Japan’s intelligence agency pressed for stopping research on radiation spread
Intelligence agency pressured researchers to withhold info on spread of Fukushima radiation http://enenews.com/intelligence-agency-pressured-researchers-to-stop-investigating-spread-of-fukushima-radiation October 3rd, 2012
Title: Government body pressured to withhold info on Fukushima radiation
Source: The Hankyoreh (S. Korea)
Author: Lee Keun-young
Date: Oct. 3, 2012
Government body pressured to withhold info on Fukushima radiation
The National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER) abruptly halted its inquiry last year into the dispersion of radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster after contacting the National Intelligence Service, it was belatedly revealed on Oct. 2.
[…]
lawmaker Chang Ha-na […] said on Oct. 2 that an examination by the Ministry of Environment inspector’s office at the [sic] showed NIER research to predict the spread of radiation from Fukushima, and its effects on South Korea, was halted immediately after a report to the NIS.
[…]
The inspector’s office examination took place in the immediate wake of March reports from the Hankyoreh and other news outlets alleging NIS involvement in the decision to suspend NIER research indicating that trace amounts of radiation were reaching the Korean Peninsula.
[…]
The inspector’s office requested a “stern warning” to [the NIER director] to ensure no similar incidents occurred in the future.
[…]
“This is as good as an admission that there was pressure from the NIS,” [lawmaker Chang] added.
New nuclear reactor now being built North of Tokyo
Work resumes on Japanese nuclear reactor http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-02/japan-resumes-reactor-work/4290390 By North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy,2 Oct 12, A Japanese power firm has resumed construction of an atomic reactor, despite government plans to phase out nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.
The reactor – 650 kilometres north of Tokyo – is being built by the J-Power company which had planned to have it operational in two years’ time. The company says it has now resumed construction of the reactor which was halted work after the Fukushima meltdowns. Continue reading
Fukushima compensation payments 1.24 trillion yen, and rising
TEPCO must compensate nuclear accident victims quickly The Yomiuri Shimbun, 2 Oct 12
The government should further enhance its system to resolve disputes over compensation for damage caused by the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant so people suffering from the nuclear accident can be helped appropriately and quickly.
By late September, 940,000 compensation claims had been made against Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the nuclear plant, for damage caused by the crisis. The claimants and TEPCO have reached agreements in 860,000 cases. The total compensation has already reached 1.24 trillion yen and will increase further. This shows the seriousness of the accident, which has forced 160,000 local residents to evacuate.
Under a compensation scheme for the damage caused by the crisis, the government first pays evacuees the money and later requires TEPCO to repay it. Compensation is calculated based on criteria set by the government’s Committee for Dispute Resolution for Compensating Damages from the Nuclear Power Plant Incident.
The criteria require TEPCO to pay compensation for such expenses as evacuation transportation fees and damage to farmers and other people who lost their businesses due to the crisis.
The agreement ratio has been high in initial compensation negotiations, but many crisis victims are still dissatisfied with the amount of reparations…… http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/editorial/T121001002720.htm
Japan’s Indistry Minister calls for a quick phaseout of nuclear energy
The most serious problem is spent fuel buildup at each plant as well as an additional storage at a fuel reprocessing plant in Aomori prefecture, northern Japan. The country lacks plans about what to do with the highly radioactive waste.
Minister: Japan Must Quickly Phase out Nuke Energy abc news, By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press TOKYO September 29, 2012 Japan’s industry minister said the country must give up nuclear power plants as soon as possible because they pose too much risk in one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries.
Yukio Edano said last year’s meltdowns after a tsunami hit the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant showed that nuclear power’s cost is too high. He expressed the opinion in his new book of policy views that hit stores Saturday.
Edano, who served top government spokesman during the height of the nuclear crisis last year, said he came to the conclusion after seeing “what was believed to be masterpiece of modern technology succumb to natural disaster so easily.”
“Now I want to eliminate nuclear power plants as soon as possible,” he wrote in the book, “Even if I get a beating, I must say this.”…. Continue reading
Fukushima’s new hospital equipment can NOT measure internal radiation
Technohill, the Japanese distributer of this equipment commented on their website that this equipement cannot measure internal exposure unlike the hospital explained on their press conference.
