanding the return of her husband’s personal belongings that he left at the hotel.
She says she wants to tell Shigeo, “Monju was not worth dying for.” http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201701120001.html
January 13, 2017
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Japan, PERSONAL STORIES |
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By TATSUYUKI KOBORI/ Staff Writer January 11, 2017 Coral bleaching has killed 70.1 percent of the nation’s largest coral reef as of the end of 2016, up from 56.7 percent just a few months earlier, the Environment Ministry said.
Warmer seawater temperatures last summer are believed to have caused coral bleaching to spread to 90 percent of the Sekiseishoko coral reef in Okinawa Prefecture…….http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201701110028.html
January 13, 2017
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climate change, Japan, oceans |
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The White House Wants Scientists To Explore Geoengineering, Gizmodo, Maddie Stone Jan 12, 2017, Geoengineering, or hacking the climate system to cool it off, is the latest science fictional idea to make its way into a White House strategic roadmap, following a report last week on how we should be preparing for the apocalypse asteroid. Seeing as the apocalypse asteroid won’t have a chance to annihilate us if the climate spirals out of control first, it would appear the White House is trying to cover all bases.
The fact that geoengineering, a controversial subject the White House avoided mentioning for years, is now getting serious treatment in a policy roadmap is also the latest indication that Obama does not think we are acting to reduce our emissions quickly enough, and that aggressive technological interventions may be required.
The roadmap, which was submitted to Congress this week by the US Global Change Research Program, the governing body of the 13 federal agencies conducting research on global environmental change, lays out future directions of study on familiar topics, such as the rapidly-warming Arctic and humanity’s impact on the global water cycle. It also urges research into two of the most widely discussed planet-hacking concepts: Solar engineering, or injecting particles into the stratosphere to make it more reflective, and carbon capture, or sucking CO2 right out of the sky.
While the report does not suggest scientists conduct a climate experiment any time soon — solar engineering and direct carbon capture from the air are both highly speculative ideas — it recommends we start laying some groundwork, by improving models and observational capabilities that can predict the consequences of geoengineering. “Such research would also define the smallest scale of intervention experiments that would yield meaningful scientific understanding,” the report reads…….
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University and an outspoken critic of geonengineering, had a somewhat darker view on the new White House recommendations. “I do believe it is dangerous to consider engaging in massive planetary interventions with a system we understand imperfectly,” he told Gizmodo. “The law of unintended consequences reigns supreme.”
“The one possible exception is direct air capture, a relatively benign form of geoengineering,” Mann continued. “With respect to other schemes, like stratospheric sulphate aerosol injection, the only legitimate reason to study them right now, in my view, is to get a better sense of just what dangers might result from implementing such schemes.”…… more http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/01/the-white-house-wants-scientists-to-explore-geoengineering/
January 13, 2017
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Further concern over French nuclear compo law Radio NZ 12 Jan 17 A French Polynesian member of the French National Assembly Jean-Paul Tuaiva has raised his concerns about the revision of the nuclear compensation law. A decree is about to be approved in Paris that will amend the 2010 law by loosening the criteria for claims to be accepted.
Tuaiva has asked the French government to reconsider compensation claims which had been rejected – a call already made by two other Assembly members…….
France tested its atomic weapons first in Algeria and then from 1966 to 1996 in the South Pacific in a programme which involved more than 100,000 personnel. http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/322239/further-concern-over-french-nuclear-compo-law
January 13, 2017
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Copeland by-election goes nuclear By Ross HawkinsPolitical correspondent, BBC Radio 4 Today 12 January 2017 “……. Conservatives are putting Jeremy Corbyn at the centre of their Copeland by-election campaign.
His image is all over Tory leaflets, and their logic is very simple. Copeland relies on the nuclear industry and Jeremy Corbyn has opposed new nuclear power stations.
It means that when a by-election date is set, the contest in Cumbria could reveal a lot about how national politics will play out in the coming months. Tories will highlight an issue that divides Mr Corbyn and his colleagues……..
The economy revolves around Sellafield, and job numbers are set to fall there as reprocessing work ends. A new nuclear power station is proposed. Labour backs new nuclear energy, and local politicians certainly do. But Mr Corbyn has made plain in the past that he disagrees.
A policy document for his leadership campaign in 2015 says plainly: “I am opposed to fracking and to new nuclear on the basis of the dangers posed to our ecosystems.”
In a 2011 speech in the wake of the Fukushima disaster he went further, suggesting existing nuclear power stations should be decommissioned………
If it’s successful, a Labour strategy of responding to relentless attacks on Mr Corbyn with an equally relentless focus on the NHS may provide a model for the opposition in the years ahead. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38589306
January 13, 2017
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China Is Building Britain ANOTHER Nuclear Reactor, Daily Caller ANDREW FOLLETT Energy and Science Reporter 12 Jan 17 Britain’s nuclear regulators are considering whether another Chinese-funded and designed nuclear reactor should be built in Bradwell, Essex.
