The Japanese government partially lifted an evacuation order in one of the two hometowns of the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant on Wednesday for the first time since the 2011 disaster.
Decontamination efforts have lowered radiation levels significantly in the area about 7 kilometers southwest of the plant where three reactors had meltdowns due to the damage caused by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The action allows people to return to about 40 percent of Okuma. The other hometown, Futaba, remains off-limits, as are several other towns nearby.
Many former residents are reluctant to return as the complicated process to safely decommission the plant continues. Opponents of lifting the evacuation orders in long-abandoned communities say the government is promoting residents’ return to showcase safety ahead of the Tokyo Olympics next summer.
The government has pushed for an aggressive decontamination program by removing topsoil, chopping trees and washing down houses and roads in contaminated areas, though experts say the effort only caused the contamination to move from one place to another, creating massive amounts of radioactive waste and the need for its long-term storage.
The meltdowns at three of Fukushima Dai-ichi’s six reactors caused massive radiation leaks that contaminated the plant’s surroundings, forcing at its peak some 160,000 people to evacuate their homes for areas elsewhere in Fukushima or outside the prefecture.
Evacuation orders in most of the initial no-go zones have been lifted, but restrictions are still in place in several towns closest to the plant and to its northwest, which were contaminated by radioactive plumes from the plant soon after its meltdowns. More than 40,000 people were still unable to return home as of March, including Okuma’s population of 10,000.
Town officials say the lifting of the evacuation order in the two districts would encourage the area’s recovery.
“We are finally standing on a starting line of reconstruction,” Okuma mayor Toshitsuna Watanabe told reporters.
A new town hall is opening in the Ogawara district in May and 50 new houses and a convenience store is underway. But the town center near a main train station remains closed due to radiation levels still exceeding the annual exposure limit and a hospital won’t be available for two more years, requiring returnees to drive or take a bus to a neighboring town in case of medical needs.
Anti-nuclear sentiment and concerns about radiation exposures remain high in Japan since the disaster, leaving many people skeptical about the safety declaration by the government and utility operators, as risks of developing cancer and other illnesses from low-dose, long-term radiation exposures are still unknown. Critics also say that the annual exposure limit of 20 millisievert, the same as nuclear workers and up from 1 millisievert before the Fukushima meltdowns, is too high.
Many people are reluctant to return home because of lingering concerns about radiation, and they have adapted to new jobs and homes after more than eight years away.
Only 367 people, or less than 4 percent of Okuma’s population, registered as residents in the two districts where the order was lifted. A survey last year found only 12.5 percent of former residents wanted to return to their hometown. The government hopes to allow some of Futaba’s 5,980 residents to return next year.
Okuma is also home to a temporary storage facility for the radioactive waste that came out of the decontamination efforts across Fukushima. A much delayed facility is still underway.
Fukushima plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., and government officials plan to start removing the melted fuel in 2021 from one of the three melted reactors, but still know little about its condition inside and have not finalized waste management plans.
India Pakistan CONFLICT: Imran Khan issues India nuclear WARNING – ‘no one can predict’
PAKISTAN’S Prime Minister Imran Khan issued a dire warning to his neighbouring country as he branded India’s attack on his “nuclear-armed” country as “irresponsible” and warned Pakistan “would have no choice” but to strike back in the future.
By ALESSANDRA SCOTTO DI SANTOLO, Express UK , Wed, Apr 10, 2019 Speaking to the BBC, Imran Khan called on his Indian counterpart to come to a peaceful dialogue over the “oppression of Kashmir” and claimed the number one priority for the two nations should be tackling poverty. He said: “Surely the number one task of the two governments should be: how are we going to reduce poverty? And the way we reduce poverty is by settling our differences through dialogue.
“And there is only one difference, which is Kashmir. It has to be settled.
“The Kashmir issue cannot keep on boiling like it is because anything happening in Kashmir – through a reaction to the oppression which is taking place in Kashmir – it would be palmed off n Pakistan.
“We would be blamed and tensions would rise as they have risen in the past.
“So if we can settle Kashmir, the benefits of peace are tremendous in the subcontinent.”
