Nuclear power, once the “golden goose” for small towns – now a liability
Ripples from US nuclear plant closings overwhelm small towns, Star Tribune, By JOHN SEEWER Associated Press MARCH 26, 2017 “……..For the small, mostly rural towns that are home to 61 U.S. nuclear plants that produce one-fifth of the nation’s electricity, each one has been like the golden goose supplying high-paying jobs and money for roads, police and libraries.
But those same places and their residents are bracing for what may come next due to the soaring costs of running aging reactors that have speeded up the closings of a handful of sites and are threatening at least a dozen more. That’s because once the power stops flowing, so does the money.
Towns that already have seen nuclear plants shuttered are now dealing with higher property taxes, cuts in services and less school funding — a new reality that may linger for decades.
In Wisconsin, the tiny town of Carlton saw the source of roughly 70 percent of its yearly budget disappear when the Kewaunee nuclear power plant closed four years ago. That resulted in the first town tax in its history.
“Financially, we benefited, but now we’re going to pay the price for the next 40 years,” said David Hardtke, the town chairman.
When operations ceased at the Crystal River Nuclear Plant along Florida’s Gulf Coast, “it was like something going through and wiping out a third of your county,” said Citrus County Administrator Randy Oliver.
To make up the difference, property tax rates went up by 31 percent and 100 county workers were let go — so many that Oliver worries there won’t be enough to evacuate residents and clear roads if a major tropical storm hits.
While the nation’s fleet of nuclear power plants wasn’t designed to last forever, closures are happening earlier than expected because repair costs are astronomical and it’s harder to compete with cheaper natural gas-fired plants and renewable energy sources.
The former head of the nuclear industry’s trade group said last year that economic pressures have put 15 to 20 plants at risk of a premature shutdown.
FirstEnergy Corp. will decide by next year whether to close or sell its plant in Pennsylvania and two in Ohio, including Davis-Besse, unless the states change regulations to make them more competitive……… New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., owner of the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, announced plans late last year to close in 2018 even though it has a license to keep operating another 14 years…….
what makes recovering tough is that almost all nuclear plants are in out of the way places that have become heavily reliant on them. And they employ specialized workers who are quick to leave for still-operating locations.
To make matters worse, many closed sites can’t be redeveloped for new uses because they’re still storing radioactive waste…….
“We have become a de facto nuclear waste dump. It just sits there, and sits there forever,” said Al Hill, the mayor in Zion, Illinois, where spent nuclear fuel remains stored on prime property along Lake Michigan even though the plant shut down 20 years ago.
On top of that, the closing took away half of the city’s tax base and pushed property taxes to the highest in the state, making it difficult to lure new businesses, Hill said……
It’s had a devastating effect on this town,” “It’s terrible. Any town with a nuclear power plant in it or near it is in danger of suffering the same fate.” http://www.startribune.com/ripples-from-us-nuclear-plant-closings-overwhelm-small-towns/417116223/
Nuclear industry’s legacy – stranded wastes, safety fears, collapsing communities
As nuclear plants age, risks rise, telegram.com Christine Legere, Dec 4, 2016
The need to support a community when a nuclear power station closes
Regional and national conversations about nuclear power center on electricity supply and cost, environmental goals and radiological safety. But we focus on how closure looks from the host community’s standpoint. There are substantial financial and social losses that pose major, long-term risks to local and regional economies.
The foreseeable losses from plant closures are substantial enough to merit major planning efforts. Economic impact studies forecast the nature and scale of losses, but it’s not clear what to do next to prepare, beyond bracing for the worst and slashing budgets.
Unfortunately, no targeted programs or funding exist to support nuclear host communities doing this kind of planning. The accelerating pace of nuclear power plant closures has exposed a problem that will affect quality of life for hundreds of towns, many in rural or economically depressed areas. There are no model practices or policies, and no federal entity that assumes responsibility beyond radiological safety, environmental cleanup and monitoring of spent fuel.
