Press release from the UK Environment Agency 1 April (not an April fools joke unfortunately)
As regulators of the nuclear industry we are working with the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and Natural Resources Wales (NRW) to ensure that any new nuclear power stations built in the UK meet high standards of safety, security, environmental protection and waste management.
Yesterday we announced that the AP1000® nuclear reactor, designed by Westinghouse, is suitable for construction in the UK following completion of an in-depth assessment of the nuclear power station design.
We are satisfied that the reactor meets expectations on safety, security and environmental protection at this stage of the regulatory process.
The total cost to deal with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster has been estimated at 70 trillion yen ($626 billion), over three times more than the government calculation, a study by a private think tank showed Saturday.
The Japan Center for Economic Research said total costs at the Fukushima nuclear complex operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc could rise to between 50 trillion and 70 trillion yen. It compares with the roughly 22 trillion yen a government panel estimated in December.
“If costs rise, the public burden could greatly increase. The country’s nuclear policy needs to be reviewed,” the JCER said.
Initially in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the government expected the costs to total 11 trillion.
But a study by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry showed the figure could be double the sum estimated in 2013.
Following that, the government decided to raise electricity rates to secure the money necessary to cover compensation payments, increasing the national burden.
Among the costs, the bill for compensation has been estimated at 8 trillion yen by the ministry. The JCER also adopted the figure.
The JCER, however, estimated costs for decontamination work at 30 trillion yen, compared with the government’s figure of 6 trillion yen, after the think tank made a calculation under a presumption that radioactive substances are disposed of at a facility in Rokkasho village in Aomori Prefecture.
The government is seeking a way to treat waste in Fukushima Prefecture, including radioactive soil, of which the amount could add up to roughly 22 million cubic meters, but where and how it will be disposed of has yet to be decided. Costs related to the procedure are not included in the government’s calculation.
Costs for decommissioning crippled reactors, which is expected to take 30 to 40 years, were estimated by the center at 11 trillion yen, compared with the government’s 8 trillion yen.
Expenses to treat contaminated water that remains in tanks at the plant were estimated by the center at 20 trillion yen unless the toxic water is released in the ocean after being diluted as nuclear regulation authorities recommend.
The Saudi Government has accelerated research into nuclear programmes and has begun building a team of experts, according to a new report by.
Labelled a nuclear ”newcomer” the Saudi Kingdom is pushing to arm itself with new technologies, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said.
The Washington DC-based group wrote since nuclear action was scaled back in Iran, it has increased in the Saudi kingdom.
Iran signed a landmark nuclear deal with world powers including the US, the UK, France and Russia in 2015.
Huge economic sanctions on Iran were lifted as a result of it restricting its sensitive nuclear activities.
The deal limited Iran’s sensitive nuclear program and subjected it to greater international monitoring.
But in nearby Said Arabia, a new threat is growing, it is claimed.
The organisation which monitors global proliferation issues (ISIS) said: “Saudi Arabia is in the early stages of nuclear development.
It is also claimed Saudi will “more actively seek nuclear weapons capabilities” in retaliation to the situation in Iran.
But currently it is focused on civilian nuclear uses.
Former US President Barrack Obama’s administration claimed the nuclear deal would calm tensions in the area
However, this is not the case.
Saudi Arabia has already stated its intention to build at least 16 nuclear reactors in the coming years.
NEW YORK – India and Pakistan have in recent months adopted duelling steps to test new nuclear weapons aimed at gaining strategic advantage over each other, according to a US media report.
“The nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan is intensifying, with new weaponry and more aggressive doctrines that are stoking tensions between two powers at growing risk of confrontation,” The Wall Street Journal reported from Islamabad.
Each has more than 100 nuclear warheads and new ways to deliver them from land, air and sea, with India appearing to be considering changing its nuclear doctrine to allow a first strike against Pakistan, correspondent Saeed Shah said, citing analysts.
Among rival developments, India tested interceptor missiles twice this year as part of its plan to develop a ballistic missile-defence shield, the report pointed out. Pakistan in January tested a missile with multiple warheads capable of evading it.
India said last year it began testing its first homemade nuclear-powered submarine at sea and a nuclear missile capable of striking all of Pakistani territory from far offshore. Then Pakistan this year said it had tested its own undersea nuclear missile capable of carrying out a retaliatory strike, the report said.
India’s army chief said for the first time this year that it devised a plan for a rapid, shallow, conventional invasion of Pakistan that some analysts say could be unleashed in response to a cross-border terror attack like the Mumbai assault of 2008.