BEIJING – A Chinese city has opened a new border crossing with North Korea — fitted with radiation detectors — even as talks between Washington and Pyongyang have languished over disagreements for nuclear sanctions relief………
The controversy is over the definition of wastes from the Lynas’ water leach purification (WLP) process, which contains thorium and uranium.
Lynas claims that the wastes are naturally-occurring radioactive material (called NORM), while we claim that the wastes are not naturally-occurring, but have been technologically-enhanced and should be called technologically-enhanced naturally-occurring radioactive material known as TENORM.
Citing “two eminent scientists”, Lynas states as fact that “the small amount of thorium and uranium in the WLP generated are not man-made but naturally occurring radionuclides found in soil, water and in food.”
Lynas is clearly distorting the facts.
First of all, the thorium and uranium containing wastes generated by Lynas are not found to naturally occur in the Gebeng area, where the plant is located. On the contrary, the raw material which is processed by the Lynas plant is lanthanide concentrate that contains the thorium, uranium and the rare-earth.
This raw material is processed and imported from the Mount Weld mine in Australia and is brought to Malaysia. It is then subject to further processing in Gebeng by Lynas.
Therefore, how can it be said that say that the thorium and uranium are naturally occurring in the soil, water and in food when they were not there before in the Gebeng area, if not for the Lynas operations?
Moreover, what is even more significant is that we are talking about the generation of an accumulated amount of more than 450,000 metric tonnes of radioactive wastes from the Lynas operations thus far. To call this naturally-occurring radioactive material is indeed unscientific.
Secondly, the wastes that Lynas has generated from the WLP process clearly falls within the definition of TENORM, as defined by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) as: “Naturally occurring radioactive materials that have been concentrated or exposed to the accessible environment as a result of human activities such as manufacturing, mineral extraction, or water processing.”
08-Apr-2019 By Tingmin Koe, Japanese authorities have been engaging both tourists and foreign governments in a double-pronged strategy to promote food products produced in areas that were hardest hit by the nuclear disaster in 2011, according to a senior government official.
A worker shows mixed oxide (MOX) fuel assemblies, which are the same type as those to be transported to Japan, in Marcoule, France, on March 14.
March 31, 2019
MARCOULE, France–Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO) plans to transport 32 plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel assemblies from France to Japan in 2020 at the earliest to help reduce its stockpile overseas.
KEPCO plans to use the MOX fuel in the No. 3 and the No. 4 reactors of its Takahama nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture, which would reduce its plutonium overseas by about one ton from the current 11 tons.
The MOX fuel was produced in France using plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel generated in Japanese nuclear power plants.
KEPCO, based in Osaka, had asked French nuclear fuel company Orano (formerly Areva) to reprocess the spent nuclear fuel and extract plutonium from it.
The plans were revealed to The Asahi Shimbun by an Orano executive.
In July 2018, the Japanese government announced a goal of decreasing the total volume of plutonium, which is stockpiled in Japan and overseas by Japanese companies, from the current 47 tons.
Japanese companies must reduce their plutonium stockpiles before a reprocessing facility in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, starts operations in 2021 to extract plutonium.
In 2017, Orano concluded a contract with KEPCO to produce 32 MOX fuel assemblies.
Under the contract, Orano has extracted plutonium from spent nuclear fuel, which was transported from Japan, in its reprocessing plant in La Hague in northern France.
The French company plans to transport the plutonium to its facility in Marcoule, southern France, within 2019 to start production of MOX fuel.
Then, the MOX fuel will be transported from a port in Cherbourg, northern France, to the Takahama nuclear power plant in Japan on a sea route in 2020 at the earliest.
Since the 1970s, Japanese electric power companies have entrusted British and French firms to reprocess their spent nuclear fuel to promote nuclear fuel recycling.
Currently, MOX fuel is used in four reactors in Japan: the No. 3 and the No. 4 reactors of the Takahama plant; the No. 3 reactor of the Genkai nuclear power plant operated by Kyushu Electric Power Co.; and the No. 3 reactor of the Ikata nuclear power plant run by Shikoku Electric Power Co.
However, MOX fuel must be used at 16 to 18 reactors to steadily decrease the plutonium stockpile of Japanese companies overseas and up to seven tons of plutonium to be extracted at the Rokkasho facility a year.
