Controversy over radiation and heat surrounding Tokyo Olympics, HANKYOREH By Kim Chang-geum, staff reporter : Aug.14,2019
“…… Safety from radiation and heat at the Tokyo Olympics
Most of the issues related to the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, which are now only a year away, boil down to safety concerns over radiation and extreme heat. Some baseball and softball matches are scheduled to be held in a stadium located close to the Fukushima nuclear reactor that took direct damage during the 2011 earthquake. Korean civic groups have also pointed out that the Japanese government has failed to properly control water contaminated by radiation from the reactor. Plans to source some of the rice and ingredients for the Tokyo Olympics Athletes Village from Fukushima are adding to these concerns. Although the level of radiation measured in such rice is within the acceptable standards in Japan, it is believed to exceed Korean standards.
Extreme heat is another potential issue. After an open water test competition in Odaiba Seaside Park, Tokyo, on Aug. 11, Sports Nippon reported, “Many athletes complained about a foul odor and the high water temperature, and one male athlete made the shocking claim that it ‘smelled like a toilet.’” Although the Olympic Committee did not reveal the water temperature on that day, it has been reported that the temperature was 29.9 degrees Celsius at 5am. The International Swimming Federation (FINA) cancels events if the water temperature reaches 31 degrees Celsius. There have also been warnings about road races. On August 8, Yusuke Suzuki, Japan’s star race-walker and world record holder in the men’s 20km, stated, “I tried training on the Tokyo Olympics race-walking course. There was no shade, so it could cause dehydration.”
Tokyo Olympics delegation heads meeting from Aug. 20-22It appears that the issue of safety from radiation and concerns about food ingredients will be conveyed during the upcoming three-day meeting with the leaders of each country’s delegation in Tokyo on Aug. 20-22, and a request will be made to the Japanese Olympic Committee to change the name of Dokdo used on maps. If the representatives from each country do raise the radiation issue, the IOC will have no choice but to intervene. The Korean Sport & Olympic Committee is also considering providing separate Korean food to Korean athletes through specially prepared meals or lunchboxes. …. http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/905758.html
“Remote-controlled robots that can withstand high radiation exposure are ‘expected in the near future’ to help remove melted nuclear fuel debris out of the reactors”
Uncapable at home to really handle a triple meldown while sacrificing its own population with an intensive denial and cover-up campaign, Japan is now proposing to the U.S. to help denuclearizing North Korea. Isn’t that the ultimate height of hypocrisy and arrogance?
(File photo taken from a Kyodo News helicopter on April 23, 2019, shows the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan, where decommissioning work is under way.)
Japan tells U.S. of plan to offer robots for denuclearizing N. Korea
August 16, 2019
Japan has told the United States that it is ready to provide its robot technology for use in dismantling nuclear and uranium enrichment facilities in North Korea as Washington and Pyongyang pursue further denuclearization talks, Japanese government sources said Friday.
As Japan turns to remote-controlled robots it has developed to decommission reactors that suffered meltdowns in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, it believes the same technology can be used in North Korea, according to the sources.
The offer is part of Japan’s efforts to make its own contribution to the denuclearization talks amid concern that Tokyo could be left out of the loop as the United States and North Korea are stepping up diplomacy.
Tokyo has already told Washington it would shoulder part of the costs of any International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of North Korean facilities and dispatch Japanese nuclear experts.
The scrapping of nuclear facilities such as the Yongbyon complex that has a graphite-moderated reactor will come into focus in forthcoming working-level talks between Washington and Pyongyang.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered to close the complex — seen as the center of the country’s nuclear material production activities — during his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Hanoi in February.
But the Trump-Kim talks broke down after the two leaders failed to reconcile Washington’s demand for denuclearization and Pyongyang’s call for sanctions relief.
Earlier this year, Japan and the United States held a working-level meeting before the Hanoi summit, in which Washington pointed to the possibility of radioactive contamination near North Korea’s facilities due to its lax management of nuclear materials, the sources said.
Japan then offered “any support,” including technological assistance, according to the sources.
Remote-controlled robots that can withstand high radiation exposure are ‘expected in the near future’ to help remove melted nuclear fuel debris out of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, crippled since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan.