A decade ago, community leaders in Southern Vermont asked what might happen to the regional economy if their plant shut down. They conducted a study to understand the problem, and produced the first-ever Comprehensive Economic Development Strategyincorporating nuclear plant closure impacts into economic planning. They had realized it was up to the region to take action because no help would be offered. By the time Vermont Yankee announced closure, work was already underway to replace Vermont Yankee losses with new jobs and businesses.
Today, the community around the Diablo Canyon Power Plant is at the start of a long journey. As home to many of the earliest plant closures, New England offers a network of people with experience, many of whom are also working to improve federal policies that will frame your future experience. This includes engaging with two current initiatives; NRC rulemaking on decommissioning and the Department of Energy consent-based approach to the spent fuel siting process.
Hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent to decommission the nuclear power plants that supply one-fifth of our nation’s energy. Additional billions are going into spent fuel handling and related litigation.
Currently, the best-case closure scenario is simply restoring nuclear sites to a natural state, erasing the past with no attempt to generate new economic activity.
We can do more. Only a few decades ago, America lacked a coherent approach to polluted sites. Now brownfield programs commonly transform polluted sites into new assets that attract investment.
Military base closures have been devastating, but over time Base Realignment and Closurepractices are evolving to help create new economic activity and redevelopment.
The local, county, regional and state agencies responsible for each community need enough funding and authority to implement timely and sufficient mitigation of all risks — to economic, environmental and human health. Decommissioning creates unfunded mandates precisely at the point when revenues are dropping. Ultimately, we need a national solution that makes the long-term economic health of host communities a policy goal. We need a federal agency that assumes responsibility for achieving that goal.
We urge California’s policymakers to join a growing body of state and federal legislators and regulators who believe we can do better when it comes to caring for the communities providing our nation’s energy.
John Mullin is professor emeritus of regional planning at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and former dean of the graduate school. He is co-founder of the Institute for Nuclear Host Communities and teaches a course on nuclear plant closures in the UMass Honors College.
Laura Sibilia is economic development director at the Brattleboro Development Credit Corp. in Vermont and a member of Vermont’s House of Representatives. She worked on development of a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy to address impacts of Vermont Yankee’s closure.
Jennifer Stromsten is program director for the Institute for Nuclear Host Communities. She has 20 years of nonprofit development experience, and a master’s degree in regional planning, focused on sustainable land use and economic development. http://www.sanluisobispo.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article105472331.html
Fukushima’s dead zone: the abandoned towns
five years on, an area 12 miles around the plant remains a dead zone, abandoned and uninhabited.
At intervals beside the roads, heaped up in huge piles, lie half a million black plastic bags containing radioactive topsoil, scraped off the surface of the land in an effort to persuade farmers to start work here again.
Some of the dead zone will never return to life. Futaba, the closest town to the plant, will probably be turned into a radioactive waste dump.
thousands of workers are now being bussed in to the cleanup effort at the power station, the radioactive fuel rods which melted down are all still there. Even after five years, radiation levels inside the reactor buildings are still too high for workers to enter, making it hard to even plan the task that needs to be done, let alone carry it out.
Fukushima: Inside the dead zone where the legacy of nuclear disaster still rulesFive years since a tsunami led to disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, Andrew Gilligan explores the ghost towns left in its wake, Telegraph UK, By Andrew Gilligan, in Fukushima, video by Julian Simmonds, additional editing by Charlotte Krol 06 Mar 2016
Along the rest of the country’s blasted east coast, the wreckage has been at least cleared away, even if not much has yet been put in its place. But in Futaba, time stopped on the night of 11 March 2011, when those residents who’d survived the giant wave fled, as they thought, for their lives from something even more frightening.
The buildings which collapsed in the earthquake have simply been left – rubble, roof tiles and all. The ceremonial torii gate of the Shinto shrine is lying exactly where it fell, on its side jutting out into the street. But most of the town is physically intact. It was just abandoned, and clearly in a very great hurry…..
As Japan’s prime minister at the time, Nato Kan, told The Telegraph in an interview published on Saturday, the country came within a “paper-thin margin” of a disaster requiring the evacuation of 50 million people. What did happen was bad enough. Inside the plant, a skeleton staff – the so-called “Fukushima 50” – battled to avert total catastrophe, reading emergency manuals by torchlight and at one stage asking workers to bring their car batteries to power the crippled cooling systems.