India has calibrated such an invasion so as not to provoke Pakistan to retaliate with its big, strategic nuclear weapons, the report said citing current and former officials from both sides.
Pakistan, in response, has developed a capability to strike such an advance with tactical nuclear weapons-which have a smaller detonation-that it calculates wouldn’t trigger a massive retaliation from India, it said.
“We assess that these types of attacks and the potential reactions increase the likelihood for miscalculation by both countries,” warned the head of US Central Command, Gen. Joseph Votel, in congressional testimony in March. “A significant conventional conflict between Pakistan and India could escalate into a nuclear exchange.”
The US State Department declined to comment, the report said. The foreign ministries of Pakistan and India didn’t respond to requests for comment. Both countries say they are developing a “credible minimal” nuclear deterrent.
While Pakistan races to keep pace with India, India is vying with the larger nuclear programme of Pakistan’s ally China, according to the report. China, meanwhile, is in competition with the US, which has drawn close to India in recent years.
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, an advocacy group, said even a limited nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan would have such a devastating impact on global climate that it would put two billion people at risk of famine.
Pakistan says the driver of the current round of nuclear competition is the US move in 2005 to legitimize India’s nuclear programme and allow it to buy fissile material on the international market. The US claims the deal strengthened non-proliferation.
That accord was intended to cement US ties with India to help contain a rising China, it said, citing analysts. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s relationship with the US has suffered as the two nations blamed each other for chaos in Afghanistan.
“With the US closer to India and an untested president in the White House, some nuclear strategists question whether Washington can still play its former honest-broker role to defuse India-Pakistan tensions,” correspondent Shah wrote.
Pakistan is increasingly relying on its nuclear deterrent against a neighbour that has a five-time bigger defence budget and twice the military manpower, it was pointed out. Pakistan is out producing India’s nuclear weapons by four to one, according to the Stimson Center, a Washington research group. Islamabad disputes that assessment.
India’s bigger stockpile of nuclear fuel and new reactors set to soon start producing substantial amounts of plutonium give New Delhi the potential to overtake Pakistan’s production of nuclear weapons in the future, it said, citing experts.
Pakistan’s recent development of tactical devices raises the risk of a nuclear weapon being used and of them falling into the hands of militants, the report cited “some experts” as claiming.
Another risk, they say, is India’s stated belief that a limited conventional war with Pakistan is possible despite nuclear arms on both sides.
India seems to be rethinking its declared policy of not using nuclear weapons first, Vipin Narang, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was quoted as saying.
If India believes Pakistan is about to use its tactical weapons, it would need to hit them first-and take out Pakistan’s strategic arsenal with nuclear strikes before Pakistan could retaliate against Indian cities, the report said.
To destroy Pakistan’s arsenal, India would need many more nuclear weapons; Pakistan would need to dramatically increase numbers to have a good chance of some weapons surviving an Indian first strike.
“Pakistan would have to go first and with everything because it can’t afford to lose. And the Indians would have to go even earlier. Iteratively, it is very destabilising. No side could afford to go second,” Prof Narang said.
India, now led by a Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government, will respond to any terror attacks in a more determined manner, as demonstrated with its special forces [so-called] incursion into Pakistani territory after an attack against an Indian base at Uri last year, Rajeswari Rajagopalan, a former Indian National Security Council official now at the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank in Delhi, was quoted as saying.
As neighbours, India and Pakistan would have just 10 minutes to react to the launch of a missile by the other side and judge whether it is nuclear armed.
Though the two have diplomatic ties, no dialogue exists to rein in the nuclear rivalry, the report said.
“If this kind of arms competition continues between India and Pakistan, the rhetoric continues to increase, and non-state actors continue to run amok, sooner or later we’ll have a crisis,” Feroz Khan, a former senior official in Pakistan’s nuclear programme, who now teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School, California, said. “South Asia sits on a tinderbox.”
An unstable Pakistan-India border region and rumblings among former officials has given Islamabad reason to fear that New Delhi is reconsidering its long-held nuclear weapons doctrine of ‘no first use.’
Since obtaining nuclear weapons capability in 1967, India has traditionally subscribed to a purely defensive doctrine when it comes to the use of atom bombs.
However, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Vipin Narang asserted at the recent Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in Washington DC that the long-standing defensive posture of New Delhi with regard to the use of nuclear weapons could be at an end and a new “pre-emptive” mentality put in its place, Business Insider reports.
Affirming these claims, General Ehsan ul Haq, a former chairman of Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, has asserted that India is rethinking its nuclear posture, in what he suggests are only the latest in a series of increasingly provocative actions toward Pakistan.