If Japan’s stockpile of plutonium, which can be used as a raw material for nuclear weapons, increases, the country could be criticized by the international society.
Since 2018, the Japanese government has asked electric power companies to offer their plutonium to each other to decrease their stockpiles, particularly those overseas.
In the future, the three electric power companies of Kansai, Kyushu and Shikoku that are using MOX fuel could obtain plutonium from Tokyo Electric Power Co. and Chubu Electric Power Co., both of which can’t reduce their stockpiles as their reactors are idled.
“In order to decrease stockpiles, it is most efficient to burn MOX fuel at Japanese nuclear power plants,” said Orano CEO Philippe Knoche.
South Asia’s nuclear-armed neighbors pull back from the abyss…barely
India and Pakistan have created the most perilous place on Earth. Salon DILIP HIRO, APRIL 7, 2019 This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch.
It’s still the most dangerous border on Earth. Yet compared to the recent tweets of President Donald Trump, it remains a marginal news story. That doesn’t for a moment diminish the chance that the globe’s first (and possibly ultimate) nuclear conflagration could break out along that 480-mile border known as the Line of Control (and, given the history that surrounds it, that phrase should indeed be capitalized). The casus belli would undoubtedly be the more than seven-decades-old clash between India and Pakistan over the contested territory of Kashmir. Like a volcano, this unresolved dispute rumbles periodically — as it did only weeks ago — threatening to spew its white-hot lava to devastating effect not just in the region but potentially globally as well.
The trigger for renewed rumbling is always a sensational terrorist attack by a Pakistani militant group on an Indian target. That propels the India’s leadership to a moral high ground. From there, bitter condemnations of Pakistan are coupled with the promise of airstrikes on the training camps of the culprit terrorist organizations operating from the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir. As a result, the already simmering relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors are quickly raised to a boiling point. This, in turn, prompts the United States to intervene and pressure Pakistan to shut down those violent jihadist groups. To placate Washington, the Pakistani government goes through the ritual of issuing banning orders on those groups, but in practice, any change is minimal.
And in the background always lurks the possibility that a war between the two neighbors could lead to a devastating nuclear exchange. Which means that it’s time to examine how and why, by arraying hundreds of thousands of troops along that Line of Control, India and Pakistan have created the most perilous place on Earth.
Trump says his relationship with Kim remains ‘very good’ amid nuclear stalemate, US President Donald Trump made the statement during the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual meeting. Asia News Network, by The Korea Herald, pril 8, 2019 US President Donald Trump said on Saturday (US time) that his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un remains “very good,” conveying his hopes of drawing Kim back to the negotiation table.His remarks come amid a stalemate between the two countries following the breakdown of the two leaders’ second summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, in late February. The deal breakers concerned denuclearization and economic sanctions.
“We’re getting along with North Korea. We’ll see how it works out, but we have a good relationship. Don’t forget, I have a very good relationship with Kim Jong-un,” Trump said during a speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s 2019 spring leadership meeting in Las Vegas………..
After their summit ended without an agreement, media reports revealed that the US had delivered a draft of an agreement demanding that Pyongyang transfer all its nuclear weapons and nuclear materials to the US.
According to Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun on Sunday, the draft agreement consisted of five main points — two demands for the communist regime and three compensatory items.
In the document, the US defined denuclearization for the North as shipping out all its nuclear weapons and dismantling all related facilities, according to the Japanese daily, which cited as its sources officials from the US, South Korea and Japan.
The US draft sought to ban all future nuclear activities by Pyongyang and to conduct inspections to verify its nuclear disarmament process. There was also a plan to excavate the remains of US soldiers in North Korea.
In return, Washington reportedly offered to declare an official end to the 1950-53 Korean War — which came to a halt with only an armistice — and to establish joint liaison offices and provide economic support to the communist regime.
On Friday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he is “confident” that there will be a third summit between Trump and Kim, though he did not provide a clear date or a location.
n a televised interview with “CBS This Morning,” based in the US, Pompeo also said the Trump administration is “convinced” that Pyongyang is “determined as well” to achieve denuclearization.