Outside, there was mass panic, with compulsory evacuation for 400,000 local residents and much of the rest of northern Japan cramming roads and railway stations to get out, too. In the end, the worst was avoided, with seawater pumped to cool the reactors and not a single immediate death from radiation exposure.
But five years on, an area 12 miles around the plant remains a dead zone, abandoned and uninhabited. You can still go there. Anyone can drive on the main road, route 6, which runs through it. Even this is an eerie experience. As well as the traffic signs, route 6 has geiger counters above the carriageway, displaying the radiation readout in the same way that others display roadworks information.
Most of the buildings here are wrecked or empty, too: an entire wall of the Segaworld games arcade has been ripped off, showing all the machines still inside. The side turnings, to get into the hearts of the towns, are blocked and mostly guarded, accessible only with passes (or, as we did, by finding an unguarded one and slipping through.)
At intervals beside the roads, heaped up in huge piles, lie half a million black plastic bags containing radioactive topsoil, scraped off the surface of the land in an effort to persuade farmers to start work here again.
Some of the dead zone will never return to life. Futaba, the closest town to the plant, will probably be turned into a radioactive waste dump. But six months ago, a few miles to the south, the authorities declared that Naraha, another town in the evacuation area, was now safe and everyone should come back.
It was hailed as the first stage in the area’s return to normality. Virtually nobody is buying. Before the disaster, Naraha had a population of 7,000. But for now, poisoned as much by mistrust of the government as by radioactivity, the place remains almost as spectral as Futaba.
“Once it’s dark, there’s only about ten houses with lights on,” said Nawasaki Yoshihiro, who was repairing the tsunami damage at his lovely traditional Japanese home opposite Tatsuma railway station. “You see wild boar running about the streets. I’m fixing this up because my parents kept pestering me not to waste the house. But even we are only here until 6 o’clock.”…….
In the station car park, dozens of commuters’ bikes give an appearance of normality. But look closer, and their chains are rusty, their tyres flat. “They have been there since 2011,” says Mr Yoshihiro. “The owners are probably dead.” Up the street, there are lights in a supermarket, a bright plastic sign above the door. But go up to the door, and you realise the place is some sort of government office, not a supermarket at all. It’s the perfect symbol of this nuclear Potemkin village.
Twenty miles further to the south, in the provincial centre of Iwaki, we find the reason why so few want to return. It’s the twice-yearly “update session” for residents of one of the temporary resettlement camps where much of Naraha’s population – and at least 20,000 other people from the radiation area alone – still live, five years on……….
From the audience, Yoshitaka Matsumoto, a local farmer, is politely angry: “You should fight the government, stop them bullying people,” he tells the mayor. Afterwards, he tells us that contamination of the water is people’s main concern. “The water comes from the taps, but it comes from a reservoir which has radioactive mud at the bottom,” he says. “The people who are back in Naraha now, they buy their drinking water from the shop, but they still have to wash in the tapwater.”…….
Though thousands of workers are now being bussed in to the cleanup effort at the power station, the radioactive fuel rods which melted down are all still there. Even after five years, radiation levels inside the reactor buildings are still too high for workers to enter, making it hard to even plan the task that needs to be done, let alone carry it out.
Around 300 to 400 tons of contaminated water is generated every day as groundwater flows into the plant filled with radioactive debris. To contain the tainted water, TEPCO, the plant’s operator pumps up the water and stores it in tanks, adding a new tank every three to four days.
There are now 1,000 tanks, containing 750,000 tons of contaminated water. “If I may put this in terms of mountain climbing, we’ve just passed the first waystation on a mountain of 10 stations,” said Akira Ono, head of the Fukushima plant, last month. The full cleanup, he admitted, may take as long as 40 years.
Back in Futaba, a banner has been erected protesting against the removal of the “nuclear power, our bright future” sign. “Save the sign, remember our folly,” it says. “Preserve it as a negative legacy.”