These include former Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar questioning the point of the no-first-use policy in a speech in November 2016, New Delhi’s dropping out of the Saarc Summit (an annual conference attended by member states Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, the Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), increased war hysteria at home, attempts to isolate Islamabad diplomatically and noticeably-heightened border tensions.
Haq has affirmed that India is “challenging the credibility of Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence through doctrinal as well as technological developments,” cited by the Times of India.
Naeem Salik, a former Strategic Plans Division official with the Pakistan government, asserted that India’s suggestions about changing from a “passive [no-first-use] to pre-emptive disarming strikes” has created an air of fear among Pakistani strategists.
“We have not only got to study our side of the game, we also have to watch out what is happening on the other side so that we learn from there also and adapt and reform own processes as well,” Salik said.
Adding to the disquiet in Islamabad, former Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said New Delhi’s nuclear posture now has ‘far greater flexibility,’ according to Ibtimes.com. In Menon’s memoir, he wrote, ”There is a potential gray area as to when India would use nuclear weapons first” against a similarly armed enemy, presumably Pakistan.
“It’s very scary because all the ‘first-strike instability’ stuff is real,” Narang said.
Britain’s airports and nuclear power stations have been told to tighten their defences against terrorist attacks in the face of increased threats to electronic security systems.
Security services have issued a series of alerts in the past 24 hours, warning that terrorists may have developed ways of bypassing safety checks.
Intelligence agencies believe that Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) and other terrorist groups have developed ways to plant explosives in laptops and mobile phones that can evade airport security screening methods.
It is this intelligence which is understood in the past fortnight to have led the US and Britain to ban travellers from a number of countries carrying laptops and large electronic devices on board.
Now there are concerns that terrorists will use the techniques to bypass screening devices at European and US airports.
There were also fears that computer hackers were trying to bypass nuclear power station security measures. Government officials have warned that terrorists, foreign spies and “hacktivists” are looking to exploit “vulnerabilities” in the nuclear industry’s internet defences.
Jesse Norman, the energy minister, told The Telegraph that nuclear plants must make sure that they “remain resilient to evolving cyber threats”.
Mr Norman said: “The Government is fully committed to defending the UK against cyber threats, with a £1.9 billion investment designed to transform this country’s cyber security.”
He said the civil nuclear strategy published in February sets out ways to ensure that the civil nuclear sector “can defend against, recover from, and remain resilient to evolving cyber threats”.
Prof Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director-general of the Royal United Services Institute, an independent think tank for defence and security, said: “It is important for the Government to respond rapidly to evolving cyber security threats. “The potential threats are wide-ranging and are coming from government and non-government sources. “Crucially there has to be clear co-operation with the private sector to tackle this, especially as airports are usually in private hands.”
US intelligence officials have warned that groups including Isil and al-Qaeda may have developed ways to build bombs in laptops and other electronic devices that can fool airport security.
There are fears that terrorists made the breakthrough after obtaining airport screening equipment to allow them to experiment.
They were said to have found that the technique would be achievable using everyday equipment.
The US Department of Homeland Security said in a statement: “Evaluated intelligence indicates that terrorist groups continue to target commercial aviation, to include smuggling explosive devices in electronics.
“The US government continually reassesses existing intelligence and collects new intelligence. This allows us to constantly evaluate our aviation security processes and policies and make enhancements when they are deemed necessary to keep passengers safe.”
Manny Gomez, a former FBI special agent, said: “We had the shoe bomber, cartridge attempt, now this is the next level. We need to be several steps ahead of them.”
Last year al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia, detonated a bomb on a flight from Mogadishu to Djibouti.
The explosives were hidden in a part of a laptop where bomb-makers had removed a DVD drive.
The bomber was blown out of the window but the plane survived.
However, experts have said the bomb would have been far more devastating had the plane reached cruising altitude. The warnings come as Britain remains on a “severe” state of alert following last month’s attack at Westminster, in which four people were killed and more than 50 injured.
Warnings that the nuclear industry has to do more to protect itself were contained in the five-year Civil Nuclear Cyber Security Strategy.
It says: “The volume and complexity of cyber attacks against the UK are growing and the range of actors is widening.” Government officials say that the threat from cyber attacks is “growing” and add: “These attacks could disrupt supply, damage facilities, delay hazard and risk reduction, and risk adverse impacts to workers, the public or the environment.”
50 minutes in to the video and Putin mentions an Island in the Arctic called Franz Joseph. He said that the Austrian explorer Mr Bayer had gone there in the 1930`s and later in the 1950`s The Italian President took pictures of the ice and when the Austrian explorer saw them and said that they ice had drastically disappeared within 20 years. He then said that there was no man made effects at that time 1920 and that it could be a “Planetary cycle” effect when answering a question on the USA position on Climate change.