For such technology to be used in the decommissioning of a nuclear facility, experts need to inspect its internal structure and check radiation levels. Therefore, Pyongyang’s acceptance of such on-site inspections would be essential.
Trump has said on Twitter that he received a letter from Kim stating that the North Korean leader is willing to meet again after joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises end next Tuesday.
North Korea, which sees the joint drills as rehearsals for invasion, has fired a series of short-range missiles in apparent protest, most recently on Friday, but Trump has played down the significance of such launches.
While Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who places priority on resolving the issue of Japanese nationals abducted by Pyongyang in the 1970s and 1980s, has expressed his hope to meet Kim “without preconditions,” such a summit appears unlikely.
Abe is the only leader yet to meet face-to-face with Kim among the countries involved in the long-stalled six-party talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear program — the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
Trump has delivered on his promise to Abe to raise the abduction issue during his meetings with Kim. The U.S. president takes the view that neighboring countries such as Japan need to pay for North Korea’s denuclearization and extend economic assistance in return for Pyongyang scrapping its nuclear facilities.
“Japan’s security will be left out if we fail to be part of the U.S.-North Korea negotiations,” a Japanese Foreign Ministry source said.
From left: The No. 5, No. 6 and No. 7 reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture
August 12, 2019
Soaring costs borne by operators of nuclear power plants to safeguard their facilities against natural disasters and terrorist attacks suggest the government is wrong in its longstanding contention that nuclear power is the nation’s cheapest energy source.
A study by The Asahi Shimbun found that the overall estimate for the cost of safety measures by 11 operators stood at 5.074 trillion yen ($48.32 billion) as of July. The operators include those whose nuclear facilities are still under construction.
The combined figure for the 11 companies represents an increase of about 660 billion yen from a year earlier.
The Asahi Shimbun has tallied total estimated safety costs by nuclear plant operators since 2013.
As of January 2013, the combined total was 998.2 billion yen.
New safety regulations implemented after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster obliged power companies to equip their facilities with additional safeguard measures to prevent a severe accident triggered by a powerful earthquake, tsunami, fire, terrorist attack and other emergencies.
The Fukushima disaster was triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake, which generated towering tsunami that knocked out cooling systems at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co., setting off a triple meltdown.
The new regulations went into effect in 2013.
TEPCO’s estimated cost to implement safeguard measures doubled to 969 billion yen in the latest study due to steps to counter liquefaction and terrorist strikes at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant’s No. 6 and No. 7 reactors in Niigata Prefecture.
Kansai Electric Power Co. reported an additional 130.8 billion yen as the cost of building an emergency facility to respond to a terrorist attack on its Oi nuclear plant’s No. 3 and No. 4 reactors in Fukui Prefecture.
In the survey, The Asahi Shimbun for the first time asked power companies about their most recent estimates for countermeasures against terrorism and the previous estimate when they applied for certification of their anti-terror facilities by the government’s Nuclear Regulation Authority.
The responses showed that anti-terror measures are proving to be two times to five times more expensive than the companies initially envisaged.
Kyushu Electric Power Co. replied that such steps for the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors at its Sendai nuclear plant in Kagoshima Prefecture grew five-fold from 43 billion yen to 220 billion yen.
Kansai Electric Power Co. said it plans to spend 125.7 billion yen on anti-terror measures for the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at its Takahama plant in Fukui Prefecture, up from 69.1 billion yen.
In the case of Shikoku Electric Power Co., the utility said measures to safeguard the No. 3 reactor at its Ikata nuclear plant in Ehime Prefecture from a terror attack surged from 32 billion yen to 55 billion yen.
Shikoku Electric said the increase is due to a change in the design and construction method following the NRA’s safety examination.
Of the 11 companies surveyed, six did not include costs for terrorism countermeasures in their estimates for safeguard mechanisms, which means that overall costs for safety measures, including those against terrorism, can only grow.
Nine reactors at five nuclear facilities are now back online after clearing the more stringent standards set by the NRA.
The safety cost for each of those reactors ranged from 130 billion yen to 230 billion yen.