In truth, in Japan’s radioactive disaster zone, the reminders of the folly and the memorials of the disaster are everywhere inescapable.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/12182635/Return-to-Fukushima.html
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Eerie situation at Futaba – abandoned town in Fukushima prefecture
Fukushima: Five years on from nuclear meltdown locals still in the dark about future, ABC News, By Rachel Mealey 6 Mar 16 The town of Futaba lies six kilometres from the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
There is an eerie feeling there. Shoes sit in the doorway of houses, as they do in houses across Japan — neatly placed together, waiting for feet to walk them out the door.
Bicycles rest against fences — waiting for the next journey………
Yuji Ohnuma ‘s slogan, “Nuclear Energy: The Energy of a Bright Future” won the day (competition years ago for pro nuclear slogan) .
Mr Ohnuma recalls being very proud when the billboard was erected — it stretched across the road on the way to the train station — seen by all who passed under it.
But now the bright future he foresaw has been ripped away. Council workers peeled the words off the billboard in December last year.
Mr Ohnuma campaigned for the sign to remain where it was — to serve as an ironic reminder to future generations of the dangers of nuclear power. But in a nation that has heavily invested in atomic energy, the billboard was not ironic — it was embarrassing.
The ABC filmed an interview with Mr Ohnuma under his sign on February 27 — the outline of the words could still be seen.
Last week on March 3, the entire structure was demolished.
The town is a chaotic mess and lives are in ruin — yet this job was given immediate priority.
“Nuclear energy has taken away my dream and my life and the bright future has become a catastrophe for us. I had a vision that my children would some day graduate from the same school as me, but all my plans are destroyed and there are no future prospects,” Mr Ohnuma said.http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-06/fukushima-five-year-anniversay/7218734
Very few return to “re-opened” town in Fukushima
Japan’s nuclear refugees face bleak return five years after Fukushima, Yahoo News, By Minami FunakoshNARAHA (Reuters) 3 Mar 16, – Tokuo Hayakawa carries a dosimeter around with him at his 600-year-old temple in Naraha, the first town in the Fukushima “exclusion zone” to fully reopen since Japan’s March 2011 catastrophe. Badges declaring “No to nuclear power” adorn his black Buddhist robe.
(For a video of ‘Fukushima refugees face a bleak return home’ click http://www.reuters.tv/Bus/2016/03/03/inside-fukushima-s-first-town-to-reopen)
Hayakawa is one of the few residents to return to this agricultural town since it began welcoming back nuclear refugees five months ago.
The town, at the edge of a 20-km (12.5 mile) evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant, was supposed to be a model of reconstruction.
Only 440 of Naraha’s pre-disaster population 8,042 have returned – nearly 70 percent of them over 60.
“This region will definitely go extinct,” said the 76-year-old Hayakawa.
He says he can’t grow food because he fears the rice paddies are still contaminated. Large plastic bags filled with radioactive topsoil and detritus dot the abandoned fields.
With few rituals to perform at the temple, Hayakawa devotes his energies campaigning against nuclear power in Japan. Its 54 reactors supplied over 30 percent of the nation’s energy needs before the disaster.
Today, only three units are back in operation after a long shutdown following the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. Others are looking to restart.
“I can’t tell my grandson to be my heir,” said Hayakawa, pointing at a photo of his now-teenaged grandson entering the temple in a full protective suit after the disaster. “Reviving this town is impossible,” he said. “I came back to see it to its death.”
That is bound to disappoint Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Rebuilding Naraha and other towns in the devastated northeast, he says, is crucial to reviving Japan.
Tokyo pledged 26.3 trillion ($232 billion) over five years to rebuild the disaster area and will allocate another 6 trillion for the next five years.
VANISHING TOWN………
No children were in sight at Naraha’s main park overlooking the Pacific Ocean on a recent morning. Several elderly residents were at the boardwalk gazing at hundreds of bags stuffed with radioactive waste.
In fact, the bags are a common sight around town: in the woods, by the ocean, on abandoned rice fields.
Little feels normal in Naraha. Many homes damaged in the disaster have been abandoned. Most of the town’s population consists of workers. They are helping to shut down Tokyo Electric Power Co’s <9501.T> Daiichi reactors or working on decontamination projects around town.