Fukushima hospital imported new WBC equipment, distributer “It can’t measure internal exposure” http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/09/fukushima-hospital-imported-new-wbc-equipment-distributer-it-cant-measure-internal-exposure/ by Mochizuki September 29th, 2012 Kuwano kyoritsu hospital in Koriyama city held a press conference on 9/24/2012. Continue reading
Mushrooms containing radioactive cesium sold in Western Japan
Cesium from mushroom made in Kyushu, sold in west coast of Japan
http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/09/cesium-from-mushroom-made-in-kyushu-sold-in-west-coast-of-japan/ by Mochizuki on September 30th, 2012 · According to the report of Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, cesium was measured from mushroom made in Ohita prefecture, in Kyushu of western Japan. It was sold in Niigata prefecture, west coast of Japan.
Also, cesium was measured from mushroom made in Shizuoka prefecture, in central Japan. It was also sold in Niigata prefecture, west coast of Japan.
Sample 1
Product : Dried mushroom
Date : 9/24/2012
Cs137 : 5.9 Bq/Kg
Production : Ohita
Sample 2
Product : Dried mushroom
Date : 9/24/2012
Cs137 : 6.3 Bq/Kg
Production : Shizuoka
The truly fearful state of Fukushima’s nuclear reactors
http://ifyoulovethisplanet.org/?p=6282 Arnold Gundersen with the latest on Fukushima, including the perilous worldwide consequences if reactor no. 4 collapses
Doomed Planet For A Failed Species? Fukushima’s Tragic Nuclear Consequences Richard Wilcox Activist Post 29 Sept 12“……….Gundersen was also recently interviewed by the intrepid Helen Caldicott, medical doctor and long time anti-nuclear 
campaigner (12). The entire interview is highly recommended listening, not only for its incredible technical information, but also to enjoy the brilliance and humor of two of our most venerable activists.
Where are the leagues of other nuclear engineers speaking out with such 
expertise? There are not many. Gundersen has intimate knowledge of what is happening at the FNPS and one wonders how he gets his information. Other than that in the public domain are there at least some concerned officials feeding him data? Gundersen tends to speak conservatively and there is certainly room for other interpretations of the situation. He may be sugar-coating the truth at times, but I think he rarely or never exaggerates the dangers.
These are main points summarized from Gundersen and Caldicott’s conversation:
- Unit 4 is being cleaned up so that Tepco can put in place the crane to remove the fuel rods. This work will not be completed before 2015 or 2016. Tepco plans to construct a building on top of what is currently there at Unit 4 in order to put in place a huge crane for removing the rods, which will then be placed in casks on the ground.
- There are concerns that the fuel rods will be damaged, but ideally they can just pull them out and put them into dry cask storage. There is a chance they will not be removed easily and get “jammed” when they try pull them out. This could take years!
- It is a very long, involved process. “They are taking way too long.” This process has to be repeated for the other reactor fuel pools as well. In the meantime we have to hope there is not another large earthquake, even though geologists think there is a likely chance of one.
- The fuel in Units 1, 2, 3 is melted down to the bottom of the reactors or “lying on the concrete” at the foundation of the reactor buildings. It took ten years to remove fuels from a melted reactor at Three Mile Island after its disaster in the US in 1979. TMI was a minor accident compared to Fukushima.
- The three reactor units at Fukushima are so highly radioactive that a million bq/liter is measured in water in surrounding buildings. That means that in the reactor buildings themselves the radiation would be exponentially higher.
- Gundersen believes the radiation is so high in the reactor areas that workers cannot do the job. The only “solution” will be to pour concrete on top of the units while “walking away for three hundred years, obviously monitoring it.” This could happen in a few years from now.
- However, Caldicott points out that the radiation will seep down into the water table for the rest of time. Arnie agrees: there is no good solution. Although “the solution would be to bore holes from underneath, and constantly pull water from out from under the building so it can be treated.” This would have to be done for a couple of hundred years to prevent contamination of the Pacific Ocean.
- If Japan’s economy shrinks, cracks, contracts and or collapses due to a variety of factors, will they have the knowledge and money to carry on with this project? Gundersen estimates the cost of the Fukushima disaster will be 500 billion dollars. The Japanese taxpayer will pay for it.
- Weighed against Japan’s rapidly aging and declining population the Japanese will be carrying a huge economic burden. The detrimental health effects from radiation will effect a substantial proportion of Japan’s population into the mists of time but will be covered up and hidden from public view, even as they perish…… http://www.activistpost.com/2012/09/doomed-planet-for-failed-species.html
Japan’s new Nuclear Regulation Authority setting new guidelines
Nuclear Regulation Authority to set new guidelines http://japandailypress.com/nuclear-regulation-authority-to-set-new-guidelines-2713469 By Ida Torres / September 27, 2012 The newly launched Nuclear Regulation Authority is set to come up with new guidelines on nuclear disaster management, particularly expanding the area for urgent measures in the event of a nuclear accident.
