Legal action against Japan by American Navy men over Fukushima radiation
TEPCO, “a wholly owned public benefit subsidiary of the government of Japan,” misrepresented radiation levels after the meltdown in order to lull the US Navy “into a false sense of security.”
US Navy sailors sue Japan for lying about Fukushima radiation http://rt.com/usa/news/sailors-japan-fukushima-radiation-878/ 26 December, 2012, American sailors have filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government for allegedly lying about the health risks they faced while assisting in rescue efforts after last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Crewmembers from the USS Ronald Reagan filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in San Diego, California this week in an attempt to hold Japan accountable for any long-term damage they’ll caused during “Operation Tomadachi,” the spring 2011 relief effort that sent sailors near the coast of Japan to assist in the days after an earthquake and subsequent tsunami ravaged the island nation and caused a level 7 meltdown at three reactors in the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.
The plaintiffs, eight sailors from the 5,500 or so that were aboard the USS Reagan at the time, say Japan did not act honestly in regards to explaining the severity of the meltdown and the risks they faced in involving themselves in the relief efforts. They are asking the state-owned Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) for $10 million in compensatory damages, as well as another $30 million in punitive damages for fraud, negligence, strict liability, failure to warn, public and private nuisance and defective design, Courthouse News Service reports.
Additionally, the sailors want TEPCO to set up a $100 million fund to pay for any future medical expenses they’re accrue as a result of the relief effort. Continue reading
Japanese high school students raise awareness of internal radiation emitters
“Victims of the H-bomb test and of the Fukushima nuclear plant
accident share a common problem: internal exposure to radiation,”
Fukushima high school students launch nuclear study group November 09,
2012 Asahi Shimbun, By AYAKO NAKADA
Two high school girls from Fukushima Prefecture are to launch a peace
discussion forum, inspired by the success of a similar long-running
nuclear study group run by students elsewhere in Japan.
Later this month, Sayako Ogata and Saki Nezu, both second-year high
school students, plan to invite fellow students to a screening of
“Hoshasen o Abita X-nen-go” (X years after radiation exposure), a
documentary about fishermen exposed to radiation from a U.S. hydrogen
bomb test at Bikini Atoll in 1954. Continue reading
An overview of the Fukushima nuclear plant situation
Two high school girls that were affected by the disaster are launching a peace discussion forum devoted to expanding the dialogue about nuclear power and weapons. One of the young women said, “My parents’ and grandparents’ generations may be to blame for allowing the nuclear power plants, but both adults and children are responsible for thinking together about the problem.”
Japan Continues Struggle with Aftermath from the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster http://blog.cleanenergy.org/2012/12/26/japan-continues-fukushima-struggle/
December 26th, 2012 › As 2012 draws to a close, evaluating the ongoing effects of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster on the people of Japan is a difficult and depressing task. After having fled their homes due to the tsunami and resulting triple nuclear meltdown, 21 months later an estimated160,000 citizens still have not returned home.
Reports of illness in humans and livestock continue to underscore the far reaching and difficult to predict impacts that a nuclear accident can cause. In July, 36% of Japanese children screened were found to have abnormal thyroid growths. This fall, an illness dubbed the “Fukushima syndrome” was reported to be killing cattle near the Fukushima prefecture. Mutations are already observed inbutterflies and other insects, whose shorter life cycles allow genetic disruptions to display more quickly than in mammals or humans.
Long term investors wary about nuclear power’s future in Japan
Nuclear Caution Holds as Bonds Diverge With Stocks: Japan Credit
Bloomberg By Yoshiaki Nohara, Satoshi Kawano & Amina Mobley – Dec 26,
2012 Japan’s bond and stock investors are at odds as to whether Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe can speed up the restart of nuclear reactors idled
on earthquake concerns…… .
“The institutional investors at the core of the bond market are still not convinced whether nuclear power generation can resume in earnest and are considering the worst case- scenario,” said Takayuki Atake, chief credit analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. in Tokyo. “The equity markets, with their large proportion of individual investors, are more responsive to news flow and the short-term prospects.”…..
While the LDP has said Japan needs its 50 reactors working, all but two remain closed and any restart will need approval from the Nuclear Regulation Authority, which is investigating six atomic plants on concern they sit on active fault lines…….