Other workers are building a new sea wall, 8.7 meters high, along a nearly 2 km stretch of Naraha’s coast, similar to other sea walls under construction in the northeast……..
Back at his Buddhist temple, part of which he has turned into an office for his anti-nuclear campaign, Hayakawa called the idea Naraha could be a model of reconstruction “a big fat lie”.
“There’s no reconstructing and no returning to how it used to be before (March 11). The government knows this, too. A ‘model case’? That’s just words.” http://news.yahoo.com/japans-nuclear-refugees-face-bleak-return-five-years-064635977–finance.html
The social toll on Fukushima families
For some Fukushima mothers, protecting children from radiation comes at heavy price, Asahi Shimbun February 23, 2016 Three-and-a-half years after fleeing to central Japan, a mother received a package from her husband who had opted to remain at their home in Fukushima Prefecture despite the nuclear disaster.
From Tamura, about 35 kilometers west of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, the father sent snacks for the couple’s two children. The cardboard box also contained divorce papers.
“I cannot send money to my family whom I cannot see,” the husband told his wife.
She still refused to return home.
Thanks to decontamination work, radiation levels have fallen around the nuclear plant since the triple meltdown caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. And families are returning to their hometowns, trying to resume normal lives.
But many mothers, distrustful of the government’s safety assurances, still harbor fears that radiation will affect the health of their children. As a result of these concerns, families are being torn apart, friendships have ended, and a social divide remains wide in Fukushima communities.
Around 70,000 people are still not allowed to return to their homes located in evacuation zones designated by the central government. And an estimated 18,000 people from Fukushima Prefecture whose homes were outside those zones remain living in evacuation………..
Sung Woncheol, a professor of sociology at Chukyo University, and others have conducted surveys on mothers whose children were 1 to 2 years old when the nuclear disaster started. The mothers live in Fukushima city and eight other municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture.
Of the 1,200 mothers who responded to the survey in 2015, 50 percent said they had concerns about child-rearing in Fukushima Prefecture.
Nearly 30 percent said they avoid or try to avoid using food products from Fukushima Prefecture, compared with more than 80 percent six months after the disaster.
But for some mothers, the passage of nearly five years since the disaster unfolded has not erased their fears of radiation.
The 36-year-old mother who received the divorce papers from her husband in autumn 2014 continues to live with her children in the central Japan city to which she had no previous connection.
A month after the nuclear disaster, she fled with her then 1-year-old son and her daughter, 10, from their home, even though it was not located in an evacuation zone.
She said she left Fukushima Prefecture because she “could not trust the data released by the central government.”……..http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201602230068
Cover-up of radiation effects makes Fukushima victims’ lives even worse
There is absolutely no negative discussion of radiation exposure in the mainstream media, to the point where journalists risk being fired if they discuss radiation exposure in their articles, and even liberal newspapers refuse to print articles discussing this topic.
The Taboo Of Radiation Exposure In Japan: The Social Effects Of Fukushima, 
Activist Post, By Erin O’Flaherty, 11 Dec 15 It is understood that radiation is physically harmful to those who are exposed to it. However, it is also harmful on a social level. Those who become exposed to radiation form a new class within society, one that is discriminated against and even feared by many ordinary people. This has certainly been the case with the Fukushima nuclear incident. This discrimination is worsened by the government and mainstream media’s treatment of the incident. This essay will discuss the social effects of the Fukushima incident by comparing it with the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It will also explain how the media play into this discrimination and attempt to understand why Japanese society is reacting in such a way. Continue reading
Uranium industry in Niger from AREVA to Chinese companies
One uranium mine in Niger says a lot about China’s huge nuclear-power ambitions, Business Insider, 25 Oct 15, ARMIN ROSEN “………the ambitions of the nuclear powers in Niger are still playing out today as Niger’s remote and inhospitable northern desert environment contains the world’s fifth-largest recoverable uranium reserves, some 7% of the global total.
A fourth mine, in a place called Azelik, near the mostly ethnic Tuareg city of In’gall, is currently much smaller than the other three sites.
