Off Fukushima coast – tsunami warning has been issued, following earthquake
Tsunami warning issued after earthquake off Fukushima, Japan, SMH, 22 Nov 16 A tsunami warning, with waves of up to three metres, has been issued for Fukushima following a magnitude 7.3 earthquake on Tuesday morning.
NHK, Japan’s national public broadcaster, is showing a livestream of the coast around Fukushima, where a three-metre tsunami is expected to hit.
NHK said a tsunami had already been observed about 20 kilometres off Fukushima’s coastline, at 6.06am local time.
At 6.49am, a 60 centimetre tsunami was observed at the Port of Onahama, at Fukushima. NHK said back wash has been reported, as the sea level decreases for the approach of a tsunami.
MA said the tsunami height is estimated to be one to three metres in the Fukushima area. Tsunami waves are expected to hit repeatedly, the warning said.
The epicentre of the earthquake, which was felt in Tokyo, was off the coast of Fukushima prefecture at a depth of about 10 kilometres, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.
Residents are being told to evacuate from coastal regions and riverside areas to a safe place, such as higher ground or an evacuation building immediately.
NHK is repeatedly telling people in coastal areas of the Fukushima prefecture to evacuate to higher ground immediately….. .http://www.smh.com.au/world/tsunami-warning-issued-after-earthquake-off-fukushima-japan-20161121-gsuh5y.html
Temporary Radioactive Soil Storage Sites Hinder Fukushima Farmers
Farmers harvest rice in one of Hisayoshi Shiraiwa’s paddies in Katsurao, Fukushima Prefecture, on Oct. 19, 2016. Another rice paddy in the foreground serves as a temporary storage site for piles of black plastic bags containing radioactive soil.
FUKUSHIMA — Wide swaths of temporary storage sites for radioactive soil and other waste generated from decontamination work in areas around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant are hampering locals from resuming farming, it has been learned.
The makeshift storage sites occupy roughly 1,000 hectares in total, or an area the size of 213 Tokyo Domes, across zones currently or formerly designated for evacuation in 11 municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture, according to the Ministry of the Environment. The high occupancy is the result of delayed work to develop interim storage facilities for contaminated soil.
Because slightly over 90 percent of those temporary storage sites lie on farmland, local governments are deprived of the very foundation for restoring farming — a key local industry — in those areas while farmers are concerned about possible damage caused by harmful rumors.
According to the Environment Ministry, there are about 280 temporary storage sites in areas designated as evacuation zones. Those storage sites — which are leased to the ministry by local farmers — accommodate over 7 million black plastic bags containing radioactive soil, grass and branches. Those flexible container bags — each capable of containing 1 cubic meter of soil and other waste — are commonly known as “flecon baggu” in Japanese.
Under the ministry plan, interim storage facilities will be built in areas totaling some 1,600 hectares in the so-called “difficult-to-return” zones in the prefectural towns of Futaba and Okuma around the Fukushima No. 1 plant. Under the scheme, radioactive soil temporarily stored at different locations in Fukushima Prefecture will be transported there for longer storage periods spanning up to 30 years before it is put to final disposal outside the prefecture.
While the ministry had initially sought to begin construction of interim storage facilities in July 2014, delays in negotiations with local residents and efforts to acquire land lots made it impossible to meet the schedule. The ministry aims to finish acquiring up to 70 percent of land necessary for the construction of interim storage facilities by the end of fiscal 2020, but the land it had managed to acquire by the end of October this year stood at a mere 170 hectares, or only 10 percent of the planned area.
The Environment Ministry estimates that up to 22 million cubic meters of contaminated soil and other waste will be generated across Fukushima Prefecture, but the interim storage facilities are expected to be able to accommodate no more than 12.5 million cubic meters of such waste by the end of fiscal 2020.
The Fukushima Prefecture village of Katsurao, where evacuation orders were lifted in most areas in June, has been pushing restoration of farming as a key policy measure. However, the total size of rice paddies in the village has dropped from some 130 hectares operated by roughly 270 households in 2010 — prior to the Fukushima meltdowns — to around 6 hectares operated by 11 households this year. Nearly 30 percent of the village’s rice paddies totaling some 220 hectares now serve as temporary storage sites for radioactive soil and other waste.
Hisayoshi Shiraiwa, a 70-year-old farmer in Katsurao, harvested rice in his paddy in October, which is adjacent to another paddy that serves as a temporary storage site for piles of black plastic bags containing radioactive soil. As the price of rice from the area hasn’t recovered to pre-disaster levels, local farmers are worried about prolonged reputational damage.
“As long as temporary storage sites remain here, farmers will lose their motivation and face a shortage of successors,” Shiraiwa said.
