Fukushima evacuee Miyuki Satou returns to ground zero – only to serve up piping hot bowls of ramen
FUKUSHIMA, JAPAN – It was about 2pm on a chilly Tuesday but there were no customers in Ms Miyuki Satou’s makeshift shop next to the Naraha town hall office, where she serves up piping hot bowls of ramen and udon.
The town was evacuated in the aftermath of the triple Tohoku disaster in 2011.
Although Naraha was the first town located entirely within a 20km radius of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant to have its evacuation order lifted in September last year, people have been slow to return. Only 976 of its population of 7,700 have come home – mostly the elderly.
One key reason for this is that families have already rebuilt their lives and bought new homes elsewhere, including Ms Satou’s.
The 51-year-old was a former resident of the coastal town bordering the Pacific Ocean, but now lives with her two daughters who have full-time jobs in the neighbouring Iwaki city.
But her ties with Naraha have led her back to run a food business – one of only two eateries there. Both close at 3pm.
Every day she has about 70 customers – mostly workers tasked with rebuilding the town where black bags of contaminated soil still remain a common sight, or former residents who have come back to visit.
She estimates only 10 per cent of her customers are residents who have moved back home.
“There is really no demand and so there is no point opening late,” she said. “Naraha used to be a much livelier town before the disaster, but now it just feels very lonely.”
It makes no sense for young families to return, when it is more convenient to live near their new workplaces or schools, she added.
But despite the nuclear disaster having changed her life, she offered a moderate take on the use of nuclear power.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration has said that Japan “cannot do without nuclear power” and has set a target to have nuclear power make up as much as 22 per cent of the country’s energy needs. Recent attempts to restart reactors elsewhere in the country – halted over public safety concerns following the 2011 disaster – have become entangled in a web of lawsuits.
The use of nuclear energy has split popular opinion in Japan. Ms Satou acknowledged it was a difficult question.
“It is an industry that can create a lot of jobs,” she said. “It will of course be better to use other forms of energy but I don’t think we have found one yet.”
High radiation keeps Fukushima evacuee Mitsue Masukura away from home
FUKUSHIMA, JAPAN – Retiree Mitsue Masukura, 63, who used to live in the coastal town of Namie, knows she will not be returning home anytime soon.
The Japanese government’s target is to declare all areas around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant livable by March next year (2017), except for three towns. Namie is one of the three. Certain parts of the town remain off limits because decontamination works have been suspended given the high radiation dosages.
Residents like Ms Masukura, a former fishmonger, are already allowed to return for only short periods during the day. They are not allowed to stay overnight.
Not that she has any plans to return.
She said: “Even if we move home, there will hardly be any amenities because many of the former merchants have moved out and started new businesses elsewhere.
“Besides, people still do not really feel safe about returning to a town so badly affected by the nuclear fallout.”
Despite official assurances of the contrary, her unwillingness to trust the authorities stems from a case of ‘once bitten, twice shy’.
In the immediate aftermath of the March 11, 2011, disaster, there was poor communication of the situation, and conflicting instructions, which led to a lot of speculation, she said.
“We didn’t know who said what or where we should go,” she said.
As a result, her family of five moved five times from town to town, ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn) to ryokan, before settling in their current temporary living quarters in Fukushima city. Each unit is smaller than the size of a one-room flat in Singapore. Her family used to live together under one roof, but now stay next door to one another across three units.
She looks forward to the family buying a house and moving to Minamisoma next year, after her grand-daughter graduates from senior high school.
When asked how she felt about not being able to return home to Namie, she said: “It’s been already five years since we left. There are all these memories of the past, which will continue to live on in the mind.”
Fukushima Special Report: When is it safe to go home?
FUKUSHIMA, JAPAN – For 72-year-old Mr Nobuyoshi Ito, home is an isolated village with only 40 other residents. Once considered among the most beautiful villages in Japan, Iitate is today a shell of its former self before a nuclear disaster five years ago.