The reactor would be funded and designed by the state-controlled China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) and the French power company Électricité de France (EDF). It could take British authorities up to four years to formally approve or reject the new reactor.
“The robust independence of the UK’s regulators is seen across the world as a key strength for nuclear in Britain,” Zhu Minhong, General Manager of CGN in Britain, told Reuters. “CGN and EDF will bring to this enterprise their joint experience in China, Britain and France over many years.”
The U.K.’s previous attempt to build a nuclear power plant with the exact same Chinese company didn’t got well.
British Prime Minister Theresa May almost cancelled a previous China-backed nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point due to its high costs and environmentalist opposition. The U.S. charged the Chinese company behind the Hinkley Point plant with nuclear espionage in August.
A columnist for a Chinese state-run media outlet called May’s reluctance to approve of the Hinkley Point nuclear power project a result of “China-phobia.” CGN agreed to pay about $8 billion of the reactor’s $24 billion dollar cost.
China’s ambassador to Great Britain issued an ultimatum over the delay earlier in August, pointing out Chinese companies have invested more in the U.K. over the past five years than in France, Germany and Italy combined.
EDF agreed in July to build the Hinkley Point nuclear reactors by 2025 after years of delays. If the reactors aren’t built, U.K. taxpayers could be on the hook for $31.6 billion, according to documents released by the government. EDF is still planning to build the reactors, despite the company’s serious financial problems and the fact that the project is below investment grade.
EDF previously delayed making a decision about Hinkley Point several times before finally approving it after already investing $2.85 billion. EDF is more than $40 billion in debt and has a history of abandoning or delaying similar reactors in France……. http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/10/china-is-building-britain-another-nuclear-reactor/#ixzz4VZwv59yK
January 13, 2017
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business and costs, China, politics, UK |
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Toshiba may face still heavier losses in U.S. nuclear business: source http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/01/12/business/corporate-business/toshiba-may-face-heavier-losses-u-s-nuclear-business-source/#.WHfi9NJ97Gg KYODO Toshiba Corp. anticipates that total losses at its nuclear business in the United States could be larger than earlier stated due to a write-down at its subsidiary Westinghouse Electric Co., a source familiar with the matter said Wednesday.
The development may further taint the financial standing of the company that has been battling to overcome a massive window-dressing scandal.
Toshiba is finalizing the size of an impairment loss at Westinghouse, which could reach tens of billions of yen, ahead of the release of its group earnings report for the April to December period in mid-February, the source said.
Last month Toshiba said it may need to write down the value of assets at CB&I Stone & Webster Inc., a nuclear plant builder Westinghouse obtained in 2015, possibly by several hundred billion yen.
Toshiba believes the devaluation of CB&I Stone & Webster may have seriously undermined the value of Westinghouse, the source said.
The source said Toshiba estimated the final write down in connection with U.S. nuclear plant operations may reach up to ¥500 billion as of the end of last year, but the total amount could change as the company combed through their financial data.
Toshiba has been focusing on nuclear energy operations as its core business but has been struggling to win orders for new power plants both at home and abroad, particularly after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The company booked an impairment loss of about ¥250 billion in its U.S. nuclear business in the last fiscal year through March 2016.
January 13, 2017
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British nuclear weapons workers to go on strike over Atomic Weapons Establishment pensions dispute The Independent, 12 Jan 17 Staff manufacture and maintain nuclear weapons including the Trident programme Lizzie Dearden @lizziedearden Employees responsible for manufacturing and maintaining the UK’s nuclear weapons are to go on strike.
Workers at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) are to stage two 48-hour walk-outs as part of a long-running dispute over pensions.
Unite said 600 of its members, who work as managers, craft and manual workers at the AWE’s two sites at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire, will strike on 18 and 30 January.
A spokesperson said workers felt “deeply betrayed” by promises made decades ago guaranteeing their pensions, when they were transferred from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to the private sector, being broken………
“The four days of strike action later this month are not being taken lightly. It is not a ‘political’ strike, but one taken reluctantly by our members who have no desire to see thousands of pounds wiped off their retirement incomes.”
Unite claimed new pensions proposals, which would see the AWE’s pension contributions lowered, violated pledges made in a ministerial statement to the Commons in the 1990s. The AWE, owned by a consortium of Lockheed Martin, Jacobs Engineering and Serco, is contracted by the MoD to build and maintain nuclear warheads for Royal Navy submarines. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-nuclear-weapons-factory-workers-berkshire-go-on-strike-prospect-union-awe-atomic-weapons-a7523516.html
January 13, 2017
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U.S. officials on Tuesday announced the cancellation of the final two oil and gas leases in a wilderness area bordering Glacier National Park that’s sacred to the Blackfoot tribes of Montana and Canada. Christian Science Monitor, Matthew Brown Associated Press JANUARY 10, 2017 BILLINGS, MONT. —U.S. officials on Tuesday announced the cancellation of the final two oil and gas leases in a wilderness area bordering Glacier National Park that’s sacred to the Blackfoot tribes of Montana and Canada, more than three decades after the tribes said the leases were illegally sold…….http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2017/0110/Thirty-years-later-Blackfoot-tribes-see-environmental-win-on-sacred-grounds
January 13, 2017
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Canada, indigenous issues, USA |
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jpratt27
The first self-sufficient boat powered only by emission-free energy will start a six-year trip around the world in the spring.