Currently, the area is just at a 8-10 kilometer radius, but after the Fukushima power plant crisis in 2011, they believe the area should be expanded to a 30 kilometer radius.
The authority will also survey a fault under the Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture after an independent survey by KEPCO showed that the fault might be active.
Part of the new guidelines that the authority is expected to draft would be to make these guidelines sanctioned under special regulation so that the local governments and entities would be required to comply and obey the instructions. Also, prefectural and municipal governments will be required to come up with new or revised disaster management
plans so authorities can determine which areas will be under priority measures. They also need to devise detailed evacuation plans for residents, especially those that are in the radius of the power plants.
The government is doing all it can to be more prepared for nuclear meltdown threats, especially after the aforementioned Fukushima events. They abolished the Cabinet Office’s Nuclear Safety Commission, which initially drafted these guidelines, to give way to the Nuclear Regulation Authority
Nuclear lobbying might succeed in resuscitating the dangerous Monju dream
The [nuclear industry] lobbying has also forestalled scrapping a controversial, 25-year-old fast breeder reactor on the country’s western coast in Fukui prefecture.
25 years and $13 billion after construction began, the Monju fast breeder reactor has managed to produce electricity for only one hour.
“What’s frightening is that it has the property that once it starts running out of control it can’t be stopped,…. What no one can ignore is that Monju is located adjacent to an earthquake fault.
Japan Plans Restart of Controversial Reactor VOA Correspondent Steve Herman was given unprecedented access inside Japan’s Fast Breeder Reactor Research and Development Center at a time when the country is debating its future energy policy in wake of last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster.
kui Pref., Japan. Steve Herman September 25, 2012 TSURUGA, JAPAN — There has been an ongoing debate in Japan on the best way to obtain a safe and affordable energy supply for the island nation. The nuclear option suffered a setback in March, 2011, when a massive earthquake and devastating tsunami caused a meltdown in reactors at Japan’s main Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant. Continue reading
Poorly paid, dangerous, work of nuclear sub-contracted workers
Desirability of nuclear power is the real question, THE HINDU, 28 Sept 12
MADHUMITA DUTTA“……In France, over 20,000-30,000 workers dubbed as “nuclear nomads” are subcontracted annually in the 58 nuclear reactors operated by Électricité de France S.A. (EDF) located in 20 sites which contribute 78 per cent of the electricity produced in the country.
EDF subcontracts over 1,000 companies, who employ the “nuclear nomads,” sometimes of foreign origin, to do the dangerous maintenance, repair and clean-up work in these plants, exposing them to ionising radiations. In her book “Nuclear Servitude: Subcontracting and Health in the French Civil Nuclear Industry,” French social scientist Annie Thébaud-Mony has highlighted this division of labour and “risk” by subcontracting dangerous work in the French nuclear power industry.
In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, over 18,000 workers were hired to clean-up the power plant, who were all subcontracted to do dangerous radioactive clean-up work. These men, hailed as “national heroes” by many, were actually local residents rendered unemployed by the disaster or were daily wagers from city slums.
Since the 1970s, Japan has had a dubious track record of subcontracting maintenance
work of reactors to outside companies which hire workers on a short-term basis who remain employed till they reach their radiation exposure limit (Nuclear Nomads: A look at the Sub-contracted Heroes by Gabrielle Hecht in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 9, 2012)…. http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/desirability-of-nuclear-power-is-the-real-question/article3939373.ece
Fukushima rice was sold labelled as from Nagano http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/09/fukushima-rice-was-sold-labelled-as-from-nagano/ by Mochizuki September 27th, 2012 In this May, a rice wholesaler in Nagano sold 26 tones of rice from Fukushima and Aomori with deceptive label of the origin to be from Nagano prefecture.
Police is suspecting this wholesaler in Nagano prefecture sold about
200 kg of Fukushima rice “Akitakomachi” labelled as the rice from
Nagano, which violates the Unfair Competition Prevention Act and JAS.
Nagano prefecture is about 268 km from Fukushima plant. The rice was
sold to Osaka.
The company is “Hashimoto shoji” in Komagane city, Nagano prefecture.
The president, Hashimoto (57) sold 200kg of Fukushima rice in the
package labelled as “Nagano” for 60,000JPY.