Most of the homes, left behind by around 6,000 residents, are empty. Farmers have been replaced with masked workers tasked with filling up black bags of contaminated soil. Only parts of the village, about an hour’s drive inland from the crippled Fukushima No 1 power plant, have been deemed safe for visitors, and they cannot stay overnight.
But that has not stopped Mr Ito, a former IT engineer-turned-farmer, from returning and staying in open defiance to study the effects of the radioactive plume that hit after the nuclear plant on the east coast of the main island Honshu was destroyed by a tsunami.
“When the government asked us to evacuate … I asked if there would be criminal charges if I continued to live here,” he said. “They said no.”
“I am a test subject, making use of the environment,” added Mr Ito, now a lobbyist opposing nuclear energy. He carries a hand-held meter to record the radiation he is exposed to daily, at his own expense.
Readings in Iitate now can range between 1.1 and 1.9 microsieverts per hour, according to government monitoring posts, which is more than 10 times those in places such as Tokyo, 250km south, where readings are around the globally accepted norm of 0.1 microsieverts per hour. This translates to a benchmark for safe radiation absorption of 1 millisievert (1,000 microsieverts) per year, although the International Atomic Energy Agency and others say anything up to 20 millisieverts per year poses no immediate danger to human health.
Mr Ito spends most of his time in the village but once a month drives three hours to Niigata prefecture on the west coast where some of his grandchildren live.
But many others from Iitate have had to evacuate to cramped temporary housing – smaller than a one-room flat in Singapore.
It is a bitter pill to swallow, said Mr Ito. “For older people like me, a slight exposure to radiation is all right, compared to the stress of living in temporary housing,” he said.
On the wall in his office is a 2011 calendar, which he has not taken down because “the female model is cute”. But it is a sombre reminder of the lives that were lost or upended at 2.46pm local time on March 11 when a 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggered a 10m wall of water that ravaged the northeastern coast of Japan and caused meltdowns in three reactors at the Fukushima plant. It was the world’s worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
Some 16,000 people died, most by drowning, 2,500 are still missing, and another 100,000 evacuees have not returned home. About 60 per cent of them still live within Fukushima prefecture. After the disaster, residents within a 20km radius of the No. 1 nuclear plant were evacuated, and some areas 30km away such as Iitate were cleared because of high radiation levels.
The health consequences of the leaking radiation are still unclear but more than 300,000 people aged below 18 have been screened for thyroid cancer. About 150 have tested positive, although some attribute this to more rigorous testing rather than the direct impact of radiation.
Last October, Japan confirmed the first case of radiation-linked cancer for a former Fukushima nuclear plant worker. Among evacuees, factors like stress, poor diet and a lack of exercise have also taken a toll.
Japan is halfway through a 10-year reconstruction master plan. Some 26.3 trillion yen (S$319 billion) has been budgeted since 2011 and another 6.5 trillion yen was approved this month to speed up the construction of public housing for evacuees, and for other projects such as medical care and infrastructure.
Decontamination process
Japan Ministry of Environment official Hitoshi Aoki said the government expects to lift evacuation orders by March next year in all but three areas – Namie, Futaba and Ookuma – where decontamination efforts have been suspended because of high air dose radiation. It has not yet been decided when these areas, which are closer to the plant, will be cleaned up.
The cleanup process involves removing topsoil, since cesium – a radioactive byproduct of the Fukushima meltdown – falls to the ground when it rains or snows, said Mr Aoki.
The disaster forced all of Japan’s dozens of reactors offline in the face of public worries over safety but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said this month that Japan “cannot do without nuclear power”.
This has split public opinion and most of the country’s reactors remain shut down.
Population drain
Iitate village is expected to be one of the areas to reopen next March.
But contamination, and a general mistrust of the Government for not being upfront or transparent about the extent of the nuclear disaster in the immediate aftermath, are among reasons former Iitate residents like Mr Hideji Suzuki, 78, are reluctant to return home.