It appears likely that plans by Chugoku Electric Power Co., Tohoku Electric Power Co. and Japan Atomic Power Co. to restart reactors will cost each of the operators more than 300 billion yen per reactor in safety measures, if the cost of implementing terrorism countermeasures is added.
With the ballooning safety costs, the government’s argument that nuclear energy is cheaper than hydro power and coal is increasingly in doubt.
In 2015, a government study put the cost to generate 1 kilowatt-hour of energy for hydro power at 11 yen, coal-fired thermal power at 12.9 yen and nuclear power at 10.3 yen or more.
The government study estimated the cost for safety measures per nuclear reactor at about 100 billion yen.
The power generation cost for a reactor will rise 0.6 yen for an increase of every 100 billion yen that will be set aside for safeguard measures.
Fukushima: Nuclear-contaminated water raises 2020 Games site fears,The Weather Network, Caroline Floyd , Meteorologist 14 Aug 19, Beginning late next July, Tokyo and several other sites around Japan will welcome elite athletes from around the world for the 2020 Summer Games. One of the sites carries with it a stigma that organizers are hoping to help heal — Fukushima.
Some scheduled baseball and softball events will take place at Fukushima Azuma Baseball Stadium, located about 70 km northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
There may be another hitch in the road to recovery, however, and it’s looming on the horizon for next year.
Tremendous amounts of water flooded the reactors in the wake of the disaster, both from the tsunami itself and from water added to cover the melted reactors and allow them to cool as part of the efforts to clean up the site and decommission the plant. Since then, groundwater has also infiltrated the site. All of this water has been contaminated by radioactive substances, like cesium and tritium. While the cesium can be removed via processing, tritium generally remains, meaning the still-contaminated water must be stored.
TEPCO, the utility which operated the reactor, has installed about 1,000 large storage tanks at the site to hold the contaminated water; currently, more than 1.05 million tons of radioactive water are being stored in the tanks, and roughly 150 tons are added every day.
TEPCO continues to install new tanks, but according to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, “space limitations mean that by the end of 2020, a maximum storage capacity of about 1.34 million tons will be reached.” Officials have added that if the groundwater infiltration was decreased, it will be possible to stretch that date until summer 2022.
Some scheduled baseball and softball events will take place at Fukushima Azuma Baseball Stadium, located about 70 km northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
There may be another hitch in the road to recovery, however, and it’s looming on the horizon for next year.
Tremendous amounts of water flooded the reactors in the wake of the disaster, both from the tsunami itself and from water added to cover the melted reactors and allow them to cool as part of the efforts to clean up the site and decommission the plant. Since then, groundwater has also infiltrated the site. All of this water has been contaminated by radioactive substances, like cesium and tritium. While the cesium can be removed via processing, tritium generally remains, meaning the still-contaminated water must be stored.
TEPCO, the utility which operated the reactor, has installed about 1,000 large storage tanks at the site to hold the contaminated water; currently, more than 1.05 million tons of radioactive water are being stored in the tanks, and roughly 150 tons are added every day.
TEPCO continues to install new tanks, but according to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, “space limitations mean that by the end of 2020, a maximum storage capacity of about 1.34 million tons will be reached.” Officials have added that if the groundwater infiltration was decreased, it will be possible to stretch that date until summer 2022.
While more tanks can be installed, a long-term solution is still being sought and, so far, most of them aren’t going over well with the locals.
One suggestion before the central government is to dilute the water after processing and gradually release it into the Pacific. Another is to build a long-term storage facility near the plant site. Fukushima residents, and fishermen in particular, have expressed strong opposition to both ideas, not over fears of the wastewater itself but because of the negative publicity and continuing stigma that would damage their livelihoods……
Setting a deadline on the current storage situation puts additional pressure on Japanese authorities and the public to reach a consensus.
Under the moniker of the “Reconstruction Olympics,” they have plotted a torch relay course that begins near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant and continues through adjacent prefectures — Miyagi and Iwate — impacted by the disaster. The region will host games in baseball, softball and soccer next summer.
“We are hoping that, through sports, we can give the residents new dreams,” said Takahiro Sato, director of Fukushima’s office of Olympic and Paralympic promotions. “We also want to show how far we’ve come.”
