Succession of earthquakes in the Sanriku Oki area (epicenter in the ocean off Fukushima)
Succession of earthquakes in the Sanriku Oki area (epicenter in the ocean off Fukushima) yesterday and today (5 or 6 earthquakes of magnitude ranging from 5.3 to 6)
Seismotectonics of Japan and Vicinity
The North America plate, Pacific plate, Philippine Sea plate, and Eurasia plate all influence the tectonic setting of Japan, Taiwan, and the surrounding area. Some authors divide the edges of these plates into several microplates that together take up the overall relative motions between the larger tectonic blocks, including the Okhotsk microplate in northern Japan, the Okinawa microplate in southern Japan, the Yangzee microplate in the area of the East China Sea, and the Amur microplate in the area of the Sea of Japan.
The seafloor expression of the boundary between the Pacific and North America plates lies 300 km off the east coasts of Hokkaido and Honshu at the Kuril-Kamchatka and Japan trenches. The subduction of the Pacific plate beneath the North America plate, at rates of 83-90 mm/yr, generates abundant seismicity, predominantly as a result of interplate slip along the interface between the plates. The 1958 M 8.4 Etorofu, 1963 M 8.6 Kuril, 2003 M 8.3 Tokachi-Oki, and the 2011 M 9.0 Tohoku earthquakes all exemplify such megathrust seismicity. The 1933 M 8.4 Sanriku-Oki earthquake and the 1994 M 8.3 Shikotan earthquake are examples of intraplate seismicity, caused by deformation within the lithosphere of the subducting Pacific plate (Sanriku-Oki) and of the overriding North America plate (Shikotan), respectively.
At the southern terminus of the Japan Trench the intersection of the Pacific, North America, and Philippine Sea plates forms the Boso Triple Junction, the only example of a trench-trench-trench intersection in the world. South of the triple junction the Pacific plate subducts beneath the Philippine Sea plate at the Izu-Ogasawara trench, at rates of 45-56 mm/yr. This margin is noteworthy because of the steep dip of the subducting Pacific plate (70° or greater below depths of 50 km depth), and because of its heterogeneous seismicity; few earthquakes above M 7 occur at shallow depths, yet many occur below 400 km. The lack of large shallow megathrust earthquakes may be a result of weak coupling at the plate interface, or simply a reflection of an incomplete earthquake catalog with respect to the length of typical seismic cycles.
The northernmost section of the Philippine Sea plate shares a 350 km boundary with the North America plate that runs approximately east-west from the Boso Triple Junction towards the Izu Peninsula. This short boundary is dominated by the subduction of the Philippine Sea plate beneath Japan along the Sagami Trough, but also includes small sections of transform motion.
The subduction of the Philippine Sea plate under the Eurasia plate begins at the Suruga Trough, immediately southwest of the Izu peninsula. In the northern Tōkai, Tonankai and Nankai sections of this subduction zone, historical data indicate M 8+ earthquake recurrence intervals of 100-150 years. The Tonankai and Nankai sections last ruptured in M 8.1 earthquakes in 1944 and 1946, respectively, while the Tōkai section last broke in 1854. In the 1980’s studies began to forecast the imminence of a large earthquake in the Tōkai region, and warned of its potential impact on the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama (the two largest cities in Japan); to date, the expected event has not occurred.
The boundary between the Philippine Sea and Eurasia plates continues south and southwestwards from the Suruga Trough, extending 2000 km along the Nankai and Ryukyu trenches before reaching the island of Taiwan. Along the Ryukyu Trench, the Philippine Sea plate exhibits trench normal subduction at rates increasing from 48 mm/yr in the northeast to 65 mm/yr in the southwest. Convergence and the associated back-arc deformation west of the oceanic trench creates the Ryukyu Islands and the Okinawa Trough. The largest historic event observed along this subduction zone was the M 8.1 Kikai Island earthquake in 1911.
In the vicinity of Taiwan the structure of the Philippine Sea: Eurasia plate boundary and the associated pattern of seismicity becomes more complex. 400 km east of Taiwan a clockwise rotation in the trend of the margin (from NE-SW to E-W), paired with an increase in subduction obliquity creates a section of the plate boundary that exhibits dextral transform and oblique thrusting motions. South of Taiwan the polarity of subduction flips; the Eurasia plate subducts beneath the Philippine Sea plate. Debate surrounds contrasting models of the plate boundary position between the zones of oppositely verging subduction, and the boundary’s relation to patterns of seismicity. Many studies propose that crustal thickening causes the majority of regional seismicity, while others attribute seismicity to deformation associated with subduction. Another resolution proposes a tear in the Philippine Sea plate and a complex assortment of subduction, transform, and collisional motion. All the models concede that seismicity around the island of Taiwan is anomalously shallow, with few earthquakes deeper than 70km.
While there are no instances of an earthquake M>8 in the modern record, Taiwan and its surrounding region have experienced eight M>7.5 events between 1900 and 2014. The dominance of shallow M<8 earthquakes suggests fairly weak plate boundary coupling, with most earthquakes caused by internal plate deformation. The 1935 M 7.1 Hsinchu-Taichung earthquake and the 1999 M 7.6 Chi-Chi Earthquake both exemplify the shallow continental crust thrust faulting that dominates regional seismicity across the island. A major tectonic feature of the island is the Longitudinal Valley Fault, which ruptures frequently in small, shallow earthquakes. In 1951, the Longitudinal Valley Fault hosted twelve M≥6 events known as the Hualien-Taitung earthquake sequence.
Large earthquakes in the vicinity of Japan and Taiwan have been both destructive and deadly. The regions high population density makes shallow earthquakes especially dangerous. Since 1900 there have been 13 earthquakes (9 in Japan, 4 in Taiwan) that have each caused over 1000 fatalities, leading to a total of nearly 200,000 earthquake related deaths. In January 1995 an earthquake that ruptured a southern branch of the Japan Median Tectonic Line near the city of Kobe (population 1.5 million) killed over 5000 people. The 1923 Kanto earthquake shook both Yokohama (population 500,000, at that time) and Tokyo (population 2.1 million), killing 142,000 people. The earthquake also started fires that burned down 90% of the buildings in Yokohama and 40% of the buildings in Tokyo. Most recently, the M9.0 Tohoku earthquake, which ruptured a 400 km stretch of the subduction zone plate boundary east of Honshu, and the tsunami it generated caused over 20,000 fatalities.
Sources:
Magnitude 5.3 quake hits off north-eastern Japan
http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/magnitude-53-quake-hits-off-northeastern-japan
M6.0 – 170km ENE of Miyako, Japan
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us10006ffg#executive
Earthquake Information
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/20160821013226395-210128.html
Anti-nuclear power protest tents in Tokyo attacked by far-right group
On August 14th, members of Japan’s ultra Right targeted the anti-nuclear power protest tents that have stood for nearly five years outside the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) in Kasumigaseki, the government district in central Tokyo.