Once a farmer, he now lives with his wife in temporary housing quarters an hour by car from their old house.
“We can’t go back to Iitate anymore, even if we want to,” he said.
Residents like him will not be able to return to their former lifestyles and jobs in the mountains – which cannot be decontaminated easily – even if they moved back.
The disaster has accelerated a demographic shift away from affected cities within Fukushima prefecture.
Minamisoma city, 30km north of the plant where lower radiation levels have allowed evacuated residents to return, has seen “rapid aging”, said city official Mr Tokio Hayama. Offices have reopened but the working population – over the age of 15 and below 65 – has yet to recover.
“We need to dispel the fear of radiation, which has become a major factor that prevents their return,” said Mr Hayama.
The disaster has also split families, like Mr Yasuhiro Abe’s. The 52-year-old moved his wife and 14-year-old daughter to Kyoto, concerned about their health in the wake of the nuclear fallout.
But he stayed behind in Fukushima City – 90km from the power plant and unaffected by the exclusion order – to continue running a movie theatre he has worked at for almost 30 years.
“As far as possible, we want to raise our child in a place with lower radiation levels,” he said. “When she comes of age, she can choose whether to come back.”
Former residents have been slow to return to the seaside town of Naraha also, which was the first within the exclusion zone to have the evacuation order lifted in September last year. Many families have already rebuilt their lives elsewhere and in the six months since, only 976 of the town’s 7,700 original inhabitants have come home – mostly the elderly.
Former residents like Ms Shinoda Tomoko, 78, have chosen to move out – and move on with their lives. She now lives 60km south of the Fukushima plant in Iwaki city with her children and grandchildren who have new jobs and are attending new schools.
But retiree Tomiko Igari, 69, intends to buck the trend. On one of her regular trips back to Naraha, she said she will return in October this year, after the lease on the flat where she now lives runs out.
Her home is just across the road from a vast field that is still full of black bags with contaminated soil.
“My only hope is that when I come home, all of that will be gone,” she said. “It’s really an ugly reminder of the accident.”
http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/fukushima-special-report-when-is-it-safe-to-go-home
Fukushima evacuee Yasuhiro Abe hopes to share same roof as wife and daughter
FUKUSHIMA, JAPAN – For Mr Yasuhiro Abe, 52, seeing his wife and daughter means an eight- to nine-hour drive south from Fukushima to Kyoto.
The mother and daughter have been living as evacuees for the past five years, since a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear disaster in their hometown in Fukushima prefecture.
But unlike many others who were issued evacuation orders, they decided to uproot voluntarily because they are worried that harmful radioactive material could spread west with rain or snow.
His daughter was nine when the meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant happened, Mr Abe
The family first moved to the neighbouring prefecture of Yamagata before heading further away and finally settling down in the ancient city of Kyoto.
His wife and daughter now rent a home in Kyoto while Mr Abe has returned to his job as the general manager of a theatre where he has worked for almost 30 years. Now, he visits them twice every three months.
“Fukushima city and Koriyama city – inland areas within the prefecture – were never made evacuation zones despite heightened radiation levels right after the disaster,” said Mr Abe, who thinks that a factor could have been the higher population density in cities, compared to coastal towns.
He is skeptical that the heightened levels were still deemed safe.
“As far as possible, we want to raise our child in a place with lower radiation levels,” he said. “When she comes of age, she can choose whether or not to come back.” “As for myself, I’ll always be here.”
Five years on, he finds himself at a crossroads.
“In March next year (2017), the Government will be stopping housing assistance for voluntary evacuees and if we want to continue living elsewhere, it will cost more money,” he said.
While the cost of living will become an issue, he is more concerned about ensuring that his daughter completes high school without disruption. She will begin high school, likely in Kyoto, next year.
“Parents like ourselves have to consider the impact on our children’s lives before deciding if we should relocate,” said Mr Abe.
