Schools in disaster zones regroup as students decline
SENDAI, KYODO – Parts of the Tohoku area hit hardest by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami now have fewer school-age children, creating pressure to close or consolidate schools, school board data suggests.
The number of elementary and junior high school students in 42 of the hardest hit municipalities in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures totals about 187,000, down 12.2 percent from five years earlier, data gathered from local education boards said Saturday.
That is more than twice the 5.2 percent nationwide drop resulting from the declining birthrate.
The greater drop in the areas most damaged by the disasters is due mainly to families having moved away from coastal areas ravaged by tsunami. The 42 municipalities also include areas where people were ordered to evacuate from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear disaster.
The decline has accelerated moves to eliminate and consolidate schools in those areas, casting a shadow over prospects for local communities, according to experts.
Bunkyo University professor Masaaki Hayo said schools can help cultivate a sense of unity. But he added, “Eliminating and consolidating schools could break up communities.”
Katsuya Suzuki of the education board in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, said, “It cannot be helped that people have settled where they have evacuated. As we also face lower birthrates, we need to think about new ways to operate schools.”
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/03/06/national/schools-disaster-zones-regroup-students-decline/#.Vtyhc-bzN_k
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
Occasionally, some of your visitors may see an advertisement here
Japan’s tax-payers up for $100bn bill for Fukushima disaster
Japan taxpayers foot $100bn bill for Fukushima disaster, Ft.com Robin Harding in Tokyo 7 Mar 16 The Fukushima nuclear disaster has cost Japanese taxpayers almost $100bn despite government claims Tokyo Electric is footing the bill, according to calculations by the Financial Times.
Almost five years after a huge tsunami caused the meltdown of three Tepco reactors by knocking out their supply of power for cooling, the figure shows how the public have shouldered most of the disaster’s cost.
It highlights the difficulty of holding a private company to account for the immense expense of nuclear accidents — a concern for countries such as the UK that are building new nuclear power stations.
The Financial Times used Ritsumeikan University professor Kenichi Oshima’s estimate that the disaster has cost Y13.3tn ($118bn) to date relative to the loss of equity value for Tepco shareholders.
“The underlying cost is mainly being paid by the public, either through electricity bills or as tax,” said Mr Oshima.
Japan’s government gives no single figure for the cost of the disaster, but Mr Oshima estimates the biggest cost to date is compensation to businesses and evacuees of Y6.2tn, followed by decontamination of the Fukushima area at Y3.5tn, and decommissioning of the reactor site at Y2.2tn.
Cash for compensation and decommissioning comes from Tepco but it gets grants from the government to keep it solvent. In theory, this cash will come back via a levy on Tepco and other nuclear operators — but this is ultimately be paid by electricity users, making it a tax by another name…….http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/97c88560-e05b-11e5-8d9b-e88a2a889797.html#axzz42AZmNd2J
Melted nuclear fuel from Fukushima disaster is missing, company says,
Global news, By Staff The Associated Press 2 Mar 16. Naohiro Masuda, the Chief Decommissioning Officer of the Fukushima nuclear plant, said on Wednesday that operators have yet to locate where the melted nuclear fuel has gone, five years after the meltdown caused by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
“There are melted fuels in units 1, 2 and 3,” Masuda said. “Frankly, we do not really know what the situation is for these (melted fuel), nor where it has gone.”…….http://globalnews.ca/news/2552628/melted-nuclear-fuel-from-fukushima-disaster-is-missing-company-says/
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
Fukushima Disaster Will Wreak Environmental Havoc for Centuries
A report from Greenpeace reveals that the destruction of ecosystems caused by the Fukushima meltdown is worse than the government lets on.
Radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan will have a long legacy of environmental destruction with up to hundreds of years of devastating impacts on the ocean, waterways, plants, and animals, according to a new Greenpeace Japan report released Friday.
The report, titled “Radiation Reloaded: Ecological Impacts of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident 5 Years Later,” reveals that radiation from the 2011 nuclear plant meltdown has found its way into trees, butterflies, birds, fish, and the important coastal estuary ecosystem in the region.
