“…Group net profits shot up because there were no costs from generating power as all three of its reactors were idled….”
January 11, 2013
By SHIN MATSUURA / Staff Writer
The Asahi Shimbun
Japan Atomic Power Co. Posted record net profits for the first half of the current fiscal year, despite all of its reactors being taken offline following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The company, which supplies five regional electric utilities with power generated at its nuclear power plants, logged 20.9 billion yen ($ 238 million) in consolidated net profits in the April-September period in 2012, according to its half-year financial report submitted late last year to a regional office of the Finance Ministry.
It was able to post a profit despite generating no electricity because it was paid a combined 76 billion yen in “basic fees” by Tokyo Electric Power Co., Which owns the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, Kansai Electric Power Co. And three other utilities.
The unlisted Japan Atomic Power receives these basic fees based on its contracts with the utilities. The company says its contracts are renewed every year and that it receives the payments even if it supplies no electricity to them.
According to the report, the company logged 76.2 billion yen in group sales, a year-on-year drop of 10 percent. Most of those revenues came from basic fees paid by the utilities.
Group net profits shot up because there were no costs from generating power as all three of its reactors were idled.
The company is expected to set a record in the current fiscal year ending in March if it does not suffer any major losses, surpassing its highest full-year group net profits of about 3.2 billion yen in fiscal 2008.
But posting profits without supplying power could rouse public ire because utilities pass these fees on to their customers.
The utilities include basic fees, along with other expenses to generate and transmit electricity, such as fuel and payroll costs, when they calculate electricity rates for general households.
Japan Atomic Power defended its receipt of basic fees, however, saying it is based on its contracts.
SEOUL: A North Korean official has apparently told Chinese authorities that the communist state is planning to conduct a third nuclear test in the coming week, a news report said on Saturday.
“We’ve heard a North Korean official in Beijingtold the Chinese side that the North planned to carry out a nuclear test between January 13-20 ,” the Joongang Ilbo daily quoted an unidentified Seoul official as saying. South Korean officialshave a policy of not commenting on intelligence matters.
“We’re now stepping up surveillance over the Punggye-ri nuclear test site,” the official said in reference to the North’s only nuclear test site, where tests were carried out in 2006 and 2009.
With the UN Security Council still debating possible sanctions against the North following the launch of a long-range rocket last month, there has been widespread speculation that Pyongyang may carry out a third nuclear test.
However, Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul said there were “no signs of a nuclear test being imminent” . “Chances are slim that the North might push ahead with a nuclear test in this winter season,” Yang said
“…”We have set a terrible precedent for the rest of the nation and for any town in the world where nuclear plants are located,” said Katsutaka Idokawa, the mayor of Futaba, one of two towns straddled by the devastated Fukushima facility. “I see this disaster as a meltdown of Japan itself.”…” (Quote from AP article below.)
Lives Slipped Away
The 50 Patients of Futaba Hospital
In the three days after the nuclear accident, more than 200 bed-ridden elderly people were stranded at the Futaba Hospital and attached old people’s home in the town of Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, and 50 died during the exhausting evacuation operation. Those 50 deaths have shocked hospital and care home operators across the country and posed hard new questions for Japan as a land of frequent natural disasters.
Air date 1/11/2013
How much support can medical staff provide when they become victims of disaster?
“We medical workers can’t help more patients if we don’t survive. First and foremost, our own survival is critical”.
AP Enterprise: Nuke evacuation fatal for old, sick
Saturday – 3/10/2012, 6:58am ET
By ERIC TALMADGE and MARI YAMAGUCHI
Associated Press
MINAMI-SOMA, Japan (AP) – The doctors and nurses at Futaba Hospital pleaded for help as a radioactive plume wafted over their hospital. They had been ordered out but had no vehicles to evacuate the hundreds of patients in their care. After two days of waiting in the cold with no electricity, help finally came.
Nearly two dozen patients died in the chaotic, daylong odyssey that followed.
Japan’s government says only one person, an overworked employee at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, died as a result of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. But one year later, details from a new report and interviews with local authorities show many more perished because of bad planning and miscommunication between government agencies.