“Of course, a part of me wants them to come back – for us to live together again.”
Land acquisition for Fukushima dump site may reach 70% by 2020: ministry
FUKUSHIMA – The Environment Ministry will likely be able to acquire about 40 to 70 percent of the site it plans to use as an interim storage facility for radioactive soil and other waste from the Fukushima nuclear disaster by fiscal 2020.
The estimate is part of a five-year road map for building the facility that was presented Sunday to a council in the city of Fukushima representing the prefecture and local municipalities.
The 1,600-hectare (3,953-acre) site straddles the towns of Okuma and Futaba, home to Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s heavily damaged Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, where a triple meltdown was triggered by tsunami spawned by the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.
If 640 to 1,150 hectares are acquired, 5 million to 12.5 million cu. meters of radiation-tainted waste can be stored there. By fiscal 2020, the ministry aims to finish transporting radioactive soil now being stored at schools or residential areas.
Environment Minister Tamayo Marukawa told reporters after the meeting that the ministry’s calculations are based on a realistic approach, adding it will continue lobbying local landowners to support the project.
To complete the project, the ministry will have to negotiate with 2,365 landowners whose property is on the targeted 1,600-hectare site. As of Friday, the ministry had visited about 1,240 of them and acquired a mere 22 hectares from 82 of them.
The negotiations are taking longer than expected due to the need to calculate official compensation. The planned facility is slated to store up to 22 million cu. meters of radioactive waste for decades.
By the end of the month, about 50,000 cu. meters of waste are expected to be transported to a provisional storage facility set up at the site.
In fiscal 2016 starting April 1, the ministry plans to transfer about 150,000 cu. meters to the site and increase the amount in stages, depending on progress with the land acquisition process.
How long shall we accept Japan to pollute our skies with incineration of radioactive materials?
I regret that so much energy, so much money was wasted into the making of this « beautiful » documentary, produced by NHK for the 5th year Anniversary, to spin and to twist the truth so as to make it more acceptable to the eyes of the victims themselves and to the eyes of the world, to brainwash world opinion about the present ongoing situation at Fukushima Daiichi and in Fukushima prefecture.
Of course it is fully expected as it is coming from NHK, which is to Japan what the Pravda newspapers was to the Soviet era, the Japanese central government nationwide propaganda organ.
Using foreigners to give more credibility to their delivered spiel is quite slick, those foreigners shills remind me a lot of some of the French collaborators working for the German Gestapo during the the German Occupation of France in exchange of material benefits, those will not be the first nor the last.
Beside the whole positive reconstruction spin, there is only one point that will should remember and take seriously : the whole reconstruction-decontamination program of the Japanese government is entirely based on incineration.
They tell us that their incineration technology will keep contained 99,9% of the radionuclides , that none will end up into our skies.
Why should we trust them, during the last 5 years they haven’t be very trustworthy nor straightforward to say the least.
How long are we gonna accept, tolerate Japan, to pollute our skies, our commonly owned and shared living environment, with their radioactive mess ?
Fukushima Prefecture has become a familiar name worldwide as a result of the nuclear accidents in 2011. Ever since then, the world has been concerned about what’s happening regarding radioactive contamination in the prefecture. To answer that question, the program will squarely face what’s been going on in Fukushima since the accidents.
French documentary filmmaker Keiko Courdy, who has been covering Fukushima since the nuclear accidents, will appear as a guest, along with experts on radiation, and the situation in Fukushima today will be explained in an easy-to-understand manner.
Various people who have appeared on TOMORROW will also take part. The program considers the future of Fukushima by featuring those who continue striving to overcome many hardships. They include villagers who have been carrying out decontamination work in the evacuation zones, hoping to return to their homes, and young people who are showing remarkable progress in re-energizing Fukushima’s farming with their new ideas.