Like Imouraren, it’s currently shuttered as a partial result of the uranium price dip. But because of its ownership and a checkered recent history, it’s an instructive guide to the future of Niger’s uranium and the global nuclear energy industry at large.
Niger’s Azelik uranium mine, owned and operated by Chinese companies, is at the geographic and economic fringes of a continent-wide wave of Chinese investment, goods, and people. Continue reading
Afraid about radiation, but afraid to speak out: Fukushima mothers
Reluctant to speak, Fukushima moms admit fear of radiation, pressure from families, Japan Times, BY MEGAN GREEN, 29 Sept 15 STAFF WRITER To stay or to flee. Mothers in Fukushima Prefecture had to make harsh decisions for their families after the nuclear disaster of March 2011. More than four years on, they still have to.
Those who remain there live in constant fear for their children’s health. But choosing to flee opened them to accusations of being bad wives who abandoned their relatives, community and husbands tied to jobs.
It is a no-win situation for those who face the decision to stay or go, because they may be unable to live up to the ideal of a ryosai kenbo (good wife, wise mother).
“Consciously or subconsciously, women are aware of the role we are expected to play in a family. After the earthquake and nuclear disaster, however, everything changed,” said Yukiko (not her real name), a mother and voluntary evacuee in her 30s. “I can’t live up to those expectations any more, and society judges me.”
All women interviewed for this story spoke on condition of anonymity.
As the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant began to play out, Tokyo Electric Power Co. established a 20-km no-go zone around the site, outside of which the government said conditions were safe. Many did not believe the assertion.
Yuriko, a woman in her 70s who lives in the city of Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, believes the zone restrictions divided the community.
“Some people trusted the government’s word and continued to live here, but others couldn’t stand living every day in fear and moved out,” Yuriko said. “Nobody knew what to believe and communities have fallen apart.”
The fear of radiation, rumors and media reports about the safety of local food prompted many mothers just outside the no-go zone to evacuate voluntarily for the sake of their children’s health. Some moved to neighboring prefectures, including Iwate and Miyagi, and others made the great leap south to Tokyo.
“To be honest, I didn’t have much knowledge about the nuclear reactors in Fukushima. But I did know how deadly high exposures of radiation could be,” said Yuko, in her 30s, who has a 6-year-old daughter. “I evacuated to Tokyo within a week of the disaster. My husband stayed in Fukushima, but I was determined to leave to prioritize the safety of my daughter.”
In many cases, voluntary evacuees like Yuko are mothers who fled with their children while their husbands remained in Fukushima to work………….. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/09/29/national/social-issues/reluctant-speak-fukushima-moms-admit-fear-radiation-pressure-families/#.VgsUZOyqpHx
One living witness to the history of Hiroshima bombing survivors
Survivor Koko Kondo shares horror of Hiroshima’s ground zero by: YUKA HAYASHI The Wall Street Journal August 06, 2015 Every year, Koko Tanimoto Kondo tours her hometown carrying the tiny, tattered pink tunic she wore on the day, 70 years ago, she and her family survived the world’s first atomic bombing.On storytelling tours around the August 6 anniversary, Ms Kondo, who was eights months old when the bomb hit, tells students about the devastation that destroyed her home and haunted her for decades.She recalls when her American fiance abandoned her days before their wedding because his relatives thought radiation exposure had made her unable to bear children.
She shares the humiliation she felt as a teenager, standing naked on a stage while doctors and scientists scrutinised her for signs of radiation’s long-term effects on the body.
She offers tales of ordinary Americans who sent food and built homes for the victims, and continued for decades after the war to send cheques on birthdays to sons and daughters of Hiroshima connected through “moral adoption”.Ms Kondo’s father, Kiyoshi Tanimoto, was a US-educated minister at a church in Japan. When Hersey visited Hiroshima in the spring of 1946, Tanimoto shared with him a detailed account of the horror and chaos he witnessed. In the book, Tanimoto is described as passing by “rank on rank of the burned and bleeding”, scurrying to find water for dying victims, and removing a dead body from a rowboat to carry those who were still alive, after apologising to the dead man for doing so.