Pompeo noted, however, that the administration remains “incredibly clear” that economic sanctions on the North “will not be lifted until our ultimate objective is achieved.”
Since the February summit, Pyongyang has expressed dissatisfaction toward Washington via its state news agency and its Foreign Ministry.
With Pyongyang’s Supreme People’s Assembly due to hold its first meeting on Thursday since a recent election, eyes are on whether the North Korean leader will mention denuclearization talks in his policy speech.
Pompeo said the US side will “closely watch” to see what Kim says, but that it does not expect any great surprises.
Keidanren, also known as the Japan Business Federation, will also request that periods in which nuclear plant operations are halted be excluded from their operating life spans, the sources said Friday.
The requests will be announced by Chairman Hiroaki Nakanishi, also chairman of Hitachi Ltd., at a news conference Monday.
Keidanren, the country’s biggest business lobby, regards nuclear power as an energy source essential for the country to move toward the decarbonization of the power sector.
In the requests, Keidanren will stress that the use of existing nuclear power facilities that have been confirmed safe is important, according to the sources.
Japan effectively limits the service life of nuclear plants to 40 years. Under the current rule, the period may be extended by up to 20 years if state approval is given.
How global climate change is already devastating Banglades
Climate change threatens millions of Bangladeshi children, warns UNICEFSBS News A new report shows environmental disasters linked to climate change are threatening the lives and futures of more than 19 million children in Bangladesh, including prompting many families to push their daughters into child marriages., BY CHARLOTTE LAM, 5 Apr 19,
Climate change in Bangladesh could impact the lives of more than 19 million children, according to a new UNICEF report.
The humanitarian agency said on Friday that the country’s flat topography, dense population and weak infrastructure makes it “uniquely vulnerable to the powerful and unpredictable forces that climate change is compounding”.
The report author, Simon Ingram, said the danger was “flooding is extreme and it is almost on an annual basis”.
The report, titled “Gathering Storm: Climate change clouds the future of children in Bangladesh”, showed about 12 million children currently live in and around powerful river systems, which flow through Bangladesh and regularly burst their banks.
A further 3 million Bangladeshi children live in farming communities, which are facing increasing periods of drought.
The report also found a link between climate change and child marriage, child labour and access to education is evident in various parts of Bangladesh.
“Climate change is undoubtedly increasing the number of children who are pushed into the workplace, where they miss out on an education and are terribly exposed to violence and abuse,” UNICEF Bangladesh Child Protection specialist Kristina Wesslund said……….
Mr Ingram said there were already six million climate refugees in Bangladeshi cities, a number that could double by 2050.
South Asia’s Overlooked Nuclear Crisis, While few were watching, India and Pakistan may have just narrowly avoided a nuclear confrontation. The Nation, By Dilip Hiro 5 Apr 19,It’s still the most dangerous border on Earth. Yet compared to the recent tweets of President Donald Trump, it remains a marginal news story. That doesn’t for a moment diminish the chance that the globe’s first (and possibly ultimate) nuclear conflagration could break out along that 480-mile border known as the Line of Control (and, given the history that surrounds it, that phrase should indeed be capitalized). The casus belli would undoubtedly be the more than seven-decades-old clash between India and Pakistan over the contested territory of Kashmir. Like a volcano, this unresolved dispute rumbles periodically—as it did only weeks ago—threatening to spew its white-hot lava to devastating effect not just in the region but potentially globally as well.
The trigger for renewed rumbling is always a sensational terrorist attack by a Pakistani militant group on an Indian target. That propels India’s leadership to a moral high ground. From there, bitter condemnations of Pakistan are coupled with the promise of airstrikes on the training camps of the culprit terrorist organizations operating from the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir. As a result, the already simmering relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors are quickly raised to a boiling point. This, in turn, prompts the United States to intervene and pressure Pakistan to shut down those violent jihadist groups. To placate Washington, the Pakistani government goes through the ritual of issuing banning orders on those groups, but in practice, any change is minimal.