In fact, if the calamities that unfolded on March 11, 2011, were to be repeated today, hundreds of thousands of lives would still be at risk, according to mayors, hospital administrators and disaster response officials interviewed by The Associated Press. They say little has been done to fix systemic planning shortfalls and communication problems between government agencies that compounded that day’s horrors.
“We have set a terrible precedent for the rest of the nation and for any town in the world where nuclear plants are located,” said Katsutaka Idokawa, the mayor of Futaba, one of two towns straddled by the devastated Fukushima facility. “I see this disaster as a meltdown of Japan itself.”
For readers in the US who were born before 1971, there is an online calculator available from the National Cancer Institute to assess your radioactive iodine (I-131) exposure (thyroid dose equivalent) from nuclear tests in Nevada:
State and county level exposures in an interactive map (which wasn’t working when I checked), here. The maximum exposure was 16 rad (thyroid dose equivalent), which is 160 milligray which is 160 millisieverts. That is rather high.
I got the links to the site from a tweet by a young nuclear researcher in Japan I follow on Twitter. He said in a later tweet, “It would have been very nice if Fukushima Prefecture’s system to estimate the radiation exposure had been available for the residents to run the calculation like this.” I can’t agree with him more.
Instead in Japan, the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS), a government agency, built a proprietary system based on the questionnaires from the Fukushima residents (low response rate), and came up with model cases. (For details, see this PDF, in Japanese.) I don’t think the residents who submitted the questionnaires have received any individualized estimate, but I could be wrong.
In nuclear testing in Nevada by the US government, soldiers were made to watch without any shielding.
The US Department of Defense has a website to assist ex-soldiers file a claim if they think they were exposed to ionizing radiation.
A video which explains the Ecology and Geology of Ennerdale, part of the Lake District National park (UK), and the impact of siting a Radioactive Nuclear Waste Facility on the Environment.
“…the First Nations community believes that the Canadian government has the duty to consult with the indigenous people of the country based on the treaties and agreements….”
Myka Burning in interview with Press TV
Sat Jan 12, 2013 7:20PM GMT
An activist says the government of the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has only created the illusion of collaborating with the First Nations community, Press TVreports.
“I think they are just sort of trying to appease people, you know, like giving the illusions of actually having that consultation going on but not actually committing to it,” Myka Burning said in an interview with Press TV on Saturday.
Referring to the protests staged by the Idle No More movement, Burning noted that the demonstrators will continue until they can achieve their demands.
“The protests when it comes to Idle No More itself…will continue until Harper brings back that collaboration with First Nations people which he has supposed to be doing, which he has been failing to do. That is one of the main objectives of Idle No More – it has to get that dialogue back on the table,” she further explained.
The Idle No More, a movement of the First Nations in Canada, has been holding protests since November 2012.
On January 3, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Shawn Atleo called on Harper to meet with the aboriginal leaders over their concerns.
Canadian aboriginals have also held demonstrations since the government approved Bill C-45, which seeks to change the rules about aboriginal land. The protests intensified after Chief of Attawapiskat First Nation in Northern Ontario Theresa Spence went on a hunger strike on December 11, 2012, demanding a meeting with Harper.
Update at 4:45pm GMT:
Adnan Latif/Ahmed Belbacha tour at Turkish Embassy, more questions from the cops, then on to Portuguese Embassy where they finished at 16:45. Now on to US Embassy for 6pm vigil – Adnan Latif’s body left Guantánamo decomposed weeks ago in a …bodybag to his family in Yemen. His soul left on 8 September 2012. He was 36. His lawyers say Guantánamo and extended arbitrary detention killed him. In 2010, Obama placed a moratorium on returns to Yemen as it was too dangerous.
Ahmed Belbacha, cleared for release almost 6 years, remains at Guantánamo for want of a safe third country to return to. Sentenced in absentia in Algeria in 2009 to 20 years for membership of a “terrorist organisation” abroad, a claim now taken back by the Pentagon, and unwanted by the UK where he lived for 18 months, he remains there for want of a safe place to go.