The “attack”, as it was swiftly dubbed by those on the Left, happened perhaps deliberately on the day before the annual anniversary of Japan’s surrender in the Pacific War that always turns Yasukuni Shrine into something of a pantomime of militarist cosplay.
It is unclear to me if this was a co-ordinated action between several groups or individuals, but online reports claim that the racist hate group Zaitokukai was the main organiser. The perpetrators of the attack seemed to attempt to surround the tents with flags and banners. The hot summer day then quickly became more heated as supporters rallied to protect the tents, and police struggled to keep the two groups on opposing sides of the street while vehicles decorated with nationalist slogans drove into the fray. The anti-tent demonstrators included at least one man wearing a war-time military costume, just as can always be seen at Yasukuni on August 15th.
Japan’s far Right has diversified in recent years, now encompassing netizens who vent nationalist anger online (the so-called netto uyoku), hate speech groups like Zaitokukai who particularly target Korean communities, and sundry protestors who march against the recent territorial incursions by China and Japan’s other neighhours. The customary black vans of the traditional uyoku are no longer the only icons of rightist groups, nor does this emerging demographic necessarily belong to the New Right or minzoku-ha that developed out of the student movement. (In fact, elements of the New Right and other nationalists also added their voices to the anti-nuclear power movement.) The hate groups and xenophobic activists view any kind of leftist, liberal or anti-government movement as an enemy of Japan, hence they have attacked protests against nuclear power or the state security bills. Shall we call it the New New Right?
The incident comes at time of renewed tensions between the state and citizens due to the ongoing clashes at Takae in Okinawa over helipad construction, which has seen hundreds of riot police despatched from the mainland to maintain order among local and visiting protestors. While the scale of that movement is still relatively small, the situation is not dissimilar to what happened during the construction of Narita Airport in the 1960s and 1970s.
This is far from the first time the tents have attracted far-right attention, including hate activists like Shusei Sakurda. Rightists damaged and attempted to disrupt the tents as earlier as 2011, which has led the anti-nuclear protestors to develop a network of supporters that can be mobilised to guard and protect the tents. As can see from the video, this is very successful as a defence strategy. The attack on August 14th was met by a vigorous counter-protest of self-professed “anti-fascists” from the movement which has also become a prominent feature of protest culture in Japan over the past few years in response to the way the ultra-nationalists have evolved. These counter-protestors strive to outnumber and drown out the noise of right-wing or hate groups’ street actions, and do not shy away from engaging directly in physical confrontations. The activists are at times as aggressive as the hate groups and others they picket, prompting a greater police presence to keep the two sides apart.
This video was made by Rio Akiyama, a freelance photographer and film-maker who spends his days crisscrossing the country to cover counter-protests and other social movements. The work of Akiyama is mirrored by that of Rody Shimazaki, a punk-turned-photographer who has also documented the 2015 security bills protests and the hate speech counter-protests. Both Shimazaki and Akiyama have published photo-books in recent months, adding to the post-Fukushima discourse with (carefully curated) versions of the protest movements.
The protest tents were first erected on September 11th, 2011, shortly after the much-publicised hunger strike at Kasumigaseki, and around the time that the anti-nuclear power movement really began to pick up momentum. The organisers themselves use the name “Tento Hiroba” (Tent Plaza), and in English “Anti-Nuclear Occupy Tent”. It has been called the Occupy Tents, or the “tent village”. The concurrent timing is coincidental, but we might dare to christen it “Occupy Kasumigaseki”, though the contexts and aims of the tents are far removed from what went on at Wall Street in those heady anti-capitalist days of late 2011.
What is the significance of the Occupy Tents? The motley structures function as a listening post; a gathering place for demonstrators, talks, music, video screenings, and information exchange. One of the tents is now a free art museum featuring work by the likes of 281_Anti Nuke. The corner where they stand is one of the symbols of the movement, along with the art of Yoshitomo Nara that was used prolifically on placards at the major rallies.
The tents have also become a kind of protest commons: a shared place for various stakeholders in the diverse anti-nuclear power protest movement to come together and exchange views. It occupies land that is public yet also government (not mutually exclusive concepts), and forces the issue of Fukushima and nuclear power to stay in the public domain even as the the Friday night vigils in front of the Kantei (prime minister’s official residence) have dwindled. That is not to say they have stopped: they continue resiliently every week, though the numbers of participants are far lower than their remarkable peak in 2012. But Tent Plaza is certainly the most materially resonant site of the movement, since the Friday night vigils are by their nature transient and shifting in scale and exact location.
In this way, the tents form a permanent platform for discourse, a “plaza” in a very real sense — a rare thing in Japan, where public land is often tightly controlled and managed. Kasumigaseki, in particular, is not amenable to assemblies, where demonstrators are not allowed to occupy the roads and are forced to gather on the snaking pavements in the district. Tent Plaza repudiates this topographical restraint and replaces it with a micro Tokyo version of Speakers’ Corner.
In addition to the ongoing crusade against nuclear power, the tents have also served as a locus for other anti-government causes, such as the protests against the state security bills last year. In one memorable episode, Buddhist monks gathered at the tents in 2015 to pray for the so-called “war bills” to be rejected.
If the unquestionably partisan Japan Atomic Industrial Forum is to believed, “members of a shadowy coalition of primarily far-left groups have continuously occupied [the tents], displaying signs criticising national nuclear policy and proclaiming the site a symbol of the anti-nuclear movement”. “Shadowy” or not, the people associated with the tents are not simply drawn from the rank’s of Japan’s far Left. There are indeed activists with long experience in radical groups. (For example, Shinzaburō Iwamoto is one of the people involved and this seems to be the same person who was part of a faction of Chūkaku-ha forced out in 2006.) But the nature of the protest is much more genial than the dogmatic tactics of the far Left, and, as we saw, a lot of its grassroots support now comes from the younger hate speech counter-protestors as opposed to the more established radical Left.
Here is someone explaining how she got involved in helping at the tents, as recorded by the Voices of Protest Japan project.
I wanted to do something as one who lives in metropolitan area. Though I did not participate from the beginning, I participated in Fukushima women’s group and did a sit-in. Also I started to visit here two or three days when I heard that Fukushima women were coming after the hunger strike done by five young people in front of METI. Then Japan’s women group continued the movement for ten more days. I didn’t participate for the whole thing but little bit. After that, the men at the first tent built the second tent when a hundred of Fukushima women were coming to the tent. But because of lack of participants after this movement, the tent was always closed when I came. In the same year, March of 2012, I started to come when I heard that they needed member for Saturday shift. So I started to go to that shift and also began to come for Thursday. Then I came for every other week rotating with another person. And now, I come for Thursday shift.