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20161120/p2a/00m/0na/004000c
Ice wall at Fukushima plant examined
Government officials have examined an underground ice wall built around Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to confirm whether the soil has frozen.
Work is ongoing to build a 1.5 kilometer barrier of frozen soil encircling reactor buildings. The goal is to prevent underground water from seeping into the plant premises, resulting in more tainted water.
Coolants are being circulated from pipes buried around the reactor site.
Work to build an ice wall began in March, and is almost completed.
State minister for industry, Yosuke Takagi and others on Monday looked at an exposed section of the ice wall.
They said the ice wall had hardened enough to withstand being hit with a hammer.
Officials say prior to construction of the ice wall, workers collected some 350 tons of underground water on a daily basis. The amount has shrunk to about 200 tons.
Japan’s nuclear regulator is also planning to assess the effectiveness of the ice wall installment.
Skiing in Fukushima
Fukushima mounts winter tourism offensive to draw foreign tourists to its snowy charms
A project will kick off in Fukushima Prefecture this winter to lure more foreign tourists to its snowy hills and mountains to help revitalize depopulated regions.
For starters, the prefecture will invite tourists from Taiwan, Thailand and Australia to Okuaizu, Urabandai and southern areas of the prefecture, and subsidize nearly all of their transportation and accommodation costs. About 200 people are expected to participate.
The purpose of the project is to promote Fukushima’s name overseas, raise occupancy at its hotels and inns, and bolster jobs in its tourism industry.
The project will run until fiscal 2018. The Fukushima Prefectural Government plans to earmark about ¥17 million from the central government’s local revitalization subsidies to finance the first year.
The prefecture is coordinating with travel agencies so that areas including the towns of Minamiaizu, Kaneyama and Bandai, as well as the villages of Kitashiobara and Tenei, can welcome visitors from Australia, where skiing is very popular, and Taiwan and Thailand, where Fukushima has tourism offices.
The four towns and villages will get three tours each, including an overnight journey, with the prefecture shouldering most of the transport and accommodation fees.
Each tour is designed so participants can ski, snowboard and have snowball fights in Fukushima’s powder snow, as well as enjoy local snow festivals. There are also plans to reserve a ski resort for a whole weekday just for foreign visitors.
In addition, tourists will be invited to soak in hot springs to interact with local residents after experiencing snow-removal activities. This will be followed by chances to sample the local cuisine and taste sake popular at home and abroad.
Other trips are being planned to famous tourist spots along the Tadami Line, which has gained an overseas following on the internet, and to fishing spots where pond smelt can be caught in Hibara and Hatori lakes.
Once the visitors return home, the project encourages them to spread information on the ski resorts, tourist spots, food and sake they experienced via SNS.
Already, the Fukushima Prefectural Government is looking to create more tours that appeal to a wider range of countries, including China and South Korea.
It intends to set up a study group comprising officials from cities, towns, villages and local tourism associations to analyze the participants’ reactions. Based on the results, the prefecture will set up multiple tourism routes to draw attention ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
“Amid tepid demand from Japanese skiers, if the prefecture successfully emphasizes the high quality of its snow, it is possible to lure more tourists from abroad,” said a source connected with a ski resort in the Aizu region.
“We’d like to design a model tour to make the mountainous areas popular in winter,” an official in the prefecture’s regional development section said.
Even though tourism has rebounded since the Fukushima disaster unfolded in 2011, it has not fully recovered.
Last year, foreign tourists who stayed at lodging facilities with more than 20 employees in Fukushima came to 48,090, more than double the 2011 tally, according to the Japan Tourism Agency.
But that’s still far short of the 87,170 who did so in 2010, and the prefecture is hunting for more ways to raise tourism in cooperation with its neighbors in the Tohoku and Kanto regions.
Fuel Removal from Fukushima Reactor 3 Likely to Be Put Off Again
Tokyo, Nov. 18 (Jiji Press)–Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc. <9501> is expected to face a further delay in the start of work to remove fuel from the storage pool at the No. 3 reactor of its disaster-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station, it was learned Friday.
It now appears difficult to begin the work in January 2018, as currently targeted by the company, the sources said. The expected postponement is due to a delay in preparations necessary for the removal work.
All six reactors at the power station in Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan, are set to be decommissioned, after the plant was knocked out by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Three of the six reactors suffered core meltdowns in the accident.
The fuel removal from the No. 3 reactor pool was initially planned to begin during April-September 2015.
The No. 3 reactor building was heavily damaged by a hydrogen explosion soon after the March 11 disaster. As part of the preparations, TEPCO plans to install a cover and relevant equipment at the reactor.
http://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2016111800715
13 Fukushima High School Students Visited Fukushima Daiichi
Propaganda to downplay the chaos & the effects of the disaster goes on at full throttle. Is it happening because Japanese are so recklessly brave and immune to radiation? Are school teachers and TEPCO officials sane enough? How could a university professor take them around at the damaged NPP without be concerned about the effect of radiation on young people?