The findings also shed light on the “flawed assumptions” that have been shared as official information by the government of Shinzo Abe and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“The Abe government is perpetuating a myth that five years after the start of the nuclear accident the situation is returning to normal,” said Kendra Ulrich, Senior Nuclear Campaigner at Greenpeace Japan, in a statement on Friday. “The evidence exposes this as political rhetoric, not scientific fact.”
While local flora and fauna show radiation levels have increased since the disaster, some residents have been told it is safe to return to contaminated areas.
“There is no end in sight for communities in Fukushima — nearly 100,000 people haven’t returned home and many won’t be able to,” Ulrich added.
Fukushima was the largest nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, and the single largest incident of radiation contamination in an ocean in history.
According to Greenpeace, Fukushima has seen radioactive water seep into the ocean on nearly a daily basis for five years, and the government’s response has inadequately managed the crisis.
“The government’s massive decontamination program will have almost no impact on reducing the ecological threat from the enormous amount of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster,” Ulrich said.
The report calls on the Japanese government to consider alternative options to nuclear power and work towards transitioning to sustainable and clean energy.
Greenpeace reports that over 317 million cubic feet (9 million cubic meters) of nuclear waste have spread around Fukushima.
The report is based on 25 radiological investigations carried out by Greenpeace since March 2011, when the earthquake hit and wreaked havoc on Fukushima.
NEW REPORT: Ecological Impacts of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident 5years Later
http://www.greenpeace.org/japan/ja/library/publication/20160304_report/
TEPCO Prosecution: A Sign That Japan’s Nuclear Industry Is in Free Fall
The criminal prosecution of TEPCO is another step in the process to end nuclear power in Japan.
By Shaun Burnie
The decision this week to indict executives of Japan’s largest energy utility, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), for their failure to prevent the meltdown of three reactors at Fukushima Daiichi is a major step forward for the people of Japan.
The fact that this criminal prosecution is taking place at all is a vindication for the thousands of citizens and their dedicated lawyers who are challenging the nation’s largest power company and the establishment system. It is a devastating blow to the obsessively pro-nuclear Abe government, which is truly fearful of the effects the trial will have on nuclear policy and public opinion over the coming years.
For the eight other nuclear power companies in Japan, including their executives, the signal is clear – ignore nuclear safety and there is every prospect that when the next nuclear accident happens at your plant you will end up in court. For an industry that disregarded safety violations and falsified inspection results through its entire existence, the prosecution of TEPCO will be shocking.
But it would be naive to think that profound behavioral change will inevitably follow. In fact, in the five years after the accident, Japan’s nuclear industry has not just failed to learn the lessons of the accident, it is still actively ignoring them. In the three years since nuclear plant operators applied to restart their shutdown nuclear fleet, the evidence shows that when it comes to nuclear safety the bottom line is not safety, but money.
Leaving aside the inherent risks of another severe nuclear accident, the new safety agency in Japan, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) is overwhelmed, incapable and inadequate.
Back in 2008, TEPCO produced an internal report that predicted a maximum credible tsunami of 15.7 meters, but continued to insist that it would not reach the nuclear plant at Fukushima, which sits at a height of 10 meters. The cooling pumps for the reactor cores and spent fuel pools were located at just four metres above sea level.
Historical evidence that a major tsunami would impact the eastern Pacific coast of Ibaraki, Fukushima and Miyagi was well known. Modelling suggested that the next major tsunami was overdue and would inundate the coastal plain about 2.5 to 3 km inland. In 2009, Japanese nuclear regulators questioned the vulnerability of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors to a large-scale tsunami and asked TEPCO to “consider” concrete steps against tsunami waves at the plant. TEPCO responded: “Do you think you can stop the reactors?”
This relaxed attitude is not just limited to TEPCO. In recent weeks, Kyushu Electric informed the NRA that the emergency seismic proof isolation building that they committed to build by March of this year would not be built after all, despite being a condition to secure approval to restart the two Sendai reactors. The NRA expressed its disappointment, but the Sendai reactors restarted in August and continue to operate.
At the Takahama nuclear plant, owned by Kansai Electric the NRA admitted in the last month that they do not know if the reactors comply with fire safety regulations requiring essential electric safety cabling to be adequately separated and protected.
The loss of safety cable function sounds mundane, but the risks are considered more severe than all other failures at a nuclear plant combined. Without electricity, vital safety systems do not work and control of the reactor is lost. A severe accident at Takahama would threaten millions of residents of Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe and the wider Kansai region.