The effort has drawn mixed reactions, if only because the so-called “affected areas” are a sensitive topic in Japan.
Some people worry about exposure to lingering radiation; they accuse officials of whitewashing health risks. Critics question spending millions on sports while communities are still rebuilding.
“The people from that area have dealt with these issues for so long and so deeply, the Olympics are kind of a transient event,” said Kyle Cleveland, an associate professor of sociology at Temple University’s campus in Japan. “They’re going to see this as a public relations ploy.”……
The populace began to question announcements from the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) about the scope of the contamination, said Cleveland, who is writing a book on the catastrophe and its aftermath.
“In the first 10 weeks, Tepco was downplaying the risk,” he said. “Eventually, they were dissembling and lying.”……..
Reliable data on radiation risks is difficult to obtain, said Jonathan Links, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins University. …….
In terms of athletes and coaches visiting the impacted prefectures for a week or two during the Olympics, Links said the cancer risk is proportional, growing incrementally each day.
The Japanese government has raised what it considers to be the acceptable exposure from 1 millisievert to 20 millisieverts per year. Along with this adjustment, officials have declared much of the region suitable for habitation, lifting evacuation orders in numerous municipalities. Housing subsidies that allowed evacuees to live elsewhere have been discontinued.
But some towns remain nearly empty.
“People are refusing to go back,” said Katsuya Hirano, a UCLA associate professor of history who has who has spent years collecting interviews for an oral history. “Especially families with children.”……..
With infrastructure repairs continuing throughout the region, evacuee Akiko Morimatsu has a skeptical view of the Tokyo 2020 campaign.
“They have called these the ‘Reconstruction Games,’ but just because you call it that doesn’t mean the region will be recovered,” Morimatsu said.
Concerns about radiation prompted her to leave the Fukushima town of Koriyama, outside the mandatory evacuation zone, moving with her two young children to Osaka. Her husband, a doctor, remained; he visits the family once a month.
The effort to safely decommission Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant just got hit by a looming deadline.
In about three years, the plant will run out of space for the massive quantities of treated but still-radioactive water that officials have been storing there, according to The Associated Press. While a government panel came up with a few possible courses of action, the most feasible one at the moment is to simply dump the water into the Pacific — a bleak sign for nuclear disasters in the future.
Maximum Capacity
At the moment, Fukushima has over 1 million tons of water stored in almost 1,000 on-site tanks, the AP reports. Plans are in place to build enough to store nearly 1.4 million more tons, but that even those will reach capacity by mid-2022.
Local fishers and residents of the area say that dumping the water would devastate the area’s fishing and agriculture industry, per the AP. Other options considered by the panel include vaporizing the radioactive water or injecting it deep underground.
“When we talk about Fukushima’s reconstruction, the question is if we should prioritize the decommissioning at the expense of Fukushima people’s lives,” University of Tokyo professor of disaster social science Naoya Sekiya told the AP. “The issue is not just about science.”
In reality, these Games are about forgetting the nuclear accident itself and with it “the victims of the nuclear accident”
Refugees are currently to be forced by financial pressure to return to areas that have been evacuated after the 2011 triple disaster, despite still significantly increased levels of radiation, as retired nuclear physicist Hiroaki Koide is pointing out. According to him, the fact that even children or pregnant women have to live with a twenty-fold increased limit for annual radiation exposure (from 1 millisievert per year before and up to 20 mSv after the incident), “is something that cannot be accepted at all”.
The Olympics are being organised “so that people in Japan forget the responsibility of the state for the nuclear accident,”
“What’s really dangerous, is that “the athletes will tell the world that Fukushima is safe”
‘Bad for Fukushima, bad for democracy’, Play the Game, By Andreas Singler, 7 Aug 19
One year before the opening of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo there is considerable resistance to the so-called ‘Reconstruction Games’ in Japan that critics fear will remove focus from the Fukushima disaster and undermine democratic values.