And in the background always lurks the possibility that a war between the two neighbors could lead to a devastating nuclear exchange. Which means that it’s time to examine how and why, by arraying hundreds of thousands of troops along that Line of Control, India and Pakistan have created the most perilous place on Earth.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
The Kashmir dispute began with the birth of the kicking twins—Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan—as independent countries. They emerged from the belly of the dying British Raj in August 1947. The princely states in British India were given the option of joining either of the new nations. The dithering Hindu ruler of Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir (its full title) finally signed a legally binding instrument of accession with New Delhi after his realm was invaded by armed tribal raiders from Pakistan. This document offered that state’s citizens the chance to choose between the two countries once peace had been restored. This has not happened so far and there is no credible prospect that it will………..
while India has long been in a nuclear arms race with Pakistan, it is no longer sticking to the same race course. In late March, Modi announced that India recently launched a rocket successfully shooting down one of its satellites. This creates the possibility that, in a future nuclear war with Pakistan, it could preemptively “blind” the Pakistanis by destroying their space-based communication and surveillance satellites. A race of another kind could be in the offing.
The central motive that drove Pakistan to develop its nuclear arsenal, however, remains unchanged. It was the only way Islamabad could deter New Delhi from defeating it in a war waged with conventional weapons……….
Pompeo hopes North Korea’s Kim does ‘right thing’ on nuclear weapons in parliament speech, David Brunnstrom, WASHINGTON (Reuters) 5 Apr 19, – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday he hoped North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would use a meeting of the country’s parliament next week to state publicly “it would be the right thing” for Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.
North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly is due to hold its first meeting this year on Thursday and could feature the first public comments from Kim about a second summit between him and U.S. President Donald Trump Hanoi in February that collapsed………..
Pompeo said he was “confident” there would be a third summit between Trump and Kim but did not have a timetable although he hoped it would be soon.
Pompeo stressed though that economic sanctions would not be lifted until North Korea gave up its nuclear weapons.
……..North Korea has warned that it is considering suspending talks and may rethink a freeze on missile and nuclear tests, in place since 2017, unless Washington makes concessions.
Evacuees can return next week to parts of Okuma, host of Fukushima nuclear plant, but few likely to. Japan Times, 5 Apr 19, KYODO The government formalized on Friday its decision to partially lift from next Wednesday a mandatory evacuation order for residents of a town that jointly hosts the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The town of Okuma — which saw all of its roughly 10,000 residents evacuate after one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters, triggered by a deadly earthquake and tsunami — will allow former residents to return for the first time in eight years, the government decided. The decision was said to be based on the lower radiation levels achieved through decontamination work.
Futaba, the other town that hosts the plant, remains a no-go zone.
Despite the decision, a very small number of residents are expected to return to Okuma. As of late March, only 367 people from 138 households, or around 3.5 percent of the original population of 10,341, were registered as residents of areas where the order will be lifted. …..
Reuters 2nd April 2019 China will fall short of its nuclear power generation capacity target for
2020, according to a forecast from the China Electricity Council on
Tuesday. Total nuclear capacity is expected to reach 53 gigawatts (GW) next
year, below a target of 58 GW, council vice chairman Wei Shaofeng told the
China Nuclear Energy Sustainable Development Forum in Beijing.
China is the world’s third-biggest nuclear power producer by capacity, with 45.9 GW
installed by end-2018 and 11 units still under construction, but its
reactor building program has stalled since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear
disaster in Japan.
No new approvals have been granted for the past three
years, amid spiraling costs, delays for key projects and safety concerns
about new technologies. Environmental impact assessments for two new
projects in southeast China were submitted to regulators last month,
however, paving the way for a resumption of its atomic energy program.
SIXTH TONE, Li YouApr 02, 2019 Energy official’s announcement comes after the Fukushima disaster in Japan led to new nuclear power projects in China being halted.
China will begin construction on several new nuclear power projects this year, according to Liu Hua, deputy minister of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and head of the National Nuclear Safety Administration.
Liu’s announcement — made Monday during the China Nuclear Energy Sustainable Development Forum in Beijing and later reported by Economic Information Daily — marks an end to the country’s three-year halt to approving new nuclear projects. Since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, China has been circumspect in approving new projects. From 2016 to 2018, the country did not greenlight a single one…….
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5 From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
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