Active Fault Japan Atomic Power Co.’s Tsuruga and Tohoku Electric’s Higashidori plants may be sitting on active faults, teams of scientists working for Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority said this month. Under the country’s guidelines, utilities are not allowed to construct reactor buildings and other important facilities above an active quake fault. Abe indicated he may allow utilities to build a new nuclear power plant if it meets safety standards to be set by the NRA, the Tokyo Shimbun reported Dec. 1, citing an interview with him. Former prime minister Yoshihiko Noda in September approved a policy calling for banning the construction of new atomic plants. LDP Chairman Hiroyuki Hosoda said in an interview with Bloomberg last month that Japan must restart its plants quickly after confirming they’re safe, citing increasing energy prices….. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-26/nuclear-caution-holds-as-bonds-diverge-with-stocks-japan-credit.html
With Japan’s new government, nuclear energy may be back
http://www.startribune.com/business/184510891.html?refer=y
December 23, 2012
Liberal Democratic Party’s big win may give nuclear industry a
reprieve.In the two days after the election the shares of Tokyo
Electric (TEPCO), the owner of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power
plant, surged by 56 percent. Investors bet that the new government
would allow Japan’s reactors, almost all of which have been idle since
being struck by an earthquake in 2011, to restart.
That may be wishful thinking. Abe may want to steer clear of the
sensitive nuclear issue until upper-house elections in mid-2013. If
so, a time frame agreed with TEPCO’s 77 banks for restarting the first
of its seven Kashiwazaki-Kariwa reactors in Niigata prefecture may be
missed.
TEPCO says each stalled reactor costs it $1.2 billion in lost profit each year.
Furthermore, the nuclear industry now has an independent watchdog, the
Nuclear Regulation Authority, which is showing teeth. Its
investigators have so far issued seismic warnings against two nuclear
power plants, which may lead to their permanent mothballing.
By law, even an LDP government should be unable to boss the watchdog around.
Yet a share-price rally may still be warranted. TEPCO’s share price is
barely a tenth of what it was before the disaster.
That reflects a genuine fear that the company may go bust. Surely,
investors mutter, the LDP remains chummy enough with Japan’s nuclear
utilities not to let any of them collapse into bankruptcy?
Okinawa a refuge for Fukushima evacuees fleeing radiation
risks are several times higher for children and even higher for
fetuses, and may not appear for years.
Japanese flee Fukushima in fear of nuclear radiation, Mail and Guardian,
22 DEC 2012 – YURI KAGEYAMA, Okinawa is about as far away as one
can get from Fukushima without leaving Japan, and that is why Minaho
Kubota is here.Petrified of the radiation spewing from the Fukushima
Dai-ichi nuclear plant that went into multiple meltdowns last year,
Kubota grabbed her children, left her sceptical husband and moved to
the small southwestern island.
More than 1 000 people from the disaster zone have done the same
thing. “I thought I would lose my mind,” Kubota told The Associated
Press in a recent interview.
“I felt I would have no answer for my children if, after they grew up,
they ever asked me, ‘Mama, why didn’t you leave?'” Continue reading
Fukushima radiation’s slow journey to USA and China’s coasts
More Fukushima nuclear pollution to hit U.S. starting in 2015 — Study: Impact strength of Cesium-137 on West Coast to be as high as 4 PERCENT http://enenews.com/report-nuclear-pollution-from-fukushima-to-hit-u-s-in-2015-impact-strength-of-cesium-137-on-west-coast-is-as-high-as-4-percent-due-to-strong-currents
December 20th, 2012 Follow-up to: Ocean Absorbed 79 Percent Of Fukushima Fallout
Source: Science China Earth Sciences
Authors: GuiJun Han, Wei Li, HongLi Fu, XueFeng Zhang, XiDong Wang, XinRong Wu, LianXin Zhang
Date: November 2012 Continue reading
Tepco pays $142,130.00 in admission of a death caused by Fukushima nuclear disaster
Tepco admits link between death and Fukushima disaster for 1st time http://enenews.com/tepco-admits-link-between-death-and-fukushima-disaster-for-1st-time
December 20th, 2012
Title: TEPCO settles over death of evacuee
Source: Jiji Press
Date: Dec. 21, 2012
Tokyo Electric Power Co. has reached a settlement with the family of a woman from Minamisoma who died as a result of the accident at the utility’s crippled nuclear power plant […]
This is the first time that TEPCO has admitted a causal link between the death of an evacuee and the accident at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. A total of 183 cases of settlement have been made public […]
According to the center, the woman, who was hospitalized in the Odaka district of the city, died in April last year after she was forced to evacuate […]
Tepco paid the woman’s family 12,000,000 yen, equivalent to $142,130.00 at today’s exchange rate.