July 24 – one year to go until the opening of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo – may have been a day of joyful anticipation for many who embrace the Olympic Movement. But not all people anticipate this event as cheerfully as the organisers in Japan, a large part of the media and the Government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would appreciate. There was and still is much opposition against the hosting of the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2020 in Tokyo. Opponents call it both “bad for democracy” and “bad for Fukushima” – the area hit by a nuclear power plant disaster on 11 March 2011 and a devastating earthquake and tsunami.
For those critics, July 24 was a reason to take to the streets against Tokyo 2020. They had announced a rally for this memorable day followed by a demonstration in Shinjuku, one of the most crowded hubs in Tokyo. A leaflet even suggested that the Olympics could be “given back even a year before”. The protest in Tokyo was part of a so-far unique international gathering of ‘NOlympics’ activists from several countries. For eight days, opponents from Tokyo, Pyeongchang, Rio de Janeiro, Paris and Los Angeles discussed the dark sides of the Olympics with critical scholars and alternative media. A press conference was held at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.
The motto ‘the Reconstruction Games’, that the organisers and the Government chose after the 2011 East Japan triple disaster, sounds like sheer mockery, opponents say. Organisers as well as the International Olympic Committee (IOC), including President Thomas Bach, often talk about reconstruction, but hardly ever mention the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster as one of the main reason for the need of such rebuilding. Continue reading →
Bad for Fukushima, bad for democracy’, Play the Game, By Andreas Singler, 7 Aug 19″…….Undermining democratic values
Japanologist and literary scholar Donald Keene, who passed away earlier this year aged 96 and who became a Japanese citizen after ‘March 11’ in solidarity with the suffering country, sharply criticised the media for their Olympic coverage of Rio de Janeiro in his Tokyo Shimbun column. Keene mentioned – “as if living in a totalitarian state” – mass media’s nationalistic approach and lack of journalistic distance. “From the very beginning, I was opposed to Tokyo Olympics,” Keene wrote. He was, according to Satoshi Ukai, one of the few public figures in Japan who could still be allowed such a clear-cut opinion. Keene, by birth a US citizen, was a legend among international Japanologists as an annalist, translator and intimate connoisseur of Japan’s golden generation of post-war writers.
“The longer one reflects about Olympics, the bigger the problems appear,” says Ukai. The fact that big celebrations and major disasters both can fuel nationalism and undermine the democratic culture of a country is one of the issues touched upon by US political scientist Jules Boykoff in his lecture on ‘Celebration Capitalism’ during a symposium at Waseda University in Tokyo on 21 July. His theoretical approach that refers on Naomi Klein’s term ‘disaster capitalism’ and covers Olympics in general appears like a blueprint on the conditions in ‘post-Fukushima’ Japan, where there are only a few years between catastrophe and festival event.
A larger number of laws have been adopted in recent years, partly as so-called anti-terrorism measures in the name of Olympic security. Critics call it an attack on the freedom of press, of expression, and of assembly. Those laws, one by one, caused mass protests driven by various social movements. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Joseph Cannataci, criticised an Anti-Conspiracy Act of 2017 in an open letter to Prime Minister Abe. And in a report to the UN Human Rights Committee, Special Rapporteur David Kaye sounded the alarm over the country’s eroding freedom of the press. It is hardly possible to report freely about sensitive issues of Japanese history such as Japan’s role in World War II, the ‘comfort women’ issue or, yet, about the real situation in Fukushima, Kaye reported. In just a few years, Japan dropped from number 11 in 2010 to 72 in 2018 and 67 in the current ranking of ‘Reporters Without Borders’.
Tepco and three other companies considering joint firm to build nuclear power plant in Aomori, Japan Times, 9 Aug 19,
JIJI Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. and three other companies are considering jointly setting up a new firm to construct and manage a planned nuclear power plant in Aomori Prefecture, informed sources said Thursday.
The three partners are Chubu Electric Power Co., Hitachi Ltd. and Toshiba Corp., the sources said.
Under the plan, the new company will build and run a new nuclear plant next to Tohoku Electric Power Co.’s Higashidori nuclear facility, which has been idle since the triple core meltdown at Tepco’s Fukushima No. 1 plant…….