Fukushima students see crippled nuclear plant firsthand
OKUMA, Fukushima Prefecture–It was no ordinary outing for the 13 students from Fukushima High School.
The teenagers toured the site of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant by bus on Nov. 18 to get a firsthand look at work to decommission the reactors following the triple meltdown in 2011.
It was the first tour by youngsters since the disaster as plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. had deemed the radiation risk was too high.
Through bus windows, the students observed the damaged reactor buildings, rows of storage tanks holding contaminated water and other facilities on the sprawling nuclear complex.
“The tour made me realize that we should arm ourselves with accurate information if we want to change people’s perceptions of Fukushima as a scary place,” said Keika Kobiyama, a first-year student in the group. “For starters, I want to tell my fellow high school students ‘We went to the plant to see for ourselves what was going on there.’”
TEPCO had previously refused to allow tours by those under the age of 18.
But the company gave the green light to this request as an exception on grounds that radiation levels had dropped significantly.
The students were each given a dosimeter as they boarded the bus for the two-hour tour. The trip was held after their parents agreed to the visit.
The students themselves had been releasing updates on the disaster for Japanese and foreign audiences by monitoring radiation levels in the prefecture and studying the decommissioning process.
World Baseball Chief Plays Down Fukushima Olympic Fears
The president of the World Baseball Softball Confederation Ricardo Fraccari at press conference in Tokyo on Friday.
World baseball chief plays down Fukushima Olympic fears
The president of world baseball’s governing body on Friday played down fears that the sport’s top stars will refuse to play in Fukushima if the nuclear disaster-hit prefecture hosts games at the 2020 Olympics.
Olympic chiefs are currently considering a proposal to play part of the Tokyo 2020 baseball and softball competition in Fukushima Prefecture, which in 2011 suffered the world’s worst nuclear accident in 25 years when the Great East Japan Earthquake triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The prefecture successfully hosted games at the Under-15 Baseball World Cup in the city of Iwaki this summer, and World Baseball Softball Confederation President Riccardo Fraccari believes senior teams will not be deterred from playing there in 2020 should its bid to host games be accepted.
“This can be an issue, but from the data I received, the situation at this moment is not dangerous in Fukushima,” said Fraccari, who held talks with Tokyo 2020 organizers in Tokyo on Friday and will visit the prefecture on Saturday to inspect potential venues.
“Even at the last Under-15 World Cup, only one country refused to come. But the rest were there. In three years — just now the situation is good, so I think from this point there won’t be any problem for countries to come to Fukushima.”
Fraccari must give his consent to the prefecture’s bid before it can be put before the International Olympic Committee, which will make a final decision when it holds its executive board meeting from Dec. 6 to 8.
Three venues in the prefecture are under consideration — Iwaki Green Stadium in Iwaki, Azuma Baseball Stadium of the city of Fukushima and Koriyama Kaiseizan Baseball Stadium in Koriyama.
“From the perspective of the WBSC, I know the importance of baseball and softball in Japan, and I know how we can facilitate the recovery from the disaster,” said Italian Fraccari. “If the field in Fukushima has all the requirements, we can take it into consideration and analyze internally the possibility.
“But I repeat, we have to check many things because we have to see how it’s possible to include it in the schedule, the distance, the fields. There are many issues and we won’t take any decision yet.”
Baseball and softball were voted onto the 2020 program as a joint bid after an absence of 12 years at an IOC session in Rio de Janeiro in August ahead of the Summer Games. The format of the competitions has yet to be decided.
Nippon Professional Baseball has agreed to suspend play for the duration of the July 24 to Aug. 9 Tokyo Olympics, but Major League Baseball has yet to say whether it will cooperate.
“There is, even from the major leagues, a desire to be more international,” said Fraccari. “Now we are discussing, but before we discuss we need to have the details of the tournament, the details of the schedule. I think that we can find a solution to have the best games possible.”
Fraccari also played down suggestions that pressure to agree to Fukushima’s proposal, which was floated by IOC President Thomas Bach during a visit to Tokyo last month, will affect his decision.
“I used to be an umpire, so I know what it means to be under pressure,” he said.
Olympics: No decision yet as world baseball-softball chief inspects Fukushima
World Baseball Softball Confederation President Riccardo Fraccari stopped short of issuing a verdict after inspecting Fukushima Prefecture as a potential host site of the 2020 Olympic baseball and softball competitions Saturday.