The Shaker Aamer tour has also come to an end and is heading to the US Embassy too.
The Omar Khadr tour is at the Spanish Embassy and the Abd El Nashiri tour has left the Polish Embassy.
Update at 4:15pm GMT:
The Adnan Latif/Ahmed Belbacha tour took the bus to the Turkish Embassy. A large number of prisoner were flown through Incirlik and to other European countries before being taken to Guantánamo Bay:http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?load=detay&link=126951 These were mostly stop-overs and for refueling.
The Omar Khad team is currently en route from the Afghan Embassy, where he was picked up and detained at Bagram for several month in 2002 before being flown to Spain before Guantánamo.
The Abd El Nashiri tour went from the UAE Embassy to the Thai Embassy as he was held at a secret prison there and tortured for several months before being taken to Poland, along with other “high value” prisoners, such as Abu Zubaydah, where they are heading to.
Diplomatic police are still on the look out for our tours.
“The information we gain using this test facility will permit engineers to design rugged, efficient fuel elements and nuclear propulsion systems,” said NASA researcher Bill Emrich, who manages the NTREES facility at Marshall. “It’s our hope that it will enable us to develop a reliable, cost-effective nuclear rocket engine in the not-too-distant future.”
Jan. 10, 2013 ? Advanced propulsion researchers at NASA are a step closer to solving the challenge of safely sending human explorers to Mars and other solar system destinations.
By using an innovative test facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., researchers are able to use non-nuclear materials to simulate nuclear thermal rocket fuels — ones capable of propelling bold new exploration missions to the Red Planet and beyond.
The Nuclear Cryogenic Propulsion Stage team is tackling a three-year project to demonstrate the viability of nuclear propulsion system technologies. A nuclear rocket engine uses a nuclear reactor to heat hydrogen to very high temperatures, which expands through a nozzle to generate thrust. Nuclear rocket engines generate higher thrust and are more than twice as efficient as conventional chemical rocket engines.
The team recently used Marshall’s Nuclear Thermal Rocket Element Environmental Simulator, or NTREES, to perform realistic, non-nuclear testing of various materials for nuclear thermal rocket fuel elements. In an actual reactor, the fuel elements would contain uranium, but no radioactive materials are used during the NTREES tests. Among the fuel options are a graphite composite and a “cermet” composite — a blend of ceramics and metals. Both materials were investigated in previous NASA and U.S. Department of Energyresearch efforts.
Nuclear-powered rocket concepts are not new; the United States conducted studies and significant ground testing from 1955 to 1973 to determine the viability of nuclear propulsion systems, but ceased testing when plans for a crewed Mars mission were deferred.
“…”Rail is already the greenest form of public transport and this partnership with EDF Energy will help us make it greener still.”…”
“…Network Rail will purchase power “up to ten years in advance”…”
11 January 2013
By electrifying more track and contracting nuclear power supplies from EDF Energy the UK rail network operator will reduce fossil fuel use over the next ten years.
A joint statement today described how Network Rail will purchase power exclusively from EDF Energy, with that supply matched to nuclear generation. With a requirement of 3.2 TWh per year, Network Rail is the UK’s largest power customer. It owns all the railway infrastructure and purchases power centrally, recouping money from firms that operate trains across its network.
“…As nuclear power plants can generate electricity at a lower cost compared with thermal, wind or hydroelectric power farms and emit less CO2, it could be a better option to generate electricity…”
Fri, Jan 11, 2013
The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday warned that electricity prices could soar by 40 percent if the country abandoned nuclear power as its major electricity source.
If the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Gongliao District (貢寮) is prevented from becoming operational, while the first and second nuclear power plants are retired, state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) would have to increase electricity rates sharply to cope with the high costs of generating power by using coal or natural gas, Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) said at the legislature, calling on lawmakers to be prepared for price increases when making decisions.
According to Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, high level of cesium was measured from 20 of 20 samples of wild boar meats in Fukushima.
The highest reading was 1,800 Bq/Kg from the meat of wild boar taken in Nihonmatsu city.