Nobu Hanaoka was only 8-months-old when the US dropped Fat Man — a Plutonium bomb — on the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Sep 25, 2017 HT Correspondent Hindustan Times, New Delhi
“Does he have all five fingers?” This was a Nagasaki atomic bomb survivor’s first question to the doctor when his son was born.Nobu Hanaoka, 73, says he was relieved when the doctor replied that his son was in perfect health. “I had hoped that the radiation did not affect the child,” Hanaoka told Al Jazeera.
Hanaoka was only eight months old when the US dropped ‘Fat Man’ — a Plutonium bomb — on the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, killing about 74,000 people. Three days before, ‘Little Boy’ — the first-ever atomic bomb, dropped on Hiroshima — had claimed 140,000 lives.
Hanaoka — clad in a simple, grey coat, has a message for the United States and North Korea as tensions escalate between the two countries over the possibility of a nuclear war.
“This is the kind of weapon that doesn’t just kill. It kills indiscriminately. It kills slowly and painfully.”
“And it shouldn’t be allowed on the surface of the Earth,” the survivor says after a pause.
“We were not even in the city of Nagasaki. We were outside. And yet the radiation that came from the bombing went far beyond the city limits,” Hanaoka said, before explaining the three ways an atomic bomb can kill.
Hanaoka’s mother and sister died due to radiation when he was six, he says, adding that he overheard the doctor telling his father the boy wouldn’t live to see his 10th birthday. “So I knew that I was not going to live long,” Hanaoka says in the video.
The atomic bomb survivor says he was always concerned for his health and feared he was dying when he got a simple cold. He also had survivor’s guilt, a mental condition in which a person feels remorse for surviving a traumatic event when others did not. “Why did my sister and mother, who were wonderful people… beautiful and smart and gentle, and they had to die.”
“And yet, I, who am not unworthy, am still alive?”
“I want all nations to come together and start finding a way of eliminating nuclear weapons altogether,” Hanaoka tells Al Jazeera after warning that there will be millions of casualties if either the US or North Korea is attacked with radioactive weapons.
North Korea’s foreign minister Ri Yong Ho told the United Nations General Assembly last week that targeting the US mainland with its rockets was inevitable after “Mr Evil President” Donald Trump called Pyongyang’s leader a “rocket man” on a suicide mission.
Trump, too, dialled up the rhetoric against North Korea over the weekend, warning Ho that he and its leader Kim Jong Un “won’t be around much longer” as Pyongyang staged a major anti-US rally.
The North had threatened to “sink” Japan into the sea and fired two missiles over the northern island of Hokkaido in the space of less than a month. Pyongyang said this month it had carried out an underground test on a hydrogen bomb estimated to be 16 times the size of the US bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. It was its sixth and largest nuclear test.
Survivors of Hiroshima-Nagasaki — the only two nuclear attacks in the history of mankind — warned of the threat of atomic weapons in a photo essay by the Time magazine last month. It quoted another survivor Fujio Torikoshi (86) as saying all he wanted was to forget the bombing. “We cannot continue to sacrifice precious lives to warfare. All I can do is pray – earnestly, relentlessly – for world peace.”
Hiroshima atomic bomb: The US nuclear attack that changed history, Aljazeera, 7 Aug 19,
As Japan marks 74th anniversary of world’s first nuclear bomb attack, we examine the events that shaped history. Japan has marked 74 years since a US atomic bomb attack that razed the city of Hiroshima to the ground at the end of World War II.
Around 50,000 people, including representatives from around the world, attended on Tuesday a ceremony held in the Peace Memorial Park near ground zero to honour the memory of the victims of the world’s first nuclear bomb attack.
In a speech, Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui called on the international community to work towards a world without atomic weapons.
Below we take a look at the events that shaped the course of history.
What happened in Hiroshima?
On August 6, 1945, at about 8:15am Japanese time, the US aircraft Enola Gay dropped an untested uranium-235 gun-assembly bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” over Hiroshima. The devastation was unlike anything in the history of warfare, ushering in the era of weapons of mass destruction.
Hiroshima was immediately flattened. The resulting explosion killed 70,000 people instantly; by December 1945, the death toll had risen to some 140,000. The radius of total destruction was reportedly 1.6km.