Available until April 11, 2016
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/vod/tomorrow/20160326.html
India’s push for solar power to bring over a million jobs
India Solar Power Push May Produce Over 1 Million Jobs http://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/23/india-solar-power-push-may-produce-over-1-million-jobs/ March 23rd, 2016 by Smiti Mittal Originally published on Sustainnovate. India’s massive solar power capacity addition target is expected to be a revolution in the Indian jobs market as well.
According to a report by the Natural Resources and Defense Council (NRDC), India may end up creating over a million new jobs in its endeavour to have 100 GW of operational solar power capacity by March 2022.
The report suggests that a massive army of engineers, construction, and maintenance workers shall be required set up the scores of solar power capacity planned by the central and state governments.
Around 210,800 site engineers and designers would be required to set the large-scale as well as rooftop solar power systems rolling. Around 624,600 semi-skilled workers would be needed for the construction and on-field execution of the projects. To monitor ongoing operations at the power plants and their maintenance, another 182,400 semi-skilled workers would be needed. Thus, a total of 1,017,800 jobs are expected be created if India indeed manages to set up a cumulative operational capacity of 100 GW by 2022.
Jobs creation and empowering youth is one of the major policies of the current government. The ‘Skill India’ program launched by the Indian government aims to provide employment to youth by providing them industrial training in the solar power sector. Several agencies across the country have already started such training programs.
Some state governments have also announced financial support to unemployed youth to set up rooftop solar power systems to help them generate a source of income.
Big Tokyo protest against Japanese govt’s nuclear plans
Over 30K people protest Japanese PM’s plan to restart nuclear reactors (VIDEO) Rt.com : 26 Mar, 2016 Over 30,000 people turned up for demonstrations in Tokyo to protest a plan being promoted by Japan’s prime minister to restart a number of nuclear power plants. On March 11, Japan marked the five-year anniversary of the devastating Fukushima disaster.
Ruptly footage captured people waving flags, carrying banners, and holding up placards while marching through popular Yoyogi Park on Friday. The activists say that restarting the nuclear reactors will create safety risks. Some banners read “To the Absence of a Nuclear Power Plant Future,” local media reported……..https://www.rt.com/news/337325-anti-nuclear-rally-tokyo/
USA minimising effect of Fukushima nuclear radiation: Clinton’s secret food pact.
Radiating Americans: Fukushima rain, Clinton’s secret food pact, Examiner, Deborah Dupre
Human Rights Examiner , 27 Mar 16, Government agreed to downplay Fukushima radiation Fukushima is far from stabilized according to energy advisor veteran with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, Arnie Gundersen who told Solar IMG Saturday that Americans, not just in the northwest, are unaware of being rained on with Fukushima nuclear hot particles and eating Fukushima contaminated food because the US government has deliberately minimized the catastrophe, partially due to a pact Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed with Japan. Gundersen, with a team of other scientists, intends to prove government statements about Fukushima are false.
“The United States came up with a decision to downplay Fukushima,” said Gundersen who is awakening the public with information such as hot particles in rain will continue falling in the U.S., not just in the Pacific Northwest, for another year, and mentioning high-level fallout in Oklahoma a few days ago.
Gundersen told SolarIMG that high-level people he knows in the State Department said Hillary Clinton signed a pact with her counterpart in Japan agreeing for the United States to continue buying food from Japan, despite that food not being properly tested for radioactive materials.
“So we are not sampling the food coming into the United States,” he said, repeating, “The US government has come up with a decision at the highest levels of the State Department, as well as other departments who made a decision to downplay Fukushima.”
In April, the month after the powerful tsunami and earthquake crippled Japan including its nuclear power plant, “Hillary Clinton signed a pact with Japan that she agreed there is no problem with Japanese food supply and we will continue to buy them so we are not sampling food coming in from Japan” according to Gundersen.
Due to this high degree of secrecy enshrouding the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, that Gundersen said is ongoing, he has called on Americans with Geiger counters to send samples to him for an independent research team’s study.