Nonetheless, the NRA granted Kansai Electric an exemption to avoid delaying restart. Takahama reactor-3 resumed operation in late January, while Reactor 4 at Takahama resumed operations for less than three days before shutting down again on 29 February due to an electrical failure.
These examples are the tip of the atomic iceberg that threatens the next nuclear disaster in Japan. With three reactors now operating, the industry remains in crisis. Having sat on idle assets for the last few years, the utilities are desperate to resume operations, while the nuclear obsessed Abe government is happy to support them. It’s time to put people first.
Nuclear power is a financial disaster which will only get worse as the electricity market opens to new suppliers and renewable energies out-price them. And the vast majority in Japan realize this: 60 percent of Japanese are opposed to the phase-in of nuclear, and there are more than 300 lawyers fighting reactor by reactor to prevent restart on behalf of citizens. At this rate, the Abe government and the nuclear industry will never see the target of 35 reactors restarted by 2030.
The criminal prosecution of TEPCO, long in coming, is another step in the process to end nuclear power in Japan and for a transformation of its energy system to renewables.
Shaun Burnie is a nuclear specialist at Greenpeace Germany, currently working as part of a Greenpeace radiation survey team in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Fukushima
‘Dark tourism’ grows at 3/11 sites
Participants in a ‘dark tourism’ tour check out vacant Ukedo Elementary School in the abandoned town of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, in early February. As the fifth anniversary of the 2011 calamity approaches, a growing number of visitors are taking part in Fukushima-related tours
Shinichi Niitsuma is enthusiastic about showing visitors the attractions of the small town of Namie: its tsunami-hit coastline, abandoned houses and hills overlooking the radiation-soaked reactors of the disabled Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Five years after the nuclear disaster emptied this stretch of Honshu’s northeastern coastline, tourism is giving residents of the abandoned town a chance to exorcise the horrors of the past.
Like the Nazi concentration camps in Poland or Ground Zero in New York, the areas devastated by the Fukushima disaster have recently become hot spots for “dark tourism” and drawn more than 2,000 visitors keen to see the aftermath of the worst nuclear accident in a quarter century.
“There is no place like Fukushima — except maybe Chernobyl — to see how terrible a nuclear accident is,” Niitsuma said, referring to the 1986 disaster in Ukraine.
“I want visitors to see this ghost town, which is not just a mere legacy but clear and present despair,” he added as he drove visitors down Namie’s main street just 8 km (5 miles) from the stricken nuclear plant.
On March 11, 2011, a magnitude-9 earthquake off Tohoku’s coast spawned massive tsunami that swept ashore, leaving an estimated 18,000 people dead or missing.
Namie’s residents were evacuated after the tsunami tipped the nuclear power plant into meltdown, and no-one has yet been allowed to move back due to the radiation.
Niitsuma, 70, is one of 10 local volunteer guides who organize tours to sights in Namie and other communities in Fukushima, including the tightly regulated areas.
The volunteers take visitors through the shells of buildings left untouched as extremely high radiation discouraged demolition work. The guides use dosimeters to avoid any hot spots.
A tsunami-hit elementary school is another stop on the morbid tour.
The clocks in the classrooms stopped at 3:38 p.m., the exact moment the killer waves swept ashore.
In the gymnasium, a banner for the 2011 graduation ceremony still hangs over a stage and the crippled nuclear plant is visible through shattered windows.
Former high school teacher Akiko Onuki, who survived tsunami that claimed six of her students and a colleague, and is now one of the volunteer guides.
“We must ensure there are no more Fukushimas,” Onuki, 61, said in explaining the reasons behind the tours of her devastated home.
Tourist Chika Kanezawa of Saitama Prefecture said she was shocked by the conditions.
“TV and newspapers report reconstruction is making progress and life is returning to normal,” Kanezawa, 42, said. “But in reality, nothing has changed here.”
Dairy farmer Masami Yoshizawa is still raising about 300 cows in Namie that are subsisting on radiation-contaminated grass in defiance of a government slaughter order.
As Yoshizawa showed off his herd, he explained that he’s keeping the cattle alive as a protest against Tokyo Electric Power Co., which manages the plant, and the government.