Just as the Wall Street occupiers were hounded out of Zuccotti Park, so too does the Japanese state want these pesky Kasumigaseki squatters gone. METI has been attempting to have the tents forcibly removed since 2014, though the orders have been challenged by protestors in the courts. Amidst the anti-nuke paraphernalia, the tents are also ostensibly fenced off by railings hung with signs informing the world that this is state land. In late July, the Supreme Court upheld an earlier ruling the the tents must be removed and the occupiers pay a vast sum for “using” public land (around ¥20,000 for every day the tents have been there). The tents are effectively on borrowed (and expensive) time, though the state knows that any clumsy eviction could result in violence.
On September 11th, the tents are celebrating their anniversary with a “9.11 Anger Festival”. The fury of Fukushima lives on in Kasumigaseki.
WILLIAM ANDREWS
State funds planned for cleaning heavily contaminated zones in Fukushima
Privatized profit, socialized risk and clean up
The government plans to use state funds to finance the radiation cleanup in the areas most seriously contaminated by the Fukushima disaster in 2011, government sources said Friday.
It is the first plan to decontaminate the “difficult to return to” zones, including a large portion of the two towns hosting the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and parts of other nearby municipalities in the prefecture.
The move is intended to expedite the cleanup process but may draw criticism because it will effectively reduce the financial burden on Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., the utility responsible for the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
Under the current legal framework, the decontamination costs are first shouldered by the state, with Tepco told to reimburse the expenses over time. But since the costs are expected to far exceed the ¥2.5 trillion estimated earlier, the utility has requested more financial support.
The government plans to conduct decontamination in the difficult-to-return-to zones, which comprise about 337 sq. km of land where around 24,000 people used to live, the sources said.
The work within the designated “reconstruction bases” will include removing buildings, replacing soil and paving roads.
Tepco will only be asked to shoulder the costs of cleaning existing facilities and infrastructure that will continue to be used within the reconstruction bases.
The government hopes to officially endorse the plan this month, the sources said.
The Fukushima disaster, triggered by a huge earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, prompted the government to issue evacuation orders to 11 municipalities near the plant.
The areas have been reclassified into three categories based on radiation level — a zone where evacuation orders are ready to be lifted, a zone where human habitation is restricted, and a zone where residents will have difficulty coming back to for a long time.
The areas subject to evacuation are gradually being reduced, with the government setting a goal of lifting all the remaining orders apart from the difficult-to-return-to zones by next March.
In the heavily contaminated zones, the government plans to conduct costly and intensive radiation cleanup efforts that will allow it to lift the evacuation orders in five years’ time.
‘99% effective’ Fukushima ice wall fails to seal off crippled nuclear plant
« TEPCO has been repeatedly facing criticism for handling of the Fukushima crisis which occurred after a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami led to a meltdown of reactors at the facility in March 2011.
The company has admitted that it did not act properly during the disaster, confessing in February that it announced the nuclear meltdowns far too late. It also stated in a 2012 report that it downplayed safety risks caused by the incident, out of fear that additional measures would lead to a shutdown of the plant and further fuel public anxiety and anti-nuclear campaigns. »
An “almost” watertight ice wall built around the Fukushima nuclear plant in a bid to prevent groundwater from entering the site has, quite predictably, proven to be not good enough, with Japan’s nuclear watchdog now urging TEPCO to find a better solution.
An expert panel with the Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority examined the latest TEPCO report this week to assess how far and how successfully the project had been implemented, Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reports. The members of the panel concluded that the ice wall was not working and a new plan was necessary to prevent groundwater getting mixed up with radioactive substances.
“The plan to block groundwater with a frozen wall of earth is failing,” said Yoshinori Kitsutaka, a panel member and a professor of engineering at Tokyo Metropolitan University.
“They need to come up with another solution, even if they keep going forward with the plan.”
In March, construction company Kajima Corp. began building the frozen wall of earth around the four damaged nuclear reactors and has completed most of the 1.5-km (1 mile) barrier. TEPCO hoped that the frozen earth barrier would thwart most of the groundwater from reaching the plant and divert it into the ocean instead. However, little or no success was recorded in the wall’s ability to block the groundwater during the five-month-period. The amount of groundwater reaching the plant has not changed after the wall was built, experts said.
The problem is said to lie in the wall’s gaps, or parts where the barrier is not frozen. According to TEPCO, 99 percent of their thermometer readings showed that the wall’s temperatures are at or below the freezing point, meaning the wall is mostly solid. However, a remaining one percent of the readings showed temperatures above the freezing point, which means the wall is not solid at those parts.
Those constitute a mere one percent of the 820-meter-long barrier, but these sections, where the earth is not frozen, are enough to ruin the entire project as they were found in areas with high levels of groundwater concentration.
TEPCO however believes that the unfrozen sections can be fixed if coated with concrete.
In April a chief architect of the project said that gaps in the wall and rainfall will still allow for water to creep into the facility and reach the damaged nuclear reactors, which will in turn create as much as 50 tons of contaminated water each day.
“It’s not zero,” Yuichi Okamura, a general manager at Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said referring to the amount of groundwater flowing into the plant. “It’s a vicious cycle, like a cat-and-mouse game…we have come up against many unexpected problems.”
Fukushima ice wall won’t stop radioactive groundwater from seeping out – chief architect https://t.co/57C1J48VHOpic.twitter.com/em5d53Cbtr
— RT (@RT_com) April 29, 2016
TEPCO has been repeatedly facing criticism for handling of the Fukushima crisis which occurred after a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami led to a meltdown of reactors at the facility in March 2011.
The company has admitted that it did not act properly during the disaster, confessing in February that it announced the nuclear meltdowns far too late. It also stated in a 2012 report that it downplayed safety risks caused by the incident, out of fear that additional measures would lead to a shutdown of the plant and further fuel public anxiety and anti-nuclear campaigns.
Despite the ongoing problems encountered following the meltdowns, TEPCO has set 2020 as the goal for ending the plant’s water problem – an aim which critics say is far too optimistic. The problem of water contamination is just one of many surrounding the dismantling and containing of the Fukushima plant debris which is estimated to take at least 40 years.
Worker’s leukemia deemed result of his work at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear plant granted compensation
Workers in protective gear at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in February
Man’s leukemia deemed result of his work at Fukushima plant
The labor ministry said a man who developed leukemia by helping in clean-up efforts at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is entitled to work-related compensation.
It marks the second such case since the 2011 nuclear disaster.
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare recognized that the cancer was due to exposure to radiation at the facility and said the government will cover his medical expenses.
The ministry said Aug. 19 that the man, who is in his 50s, was involved in removing debris and repairing machinery that handled radioactive water at the plant between April 2011, a month after the triple meltdown triggered by the earthquake and tsunami disaster, and January 2015.
His accumulative radiation exposure was 54.4 millisieverts.
The man worked for a contractor with Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the nuclear complex.
He was diagnosed with leukemia in January 2015, and filed application for worker’s accident compensation at the Fukushima Labor Standards Inspection Office, a regional branch of the ministry.
Under the ministry’s guidelines, eligibility for work-related compensation in such cases is granted if leukemia is diagnosed after the person worked for more than a year in an assignment which resulted in an annual dose of more than 5 millisieverts.