Fraccari scouted Azuma Stadium in Fukushima City and Koriyama’s Kaiseizan Stadium but insisted the purpose of his visit this time was to gather intelligence and not to reach a decision of any kind. The third city being considered is Iwaki, whose Green Stadium Fraccari has already visited.
“At the moment, I’m just collecting information of the stadiums,” said Fraccari, who met Fukushima Gov. Masao Uchibori ahead of his stadium tours.
“The problem for Fukushima is not just the stadium. We have to check about the transportation, the facility for the teams and the schedule.”
The 2020 organizing committee is looking to open the baseball and softball tournaments in the prefecture, with Japan set to play in the first game of both competitions.
Fraccari did not mention a deadline on when the competition format and the overall schedule would be made, but did say all the stakeholders would have to work fast, with the organizing committee aiming to finalize details at the Dec. 6-8 executive board meeting of the International Olympic Committee.
“Yesterday, it was a good meeting with Tokyo 2020,” he said. “We work very close with them, we cooperate a lot because both of us have the best interests in the Games in 2020.”
“We have to work very fast because we don’t have too much time. We don’t yet have a fixed deadline, for sure but we have to work very, very soon towards the entire Games (plan).”
Uchibori reiterated Fukushima’s willingness to stage the two sports.
“We want to express our strong desire to organize the events in Fukushima Prefecture,” Uchibori said to Fraccari in his native Italian.
“It will help unite the people of Fukushima, and help unite the prefecture and the world. They’re fantastic sports.”
Uchibori reassured Fraccari that the radiation levels in Fukushima, which was devastated by the March 2011 earthquake and the nuclear power plant crisis that followed, are no different to that of major cities around the world.
“In almost all areas in the prefecture, the figures are the same as any of the world’s major cities,” Uchibori said.
School failed to act on extortion of Fukushima evacuee bullied at school
YOKOHAMA — Education authorities failed to react to financial and emotional damage incurred by a boy who was bullied at his school here after evacuating from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, it has been learned.
The boy, who is now 13, was bullied at an elementary school in Yokohama after he transferred there from Fukushima Prefecture. Although the school and the Yokohama Municipal Board of Education were aware that the boy was forced to pay about 1.5 million yen to his classmates, they failed to respond proactively to the case. His parents had conveyed the amount to the school and education board after being informed of it by Kanagawa Prefectural Police.
According to attorneys for the student and other sources, the parents consulted with prefectural police in July 2014 about their son’s classmates demanding money from him. After checking the footage of security cameras at a video arcade, prefectural police found that at least one of the bullies had squandered hundreds of thousands of yen of boy’s money each time.
The money that the victim was forced to pay was spent on travel, dining and entertainment. The student was initially demanded to pay around 50,000 yen at a time, but the sum eventually snowballed.
The bully extorted the victim, saying, “You’ve got compensation money (for the nuclear disaster), don’t you?” The victim could not confide the incidents to his parents and secretly paid the bullies using his family’s money budgeted for living expenses.
The victim stopped attending school for a second time in June 2014, and his parents reported the prefectural police’s investigation results to his school and the city education board. However, the school didn’t deem the case a “serious situation” under the law to promote measure to prevent bullying, and shelved it.
At a Nov. 15 press conference, the city education board admitted that there was money trouble between the students. Superintendent of schools Yuko Okada said, “We should have recognized the case as serious as more than one month had passed since the student stopped attending school and the money and goods issues surfaced.”
A third-party panel to the city education board criticized the school and the education board, saying, “There are no traces of their having given sufficient instructions to the parties who ‘paid’ and ‘were paid for,’ though (the education authorities) were aware of the exchange of monies in the tens of thousands of yen.”
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20161118/p2a/00m/0na/018000c
Cancer patient compensated for Fukushima work to sue TEPCO
Damage from an explosion remains at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant’s No. 4 reactor building in March 2013.
A 42-year-old man diagnosed with leukemia after working at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant plans to sue Tokyo Electric Power Co., saying the utility failed to take adequate precautions against radiation exposure.
He will also sue Kyushu Electric Power Co., operator of the Genkai nuclear plant in Saga Prefecture where he had also worked, in the lawsuit expected to be filed at the Tokyo District Court on Nov. 22.
The man, who is from Kita-Kyushu in Fukuoka Prefecture, will demand about 59 million yen ($541,000) in total compensation from the two utilities.
“TEPCO and Kyushu Electric, as the managers of the facilities, are responsible for the health of workers there, but they failed to take adequate measures to protect them from radiation exposure,” said one of the lawyers representing him.
“The man was forced to undergo unnecessary radiation exposure because of the utilities’ slipshod on-site radiation management, and as a result had to face danger to his life and fear of death,” the lawyer said.