In the early part of the debate Putin said that commercialisation of the Arctic was inevitable and he expected a tenfold increase in Shipping traffic in the Arctic that he was planning for.
53 minutes in and Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said he agreed with what Putin said but also pointed out that he was still hopeful with the Paris Climate change agreement.
55 minutes in and Putin looked at the ice on Franz Joseph island.. He saw evidence of black carbon on the ice from thousands of years ago that came from Mount Etna and was worse than man made causes of black carbon. Putin then addressed Iceland’s president, Gudni Johannesson. Earlier points but saying that science should be encouraged to develop business and protect the environment .
59 minutes in and the CNN reporter hosting the event, hit Putin with the USA election and Ukraine and Crimea.. Listen for your self .. “Bunch of lies” said Putin.. He goes on briefly to discuss some of the geopolitical issues in this area.
He then mentions cooperation with the USA including recent negotiations concerning the Bering straights where shipping agreements, scientific projects, safety and free travel between Alaska and Russia are in operation. He also mentions fishing and Polar bear conservation as the projected increase in shipping develops. Further to that, Putin talks of the developing of hydrocarbons and Russia working with Exxon, Mobil and other partners and that prospects are huge for the USA, Russia and the whole world, also that this will benefit relations with the USA and Russia (To a huge round of applause from the hundreds of attendees to the conference).
1 hr and 5 minutes in the CNN reporter hosting the conference then goes back off topic and reiterated the question, “you and the Russian government did not try to influence the US presidential American election and there will be no evidence found?”
Quoting Ronald Reagan Putin said “read my lips, No!”. The CNN reporter persisted and Putin said that the Russian conference wanted to cooperate with US authorities but here was blocks put up by the US authorities to clear up Russian business corruption.
1hr 12 min in and President Sauli Niinisto said that European dealings with Russia did not reflect the USA position. Even during the cold war where interrelations were still possible. Iceland’s president, Gudni Johannesson then pointed out that respect for international treaties and trust were very important and that even small countries had a voice in this process.
1 hr and 17 minutes in and the CNN host then mentioned Finland being in the American backed NATO treaty and then quoted General Mattis as saying that Russain moves in the arctic were “aggressive” . Putin responded “our aggressive steps?” and then the CNN host said it was “Umm a quote from James Mattis, the US defense secretary”
The audio on the video became bad at this point.. Putin defended this as the USA develops its military infrastructure in the area including its nuclear infrastructure. This means that Russia needs to retaliated because the US withdrew from the ABM treaty. He said that he is rebuilding the Arctic resources to limit smuggling, piracy and illegal fishing.. The Russian military infrastructure is dual use for emergency incidents , oil spills and scientists research deployment and that Russia is transparent and hopes for more cooperation with the USA on these matters.
1 hr 22mins in and Putin is asked by the CNN host how will cooperation be encouraged? An example of cooperation Putin said that aircraft transponders should be kept on when responding to concerns from Finland but when Putin asked for an agreement NATO said they would not comply. He then mentions the USA has the biggest military budget and the most planes flying. Putin did say that some cooperation is being agreed in Syria and he hoped this would expand to the Arctic. The Finnish Prime minister said that he asked for all transponders to be switched on and not just Russian planes. He also said that some NATO representatives are looking into turning transponders on. The discussion then turned to Syria and the need for global cooperation. 1hr 31 min in and the question of territorial claims (200 km from Russian border). Putin mentions the agreement with Norway and its successful conclusion in signing a treaty. The Icelandic prime minister added that the Arctic council was a general success and the issue of fish catch quotas were underway despite challenges. He also mentions difficulties with scientific differences and that the science behind fisheries has a good agreement.
1 hr 35 min in and the question of the future of the Arctic is mentioned.The host mentions that large contingent from China that wishes to make claims on its near Arctic resources. Putin mentions the international agreements and that all countries have the right to work in the arctic region mentioning business`s from N Korea China and India with 4 others. Rules of working on this area are underway. The Finnish minister mentions the N. eastern passage connecting the Pacific and Atlantic regions. Iceland`s minister acknowledged that other non Arctic nations have a right to resources and communication channels and mentioned that many discussions are underway irregardless of the size of the countries involved.
1hr 45 minutes in and the discussion turns to sanctions and Putin said that he doesn’t want to discuss these issues and other issues as there are ongoing discussions. He quotes concerns of the Arab spring and Ukrainian protests as the reason to clamp down on Russian protesters and sanctions destroying the lives of 100,000`s of Americans and Europeans effected by these sanctions. He hopes that future talks might might be a solution to this problem.