Sampling date : 12/7/2012
Cs-134 : 657 Bq/Kg
Cs-137 : 1,140 Bq/Kg
The lowest reading was 74 Bq/Kg from the sample taken in Nishiaizu machi, but they measured cesium more than 100 Bq/Kg from all the other samples (19 of 20) .
Ms. Seiko Takahashi responds to BBC‘s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes (1/3/2013) when he asks about “Fukushima 50”, workers who remained at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant after Reactor 3 building exploded and kept on doing whatever they could to contain the situation:
Before the meltdowns, Seiko Takahashi never thought of activism. Now the middle-aged mother from Fukushima City is a passionate anti-nuclear campaigner. And she admits there is little sympathy for the Fukushima workers.
“They are not heroes for us,” she says. “I feel sorry for them, but I don’t see them as heroes. We see them as one block, they work for Tepco, they earned high salaries. The company made a lot of money from nuclear power, and that’s what paid for their nice lives.”
She is essentially saying they get what they deserve, for having worked for TEPCO.
Her city, Fukushima City, is in the highly contaminated middle-third of Fukushima Prefecture. While most Japanese (and foreigners) may sympathize with her and her city’s plight, many of them are also angry that the city, along with almost all municipalities in that prefecture, continues to grow crops and sell them outside, claiming they are “safe” (i.e. less than 100 Bq/kg of radioactive cesium), and claims it suffers tremendously from “baseless rumors”.
For how some of the Fukushima I Nuke Plant workers have been treated by their fellow Fukushima residents, see my post from February 2012. That post was about an article that appeared in Germany’s Der Spiegel. I have seen hardly any coverage on the issue in the Japanese media.
As BBC’s Wingfield-Hayes says at the end of his report,
There is wide sympathy here for victims like him, [Mr. Yoshizawa the cattle farmer in Namie-machi] but the Japanese public appears to have little sympathy or concern for the suffering of Fukushima workers.
“..Rice contaminated with radioactive cesium has been detected in Miyagi Prefecture. It is the first time that contaminated rice has been discovered outside of Fukushima Prefecture. The rice, which at 240 Bq/kg exceeded government-mandated limits by almost two-and-a-half times, was not sold to the public. Prefectural officials have requested that nearby farmers refrain from shipping rice and other produce until further testing can be conducted…”
Blogpost by Christine McCann – January 11, 2013 at 11:46
Here’s the latest of our news bulletins from the ongoing crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
In response to a scathing ten-part expose by the Asahi Shimbun, which revealed illegal dumping of radioactive waste into rivers and forests, failure to collect contaminated water used in the cleanup process, and inappropriate use of high-pressured sprayers, Ministry officials finally interviewed supervisors from four contracting firms that had been awarded a highly lucrative 650 billion yen ($7.4 billion) contract. The firms originally agreed to bag all radioactive material, including leaves and branches; only use high-pressure sprayers on gutters and collect all water used; and wipe down walls and roofs of houses by hand or with brushes. Contaminated materials were to be stored at temporary storage sites, and cleanup was to occur within 20 meters of both sides of all roads. The work was to be performed in 11 municipalities over four prefectures.
During the course of the interviews, two firms admitted that workers had not properly collected contaminated water in the towns of Naraha and Iitate. Although that practice is a violation of the Ministry’s contract with the firms, it is not illegal. The Asahi reporters, however, submitted extensive photographic, video, and audio documentation of far more extensive problems than those to which the firms admitted.
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, 8901 Wisconsin Avenue, Building 42, Bethesda, MD 20889-5603, USA. Millera@afrri.usuhs.mil
Abstract
The use of depleted uranium in armor-penetrating munitions remains a source of controversy because of the numerous unanswered questions about its long-term health effects. Although no conclusive epidemiologic data have correlated DU exposure to specific health effects, studies using cultured cells and laboratory rodents continue to suggest the possibility of leukemogenic, genetic, reproductive, and neurological effects from chronic exposure. Until issues of concern are resolved with further research, the use of depleted uranium by the military will continue to be controversial.
“We’ve heard a North Korean official in 
nuclear-news 