The lawyers group said the man has a strong case, citing a ruling by labor authorities in October 2015 that recognized a correlation between his leukemia and his work in response to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
It was the first time cancer was ruled work-related among people who developed the disease after working at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
The planned lawsuit will be the first legal action against TEPCO brought by an individual whose work-related compensation claim has already been granted.
Between October 2011 and December 2013, the man worked at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant to set up a cover on the damaged No. 4 reactor building and perform other tasks.
The man also did regular maintenance jobs at the Genkai plant.
His accumulative radiation exposure at the two plants came to about 20 millisieverts.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201611180052.html
Fukushima ‘ghost town’ uses dummies to fill sad post-3/11 void
Completed dummies sit while women make another in Naraha, Fukushima Prefecture, on Nov. 14.
NARAHA, Fukushima Prefecture–Ghosts of the past are all around in this Fukushima town whose communities were decimated in the aftermath of the 2011 nuclear disaster.
Less than one-tenth of Naraha’s residents have come home since its evacuation order was lifted, but some who did return have devised a creative solution to the population problem.
Locals have formed a group to make dummies to place them around the town in lieu of the many human inhabitants who have been absent since the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant disaster of March 2011.
The results are poignant.
All residents of Naraha, Fukushima Prefecture, were ordered to evacuate the area following the triple meltdown, and were given the green light to return in September 2015.
However, only 718 residents–less than 10 percent of the town’s total population–had returned to their homes as of Nov. 4 this year.
Missing their friends and neighbors, some of the returned residents started the dummy project in June this year.
Currently, five women are making mannequins, including members of local voluntary group, Nanikashitai (“I want to do something”), which numbers about 30 members.
The women gather once a month at a former elementary school building to assemble cotton-stuffed heads, wooden frames, and arms and legs made from rolled newspapers. Then, they choose outfits and dress them.
The “ages” of the figures range from two to 85, according to the women.
So far, the women have completed 28 dummies, of which more than 10 occupy seven locations, including a financial institution and a day-care facility. When they showed them at an event in the town, they had visitors name them, and they even registered them as town residents.
“We hope that the dummies will bring a smile to the faces of those who see them,” said Kaneko Takahara, 68, one of the women.
Pushing the Limit: Fukushima Fingerprint Isotope Found in Salmon from 2015
Complete results from 2015 biotic monitoring. New results are larger icons with bold/italic labels.
For the first time, the Fukushima fingerprint isotope, cesium-134 (134Cs; half-life ~ 2 years), has been detected at an extremely low level in a Canadian salmon by the InFORM project. The single sockeye salmon that tested positive was sampled from Okanagan Lake in the summer of 2015, according to scientists from the Radiation Protection Bureau at Health Canada, in cooperation with Fisheries and Oceans Canada and local First Nations. The sample was one of a few (7 out of 156 total) individual fish that had trace levels of the longer lived cesium-137 (137Cs) (30 yr half-life) that we reported on last winter. To determine if this trace 137Cs was from Fukushima or remnant from atmospheric weapons testing, InFORM reexamined these individual fish samples to see if extremely low levels of 134Cs may be present. The results of this extended analysis show that trace (0.07 Bq kg-1) levels of 134Cs were detected in one sample from Okanagan/Columbia River population. No 134Cs was detectable in the other samples. The observed levels remain well below the action level (1000 Bq kg-1) set by Health Canada guidelines.
As we reported in the winter 2016 update, 7 individual fish (out of the 156 measured) from 2015 tested positive for low levels (<1 Bq kg-1) of cesium-137 (137Cs). With its ~30 year half-life, 137Cs is still present in the environment from 20th century atmospheric weapons testing and Chernobyl in addition to the Fukushima accident. In contrast, no individual fish from the 2014 monitoring effort were found to contain detectable levels of 137Cs. This difference led the team at the Radiation Protection Bureau to conduct a more detailed investigation of some of those few positive samples to determine if 134Cs, the Fukushima fingerprint isotope, was present. Results from 5 of those 7 are now available and discussed below. The remaining two samples are still in processing.
To read more: https://fukushimainform.ca/2016/11/15/pushing-the-limit-fukushima-fingerprint-isotope-found-in-salmon-from-2015/
TEPCO to be sued by cancer victim, former Fukushima worker
Cancer patient compensated for Fukushima work to sue TEPCO http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201611180052.html THE ASAHI SHIMBUN November 18, 2016 A 42-year-old man diagnosed with leukemia after working at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant plans to sue Tokyo Electric Power Co., saying the utility failed to take adequate precautions against radiation exposure.
He will also sue Kyushu Electric Power Co., operator of the Genkai nuclear plant in Saga Prefecture where he had also worked, in the lawsuit expected to be filed at the Tokyo District Court on Nov. 22.