1 hr 53 minutes in and the host asks the ministers one way to move froward with positive outcomes.
Discussion, agreement, solutions and developing positive relations were mentioned and Putin said that he hoped these principles and agreements in the Arctic would spread globally.
Full video source on the International Arctic treaty can be found here ;
Streamed live on 30 Mar 2017
Russian President Vladimir Putin is speaking at a plenary session of the International Arctic Forum, dubbed ‘The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue’. The conference is a major platform for discussing the problems and prospects of the Arctic. About 2,000 guests are expected at the forum in Russia’s northwestern city of Arkhangelsk, including Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and Iceland’s president, Gudni Johannesson.
Toshiki Fujimori, left, hands folded paper cranes to the representatives of countries participating in the United Nations Conference to negotiate a ban on nuclear weapons at the United Nations headquarters in New York on March 31, 2017.
Anti-nuke NGO hands paper cranes to delegates at U.N. conference
NEW YORK — As the first session of the United Nations conference to negotiate a ban on nuclear weapons wrapped up here on March 31, an atomic bomb survivor and Nagasaki University students had a special present for each of the government representatives: a folded paper crane.
By handing the representatives this symbol of peace, Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor Toshiki Fujimori, 73, and the students conveyed their hope for the establishment of a U.N. treaty outlawing nuclear weapons. The cranes were an initiative planned by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a non-governmental organization (NGO).
“I hope that the cranes will remind the representatives of their determination to abolish nuclear weapons each time they see them,” Fujimori commented.
Hanako Mitsuoka, 21, a third-year student at Nagasaki University and a Nagasaki Youth Delegation member, said everyone took the cranes with smiles on their faces.
ICAN called for the participation of more countries during the conference by also placing the cranes on the seats of representatives of countries that did not participate, including Japan, and running a campaign on social media posting pictures of the non-participating countries’ flags and a signboard with the message “Wish you were here.”
Fujimori, who gave a speech to the conference on its opening day on March 27, conveyed his determination to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
“There is no doubt that there is high hope for us members of civil society to abolish nuclear weapons, so we must act in order to meet those expectations,” he said.
A representative of a group of atomic bomb survivors has criticized the Japanese government for its refusal to join UN discussions on a legally-binding treaty to ban nuclear weapons.
Toshiki Fujimori is an assistant secretary general of Nihon Hidankyo, or the Japan Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers Organizations.
He said many participants during the first round described the experience of “hibakusha” or atomic bomb survivors. Fujimori himself told the General Assembly about his experience.
He said he expects Japanese officials to take a seat at the negotiating table and accept the outcome of the first round of talks. He says he believes a good treaty can be drafted in the next round.
Word ‘hibakusha’ should be in nuke ban treaty preamble: Austrian U.N. delegate
NEW YORK — The permanent representative of Austria to the United Nations in Geneva has told the Mainichi Shimbun he hopes a treaty on the nuclear weapons ban being negotiated at the U.N. headquarters here will include the term “hibakusha” — a Japanese word for those exposed to radiation.
Ambassador Thomas Hajnoczi, who played a leading role in five days of international negotiations between March 27 and 31, told the Mainichi that he is lobbying other participating countries to push for the addition of “hibakusha” in the treaty’s preamble, and said he believes the word will indeed be included since no countries are opposed to the idea.
The term “hibakusha” used here is not just referring to survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, but those who were exposed to radiation from nuclear tests around the world.
The Austrian representative emphasized during a meeting on March 31 that articles on support measures for the victims of nuclear blasts should be included in the treaty since it will focus on human rights issues derived from nuclear weapons.
He also touched on the speeches made by atomic bombing survivors invited to the talks during the March 28 meeting and said he was moved by them. He argued that in the preamble, it is important to refer to suffering that the victims of nuclear explosions have been going through, a central part of the treaty.
Toshiki Fujimori, assistant secretary general of the Japan Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers Organizations, who was exposed to the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, told the U.N. meeting on March 27 that the treaty must reflect the calls of hibakusha “in express terms so that the world makes remarkable progress toward nuclear weapons abolition.”
Another hibakusha from the Hiroshima bombing, Setsuko Thurlow, who now lives in Canada, also made an address during the meeting, saying that she wanted the world to feel the souls of those who died in the two bombings.
1st round of nuclear weapons ban treaty talks ends
Delegates from 115 countries have wrapped up the first round of talks on a proposed international treaty to ban nuclear weapons.