Energy Observer, a former multi-hull race boat converted into a green vessel equipped with solar panels, wind turbines and a hydrogen fuel cell system, will be powered by wind, the sun and self-generated hydrogen.
The 5 million euro ($5.25 million) boat, which is currently in a shipyard in Saint-Malo, will set sail from the Brittany port and will make its first of 101 stops across 50 countries in Paris as part of a six-year circumnavigation.
“This boat will demonstrate that there are many solutions for energetic transition,” said French environmentalist Nicolas Hulot, who attended the project presentation on Wednesday at the UNESCO headquarters. “All solutions are within nature.”
Designed in 1983 under the supervision of Mike Birch, the boat enjoyed a successful career in open-sea sailing races, including winning the…
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January 12, 2017
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geoharvey
Opinion:
¶ “Canada’s Vast Source of Climate Pollution May Go Bust” • The Canadian oil sands are one of the world’s most important sources of climate pollution, and they are America’s biggest source of imported oil. And they may be about to go bust. The reason is that oil prices need to be above $80 per barrel for mining oil sands to be profitable. [Climate Central]
Oil sands processing in Alberta. (Credit: Kris Krug / flickr)
¶ “If Present Trends Continue, China May Become a Sustainable Development Success Story. (Really!)” • This year has already been characterized by global political uncertainty – and waning confidence in US climate policy. Now China is posed to assume the role of world leader in climate diplomacy and clean-energy finance. [UN Dispatch]
¶ “Renewables Are a Rising Global Tide – and the US Better
Pay Attention” • If the US…
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January 12, 2017
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jpratt27
The Wretched State of the Human Family and Our Shared Ecological HabitatBY DR. GLEN BARRY · PUBLISHED JANUARY 8, 2017 · UPDATED JANUARY 8, 2017
Humanity’s one shared biosphere that makes Earth habitable is collapsing and dying as industrial growth overruns natural ecosystems and climate; as we have utterly failed to embrace our dependence upon each other and nature for our well-being and very survival. It is time to come together as one human family to resist injustice, inequity, violence, and non-sustainability as we create a rich and verdant life for all amidst resurgent natural ecosystems on a living Earth that can last essentially forever.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. – George Orwell
We are one human family. Best we end the dysfunction and start acting like it or we destroy ourselves and our one shared habitat. – Dr. Glen Barry
Deep ecology essay by Dr…
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January 12, 2017
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jpratt27
Why is capitalism addicted to fossil fuels?
A review of Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming (Verso, 2016), £20
One of the biggest challenges that humanity faces is how to stop global warming. It is clear that if we don’t cut carbon emissions quickly then we face climate catastrophe. There is one very simple solution: to stop burning fossil fuels and make a rapid switch to the use of renewables such as solar, wind and tidal. But the problem is the very opposite is happening. The last decade has seen a boom in what may be termed dirty energy—fracking, deep water drilling and tar sand extraction have all been recently developed to enable the continued extraction of coal, gas and oil from hard-to-reach locations.
So why is this happening? When the entire future of the planet is at stake why are…
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January 12, 2017
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jpratt27
#DayAgainstDenial Protests Across the U.S. Call Attention to Climate Change as Trump Cabinet Confirmation Hearings Begin
By Sharon Kelly • Tuesday, January 10, 2017 – 11:57
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees for the Cabinet began appearing before the U.S. Senate to start their confirmation hearing process on Tuesday — and some of the slots to be filled will have major implications for American climate change policies. Rex Tillerson, who announced his retirement as CEO of ExxonMobil, is scheduled to appear before the Senate on Wednesday, as is Elaine Chao, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Transporation.
On Monday, environmentalists nationwide organized protests at senators’ home offices, with organizers calling on their representatives to refuse to confirm Cabinet nominees hostile to combating climate change.
The #DayAgainstDenial protests attracted hundreds of demonstrators in cities large and small, organizers said. More than 200 people arrived at Senator Susan Collins’ office in Portland, Maine, according to…
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January 12, 2017
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jpratt27
In the face of the mind-boggling peril of climate change, feel the despair, then work harder
From confirmation that 2016 was New Zealand’s warmest year on record to the imminent inauguration of a big-emissions US president, it’s easy to understand desperation in the face of climate change. But we need to channel all our energies into urgent action, writes James Renwick.
Climate change and global warming have been in the news a lot lately. The year 2016 is about to be confirmed as the warmest globally), in records going back over 130 years. A 5000km2 slab of the Larsen C ice shelf is poised to break away any day. Global sea ice extent has been running millions of square kilometres below normal for months now, and Santa sweltered in temperatures 20°C above normal at the North Pole over the Christmas period. Heatwaves, fires, droughts, floods, have all been ascribed to…
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January 12, 2017
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nuclear-news 