The man, who is from Kita-Kyushu in Fukuoka Prefecture, will demand about 59 million yen ($541,000) in total compensation from the two utilities.
“TEPCO and Kyushu Electric, as the managers of the facilities, are responsible for the health of workers there, but they failed to take adequate measures to protect them from radiation exposure,” said one of the lawyers representing him.
“The man was forced to undergo unnecessary radiation exposure because of the utilities’ slipshod on-site radiation management, and as a result had to face danger to his life and fear of death,” the lawyer said.
The lawyers group said the man has a strong case, citing a ruling by labor authorities in October 2015 that recognized a correlation between his leukemia and his work in response to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
It was the first time cancer was ruled work-related among people who developed the disease after working at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
The planned lawsuit will be the first legal action against TEPCO brought by an individual whose work-related compensation claim has already been granted.
Between October 2011 and December 2013, the man worked at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant to set up a cover on the damaged No. 4 reactor building and perform other tasks.
The man also did regular maintenance jobs at the Genkai plant.
His accumulative radiation exposure at the two plants came to about 20 millisieverts.
He was diagnosed with acute myelocytic leukemia in January 2014.
TEPCO may struggle to find partners due to Fukushima decommissioning costs
Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko, right front, speaks at a meeting of the ministry’s expert panel on reform of TEPCO and issues related to the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant on Nov. 15, 2016.
Naomi Hirose, president of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. (TEPCO), presented a proposal to reform the operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant to the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry’s expert panel on Nov. 15.
Under the proposal submitted by Hirose on the reform of TEPCO and issues related to the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, TEPCO is to collaborate with other power companies in the areas of nuclear power generation and energy transmission and distribution in an effort to boost its earning power. But if other major utilities were to work with TEPCO on a nuclear power project, questions would be raised about how to split risks such as decommissioning costs for the crippled Fukushima plant among companies concerned. Such being the case, TEPCO will likely have difficulty finding partners.
Hirose attended the closed-door expert committee meeting as an observer. Committee chairman Kunio Ito (specially-appointed professor at Hitotsubashi University) and a senior industry ministry official revealed the details of Hirose’s reform proposal at a news conference after the panel meeting.
According to details revealed at the news conference, Hirose proposed to step up TEPCO’s cooperation with other power companies on its nuclear power business including the areas of safety measures, joint technological development and overseas business operations. The industry ministry had already proposed at an expert panel meeting that TEPCO spin off its nuclear business into a subsidiary and collaborate with other utilities, among other moves. TEPCO is expected to incorporate these plans into the “New Comprehensive Special Business Plan” that is set to be revised early next year in line with discussions at expert panel meetings.
Under the current New Comprehensive Special Business Plan, TEPCO assumes reactivation of its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant as a source of earnings to be used to rebuild itself. But there are no prospects of the power plant being reactivated as the governor of Niigata Prefecture, which hosts the nuclear facility, is taking a cautious stance toward reactivation. The industry ministry wants to secure understanding of a plan to reactivate the nuclear power plant by improving the creditworthiness of TEPCO’s nuclear business through collaboration with other utilities. But because there is a possibility of other power companies being forced to shoulder the costs of decommissioning the crippled Fukushima plant, it remains unclear whether TEPCO will be able to cooperate with those utilities as envisioned.
A member of the expert panel was quoted as saying at the meeting, “A proper alliance cannot be formed unless ways of shutting off the risks (for possible alliance partners) are considered. Hirose also proposed that TEPCO work with other firms in the area of power generation and transmission, as well as jointly procure materials with other firms.
As for the costs of decommissioning the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, which are expected to exceed the initial estimate by several trillion yen, and expenses for paying compensation to nuclear disaster victims, the expert panel confirmed plans for TEPCO to minimize financial burdens on the public through management efforts. An expert panel member was quoted as saying at the Nov. 15 meeting, “If TEPCO’s liability is defined as limited, the general public will see the move as relief measures for TEPCO. We should carefully consider public opinion.”
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20161116/p2a/00m/0na/008000c
Fukushima boy mocked as ‘germ’ releases notes about bullying
A note written by the 13-year-old boy who was bullied after transferring from a school in Fukushima Prefecture to one in Yokohama is seen. Parts of the note are blacked out for privacy reasons.
Fukushima boy mocked as ‘germ’ releases notes about bullying
YOKOHAMA–Notes written by a boy from disaster-hit Fukushima Prefecture reveal the relentless bullying he faced and his sense of hopelessness, but they also show a positive attitude that kept his suicidal thoughts at bay.
Reports of classmates’ cruelty toward the boy, including payments of money, after he transferred to a Yokohama elementary school have again put bullying in the national spotlight.