“I want to tell people all over the world, ‘What happened to me may happen to you tomorrow’,” Yoshizawa said.
The disaster shattered the government’s carefully cultivated nuclear safety myth and kept its dozens of commercial reactors offline for about two years amid nuclear safety radiation exposure fears.
But the government is gradually restarting them, claiming the resource-poor country needs nuclear power.
English teacher Tom Bridges, who also lives in Saitama, said he could share the victims’ anger and frustration through the tour.
“It’s not a happy trip but it’s a necessary trip,” he said.
Some residents still grieving their loved ones and their inability to return to their homes, say they have mixed feelings watching sightseers tramping through their former hometown.
But Philip Stone, executive director of the Institute for Dark Tourism Research at Britain’s University of Central Lancashire, said recently that such tangible reminders of disasters serve as “warnings from history.”
Niitsuma, who is from Soma, a coastal city some 35 km (just over 20 miles) north of the Fukushima No. 1 plant, says he feels haunted by regret for not having been active in the anti-nuclear movement, even though he opposed reactor construction.
“I should have acted a little more seriously,” he said.
“I’m working as a guide partially to atone.”
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/03/06/national/dark-tourism-grows-311-sites/#.VtxHIfl95D8
FIVE YEARS AFTER: 45% of mayors in affected areas see delayed recovery
In a new survey, 19 of the 42 mayors in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, or 45 percent, said that recovery from the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident will take longer than predicted three years ago.
The Asahi Shimbun survey also shows that the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is continuing to hamper recovery efforts in Fukushima Prefecture, compared with the other two prefectures.
As for 15 mayors in Fukushima Prefecture, nine, or 60 percent, said that their projected completion period of recovery will be in fiscal 2023 or later, according to the survey.
In contrast, almost all the mayors in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures said the recovery process will be completed by the end of fiscal 2022.
The survey is the fourth of its kind since The Asahi Shimbun started it in 2013. The 42 mayors were chosen as their municipalities were located in coastal areas damaged by the tsunami or ordered to evacuate due to the nuclear accident.
The Asahi Shimbun surveyed the mayors in writing and in interviews. As for the recovery completion period, they were asked to choose from “fiscal 2015,” “fiscal 2016 to fiscal 2017,” “fiscal 2018 to fiscal 2022” and “in fiscal 2023 or later.”
Two of the 15 mayors in Fukushima Prefecture chose “fiscal 2015” in the survey held in 2013 but selected “in fiscal 2023 or later” in the latest survey. In addition to the two, five other mayors gave the same response in the latest survey although they had projected an earlier completion of the recovery process.
The 15 mayors were also asked about factors obstructing the recovery. They were allowed to list up to three. Fourteen cited having to deal with the nuclear accident.
“It is realistic to think that recovery will take 20 or 30 years even if the evacuation order is lifted,” said Namie Mayor Tamotsu Baba. All the residents of Namie are currently living outside the town due to the evacuation order.
“The challenge is what we should do to maintain our town,” he added.
“Residents in my village cannot plan their future,” said Katsurao Mayor Masahide Matsumoto. All the residents in Katsurao have also evacuated the village.
“I want the central government to present its policies as early as possible on what to do with the (high radiation) ‘difficult-to-return’ zones,” Matsumoto added.
Of the 27 mayors in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, 26 replied that the recovery will be completed by the end of fiscal 2022. The figure shows the seriousness of the delay of recovery efforts in Fukushima Prefecture.
As a factor that is obstructing their recovery, nine mayors in Miyagi Prefecture cited a “shortage of staff members for their municipal governments.” Meanwhile, in Iwate Prefecture, seven mayors cited a “shortage of businesses and workers,” but six chose a “shortage of staff members for their municipal governments.”
According to the internal affairs ministry, 39 municipalities of the three prefectures were demanding additional staff members as of January this year. The number of insufficient staff members stood at 196 in total.
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/recovery/AJ201603060036
Fire At Namie Nuclear Waste Site In Fukushima
TV Asahi (ANN) March 5th (Sat) 19:15
There was a fire at the temporary storage of decontamination waste in Namie , Fukushima Prefecture, for about 5 hours.