The 5-day meeting ended on Friday at United Nations headquarters in New York. It was held following a resolution adopted last December by the UN General Assembly. Non-nuclear countries such as Austria led efforts to press for the adoption.
The next round of talks is scheduled to be held from the middle of June to early July.
Costa Rican Ambassador Elayne Whyte Gomez chaired the meeting. She said there was constructive discussion on the scope, legal framework, and methods to prohibit nuclear arms.
She added delegates will aim to adopt a draft treaty by July 7th, the deadline for the next negotiations.
A UN statement said the discussion this time was about making nuclear arms illegal. It said the elimination process will be decided in later talks.
Nuclear-weapons countries such as the US and Russia are not participating in the negotiations.
Japan, the only country to have experienced atomic bombings, is also absent. It says nuclear disarmament should be a phased process involving the nuclear nations.
Head of nuclear arms ban talks aims to draft treaty next month
NEW YORK — The president of a conference on establishing a convention to outlaw nuclear weapons said she aims to draw up a draft of the convention next month and have it adopted in July.
The five-day first round of the conference, which was held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, ended on March 31.
Over 100 countries are participating in the conference, and many of them have expressed hope that a treaty to outlaw the use, production, possession, stockpiling and experiments of nuclear arms will be concluded.
Elayne Whyte Gomez, Costa Rican ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva and president of the conference, will draw up a draft while coordinating views among participating countries, and is expected to present the draft to the participating states as early as late May.
Whyte also said a meeting will be held in Geneva by June to exchange opinions between the countries involved, and she aims to have it adopted by the end of the second round of the conference to be held from June 15 to July 7.
About 40 countries, including the five major nuclear states — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — and NATO members and others that rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella, are opposed to a treaty that would ban nuclear arms and are not participating in the conference.
Japanese disarmament ambassador Nobushige Takamizawa announced in a speech at the outset of the conference on March 27 that Tokyo would not participate in the talks.
A demonstration takes place at Hibiya Park in Tokyo in March 2016, at which protesters express their distrust of the government which has failed to listen to the voices of Fukushima nuclear disaster victims.
Six years have passed since the disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)’s Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, and the government’s policies for helping affected people are reaching the end of a chapter.
The government provision of housing to voluntary evacuees is coming to an end, and with the exception of a few selected areas, evacuation orders have been lifted or scheduled to be lifted soon. Compensation payments for such evacuees are scheduled to end, too — as these were given out in tandem with the evacuation orders.
With this kind of reality in mind, the “accelerated recovery” that was promoted by the government now just appears to be a hasty attempt to draw a curtain over the issue of evacuation from Fukushima. Government policies related to evacuation are seemingly one-way, and given that these policies have failed to gain the acceptance of affected residents, it can be said that they are corroding away at the core of democracy.
Over the past few years, I have continued to cover the situation in Fukushima using data such as health surveys, polls of voluntary evacuees, housing policies, and decontamination — with the aim of chasing after the real intentions of the creators of government policies. And yet, even though the government organizations and bureaucrats that are in charge differ depending on the issue, discussions go on behind closed doors, after which decisions are forced on the public that are completely out of touch with the needs of those affected. These kinds of policymaking procedures are all too common.
There are also cases of double standards. For example, the government had set the maximum annual limit of radiation exposure at 1 millisievert per year for regular people but immediately after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the figure was raised to 20 millisieverts per year as the yardstick for evacuation “because it was a time of emergency.”
Later, in December 2011, a “convergence statement” was released by then Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda in which he announced that the “emergency period” was over. Restructuring of the evacuation orders was subsequently carried out, and then the new criteria for relaxing such instructions were discussed in private.
From April 2013 onward, closed-door discussions continued to take place among section chiefs and other officials from organizations such as the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Reconstruction Agency. They then waited until after the House of Councillors election in July 2013 to announce that areas where the annual radiation exposure was less than 20 millisieverts per year would be exempted from the evacuation orders. A source told me that the timing of the announcement was set as “not to trouble the government.” In other words, the level of 20 millisieverts per year had switched from “the time of emergency level” to “the ordinary level,” and it was as though the previous 1 millisievert annual level for ordinary situations had been banished from history.
Nearly four years have passed since then. At an explanatory meeting for evacuees from the Fukushima Prefecture towns of Namie and Tomioka, hardly anyone agreed with the lifting of the evacuation order this coming spring. It’s clear in the term “unnecessary exposure to radiation,” often used by the Fukushima evacuees, that there is absolutely no reason for local residents to endure radiation exposure caused by the nuclear disaster. And it’s understandable that they have difficulties accepting policies that ignore the voices of those from the affected areas.