The ministry’s decision to grant compensation in this case came after a panel of experts offered their opinions on the matter.
The ministry is scrutinizing the cases of five other former workers at the plant who have applied for compensation.
Compensation in such cases was first granted last October after a man in his early 40s was diagnosed with leukemia in January 2014. He was exposed to 16 millisieverts of radiation while he worked at the plant between 2012 and 2013.
Applications for the work-related compensation as a result of the Fukushima disaster are expected to increase in coming years, experts say.
According to TEPCO, those who had annual does of more than 5 millisieverts of radiation during fiscal 2015 numbered 4,952.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201608200036.html
Fukushima worker with cancer granted compensation
Japan’s labor ministry has certified that a former worker at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is eligible for compensation for developing leukemia.
The man in his 50s had worked at the plant for nearly 4 years since April 2011, soon after the compound suffered a meltdown.
The ministry says the man was in charge of mechanical repairs at the plant. It says he developed leukemia in January last year, and applied for workers’ compensation.
Ministry officials say the man’s radiation exposure has reached 54.4 millisieverts, and that they found no other plausible causes except his work.
He is the 2nd person to be awarded compensation in connection with the accident, following a case last October involving another man with leukemia.
In all, 14 nuclear plant workers in Japan have been granted compensation for work-related cancer.
About 47,000 people have worked at the Fukushima plant in the 5 years since the accident.
Panel: TEPCO’s ‘ice wall’ failing at Fukushima nuclear plant
Devices to freeze the earth are set up on the southern side of the No. 4 reactor building at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture in 2014.
Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s “frozen wall of earth” has failed to prevent groundwater from entering the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, and the utility needs a new plan to address the problem, experts said.
An expert panel with the Nuclear Regulation Authority received a report from TEPCO on the current state of the project on Aug. 18. The experts said the ice wall project, almost in its fifth month, has shown little or no success.
“The plan to block groundwater with a frozen wall of earth is failing,” said panel member Yoshinori Kitsutaka, a professor of engineering at Tokyo Metropolitan University. “They need to come up with another solution, even if they keep going forward with the plan.”
One big problem hampering work at the nuclear plant, which was hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in 2011, has been the tons of groundwater entering the buildings housing the No. 1 through No. 4 reactors every day.
The water becomes contaminated with radioactive materials within the reactor buildings.
TEPCO’s plan was to create a frozen wall of earth around the reactor buildings to divert the groundwater away from the plant and into the ocean.
The company started freezing the ground on March 31, and the project’s budget was 34.5 billion yen ($344 million) in taxpayer money as of the end of May.
But the amount of groundwater pumped from the ocean side of the frozen wall has shown little change from when there was no icy earth wall.
TEPCO’s report said 99 percent of thermometer readings on the 820-meter-long stretch showed temperatures of freezing or lower, suggesting the underground wall was frozen solid at those points.
However, the remaining 1 percent of the readings above freezing were in areas with high levels of groundwater concentration.
A 99-percent success rate may sound impressive, but much like dams, airlocks and Tupperware, TEPCO’s ice wall is failing if it is not 100-percent watertight.
The utility said the unfrozen sections could be reinforced with an injection of concrete.
The panel asked the utility submit calculations estimating the amount of groundwater that can be blocked if water is pumped before it reaches the frozen wall.
Tokyo 2020 Games prep beset with problems
“Some officials even suggested they were hoping Fukushima prefecture could host the first rounds of softball and baseball, which have been added to the program for the 2020 Olympics.
The northeastern prefecture hosts the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station which suffered a triple meltdown in March 2011 after it was hit by an earthquake and resulting tsunami.
About 100,000 residents have still been unable to return home because of radioactive contamination near the complex.”
Tokyo’s preparations for the 2020 Games have been beset by problems from soaring costs to a stadium designed without the Olympic cauldron.
In less than four years, the final torch bearer will light the cauldron in the opening ceremony to start the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
But where was the cauldron in the newly selected design for the Olympic main stadium, Japanese officials asked in March.
It was just the latest in a series of controversies involving Tokyo’s second Olympics.
Tokyo organising committee president Yoshiro Mori blamed the new main stadium operator, the Japan Sports Council, and then-sports minister Hiroshi Hase for the missing cauldron.
“It would make no sense not to think about the cauldron if the stadium was getting built for the Olympic Games,” Mori said.
Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, whose proposal was picked in December as the new design for the venue, said the placement of the cauldron was not even on the agenda during the bidding.
His design has spectators’ stands covered by wooden materials, therefore there are concerns that a cauldron in the stadium could infringe the country’s Fire Service Act.
But Kuma has tried to allay such concerns, saying there’s no need to worry as he is considering various methods to install it.
Kuma’s design was adopted after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided in July 2015 to abandon the initial design by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid amid a public outcry over its surging cost.
The Japanese architect’s plan indicates a total construction cost of Y149 billion ($A1.94 billion), far below the estimated Y252 billion for the controversial scrapped design by Hadid, which almost doubled from an initially projected Y130 billion.
Kuma’s office says the construction will start in December and it will be completed in November 2019, two months earlier than the deadline imposed by the International Olympic Committee, seven months before the opening of the 32nd Olympics.
The changes, however, will make it impossible to use the new stadium for the rugby World Cup in the (northern) autumn of 2019 as scheduled.
Japan also withdrew its original Tokyo Olympics logo a year ago after its designer Kenjiro Sano was accused of copying it.
A Belgian designer sued the IOC, saying the logo was similar to one of his works produced for a theatre in Belgium.
The new official emblem was picked in April.
More than three years ago, then-candidate city Tokyo promised a compact Olympics with most venues close to the centre of the Japanese capital. That was a main selling point to win the bid to host the 2020 Games against Istanbul and Madrid.
Tokyo, however, backed down on such promises as some venues have moved out of the Japanese capital.
Some officials even suggested they were hoping Fukushima prefecture could host the first rounds of softball and baseball, which have been added to the program for the 2020 Olympics.
The northeastern prefecture hosts the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station which suffered a triple meltdown in March 2011 after it was hit by an earthquake and resulting tsunami.
About 100,000 residents have still been unable to return home because of radioactive contamination near the complex.
The organising committee has been criticised for soaring costs.
Former defence minister Yuriko Koike became governor of Tokyo in a landslide victory in late July, the first woman to head the Japanese capital. A ruling Liberal Democratic Party MP who speaks fluent Arabic and English, she has pledged to review the ballooning costs of the 2020 Games.
Koike is in Rio de Janeiro to attend the closing ceremony to accept the Olympic flag as a representative of the next host city.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/08/19/tokyo-2020-games-prep-beset-problems
‘Hibakusha’ talks scrapped after Nagasaki bomb threat
NAGASAKI–A bomb threat against schools in Nagasaki Prefecture prompted the cancellation of peace-promotion events featuring “hibakusha” atomic bomb survivors sharing their horrific experiences in World War II.