The boy wrote the notes in July 2015, when he was a sixth-grader at the public elementary school. His family had moved to the city from Fukushima Prefecture five months after the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant unfolded in March 2011.
The notes were released on Nov. 15 through Tomohiro Kurosawa, a lawyer representing the boy.
In his notes, the boy wrote that he “thought many times about dying” to escape his predicament.
But he did not want to become another victim of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami that caused the triple meltdown at the plant.
He wrote that he decided to live because “so many people had to die” in the quake and tsunami.
The home of the boy’s family was outside the evacuation zone designated by the central government, but his parents decided to move the family partly over fears of possible health damage from the radiation.
After his transfer to the school in Yokohama, some classmates attached “kin,” which means “germ,” to his name, suggesting that he was contaminated. It became his nickname.
“I found it heartbreaking because, every day, I was treated as if I were a germ or radiation,” he wrote. “I believe that people from Fukushima have become the targets of bullying. I could offer no resistance (to the bullying).”
In May 2014, when he was in the fifth grade, he started going to game arcades and amusement parks with 10 or so classmates, according to an investigative panel at the Yokohama municipal board of education. His tormentors made him cover the costs of those outings, saying the boy’s family was being well-compensated for the nuclear accident.
The boy apparently stole cash from his parents to pay for nearly 10 such outings, ranging from 50,000 yen ($463) to 100,000 yen each time, including meals and travel expenses.
He even bought air guns for two other children so that they could play together.
The total amount he paid for those occasions was 1.5 million yen, according to Kurosawa.
“I was deeply frustrated and upset when they told me to bring the money, but I could not do anything, feeling just fearful, because I was afraid they would bully me again if I resist,” the boy said in the notes. “I was angered when they told me that I have compensation money (for the nuclear disaster), and I find it vexing that I could not resist.”
The bullying came to the attention of parents of other children in May 2014, and they informed school officials that the boy was paying money to his classmates.
The same month, the boy’s parents asked the school about their son’s missing cap, saying somebody might have hidden it.
The school began looking into the boy’s case, but he had already lost confidence in the teachers.
“I told (my teachers) all I had experienced, but nobody believed me,” the boy wrote.
Yuko Okada, superintendent of the city education board, acknowledged that school officials failed to respond appropriately to the boy’s case.
“The boy did not attend school for more than a month, and there was a report suggesting that the boy paid money,” Okada said of the boy’s absence from school, which began in late May 2014. “The school should have considered it a grave case as of June 2014, when he was in the fifth grade.”
According to Kurosawa, school officials interviewed the bullies, who insisted that the boy paid the money “out of his own will.” The school concluded this was not a case of bullying.
The school officials did not interview the boy.
Sachiko Takeda, an education critic well versed in the bullying issue, criticized the school officials for lacking the sense to protect children from potential bullying.
“It was essential for officials to have looked at the issue from his perspective, that the bullying could stop once he gives them money,” she said. “The officials should have paid extra attention to children from Fukushima Prefecture because there were already reports across the country that they tend to become targets of bullying.”
In addition, Takeda said adults should do some soul-searching because they pass on to children the mistaken perception that “radiation is contagious” and that evacuees who fled on their own “receive a large amount of money in compensation for the nuclear disaster.”
The boy graduated from the elementary school and is now attending a free school for absentee students, according to Kurosawa.
The boy said he decided to make his notes public in hopes that “bullying will disappear” after hearing a flurry of media reports about deaths of bullied children.
“I am also hoping that my notes can comfort, even slightly, many children (in a similar situation),” he said.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201611160066.html
Note written by Fukushima evacuee bullied at new school released
YOKOHAMA — A 13-year-old boy who had been bullied after transferring to an elementary school here from Fukushima Prefecture due to the nuclear disaster wrote that he “thought about dying many times” in a note revealed on Nov. 15 by an attorney representing the boy and his family.
The attorney released a statement by the boy’s parents along with the three-page note their son wrote in July last year, when he was a sixth grader. The boy stated in the note that his new classmates in Yokohama demanded money, saying that he must have received compensation because his family had fled their hometown in Fukushima Prefecture after the nuclear meltdowns in 2011. It also said he was called a “germ,” and that he was worried the name-calling was prompted by radiation associated with the nuclear disaster. The bullying reportedly continued for three years, from second to fifth grades, and he was unable to attend classes as a result.
The boy wrote, “I thought about dying many times, but I decided to live, even though it is painful, because a lot of people died in the disaster.”
According to the attorney, the boy decided to disclose his notes in hopes of encouraging fellow bullying victims. He wrote about the time his classmates demanded money, saying, “It makes me mad that they told me I have compensation money, and it’s also frustrating that I could not fight back,” adding, “I couldn’t do anything because I was scared of being bullied again.” The boy also wrote about his feelings when he was called a “germ,” saying, “It was painful because I thought it was because of radiation. I realized that people from Fukushima would be bullied (because of the disaster).”