“The impact of the bomb was so terrific that practically all living things – human and animal – were literally seared to death by the tremendous heat and pressure set up by the blast,” Tokyo radio said in the aftermath of the explosion, according to a report by The Guardian in August 1945.
“All the dead and injured were burned beyond recognition. Those outdoors were burned to death, while those indoors were killed by the indescribable pressure and heat.”
But the damage did not end there. The radiation released from the explosion caused further suffering. Thousands more died from their injuries, radiation sickness and cancer in the years that followed, bringing the toll closer to 200,000, according to the Department of Energy’s history of the Manhattan Project. …..
The bombings were as questionable back then as they are today. Six out of seven five-star US generals and admirals at the time felt there was no need to drop the bomb because Japanese surrender was imminent. …….
The power of the atomic bomb would usher a change in geopolitics that still reverberates to this day, with several countries currently vying to acquire this technology.
The Doomsday Clock
In 1947, the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project created the Doomsday Clock, which represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe, with midnight symbolising the destruction of civilisation as we know it.
“I think Japan is one country that should work hard to prohibit the use of nuclear weapons, in fact, to get rid of all nuclear weapons because Japan is the only country in the world that suffered from bombing by nuclear device so Japan knows how horrible it is when nuclear weapons are used,” Dr Mahathir was quoted as saying.
Over 70 countries have signed the treaty but ratification has been slow. The treaty needs 50 member nations to formally adopt it in order to be effective but only 25 have done so as of this month.
More importantly, major nuclear arms makers such as the US and China have not signed on. Consequently, countries such as Japan that enjoy protection from the US by virtue of their alliance have similarly deferred from supporting the treaty.
Japan is vicariously dependent on the US’ military might as the Asian country amended its constitution after its WWII defeat to prohibit its armed forces from being deployed offensively.
Dr Mahathir lauded this as a good example for the rest of the world.
“Japan is the only country in the world which has outlawed war, aggressive war, in order to solve problems of conflict between nations. That is a good beginning. Other countries should follow,” he was quoted as saying.
However, the Malaysian PM also noted growing hostilities between Japan and South Korea, and expressed concern that Japan’s constitutional ban on military aggression might not last.
His Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, previously suggested that the constitutional restriction be revisited to clarify the role of his country’s Self-Defence Forces.
Hiroshima mayor pushes Japan to join nuke ban treaty on A-bomb anniv. By Keita Nakamura, KYODO NEWS 5 Aug 19Hiroshima marked the 74th anniversary of its atomic bombing by the United States on Tuesday, with the city’s Mayor Kazumi Matsui putting pressure on the Japanese government to join a U.N. treaty banning nuclear weapons in his peace declaration speech.Attended by representatives from about 90 countries including the United States, the annual memorial ceremony took place at the Peace Memorial Park near Ground Zero
In the annual declaration, Matsui called on the central government to “accede” to the request from “hibakusha,” as atomic bomb survivors are known in Japan, that the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was passed in July 2017 with the support of 122 nations, be “signed and ratified.”
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave a speech at the ceremony but avoided any reference to the treaty. Japan has refused to participate in the treaty, along with other countries under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, as have the world’s nuclear-weapon states…….
This year, Matsui also demanded that the world leaders “respond to the yearning of civil society for entry into force” of the treaty, and Japanese leaders “manifest the pacifism of the Constitution” by showing leadership toward a nuclear-weapon-free world.
“Around the world today, we see self-centered nationalism in ascendance, tensions heightened by international exclusivity and rivalry, with nuclear disarmament at a standstill,” Matsui warned.
The power of individuals is weak, he said, but added there have been many examples of collective strength achieving desired goals…..
Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue has said he will also urge the Japanese government to support the treaty at this year’s memorial ceremony to be held Friday in his city, as he has done in each of the past two years.
KYODOm HIROSHIMA – A Japan-U.S. joint research organization opened one of its radiation research facilities in Hiroshima to the public Monday to raise awareness of the effects of radiation on human health, ahead of the anniversary on Tuesday of the atomic bombing of the city.Although the Hiroshima facility will only be open to the public for two days, the Radiation Effects Research Foundation will open another research facility in the city of Nagasaki on Thursday and Friday to coincide with the city’s Aug. 9 A-bomb anniversary.