“We decided to call off an event, giving top priority to the safety of participants,” said an official with the Kita-Kyushu municipal government in Fukuoka Prefecture, also on the southern main island of Kyushu.
An e-mail sent in late July to the Nagasaki prefectural government said elementary and junior high schools would be blown up on Aug. 10 or Aug. 11. No reason was given for the threat.
The Kita-Kyushu government had organized a one-day bus tour to Nagasaki for 270 elementary and junior high school students, as well as their parents, as part of a peace-promotion program.
The initial itinerary included a visit to Shiroyama Elementary School to listen to the accounts of hibakusha on Aug. 9, the 71st anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city.
The school is near ground zero, and many of its students and teachers were killed in the blast on Aug. 9, 1945.
But tour organizers dropped the visit to the school from the schedule after Shiroyama Elementary School had informed them of the bomb threat.
The scrapped visit to the school gave the tour participants more time to spend at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and the site of the hypocenter. In the morning, they visited a civic hall in Nagasaki to watch a live broadcast of a ceremony for atomic bomb victims held at Nagasaki Peace Park.
A group of 15 students ranging from elementary to high school age, also from Kita-Kyushu, canceled an event to hear the atomic bomb survivors’ accounts scheduled for Aug. 10 at Shiroyama Elementary School and elsewhere in light of the bomb threat.
The group visited Nagasaki from Aug. 8 to take part in a peace forum for young people.
The Nagasaki prefectural board of education had urged elementary and junior high schools to refrain from activities on Aug. 10-11. Those days passed without incident in the city.
Promoted Fukushima Tourism Booming
Fukushima Attracts 50 Million Tourists Annually for the First Time Since the Nuclear Disaster
Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture has hit a tourism milestone, drawing in more than 50 million visitors in the past year, according to data released by the Fukushima Prefectural Government.
The prefecture drew in a total of 50.31 million tourists, making it the first time this annual threshold has been achieved since the nuclear disaster of 2011.
According to the The Japan Times, the area has seen a recovery of close to 90 percent since then, which officials in the region contribute to several factors.
Last year, Fukushima officials launched the “Fukushima Destination Campaign,” tapping into the country’s transportation resources to offering railway deals and promotions.
Officials pointed to the opening of the section between the Tomioka and Namie interchanges on the Jōban Expressway last March as a key player in the surge of visitors in eastern Fukushima last year, which was up 59.9 percent from 2014.
The opening of new leisure facilities and a re-emergence of the area’s famous hot springs is also helping draw in visitors.
Above all, the data found that travelers were most drawn to the prefecture’s natural sights, with destinations like the Bandai-kogen highlands drawing in a total of 2.18 million visitors last year.
http://www.travelandleisure.com/trip-ideas/nature-travel/fukushima-tourism-rebound
Footholds Should Be Built in Fukushima No-Go Zone: LDP Team
Tokyo, Aug. 17 (Jiji Press)–Reconstruction footholds should be set up in the no-go zone heavily contaminated by the 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima Prefecture in northeastern Japan, a Liberal Democratic Party team proposed Wednesday.
The footholds should be used for decontamination work and infrastructure development so that evacuation orders for residents of the zone will be lifted in around five years, said the ruling party’s Headquarters for Accelerating Reconstruction after the Great East Japan Earthquake.
At a general meeting, the headquarters broadly agreed on a draft outline of the party’s planned sixth reconstruction proposal for areas damaged by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami and the subsequent reactor meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The government plans to remove all evacuation advisories in municipalities affected by the nuclear accident by the end of March 2017, excluding in the no-go zone where radiation levels are still too high for local residents to return home anytime soon.
The LDP will submit the proposal to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe later this month, after finalizing it through discussions with its coalition partner, Komeito.
Why Japan? The racism of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings
“Were he alive today, Dr. King would still be using the ‘unarmed truth’ to warn that we stand at the very precipice of the hell of thermonuclear self-immolation … We must transform the world power struggle from the nuclear arms race to a creative contest to harness man’s genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all.”
How the US saw the Japanese people in 1942
As we remember the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this month 71 years ago, we have largely forgotten the racist propaganda that made it possible, writes LINDA PENZ GUNTER. We have likewise sanitised history to exclude the voices of African Americans who loudly protested the use of nuclear weapons, connecting them to American colonialism abroad and racism at home.
This month 71 years ago, the US cropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on August 6 and 9 respectively.
‘Racism’ is probably not the first word that springs to mind as we reflect on these terrible events, and their immediate and ongoign aftermath.
But according to a fascinating book by Vincent J. Intondi, published last year and entitled African Americans Against the Bomb, it was the recognition of those bombings as an act of racism that drew African Americans into the nuclear disarmament movement and future wars that kept them there.
As Intondi explains in his introduction, “Black activists’ fear that race played a role in the decision to use atomic bombs only increased when the United States threatened to use nuclear weapons in Korea in the 1950s and in Vietnam a decade later.”
This singling out of non-white enemies for the use or threat of atomic weapons drew African Americans not only into the nuclear abolition movement, Intondi contends, but into a form of social activism that connected many issues of civil and human rights on a global, rather than national scale.
The black anti-nuclear campaign: airbrushed out of history
“Since 1945, black activists had made the case that nuclear weapons, colonialism, and the black freedom struggle were connected”, writes Intondi.
African Americans recognized colonialism “From the United States’ obtaining uranium from the Belgian-controlled Congo to France’s testing a nuclear weapon in the Sahara”, Intondi writes. It was the use and continued testing of the atomic bomb, “that motivated many in the black community to continue to fight for peace and equality as part of a global struggle for human rights.”
Those who joined the struggle against nuclear weapons included Martin Luther King, Jr., of course, but also W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson and many others. Yet it is rarely their faces that are evoked when there is discussion of the Ban the Bomb marches or, later, the rise of SANE/Freeze.
Perhaps no one better embodied that clear understanding of the link between the struggle for peace and justice and the arms race than Bayard Rustin, posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013 by President Obama.
Yet despite Rustin’s outspoken role for peace and disarmament, the word ‘nuclear’ never appears in his Wikipedia biography. Rustin’s leadership in the anti-nuclear movement, like that of many of his fellow African Americans, has vanished from the history books. But not from Intondi’s.
Dehumanising an entire people
The debate about whether the US was justified in dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki persists today. The most widely accepted – but ferociously challenged – argument in favor is that it was necessary to force the surrender of Japan and thus end World War II.
But the underpinnings of racism are glaringly obvious. Intondi quotes poet Langston Hughes asking the question voiced by many others; why did the United States not drop the atomic bomb on Germany or Italy?
The answer can be found in the appalling and vitriolic anti-Japanese sentiment Intondi cites, whipped up to dehumanize an entire population. This includes the illustrious Time magazine which declared that “The ordinary unreasoning Jap is ignorant. Perhaps he is human. Nothing … indicates it.”
Clearly, these were slurs with which the African American community were all too familiar. It enabled them to empathize with the innocent victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and, more broadly, with those around the world oppressed by colonialism.