The boy wrote in the notes that the school did not believe him even though he told teachers about the bullying, and that they ignored him when he tried to consult them.
Meanwhile, the boy’s parents criticized the school in their statement, saying that staff did not contact them even when they knew that some students at the school were demanding money from their son. In addition, they touched on the report released by a third-party investigative committee set up by the Yokohama Municipal Board of Education, saying it was unfortunate that many parts explaining what kind of bullying took place were redacted even after they told the board that they wanted details to be made public.
Municipal education board superintendent Yuko Okada held a separate news conference on Nov. 15 and said, “We feel sorry that the school and the education board were unable to respond to the matter in a coordinated manner.” She added, “I was not under the impression that we were asked to reveal everything that was in the report.” The education board is set to interview relevant persons once again.
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20161116/p2a/00m/0na/015000c
Probe ordered into Fukushima boy bullying
The mayor of Yokohama City has ordered its education board to look into why it failed to respond quickly to the bullying of a student who had evacuated due to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident.
A third-party panel of the board determined that the boy was bullied after entering an elementary school in Yokohama. The panel said school staff and education authorities responded slowly to the problem.
Mayor Fumiko Hayashi told reporters on Wednesday that city officials failed to make good use of an anti-bullying law enacted after a spate of serious cases across the nation.
Hayashi also referred to a note in which the boy said he thought of suicide many times.
She said she sensed his pain from the note and was heartbroken over his experience.
Hayashi said she wonders why the school and the board failed to help him much earlier.
Work Starts in Fukushima on Intermediate Waste Facility
The planned site for an intermediate storage facility of radiation-contaminated waste spans the towns of Futaba and Okuma and surround the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture.
The Environment Ministry on Nov. 15 started building a facility in Fukushima Prefecture that will store radiation-contaminated debris for up to 30 years, despite obtaining permission for only 11 percent of the site.
The 16-square-kilometer storage facility is expected to hold up to 22 million cubic meters of materials contaminated by radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011.
“I hope that you take pride in this project and cooperate to construct the facility,” Tadahiko Ito, a vice environment minister, told workers.
The facility, which will span the towns of Futaba and Okuma, is expected to start accepting, sorting and storing the debris in autumn 2017 at the earliest, more than two-and-a-half years later than the initial schedule of January 2015.
The project has been delayed because the ministry has faced difficulties buying or borrowing land for the project.
In fact, only 445 of the 2,360 landowners of plots at the site have agreed to sell or lend their properties to the ministry for the storage facility as of the end of October.
Many of the reluctant landowners, who possess 89 percent of the land, fear the contaminated waste will remain at the facility well beyond 30 years.
The government has worked out a bill stipulating that contaminated materials kept in the intermediate storage facility will be moved out of Fukushima Prefecture in 2045. However, the government has yet to decide on the location of the final disposal site.
A huge cleanup operation after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant collected tons of radioactive soil and debris.
In March 2015, the ministry borrowed land and created a “temporary storage place” within a 16-square-km site on an experimental basis.
However, only about 70,000 cubic meters of the waste has been taken to the temporary storage site as of the end of October. The remaining waste, exceeding 10 million cubic meters, is being tentatively stored at about 150,000 locations in the prefecture.
“If the transportation of contaminated materials to the intermediate storage facility proceeds, the waste currently stored in residential areas and at company compounds will be transported there,” said an official of the Fukushima prefectural government’s section in charge of decontamination.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201611150040.html
Work begins on Fukushima nuclear waste site
Construction work has begun in Fukushima Prefecture on intermediate storage facilities for contaminated soil and waste materials from the 2011 nuclear disaster.
Groundbreaking ceremonies were held in the towns of Futaba and Okuma on Tuesday.
Two facilities will be built in a 16-square-kilometer area that straddles in the towns. One will be used to sort nuclear waste by size and level of contamination, and the other will store the sorted soil.
State Minister for the Environment Tadahiko Ito encouraged workers, saying they should be proud to be working for the region’s revival.
In the first day of work on Tuesday, workers removed contaminated soil from the surface of the site. Full-fledged construction work is to begin in January.
Waste from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and soil that has been removed in decontamination operations will be stored at the intermediate storage site before it is ultimately disposed of.
The contaminated soil and waste have been kept at temporary sites throughout Fukushima Prefecture longer than the 3 years the government had initially promised local communities. This is because construction of the intermediate storage site was delayed due to a lack of progress in acquiring the land.
The Environment Ministry plans to begin operating the intermediate storage facilities in about a year. It plans to enlarge the site after acquiring more land.
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