This marks the 25th annual public opening of the facility in Minami Ward, Hiroshima. It aims to share research content and help the public better understand the health effects of radiation. The research facility has been collecting data from hibakusha since the institute was established in 1975, when it succeeded the research efforts of its predecessor, the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission.
Some of the exhibition booths explain the risks of radiation, as well as the role of blood. Visitors can also experiment with freezing cells in liquid nitrogen for preservation, which tends to be popular with children when the experiment is successful.
“The (facility was) full of things I didn’t know were there, like health research on second generation hibakusha. Even as a Hiroshima resident, I learned a lot,” said Sanae Yamamoto, a 41-year-old housewife from Asakita Ward in the city who visited the facility with her children.
Expert says 2020 Tokyo Olympics unsafe due to Fukushima | 60 Minutes
Fukushima: Despite health threats, the Japanese government urges residents to return https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1161500/fukushima-japanese-government-encourages-residents-returnFAMILIES who fled nuclear meltdown in Fukushima are being urged to return to their homes ahead of the Tokyo Olympics., By DAVID PILDITCH, Aug 4, 2019Alarming levels of radiation up to 20 times higher than official safety targets have been recorded in areas where locals are being encouraged to go back. We found ghost towns eight years after three reactors went into meltdown at Daiichi power plant 140 miles north east of Tokyo in March 2011. Tokyo 2020 is being hailed as the “Reconstruction Olympics” signalling new hope following the earthquake and tsunami that triggered the disaster and left more than 18,000 people dead.
Now evacuees are being urged to return as the global spotlight focuses on the recovery of the region. The government has lifted most evacuation orders and all but a handful of hot spots have been declared safe.
But parents believe their children are in danger, saying officials are downplaying the dangers and safety is compromised in a cynical attempt to convince the world the crisis is over.
Families have accused the government of speeding up their return to showcase safety standards ahead of the Olympics.
We found once-vibrant communities now post apocalyptic wastelands like something from a Hollywood movie after the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
Schools, shopping malls, supermarkets, libraries and petrol stations lie decaying along with thousands of homes. Many are set behind guarded barricades in exclusion areas known officially as “difficult to return to zones”.
Others lie in areas which the government says are safe to live in but whose few residents – wild boar and monkeys – demonstrate signs of mutation. Along roadsides sit giant black bags containing contaminated soil.
In Tomioka, five miles from the power plant, a school sports hall is scattered with footballs left when children fled.
It’s in stark contrast to arenas being built for the £20billion Games. Fukushima is hosting the first event, a softball match on July 22, two days before the opening ceremony.
The Japanese leg of the torch relay starts on March 26 at a soccer training centre 12 miles south of the crippled plant. The J Village, a base for emergency workers, only fully reopened last month.
In Okuma our Geiger counter sounded furiously, recording four microsieverts an hour. The government safety target is 0.23 microsieverts per hour.
It came days after evacuation orders were lifted for parts of the town which had 10,000 residents. The centre remains a no-go zone and just 367 former residents have registered to go back.
Ayako Oga, 46, who suffered a miscarriage, says: “The Olympics are putting lives in danger. The government is forcing people to leave the public homes they have been in. They are putting a heavy burden on people still suffering mentally and financially.”
In Namie, which had 21,000 residents, evacuation orders were lifted in 2017. It is said 800 people returned but we found desolation, only traffic lights working.
The Wild Boar bar last served a drink on disaster day. Owner Sumio Konno, in a group legal action against the government, says his son, who was five, still suffers nosebleeds. “He is sick all the time,” he says. “Every month he needs to go to the doctor.”
Ryohei Kataoka, of the Citizens Nuclear Information Centre, says: “The government’s insistence in lifting evacuation orders where heightened radiation-related health risks undeniably exist, is a campaign to show that Fukushima is ‘back to normal’ and to try to make Japan and the world forget the accident ever happened.”
(File photo taken from a Kyodo News helicopter on April 23, 2019, shows the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan, where decommissioning work is under way.)
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