Consequently, according to Intondi, the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan was viewed through a very different lens by the African American community than by white America. Du Bois recognized immediately what the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagaski would be. It would lead, he warned, to a corporate conspiracy of profiteering that would impact the working people of the US the most severely.
“Big business wants war to keep your mind off social reform”, Intondi quotes Du Bois as saying at a 1950 Harlem press conference. “It would rather spend your taxes for atom bombs than for schools because in this way it makes more money.”
All we are saying, is give peace a chance
Today, the US is still spending far more on atomic weapons than schools. The Obama administration announced a $1 trillion spending plan over the next 30 years to “upgrade and refurbish” nuclear weapons. (Recently, an Obama spokesman hinted that the president may seek to considerably reduce that bill before leaving office.)
But the voices of African Americans like Robeson, Du Bois, Dorothy Height, Dick Gregory and others are no longer leading the nuclear disarmament movement. Today’s nuclear abolition crowd is largely white, progressive and almost entirely grey-haired.
Why did they disappear? Many African Americans in the anti-nuclear movement of the 1950s and ’60s were firmly on the Left, some members of, or fellow travelers with, the Communist Party. The McCarthy witch hunts and general Red baiting, forced a retreat on all fronts, including among some African Americans, Intondi suggests.
Some hung on for a while. Twenty years after King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, at an August 1983 anniversary march, the official platform still proclaimed the importance of nuclear disarmament, as Intondi quotes in his book:
“Were he alive today, Dr. King would still be using the ‘unarmed truth’ to warn that we stand at the very precipice of the hell of thermonuclear self-immolation … We must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the nuclear arms race to a creative contest to harness man’s genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all … We call upon the American public to turn the arms race into a ‘peace race’ utilizing the existent and evolving movements in the United States as its foundations.”
Black lives matter!
But the peace was never run. Prosperity did not come for many, especially in the African American community. Anti-nuclear activism did finally persuade President Reagan to change course, but nuclear weapons were not abolished in the US or in any country that already possessed them. Others like Israel, India and Pakistan, developed them.
The notion that nuclear weapons were ‘necessary’, or a ‘deterrent’, despite the protests and all evidence to the contrary, held sway then and continues to do so today.
Many others have abandoned the cause as well. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are now 71 years in the past, and even though we face the ever-present threat of instant annihilation by the accidental or deliberate use of nuclear weapons, the sense and understanding of this persistent threat has subsided.
For the African American community, priorities changed. Although segregation came off the statute books, it persisted. Opportunities for African Americans grew, but not enough, and for too few. Huge swaths of the population continued to languish in ghettoized neglect. There were periodic explosions – the riots of Watts, Newark, Washington – but not enough action to bring the community fully out of poverty and discrimination.
A fundamental grasp of the depths of racism by the non-black community in the US was never achieved. This led to the misunderstanding of meaning and intent behind the Black Lives Matter movement, the absence of that tiny word ‘also’ leading to criticism, amendment and even hostility.
Recognising the contribution of African Americans
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a decision that could be made because the US government and its propaganda team seared into the collective American psyche the idea that the Japanese people were, as US General Joseph Stilwell said at the time and most vilely, “bowlegged cockroaches”. The US press, as we have seen from the Time quote, were right behind him.
Then the photos began to emerge – of burned children with their skin hanging off; of bodies charred or even vaporized; of the agonizing deaths from radiation sickness. And there was Sadaki Sasaki and the 1,000 origami peace cranes she folded before her death at 12 from leukemia ten years after the bomb was dropped on her hometown of Hiroshima.
Those images galvanized a movement. But they also evoked recognition and empathy among thousands of African Americans who saw the racism for what it was and provided the motivation for their substantial but largely unheralded contribution to the nuclear abolition movement.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear, a Takoma Park, MD environmental advocacy group.
Former town mayor recalls town referendum that booted plans for nuclear plant
NIIGATA – Residents of the town of Maki, Niigata Prefecture, made the right decision 20 years ago, according to Takaaki Sasaguchi.
The town was Japan’s first ever to hold a referendum over a plan to build a nuclear power plant and firmly knocked it down.
“I’m proud that we opened our future through the referendum,” the former town mayor, 68, said in an interview. “Our choice not to allow a nuclear plant to be built in our town was not wrong.”
Maki no longer exists as a discrete entity as it has since been absorbed into the city of Niigata.
But memories run strong of what people power achieved, and in light of the Fukushima disaster what it may have prevented.
In 1971, Tohoku Electric Power Co. unveiled plans to construct a nuclear plant in the town. The facility was to generate electricity from a central 825,000-kw reactor of boiling-water design.
But as land appropriation and other work got underway, opposition strengthened.
Sasaguchi and his colleagues set up a group aimed at holding a referendum so that residents could decide for themselves.
He was elected mayor in January 1996, and the Maki government then established a municipal ordinance for a referendum.
Referendum day was Aug. 4 that year, and 12,478 residents voted against the plan. Those in favor totaled 7,904.
Voter turnout was 88.29 percent in Japan’s first local referendum over a nuclear power station.
Following the result, Mayor Sasaguchi decided to reject the nuclear plant construction, and a plot of land that the town owned within the proposed site was sold off to residents who had opposed the plans.
Those in favor of the plant sued, but in December 2003 they lost the case and later that month Tohoku Electric threw in the towel.
Sasaguchi accuses Japan’s government of not encouraging respect for local voices back then.
A pro-nuclear push made it difficult for Maki residents to speak up.
“The most important thing in the referendum was that residents showed their intentions and made a choice,” Sasaguchi recalls.
The referendum result drew heavy media coverage, and the town was praised for choosing the democratic process.
Sasaguchi says it also brought the town together.
“I think Maki residents probably wanted to bring their town, which had been upset by the nuclear project, back to being a normal community,” he said.
The town was merged into the city of Niigata in 2005, and the referendum began to be forgotten.
However, the March 2011 nuclear crisis in neighboring Fukushima Prefecture reminded ex-Maki residents of the significance of their vote back in 2006.
They told Sasaguchi the same tragedy could have happened to them if they had allowed a nuclear plant to be built.
Meanwhile, Sasaguchi notes that Tokyo Electric Power Co. has filed for Nuclear Regulation Authority safety checks for two of the seven reactors at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station in Niigata Prefecture.
“Even if the NRA endorses the safety, the issue of the nuclear waste disposal site remains unresolved,” he said.
The central government still has not identified a long-term disposal site for high-level waste.
“The Japanese government should put into force a policy that doesn’t depend on nuclear power plants as soon as possible,” he said.
Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s “frozen wall of earth” failing at Fukushima
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201608190060.html By KOHEI TOMITA/ Staff Writer August 19, 2016 Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s “frozen wall of earth” has failed to prevent groundwater from entering the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, and the utility needs a new plan to address the problem, experts said.
An expert panel with the Nuclear Regulation Authority received a report from TEPCO on the current state of the project on Aug. 18. The experts said the ice wall project, almost in its fifth month, has shown little or no success.