According to the police, at 5:00 in the morning, a fire started at the temporary storage of decontamination waste in Namie, dead branches and dead grass coming from decontamination which had been stacked on site before to be packed in bags.
It took about five hours to extinguish it. Although there was decontamination work at that time, no fire was being used, the police will look to determine the cause of the fire.
http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/videonews/ann?a=20160305-00000034-ann-soci
Japan taxpayers foot $100bn bill for Fukushima disaster
The Fukushima nuclear disaster has cost Japanese taxpayers almost $100bn despite government claims Tokyo Electric is footing the bill, according to calculations by the Financial Times.
Almost five years after a huge tsunami caused the meltdown of three Tepco reactors by knocking out their supply of power for cooling, the figure shows how the public have shouldered most of the disaster’s cost.
It highlights the difficulty of holding a private company to account for the immense expense of nuclear accidents — a concern for countries such as the UK that are building new nuclear power stations.
The Financial Times used Ritsumeikan University professor Kenichi Oshima’s estimate that the disaster has cost Y13.3tn ($118bn) to date relative to the loss of equity value for Tepco shareholders.
“The underlying cost is mainly being paid by the public, either through electricity bills or as tax,” said Mr Oshima.
Japan’s government gives no single figure for the cost of the disaster, but Mr Oshima estimates the biggest cost to date is compensation to businesses and evacuees of Y6.2tn, followed by decontamination of the Fukushima area at Y3.5tn, and decommissioning of the reactor site at Y2.2tn.
Cash for compensation and decommissioning comes from Tepco but it gets grants from the government to keep it solvent. In theory, this cash will come back via a levy on Tepco and other nuclear operators — but this is ultimately be paid by electricity users, making it a tax by another name.
There is are also doubts about whether the levy will be sustainable when Japan’s electricity market opens to competition from April 1. In a recent interview, Tepco chief executive Naomi Hirose insisted the company would make enough money to clean up the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
“We have to preserve that earning power,” Mr Hirose said. “Victory for us means having the money to meet our responsibilities in Fukushima. If we can’t, that’s failure.”
But one way to judge Tepco’s contribution is its share price, which should reflect past losses, as well as any levies the market expects in the future. Compared with March 10 2011, the day before the disaster, Tepco’s equity has lost Y2.6tn in value. Debtholders have not suffered losses.
That implies Tepco has borne slightly less than 20 per cent of the total cost, with taxpayers picking up the other Y10.7tn. The figure is rough, and ignores the cost of shutting down all Japan’s nuclear reactors, so it is likely to understate both the total cost and the proportion paid by the public.
Tepco, the finance ministry and the economy ministry declined to comment on the estimate. A government official insisted all costs would ultimately be recouped from Tepco and said it could not pass the burden on to electricity customers. “As a whole, Tepco is paying its own costs,” said the official.
Evacuees are now being allowed to return to some villages near the Fukushima Daiichi plant but decommissioning will take decades, with radiation levels still too high even to evaluate the stricken reactors. The final cost is unknown and Mr Oshima expects his estimate to rise.
“The government’s approach has worked in that Tokyo Electric has not shut down,” said Mr Oshima. “But with the costs increasing to this extent it’s hard to see the purpose of having kept Tepco alive.”
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/97c88560-e05b-11e5-8d9b-e88a2a889797.html#axzz428179eA0
Government to spur work to fully reopen Fukushima’s disaster-hit JR Joban Line
The limited express train “Super Hitachi No. 50,” bound for Ueno Station in Tokyo, has remained at Haranomachi Station in Minami-Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, since March 11, 2011, as the JR Joban Line became partly unavailable due to the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and an accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. East Japan Railway Co. plans to remove the train from the railway in mid-March.
Government to spur work to fully reopen Fukushima’s disaster-hit JR Joban Line
NARAHA, FUKUSHIMA PREF. – Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed a willingness Saturday to spur work to fully reopen East Japan Railway Co.’s Joban Line in Fukushima Prefecture, which was partially closed following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The government is looking at completely reopening the Joban Line in the spring of 2020, ahead of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, informed sources said.
“I’ve instructed the transport minister to promptly indicate the timing (of the reopening),” Abe told reporters during a visit to the Fukushima Prefecture town of Naraha near the disaster-crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
The Joban Line’s operator, also known as JR East, has released a plan to reopen in stages by the end of 2017 all shuttered sections but the Tomioka-Namie segment near the nuclear plant.