Another problem is government bodies’ practice of blurring responsibilities by deleting inconvenient elements in records of the closed-door decision making process, thereby making it impossible for third parties to review the process afterwards.
The government was planning to complete the majority of the decontamination work by the end of fiscal 2016. In June 2016, the Environment Ministry devised a plan for reusing the contaminated soil whose volume has ballooned due to the cleaning work. In a closed-door meeting with specialists, the ministry also set the upper contamination level limit for reusing the soil at 8,000 becquerels per kilogram. However, with regard to the reuse of waste generated from decommissioning work such as iron, the upper limit is set at 100 becquerels. What officials talked about in that closed-door meeting was how to make that kind of double standard appear consistent.
In June 2016, the Mainichi Shimbun reported this matter, and as a number of freedom-of-information requests were filed, the Environment Ministry decided to release the relevant records. Ministry officials claimed that they were making all the information public. However, they had deleted statements by the bureaucrats in charge; statements that suggested the entire discussion had been undertaken with the 8,000 becquerel limit as a given.
Speaking on the issue of helping affected people, politicians and bureaucrats have repeatedly spouted rhetoric such as “staying beside disaster victims.” Despite this, however, there have been cases where senior officials from organizations such as the Reconstruction Agency have shown their true feelings through abusive statements via social media such as Twitter. In August 2015, Masayoshi Hamada, the then state minister for reconstruction, stated in private about the housing provision for Fukushima evacuees, “Basically, we are accepting residents based on the assumption that we don’t support those who evacuated voluntarily.”
Hamada was promoted to the position of state minister in December 2012 — at the same time as the launch of the second Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — and he was put in charge of supporting voluntary evacuees. For these evacuees, the housing provision policy was anticipated the most. Hamada’s irresponsible remarks, however, were almost equal to saying that the agency had no real intention of helping those who had evacuated of their own accord. I cannot help but wonder if politicians such as Hamada do in fact want to “stay beside disaster victims.”
The victims of the Fukushima nuclear disaster have always been kept on the other side of the mosquito net. The majority of policy discussions among the state and local governments concerning the affected people have taken place behind closed doors, and the records that have been released afterward have often been censored in order to conceal certain elements, with excuses such as “making these documents public could cause confusion.” In some of those closed door meetings, officials even talked about “how not to leak information.”
It might be stating the obvious, but unless information concerning policies is made public and there is transparency surrounding the decision making process, democracy cannot function. The way that the government has one-sidedly carried out its national policies by ignoring the voices of the Fukushima disaster victims, as well as people across Japan, poses risks to the very foundation of democracy. In some ways, this is one major part of the damage caused by the nuclear disaster.
The Japanese government has lifted the evacuation order for most parts of a town in Fukushima Prefecture. It was issued after the 2011 nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
The directive for Tomioka Town was lifted at midnight on Saturday in all areas except for no-entry zones with high radiation levels.
The town became the 9th municipality to be released from the order. The decree was initially imposed on 11 municipalities in the prefecture.
The government also withdrew the directives for some areas in Kawamata Town, Namie Town, and Iitate Village at midnight on Friday.
Areas still subject to the government evacuation order now make up 369 square kilometers. That is one-third of the initial size.
About 9,500 Tomioka residents are now allowed to return to their homes.
But in a survey conducted by the Reconstruction Agency and other institutions last year, only 16 percent of Tomioka’s residents said they wanted to return to their hometown.
The town government had opened a shopping mall and a medical facility ahead of the lifting of the evacuation order.
In the future, it will be a challenge for the town to revive industries, decontaminate no-entry zones, and provide continued support for residents living outside the town.
A woman sheds tears at the ceremony to mark the government lifting the evacuation order for the village of Iitate, Fukushima Prefecture, on March 31. The evacuation orders for the towns of Kawamata and Namie were also lifted, reducing the Fukushima nuclear disaster evacuation zones to the highly-contaminated difficult-to-return zones. However, of the roughly 22,500 residents of the three municipalities, only around 10 percent are expected to return to their homes. Iitate Mayor Norio Kanno nevertheless remained positive at the ceremony, stating, “The lifting of the order is not our goal, but it’s the beginning of reconstruction. I hope to strengthen our spirit of independence and will to restore our village.”
A group supporting child cancer sufferers in Fukushima on Friday confirmed the diagnosis of a boy who at the time of the 2011 disaster was just four years old, contradicting the local government’s position that no child of that age has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
The boy was diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery after taking part in a Fukushima prefectural government survey to gauge the impact of the disaster. Local authorities, however, claim at the time of the survey he had not yet been officially confirmed as suffering thyroid cancer.