“The plan to block groundwater with a frozen wall of earth is failing,” said panel member Yoshinori Kitsutaka, a professor of engineering at Tokyo Metropolitan University. “They need to come up with another solution, even if they keep going forward with the plan.”
One big problem hampering work at the nuclear plant, which was hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in 2011, has been the tons of groundwater entering the buildings housing the No. 1 through No. 4 reactors every day.
The water becomes contaminated with radioactive materials within the reactor buildings.
TEPCO’s plan was to create a frozen wall of earth around the reactor buildings to divert the groundwater away from the plant and into the ocean.
The company started freezing the ground on March 31, and the project’s budget was 34.5 billion yen ($344 million) in taxpayer money as of the end of May.
But the amount of groundwater pumped from the ocean side of the frozen wall has shown little change from when there was no icy earth wall. TEPCO’s report said 99 percent of thermometer readings on the 820-meter-long stretch showed temperatures of freezing or lower, suggesting the underground wall was frozen solid at those points.
However, the remaining 1 percent of the readings above freezing were in areas with high levels of groundwater concentration.
A 99-percent success rate may sound impressive, but much like dams, airlocks and Tupperware, TEPCO’s ice wall is failing if it is not 100-percent watertight.
The utility said the unfrozen sections could be reinforced with an injection of concrete.
The panel asked the utility submit calculations estimating the amount of groundwater that can be blocked if water is pumped before it reaches the frozen wall.
The Mysterious Case Of The Missing Fukushima Fuel
By Richard Wilcox, PhD
As the world forever hurtles toward Armageddon, the Fukushima nuclear disaster has largely faded from the front pages. But the issue is far from resolved. Radiation from nuclear accidents is not easily dispelled with estimates of clean-up time at Fukushima ranging from 40 to 500 years, and nearly six years have already passed. Even safely stored nuclear material is dangerous for 100,000 years (1).
Elvis Has Left The Building
The major question regarding the situation at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi (no.1 nuclear power plant) regards the location of the melted fuel at reactor units 1, 2 and 3.
Recent evidence of the location of the fuel in unit 2 was disputed, with Tokyo Electric Co. (Tepco) and the mainstream media taking one view and independent scientists taking another. Is the melted fuel still inside the container in the reactor building, or has it leaked out and is now penetrating in scattered areas laterally and vertically into the ground?
Large amounts of melted fuel could reach the ground water, and even the aquifer which is ultimately connected to the Tokyo water supply.
Let’s compare two assessments on this important issue based on the use of “Muon tomography”:
According to the Asahi Shimbun (newspaper) version of reality which relies solely on the Tepco report:
Most of the nuclear fuel inside the No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant apparently did not melt through the pressure vessel (2).
Is it that simple? Tepco’s record of reliability has become rather tarnished over the years.
Note that in the graphic image above, the word “believed” is used, which reinforces the word “apparently” used in the text of the article referring to the uncertainty of the location of the melted fuel. However, the title of the article is more confident, stating that “most fuel was contained.” The title is blatantly misleading and since most readers just skim the news, that will be what they take away from the report.
On the other hand, the independent scientists at the Simply Info website differ about the location of the fuel in relation to the container, the “Reactor Pressure Vessel” (RPV):
Tepco’s superimposed mask demarcates the bottom head too low including fuel inside the rpv which according to the refined image is clearly shown below the bottom head….”there is no fuel in the bottom of the RPV in any significant amount” (3).
This graphic indicates that a different method was used by these scientists to view the location of the melted fuel.
In this graphic the Simply Info scientists argue that the container drawing was placed too low in the Tepco version, whereas in their version, it is higher, making it less obvious that the fuel is in the container.
Careful reading of this article reveals that Tepco’s analysis, as so glibly presented by the mainstream media, was based on technological smoke and mirrors, clearly intended to deceive. Tepco and the media should report on the range of plausible possibilities, not only the small slice of reality they wish the public to see (4; 5).
So will the Asahi Shimbun correct their fallacious reporting? Both the Japan Times and the Asahi Shimbunare heavily owned and controlled by foreign investors and media. TheAsahi shares offices with the New York Times in Tokyo and many Japanese English dailies rely on Western news wires such as the agenda driven, oligarchic news sources, Reutersand the Associated Press (6).
Decommissioning Or Out Of Commission?
In fact, in over five years much progress has been made to control the situation at the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant. Much of the rubble has been cleaned up and fresh coats of paints are on the buildings, but the place is still intensely radioactive, and no human can approach the specific reactor meltdown sites.
The second major issue at Dai-ichi concerns the future plans for the decommissioning of the plant. All along Tepco has said they will retrieve the melted fuel and complete decommissioning within 40 years. In fact the technology to retrieve the fuel has not yet been invented. Not only is it impossible for human workers to approach the area, but even robots break down due to the radiation short circuiting their wires.
It was recently revealed that Japan is still considering an option that many people feel would be very dangerous in the long term, and that is the “sarcophagus” solution (7). The only time this has been tried is at Chernobyl — it looks like a high-tech barn placed over the site (8). Unlike Chernobyl where the ground is rock hard, at Fukushima the ground is akin to a wet sponge with soft topsoil, so while covering it will reduce radioactive atmospheric fallout, the radiation will continue to leak downwards to the aquifer and outwards to the ocean unless appropriate engineering measures are taken.
Nevertheless, progress is slow with efforts “underway to develop the equipment needed to retrieve corium (melted fuel) samples from inside the containment structures of units 1-3 at the plant. No solid time frame” has yet been was mentioned (9).
The Nuclear Story
In an interesting aside, the best documentary film on Fukushima I have see so far, Fukushima: A Nuclear Story was released in 2015 (10). It is an Italian production but with English narration and subtitles. The plot follows journalist Pio d’Emilio during the nuclear crisis as he tries to uncover the real situation in Fukushima. The film is engaging and educational at the same time, covering new ground and combining dramatic events as they unfold at the time with scientific explanations done in an entertaining, “manga” comic book style.
The film emphasizes the near catastrophe of Tepco’s panic during the accident, and the courage and wisdom of then prime minister Naoto Kan, and the Fukushima 50, led by the plant manager Masao Yoshida whose snap judgement literally “saved the world.”
The film raises one very interesting piece of information that I did not know about which is that it was only the luck of the pool fuel gate at unit 4 not closing, in other words, malfunctioning, which allowed water in to cool the scorching fuel rods. Had that not occurred, the fuel rods could have caught fire spreading massive radiation for hundreds of miles.
Note that had the Fukushima accident happened at night or on the weekend there would have been far fewer workers at the plant to tackle the problem, possibly leading to a completely out-of-control situation.
The Ice Wall Cometh…
The “ice wall” that Tepco built in order to freeze the ground around the plant to block water flow in and out of the plant, continues to have problems. It is a very expensive operation to build and maintain, prone to technical problems and no one really knows when or if it will ever be fully implemented (i.e., taxpayer boondoggle) (11; 12). Even if the ice wall operates as intended it will not stop all of the water flow allowing some to be contaminated (13).