See also: NHK: Criminal inquiry into nuclear accident begins — Fukushima disaster “a criminal act by the gov’t and Tepco”? — Multiple prosecutors coordinating investigation
Japanese waking up to the false economics of nuclear power
Radiation leaking from the damaged power plants has laid bare national policies and economic choices that have long gone unquestioned in Japan. “Please imagine!” one man told a priest. “A rural town, where there were no jobs, no money and no industries, was able to receive a chunk of money suddenly just by welcoming the construction of nuclear power plants.”
The conferees pledged “to pray for and with the people of Fukushima and other communities suffering the harms caused by nuclear power” and to send the conference’s final statement to next year’s WCC Assembly in Busan, Republic of Korea.
Nuclear tragedy finds a human face in Fukushima, Insights, ON 19 DEC 2012 BY STEPHENW “……..Christian and Buddhist clergy, as well as laypersons, told the 87 conferees from Asia, Europe and North America of their struggle to support families and communities, to cope with the disaster themselves and to challenge the official disaster response.
Conference participants resolved to initiate discussions in faith communities about “civilian and military uses of nuclear energy”, and to develop plans of action “including lifestyle changes”.
The conference began in the city of Koriyama, 100 kilometres from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and well beyond the official disaster exclusion zones. Radiation hotspots there—created when a reactor building exploded and contamination was spread by prevailing winds—are as dangerous as areas in the town nearest to the nuclear plant. Continue reading
Pro nuclear Mr Amari likely to be Japan’s Economic Minister
Abe to Give Posts to Stimulus, Nuclear Advocates By TAKASHI NAKAMICHI, WSJ, December 20, 2012,
TOKYO—Incoming Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will likely form an
old-boy economic team led by fiscal stimulus and nuclear energy
proponents,….. Along with Mr. Aso, the incoming prime minister will
likely tap the policy head of the Liberal Democratic Party and
longtime ally, Akira Amari, to fill in a new ministerial post
responsible for guiding overall economic policy discussions. Mr. Amari
held the trade minister’s portfolio when Mr. Abe was last prime
minister from 2006-2007.
One of the LDP’s leading energy experts, Mr. Amari has defended
Japan’s reliance on nuclear plants, even after the March 2011
earthquake triggered the nation’s worst nuclear crisis. A one-time
employee at Sony Corp., 6758.TO -1.63% Mr. Amari represents the voices
of corporate Japan……
Mr. Abe is diverging from the path trodden by the outgoing ruling
Democratic Party of Japan, which has grown more fiscally conservative
and has pledged to exit nuclear power by 2040……
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324461604578191052600447858.html
National Christian Council finds nuclear power incompatible with life and peace
The science in play is not fiction. Children are growing up forbidden to play outdoors, young women worry that no one will want to marry them, a mother tests her rice harvest to see if she can share it with her children, families are paying off loans on radioactive homes they will never use. These are the kind of stories heard every day at a parish radiation information centre in Aizu Wakamatsu, Japan.
The conference concluded that “there is no safe use of nuclear power, no safe level of exposure to radiation, and no compatibility between nuclear power, life and peace.”
Nuclear tragedy finds a human face in Fukushima, Insights, ON 19 DEC 2012 BY STEPHENW
The everyday effects of radiation borne by survivors of the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan add up today to an involuntary experiment with public health, community life and environmental affairs.
An ecumenical conference, called to listen to local residents, found that last year’s chain reaction of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear calamity has generated a “live” human tragedy, across a province, with no end in sight.
The Geiger counters that priests and parishioners pull out of their pockets like cell phones made the local anxieties and fears real for their visitors.