The survey found that of the 385,000 people aged 18 or younger at the time of the disaster, a total of 184 youths aged between 5 and 18 have been diagnosed with or are suspected to have thyroid cancer.
A road remains blocked Thursday evening in the town of Tomioka near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. An evacuation order for Tomioka residents will be lifted Saturday.
Evacuation orders lifted for three more Fukushima areas but residents slow to return
FUKUSHIMA – Japan on Friday lifted its evacuation orders for the village of Iitate and two other areas that had been enforced due to the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station.
The move came six years after Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s power station suffered meltdowns after the huge earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, triggering evacuation orders in many places in Fukushima Prefecture, including Iitate and the other two areas.
Residents of Iitate, the town of Namie and the Yamakiya district in the town of Kawamata, totaling some 22,100 at the end of February, can now return home, except in a handful of places included in no-go zones where radiation levels are still too high.
With the evacuation order set to be removed for the town of Tomioka on Saturday, Okuma and Futaba, the host towns of the crippled power station, will be the only Fukushima municipalities without an area where an evacuation order has been lifted.
Meanwhile, municipalities where evacuation orders have been removed have their own problems: a slow return of residents.
The central government and affected municipalities have channeled their efforts into improving commercial facilities, transportation systems and other infrastructure, hoping to attract residents, old and new.
In Tomioka, a ¥2.4 billion emergency hospital will be created, reflecting strong calls for medical institutions.
The return of residents has remained slow, however, with many returnees being elderly. In the five municipalities whose evacuation orders had already been lifted, only 14.5 percent of residents came back.
In Iitate, Namie and Kawamata’s Yamakiya district, the share of residents who said they want to go back to their hometowns in joint surveys mainly by the Reconstruction Agency stood at 33.5 percent, 13.4 percent and 43.9 percent, respectively.
The central government will begin work to revive areas in the no-go zones spanning seven municipalities. According to the government’s plan, each of the seven will have a reconstruction base for work to decontaminate local areas tainted with radioactive substances from the Tepco power station and build infrastructure.
Decontamination costs will be borne by the central government. It aims to lift evacuation orders in the no-go zones within about five years.
“The government is resolved to fully lift the evacuation orders (in the no-go zones), even if it takes a long time,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has recently said.
People pray in silence in front of a memorial for the victims of the 2011 disaster in Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, early on March 31. The tsunami-struck Ukedo district remains empty in the background.
Most Fukushima evacuation orders end save for no-go zones
More than six years after the nuclear accident, evacuation orders for areas in two towns and one village in Fukushima Prefecture were lifted after midnight on March 30, allowing residents to finally return home.
The number of residents affected tops 32,000, including the population of Tomioka, where the same order is scheduled to be lifted on April 1.
That will result in the government’s evacuation order issued right after the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant being lifted for almost all affected areas, apart from highly contaminated areas designated as a “difficult-to-return zone.”
However, less than 20 percent of people had returned to areas where the order had already been withdrawn earlier, and not many residents from areas close to the nuclear plants are willing to go back.
On March 31, the order for parts of Namie and Kawamata towns and Iitate village was lifted.
In the coastal Ukedo district in Namie, about seven kilometers north of the No. 1 plant, about 30 people, including Namie residents and the town mayor, gathered at a memorial for the 182 victims from the town before the dawn, hours after the lifting of the evacuation order.
Just after 5:30 a.m., they held a minute of silent prayer.
“I would like to achieve complete recovery until the ban (on the difficult-to-return zone in the town) is lifted entirely for Namie, while cooperating with the residents,” said Namie Mayor Tamotsu Baba.
In Namie, Iitate and Tomioka, the entire population had been living outside their homeland.
After the nuclear crisis unfolded, spawned by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, the government issued evacuation orders to 11 municipalities, for the total population of about 81,000.
Since then, one by one, the authority had lifted bans on areas that met certain safety criteria–estimated annual radiation doses totaling 20 millisieverts or less, and infrastructure and lifelines were reconstructed.
In Okuma and Futaba, where the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant is sited, the evacuation order remains in effect for all residents.
From now on, the government’s priority will shift to encouraging evacuees’ return and assisting them on becoming financially independent, while withdrawing in stages their compensation and accommodation payments.
In the government’s fiscal 2017 budget, a fund of 23.6 billion yen ($212 million) was set aside for restoring the local health-care system and facilities in the area impacted by the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami, and nuclear crisis.
Restoring the essential services for living is part of the plan to encourage evacuees to return to their homes.
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