The prime minister also said that he will instruct the industry minister to set up a public-private panel to start a detailed study this month on a plan to make Fukushima Prefecture a key region for renewable energy production.
“In Fukushima in 2020, hydrogen fuel for 10,000 fuel cell vehicles will be produced from (the use of) renewable energy,” Abe said.
On Saturday, he visited a stock farm in the city of Fukushima, a restaurant using local ingredients in the town of Hirono, a battery factory in Naraha and other facilities.
“The reconstruction of Tohoku is the Abe administration’s top priority,” the prime minister said ahead of the fifth anniversary on Friday of the massive disaster.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/03/05/national/government-to-spur-work-to-fully-reopen-fukushimas-disaster-hit-jr-joban-line/#.Vtss5ObzN_l
FIVE YEARS AFTER: Joban Line to be fully resumed by spring 2020
Damaged in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami and disrupted by the nuclear accident, the JR Joban Line, which runs between Tokyo and Miyagi Prefecture, is set to fully resume operation by spring 2020.
On March 5, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe inspected the Joban Line and told reporters, “I instructed the transport minister to set as early as possible the time when train services will be resumed along the entire portion.”
The government is expected to set the target of spring 2020 for the full resumption of service at its Reconstruction Promotion Council meeting on March 10, according to government sources. That will allow railway services to be fully available before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, to be held in the summer of that year.
At present, services are still unavailable in two sections. One is the 46-kilometer stretch between Tatsuta Station in Naraha, Fukushima Prefecture, and Haranomachi Station in Minami-Soma, also in the prefecture.
The other is the 22.6-km section between Soma Station in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, and Hamayoshida Station in Watari, Miyagi Prefecture.
Of the 46-km stretch, the 21-km portion between Tomioka Station in Tomioka and Namie Station in Namie is close to the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, and most of the areas along the route have been designated as “difficult-to-return zones” due to high radiation levels.
In those areas, it is necessary to remove the crossties and gravel that are contaminated with radioactive substances and to lay new ones. The work is expected to continue until fiscal 2019.
Meanwhile, the operation of the remaining sections is scheduled to resume by fiscal 2017
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/recovery/AJ201603060030
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speaks with local high school students at JR Odaka Station
on the Joban Line in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture,
on Saturday during a visit to the area.
Radiation damage – mutations appearing in Fukushima forests
Mutations, DNA damage seen in Fukushima forests: Greenpeace, Phys Org, March 4, 2016 Conservation group Greenpeace warned on Friday that the environmental impact of the Fukushima nuclear crisis five years ago on nearby forests is just beginning to be seen and will remain a source of contamination for years to come………
As the fifth anniversary of the disaster approaches, Greenpeace said signs of mutations in trees and DNA-damaged worms were beginning to appear, while “vast stocks of radiation” mean that forests cannot be decontaminated………..
In a report, Greenpeace cited “apparent increases in growth mutations of fir trees… heritable mutations in pale blue grass butterfly populations” as well as “DNA-damaged worms in highly contaminated areas”, it said.
The report came as the government intends to lift many evacuation orders in villages around the Fukushima plant by March 2017, if its massive decontamination effort progresses as it hopes.
For now, only residential areas are being cleaned in the short-term, and the worst-hit parts of the countryside are being omitted, a recommendation made by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
But such selective efforts will confine returnees to a relatively small area of their old hometowns, while the strategy could lead to re-contamination as woodlands will act as a radiation reservoir, with pollutants washed out by rains, Greenpeace warned.
The conservation group said its report relies largely on research published in peer-reviewed international journals.
But “most of the findings in it have never been covered outside of the close circles of academia”, report author Kendra Ulrich told AFP.
The Japanese government’s push to resettle contaminated areas and also restart nuclear reactors in Japan that had been shut down in the aftermath of the crisis are a cause for concern, Ulrich said, stressing it and the IAEA are using the opportunity of the anniversary to play down radiation impacts.
“In the interest of human rights—especially for victims of the disaster—it is ever more urgent to ensure accurate and complete information is publicly available and the misleading rhetoric of these entities challenged,” she said.