“I cannot tell my children that there will be something good if they live,” one mother told a Buddhist priest. Continue reading
Trouble with nuclear fuel rods in Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant
Kyodo: Level 1 incident at Japan nuclear plant — Deformed fuel rods stuck together in pool http://enenews.com/kyodo-level-1-incident-at-japan-nuclear-plant-deformed-fuel-rods-stuck-together-in-pool
December 19th, 2012
Regulators confirm ‘level 1’ incident (on 7 level scale) at TEPCO nuclear plant in west Japan. Deformed fuel rods stuck together in pool
18 Dec 12
Title: Regulators confirm level 1 incident at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant
Source: Kyodo
Date: Dec. 19, 2012
Japan’s nuclear regulatory authority said Wednesday that recently confirmed trouble with fuel rods stored in a spent nuclear fuel pool at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant is a level 1 incident on a 7-point international scale.
A pair of fuel rods was touching as a result of deformation in the bundle of fuel rods, leading the Nuclear Regulation Authority to determine that the fuel had likely been loaded to the reactor core “in an abnormal situation.” The NRA’s assessment of the incident is provisional. […]
also: Nuclear fuel rods touching — “Serious fuel failure accident” risked at Japan plant
Lands subsiding in Japan, following earthquake 2011
Japan Officials: Ground subsidence spreading after quake — Concern about sinking buildings being damaged — Only an inch can jeopardize stability http://enenews.com/japan-officials-ground-subsidence-is-spreading-after-quake-concern-about-sinking-buildings-being-damaged-only-an-inch-can-jeopardize-stability-video
December 18th, 2012
Title: Quake-caused subsidence spreads
Source: NHK WORLD English-
Date: Dec. 17, 2012
The Environment Ministry says nearly 6,000 square kilometers of land across Japan have subsided by more than 2 centimeters in the last fiscal year. […]
This level is judged to have a potential impact on buildings’ stability.
The ministry says Kesennuma in Miyagi Prefecture sank deepest by 73.8 centimeters, followed by Ichikawa in Chiba by 30.9 centimeters [Fukushima Prefecture NOT tested]
The ministry officials say the subsidence is attributable to last year’s March 11th earthquake. They have expressed concerns over the spread of subsidence and further damage to buildings.
Japan’s new government, bad for the environment, and for women
activists are concerned about two areas they fear will slip beneath the radar of the incoming administration: the country’s nuclear policy in the aftermath of the disastrous accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor following the earthquake and tsunami last March; and job stability for youth and women, both grappling with badly paid or part-time work.
Only 38 female candidates, from a total of 225, won seats in the parliament during this election, a major dip from the 54 women who won seats at the last poll in 2009.
Already, Japan has been ranked as low as 110th on the World Economic Forum’s latest gender gap survey, which rates countries based on gender equality in political representation.
Women and Activists Lament Japan’s Election Outcome By Suvendrini Kakuchi TOKYO, Dec 18 2012 (IPS) – The return to power of Japan’s conservative and hard-line Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on Sunday indicates that voters traded urgently needed social and environmental reforms for traditional male-led leadership, according to analysts here.
Youth and feminist organisations who had campaigned vigorously for better environmental protections, labour equality and the upholding of regional peace ahead of the elections, expressed frustration about Sunday’s outcome, lamenting that the victorious LDP is yet to present concrete policies to tackle Japan’s most pressing problems……
LDP leader Shinzo Abe, whose brief term as Prime Minister ended abruptly in 2007, is now set to take back the reins.
A hawkish politician, he has raised his profile by promising to usher in a militarily stronger Japan – Continue reading
Fukushima nuclear situation still critical, with “makeshift” cooling system
Fukushima plant situation ‘volatile,’ a year after cold shutdown declared, Asahi Shimbun December 18, 2012 By NAOYA KON/ Staff Writer Workers are nowhere close to determining the state of melted fuel at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, a year after the government declared the damaged reactors were in a “cold shutdown” state.
Storage tanks at the site are nearing capacity for radioactive water. A makeshift system is still being used to cool the nuclear fuel. And leaks of contaminated water and quake-induced collapses of plant facilities remain a threat. Continue reading
1 This Month
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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