Police has been investigating his office and warehouse since this May.
He states he did not have enough supply of Nagano rice, purchased rice
from Fukushima to sell with deceptive label of the origin.
Third steel beam found beside the fuel rack. Tepco “Fuel assemblies may be damaged” Fukushima Diary, by Mochizuki on September 25th, 2012 ·
As to the latest accident in reactor3, Fukushima Diary reported Tepco
found 2 steel beams in SFP3.
(cf. [Reactor3] Underwater video, “Two steel beams were found in the pool”)
After this article, Tepco found another steel beam in the pool, now
they are considering the possibility that the fuel assemblies are
damaged.
So far, Tepco finished investigating the 1/8 of the pool and found 3
steel beams in total. One of the 3 steel beams was found beside a rack
of fuel assemblies.
Tepco still hasn’t verified the dropped steel beam.
They have been stating there is no change in the radiation level in
the pool water and no change of the water level, which suggests the
state of the pool and fuel assemblies were sound, but they are
starting to suggest the possibility that fuel assemblies were
damaged…….. http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/09/third-steel-beam-found-beside-the-fuel-rack-tepco-fuel-assemblies-may-be-damaged/
Japan’s new nuclear safety agency dumps the previous hastily made “stress tests”
New nuclear watchdog to dump reactor stress tests http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120925c1.html Kyodo Japan’s new nuclear watchdog plans to disregard the stress tests used by its predecessor for the reactor reactivation process because it
plans to create fresh criteria for the task, Nuclear Regulation Authority chief Shunichi Tanaka said Monday.
“We will not use ‘stress tests’ as our judgment criteria,” Tanaka said in an interview,
referring to the two-stage safety examination that the government slapped together to push through reactor restarts in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in March last year, fearing summer power outages.
Utilities seeking to restart reactors have already submitted the results of their first-phase stress tests to the NRA’s predecessor, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. NISA was to check the results.
Of the nation’s 50 viable commercial reactors, results on 30 have been submitted. In July, Kansai Electric Power Co.’s two reactors at the Oi power plant in Fukui Prefecture became the first to be reactivated since the crisis.
But Tanaka’s remarks mean the utilities will have to go back to square one to restart their reactors.
Tanaka emphasized that he has “no intention” to decide on whether the stress test results so far submitted are proper.
The NRA, launched earlier this month as part of efforts to improve regulation in light of the Fukushima crisis, plans to formulate new safety standards within 10 months.
Hypocrisy of Japanese govt’s pretense of a no nuclear policy
The entire [zero nuclear]policy had been watered down to nothing due to opposition from both the US and the Japanese Business Federation (Keidanren).
If we don’t, someone else will (and other dubious rationalizations)Kanagawa Notebook, September 23, 2012 ZERO NUCLEAR POWER BY 2030′s: OFFICIAL GOAL!! …. protestors in Tokyo are calling for an end to reliance on nuclear power NOW, which could be achieved simply by shutting down the two reactors at the Oi Power Plant in Fukui Prefecture.
Zero nuclear power by the 2030′s?? That would give the government plenty of opportunity to keep the Ooi reactors running and re-start others in the meantime. So I read the article calmly and objectively, and was not surprised to discover the clause at the end added by the Prime Minister: “It is extremely hard to predict how things may develop in the future and we should make sure that we are able to take a flexible approach.” Flexible, meaning “Well, we’ll TRY to keep this promise. But it may not work out, so please understand, okay?”
And to add insult to injury, the article made it very clear that the government intended to continue the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, and did not plan to give up on the Monju fast-breeder (a prototype reactor that theoretically will run on reprocessed uranium and plutonium. The reactor has been plagued by accidents and cover-ups, and currently sits idle; it has actually only produced a single hour’s worth of electricity since its completion, which involved four decades of work and an appalling amount of money), scheduled to come on-line in 2050. Continue reading
Deformities in butterflies – effects of Fukushima radiation
More images of deformed butterflies after Fukushima — Wings folded over, rumpled, much different sizes (PHOTOS)
September 21st, 2012
By ENENews
The biological impacts of the Fukushima nuclear accident on the pale grass blue butterfly
Scientific Reports
Volume 2; 2012 See more photos here
1 This Month
Read the Public Inquiry Report, the Commissioners’ report, Surrendering Australia: The AUKUS Deception is available to download for free at aukuspublicinquiry.com. Or just watch the replay of the National Press Club Luncheon.
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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