Scientists, including a researcher who found mutations of Fukushima butterflies, have warned, however, that more data are needed to determine the ultimate impact of the Fukushima accident on animals in general.
Researchers and medical doctors have so far denied that the accident at Fukushima would cause an elevated incidence of cancer or leukaemia, diseases that are often associated with radiation exposure.
But they also noted that long-term medical examination is needed especially due to concerns over thyroid cancer among young people—a particular problem for people following the Chernobyl catastrophe. http://phys.org/news/2016-03-mutations-dna-fukushima-forests-greenpeace.html#jCp
Five Years After Fukushima, ‘No End in Sight’ to Ecological Fallout
An employee uses a a radiation dosage monitor as workers continue the decontamination and reconstruction process.
The environmental impacts of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are already becoming apparent, according to a new analysis from Greenpeace Japan, and for humans and other living things in the region, there is “no end in sight” to the ecological fallout.
The report warns that these impacts—which include mutations in trees, DNA-damaged worms, and radiation-contaminated mountain watersheds—will last “decades to centuries.” The conclusion is culled from a large body of independent scientific research on impacted areas in the Fukushima region, as well as investigations by Greenpeace radiation specialists over the past five years.
“The government’s massive decontamination program will have almost no impact on reducing the ecological threat from the enormous amount of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster,” said Kendra Ulrich, senior nuclear campaigner at Greenpeace Japan. “Already, over 9 million cubic meters of nuclear waste are scattered over at least 113,000 locations across Fukushima prefecture.”
According to Radiation Reloaded: Ecological Impacts of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident 5 Years Later, studies have shown:
- High radiation concentrations in new leaves, and at least in the case of cedar, in pollen;
- apparent increases in growth mutations of fir trees with rising radiation levels;
- heritable mutations in pale blue grass butterfly populations and DNA-damaged worms in highly contaminated areas, as well as apparent reduced fertility in barn swallows;
- decreases in the abundance of 57 bird species with higher radiation levels over a four year study; and
- high levels of caesium contamination in commercially important freshwater fish; and radiological contamination of one of the most important ecosystems – coastal estuaries.
The report comes amid a push by the government of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe to resettle contaminated areas and also restart nuclear reactors in Japan that were shut down in the aftermath of the crisis.
However, Ulrich said, “the Abe government is perpetuating a myth that five years after the start of the nuclear accident the situation is returning to normal. The evidence exposes this as political rhetoric, not scientific fact. And unfortunately for the victims, this means they are being told it is safe to return to environments where radiation levels are often still too high and are surrounded by heavy contamination.”
According to Greenpeace, it’s not only the Abe government that holds “deeply flawed assumptions” about both decontamination and ecosystem risks, but the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), too. Indeed, the failures in the methods used by the IAEA to come to the “baseless conclusion” that there would be no expected ecological impacts from the Fukushima disaster are “readily apparent,” the report claims.
In September, Greenpeace Japan blasted the IAEA for “downplaying” the continuing environmental and health effects of the nuclear meltdown in order to support the Japanese government’s agenda of normalizing the ongoing disaster.
Report on Ecological Impacts of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident 5years Later
The report is based on a large body of independent scientific research in impacted areas in the Fukushima region, as well as investigations by Greenpeace radiation specialists over the past five years. It exposes deeply flawed assumptions by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Abe government in terms of both decontamination and ecosystem risks. It further draws on research on the environmental impact of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe as an indication of the potential future for contaminated areas in Japan.
The environmental impacts of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster will last decades to centuries, due to man-made, long-lived radioactive elements are absorbed into the living tissues of plants and animals and being recycled through food webs, and carried downstream to the Pacific Ocean by typhoons, snowmelt, and flooding.
Greenpeace has conducted 25 radiological investigations in Fukushima since March 2011. In 2015, it focused on the contamination of forested mountains in Iitate district, northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Both Greenpeace and independent research have shown the movement of radioactivity from contaminated mountain watersheds, which can then enter coastal ecosystems. The Abukuma, one of Japan’s largest rivers which flows largely through Fukushima prefecture, is projected to discharge 111 TBq of 137Cs and 44 TBq of 134Cs, in the 100 years after the accident.
http://www.greenpeace.org/japan/ja/library/publication/20160304_report/
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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