Is this why the sarcophagus option is still on the table? Critics have argued that the ice wall was poorly conceived from the start because it did not address dealing with the source of water flow which is at the water shed above the plant in the nearby mountains (Tepco balked at the project due to the high cost).
Japan Nuke News
Various nuclear related issues pop up from time to time around country. Since the nuclear accident in 2011, the overwhelming public sentiment has been strongly anti nuclear, despite efforts by the Abe administration to downplay the accident and restart as many of the reactors around the country as possible. The logic of the restarts against public opinion is in order to satisfy the big banks who have financed Japanese utility company operations while reactors have remained idle (expensive but not profit producing) over the past years.
Ever since the hugely destructive earthquakes earlier in 2016 on the island of Kyushu, nuclear plant restarts along the path of the fault line, which basically travels through the middle of the entire country, have been in doubt. Still we see for example in Shikoku that nuclear reactors are restarting despite local opposition (14).
Although prime minister Abe keeps pushing for resumption of nuclear operations, he probably would not want to work at the Fukushima nuclear disaster clean up site himself. It was recently reported by Japanese scientists that insoluble radioactive cesium has been detected in workers exposed to high levels of radiation at the plant (15).
Indeed, the wildlife in Fukushima prefecture has long been reported to be contaminated with radiation, recently a wild boar was detected with massive levels of radiation in its body (16). This is an indication of the general contamination of the environment there.
This doesn’t stop the Fukushima tourist board from advertising how safe and wonderful life is there. In order to drum up tourist dollars the national government has carried out a massive public relations campaign despite the lingering possibility of numerous radioactive hotspots in the area (17; 18).
Trump Threatens Nuclear Cartel
Maybe things will change a bit if Donald Trump can be elected president in the United States. Trump has promised to reduce US military presence in Japan and let them sort out their own military affairs. This does not bode well for the US-Japan military racket which siphons off billions of dollars in tax revenue to satisfy the greed of both country’s military industrial complexes, which are intensely tied up with the nuclear weapons and power industries (20).
Isn’t it ironic that the bogeyman of North Korea which is constantly conjured by Japan to justify its own growth in militarism, obtained its original nuclear weapon technology from Britain, a supposed Japan ally (21).
Funny old world ain’t it.
* Special thanks to the Simply Info website for their continuous work on the Fukushima issue; and to Activist Post for their continued reporting.
Richard Wilcox is a contributing editor and writer for the book: Fukushima: Dispossession or Denuclearization? (2014) and a Tokyo-based teacher and writer who holds a PhD in environmental studies. He is a regular contributor to Activist Post. His radio interviews and articles are archived athttp://wilcoxrb99.wordpress.com and he can be reached at wilcoxrb2013@gmail.com.
References
1 – Nuclear waste: keep out for 100,000 years
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/db87c16c-4947-11e6-b387-64ab0a67014c.html#axzz4EtlF3Xds
2 – New study on Fukushima reactor shows most fuel was contained
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201607290050.html
3 – Something Incredible Found In Fukushima Muon Scan
http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=15666
4 – First Fukushima Unit 2 Muon Scans Dispute New Scan Results
http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=15650
5 – Fukushima Unit 2 Muon Scan Not So Conclusive
http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=15637
6 – Democracy in Peril: Twenty Years of Media Consolidation Under the Telecommunications Act
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34789-democracy-in-peril-twenty-years-of-media-consolidation-under-the-telecommunications-act;
7 – NDF Tries To Walk Back Fukushima Daiichi Sarcophagus Admission
http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=15607
8 – The Chernobyl Gallery: Sarcophagus
http://chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/sarcophagus/
9 – Melted Fuel To Be Sampled From Fukushima Reactors Containment
http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=15608
10 – Fukushima: A Nuclear Story
http://www.nuclearstory.com
11 – Fukushima Frozen Wall Sees Small Progress From Concrete Addition
http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=15659
12 – Fukushima Frozen Wall Report For June 23 2016
http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=15569
13 – Fukushima No. 1 plant’s ice wall won’t be watertight, says chief architect
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/04/29/national/fukushima-plants-new-ice-wall-will-not-be-watertight-says-chief-architect/#.V7JtD-lMaRk
14 – Shikoku MOX plant restarts amid outcry over fresh quake fears
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/08/12/national/shikoku-electric-poised-fire-ehime-plant-mox-reactor-amid-protests/#.V66L_ulMaRk
15 – THREE-YEAR RETENTION OF RADIOACTIVE CAESIUM IN THE BODY OF TEPCO WORKERS INVOLVED IN THE FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI NUCLEAR POWER STATION ACCIDENT
http://rpd.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/03/14/rpd.ncw036
16 – 960 Bq/kg of Cs-134/137 detected from wild boar in Fukushima
http://fukushima-diary.com/2016/07/960-bqkg-of-cs-134137-detected-from-wild-boar-in-fukushima/
17 – Tokyo to Fukushima: Route to enjoy modern, old Japan
http://showcase.japantimes.co.jp/tokyo/news/?key=tokyo1
18 – Fukushima tourism making strong progress on recovery
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/08/14/national/fukushima-tourism-making-strong-progress-recovery/#.V7Eoo-lMaRk
19 – Trump rips U.S. defense of Japan as one-sided, too expensive
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/08/06/national/politics-diplomacy/trump-rips-u-s-defense-japan-one-sided-expensive/#.V6bc2elMaRk
20 – North Korea used British technology to build its nuclear bombs
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2987935/what_theresa_may_forgot_north_korea_used_british_technology_to_build_its_nuclear_bombs.htm
Source:
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/08/16/the-mysteriously-case-of-the-missing-fukushima-fuel/
Kansai Electric starts removing fuel from Takahama reactor No. 4
FUKUI – Kansai Electric Power Co. on Wednesday began removing fuel assemblies from the No. 4 reactor at its Takahama nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture.
The removal is the result of a preliminary injunction issued in early March by the Otsu District Court in neighboring Shiga Prefecture ordering the power utility to halt operations of the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at the plant. The court upheld a petition filed by a group of residents who live near the plant in Shiga and are concerned over safety.
The work to remove 157 nuclear fuel assemblies from the No. 4 reactor started at noon and is slated to end around 7 p.m. Friday. The fuel assemblies will be transferred to a spent fuel storage pool.
Kansai Electric will begin to remove fuel from the No. 3 reactor on Sept. 5.
The No. 3 reactor, which was brought back online on Jan. 29, was shut down following the injunction. The No. 4 unit was reactivated on Feb. 26, but it automatically shut down on its own three days later due to a technical glitch.
Kansai Electric filed an appeal against the injunction but was turned down by the Otsu court in June.
The utility then filed an appeal with the Osaka High Court in July requesting the cancellation of the district court’s injunction.
1 This Month
26 September – International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
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