Ms Kondo and her mother were buried under the parsonage of her father’s church. Her mother managed to hoist her out of the rubble after chipping away at “a chink of light” that they could eventually fit through. When Tanimoto was reunited with his wife and baby, he was “so tired that nothing could surprise him”. Hersey wrote in his account, which first appeared in the New Yorkermagazine in August 1946, a year after Hiroshima and Nagasaki became the first and only cities in history to experience a nuclear bombing………..
Ms Kondo shows the visitors where her father’s church stood before it collapsed, burying her under the rubble. She takes them to the river her father crossed in a rowboat to carry victims, some grotesquely burned, to escape the devastation. They go to the Red Cross Hospital, where thousands went for refuge. Ms Kondo’s brief appearance in the book Hiroshima, by journalist John Hersey, set her on a path to become a messenger from ground zero. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wall-street-journal/survivor-koko-kondo-shares-horror-of-hiroshimas-ground-zero/story-fnay3ubk-1227471529950?from=public_rss&utm_source=The%20Australian&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial
The effects of radiation have haunted the lives of atomic bomb survivors.
The A-bombs fell / Specter of radiation lingers on , Japan News, , August 04, 2015, August 04, 2015 The Yomiuri ShimbunThis is the second installment in a series. “……….When hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) need treatment due to malignant tumors, leukemia, cardiac infarcts and other ailments, they may be officially recognized as having radiation sickness. This entitles them to a special monthly medical allowance of about ¥140,000, which is provided by the government apart from medical costs.
However, there are certain requirements for receiving the allowance, such as how far they were from Ground Zero when they were exposed. There were a total of 183,519 holders of special hibakusha health-care certificates for the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as of the end of March, but only 4.8 percent of them, or 8,749, were recognized as having radiation sickness………..
Poverty and discrimination
The effects of radiation have haunted the lives of atomic bomb survivors.
“Just as I expected.” So thought a 72-year-old woman in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, when she was diagnosed with malignant lymphoma at a hospital nine years ago.
Her older brother and sister, both hibakusha, died from cancer after the war. The woman was the youngest of seven siblings, a boy and six girls. She experienced the bombing when she was 2 years old, in Ushita-Honmachi, now Higashi Ward, in the city of Hiroshima, about 2.5 kilometers from the blast center.
Looking for her brother and sisters, she entered the central area of the city while being carried by her mother for several days.
Her mother died eight months later, probably as a result of that exposure, while her father also died from a disease. The woman was adopted by another family, but three years later, her brother, who was also exposed to the Hiroshima bombing and had reached the age of 17, took her back……..
The woman was recognized as having radiation sickness in 2009. However, a neighbor told her, “You’re lucky to be a recipient” of the special monthly medical allowance. These words were very painful and in May this year, she refused to accept the money.
She wants people to know about her suffering but does not want them to know that she is hibakusha. This spring, a shadow was also found in her pancreas.
“My family was devastated, and I suffered from poverty and discrimination. My life is bound to the atomic bomb. I want to be freed from this,” she said in a trembling voice http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0002331263
Concerns of mothers and children in Fukushima
Mako Oshidori in Düsseldorf “The Hidden Truth about Fukushima”, Fukushima Voice version 2E 28 May 2014 “…….. Next, I would like to talk about mothers in Fukushima. These mothers (and fathers) live in Iwaki City, Fukushima. They are active on school lunch issues. Currently, Fukushima produce isn’t selling well due to suspected contamination. So the prefectural policy is to encourage the use of Fukushima produce in school lunches, in an attempt to appeal its safety. As a large municipality, Iwaki City had been purchasing produce from distant prefectures instead of Fukushima produce, but after the accident, the policy changed to use Fukushima produce in school lunches in order to appeal safety of Fukushima produce by showing it’s safe enough to give to children.
By the way, the current measure to deal with areas contaminated with a high level of radioactive material is to remove the soil, put it in bags, and place them in an empty lot. It’s not just Fukushima Prefecture. Neighboring prefectures in eastern Japan, such as Ibaraki Prefecture, Gunma Prefecture, Miyagi Prefecture and Iwate Prefecture also have a lot of areas with contamination where people live. They decontaminate, put the soil in bags, and stack them in an empty lot. By the way, these bags look small, but each bag actually weighs 1 ton. It’s rather large. ……
The nuclear terror motivations of extremists of Salafi jihadists and of White Supremacists
Break-In at Y-12 How a handful of pacifists and nuns exposed the vulnerability of America’s nuclear-weapons sites .New Yorker, BY ERIC SCHLOSSER , 9 March 15 “…….After considering the threat of nuclear terrorism for many years, William C. Potter, the director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and Gary Ackerman, the director of the Unconventional Weapons and Technology Division, at the University of Maryland, outlined some of the motives that could drive a terrorist group to obtain a nuclear weapon. The group might hope to create mass anxiety or mass casualties. It might want to deter attacks by a state with nuclear weapons. It might want to destroy a large area belonging to an adversary. It might want the prestige that nuclear weapons seem to confer, the status of being a world power. And it might seek to fulfill a religious goal. Groups that have an apocalyptic outlook—that believe “an irremediably corrupt world must be purged to make way for a utopian future,” that celebrate violence as a means of achieving those aims—could be especially drawn to nuclear weapons, Potter and Ackerman found. Today, the number of those groups seems to be multiplying.
“The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it,” Osama bin Laden declared in 1998. Al Qaeda’s current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has said that his mood won’t improve until America vanishes. And he quoted, with approval, a radical imam’s view that using a nuclear weapon against the United States would be sanctified by God: “If a bomb were dropped on them, destroying ten million of them and burning as much of their land as they have burned of Muslim land, that would be permissible without any need to mention any other proof.”
The Salafi jihadist world view promoted by Al Qaeda stresses the religious duty to purify corrupt states through violence, drive out infidels, and create a new caliphate—a perfect state in which religious and political leadership will be merged. Seth G. Jones, the director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation, estimates that there are about fifty Salafi jihadist groups worldwide. They focus primarily on local struggles, battling the “near enemy,” not the “far enemy”: the United States. The groups most likely to commit terrorist acts on American soil are Al Qaeda, its offshoot Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). None have thus far engaged in nuclear terrorism, preferring more conventional and reliable forms of violence.
Japan’s communities deeply divided over move to restart nuclear reactors
Move to switch Japan’s nuclear reactors back on divides communities Australian Broadcasting Corporation VIDEO Broadcast: 12/12/2014 Reporter: Matthew Carney
Switching Japan’s nuclear reactors back on is top of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s agenda if he wins another term but the idea is unpopular and deeply divides communities.
Transcript
SABRA LANE, PRESENTER: Four years on from one of the world’s nuclear disasters, the meltdown at Fukushima, Japan is on the verge of a historic move to switch its mothballed nuclear reactors back on. The move is deeply controversial, as 120,000 Japanese have still not been able to return to their homes and there are serious doubts the site can ever be contaminated. The issue will be front and centre when Japan goes to the polls this weekend, where Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seems assured of winning a third term in power. North Asia correspondent Matthew Carney travelled to remote southern Japan where the first nuclear reactor will be flicked back on and he found communities deeply divided.
MATTHEW CARNEY, REPORTER: In one of the holiest sites in southern Japan, the monks are sending out a warning to the world. . Nearby, the Sendai nuclear reactors are about to be turned back on. The industry was shut down after the Fukushima disaster.
HIROAKI MURAI, BUDDHIST MONK, CHINKOKU TEMPLE (voiceover translation): If a second accident happens, it will be a catastrophe. Most areas of Japan will become unliveable. Restart of the reactors is unthinkable.
MATTHEW CARNEY: For more than 2,000 years, pilgrims have been coming to this holy mountain to seek clarity and purity. But now it faces another immediate threat, a waste facility has been built at the base of the mountain. The local government says no nuclear waste will be stored here. For the head monk, it’s a step way too far.
HIROAKI MURAI (voiceover translation): This is wrong. Religion and belief are indispensable. They’re about to turn this sacred mountain into a nuclear dump site. For what? Money? We’ve lost any sense of what’s valuable……….http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s4148034.htm
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Hibakusha Appeal to End Nukes Now!
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