Gundersen says the new study will prove that what the U.S. government is telling Americans is false………
One reason millions will die from Fkushima is what some experts in July called scandalous collusion to cover-up the horrendous facts about the nuclear holocaust occurring.
Fukushima stabilized? Many children to suffer thyroid cancer in three to five years
“The reactors are better than since the accident,” said Gundersen, but “they all have holes on them, so they are not holding water.” “Until a couple of weeks ago, they had to constantly add water. Now there’s a system in place that’s cleaning the water enough that they can pump it back into the reactor.”
Gundersen stated that the reactors are still creating “an enormous amount of waste” and that “the filters are hotter than a pistol.” “I still believe water is leaking into the ocean and I know water’s leaking into the ground table,” he said.
Gundersen said it is a concern that there are indications that there is still iodine on site plus, ‘enormous amounts of iodine have been in the water.” “There’s an awful lot of kids that are going to have thyroid problems in the next three to five years as the result of this.”
Kicking the nuclear can, Worst to come: Unit 4, Contaminated food and water, Children and cancer……….http://www.examiner.com/article/radiating-americans-fukushima-rain-clinton-s-secret-food-pact
Japanese journalists under pressure from government
Japanese journalists allege government pressure on media http://bigstory.ap.org/urn:publicid:ap.org:8b04d4cd11ec4f289c57a7c88c02e1ca By MARI YAMAGUCHI Mar. 24, 2016 TOKYO (AP) — Five Japanese journalists accused Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government on Thursday of pressuring broadcasters to reduce criticism of its policies, but also lamented what they called a failure by media to live up to their convictions.
They spoke at a news conference after Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Sanae Takaichi warned broadcasters last month that their licenses could be revoked if they failed to be impartial in political coverage. Continue reading
New battery technology developed by Chinese researchers
Chinese researchers develop new battery technology, EurekAlert, 25 Mar 16CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTER A Chinese research team from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a novel, environmentally friendly low-cost battery that overcomes many of the problems of lithium ion batteries (LIB). The new aluminum-graphite dual-ion battery (AGDIB) offers significantly reduced weight, volume, and fabrication cost, as well as higher energy density, in comparison with conventional LIBs. AGDIB’s electrode materials are composed of environmentally friendly low cost aluminum and graphite only, while its electrolyte is composed of conventional lithium salt and carbonate solvent.
The research, published in “A Novel Aluminum-Graphite Dual-Ion Battery,” recently appeared in Advanced Energy Materials (IF=16.146).
The discovery is particularly important given rising battery demand and existing LIB technology, which is reaching its limit in specific energy (by weight) and energy density (by volume).
LIBs are widely used in portable electronic devices, electric vehicles and renewable energy systems. Battery disposal creates major environmental problems, since most batteries contain toxic metals in their electrodes. According to the Freedonia Group, world battery demand is expected to rise 7.7% annually, reaching US$120 billion in 2019………http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-03/caos-crd032416.php
Video from North Korea depicts Nuclear Strike on Washington
North Korean Propaganda Video Depicts Nuclear Strike on Washington, NYT By CHOE SANG- HUNMARCH 26, 2016 SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea released a propaganda video on Saturday that depicts a nuclear strike on Washington, along with a warning to “American imperialists” not to provoke the North.
The four-minute video clip, titled “Last Chance,” uses computer animation to show what looks like an intercontinental ballistic missile flying through the earth’s atmosphere before slamming into Washington, near what appears to be the Lincoln Memorial. A nuclear explosion follows.
“If the American imperialists provoke us a bit, we will not hesitate to slap them with a pre-emptive nuclear strike,” read the Korean subtitles in the video, which was uploaded to the YouTube channel of D.P.R.K. Today, a North Korean website. “The United States must choose! It’s up to you whether the nation called the United States exists on this planet or not.”
Such remarks are in line with recent threats and assertions from North Korea about its nuclear and missile capabilities………http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/world/asia/north-korea-propaganda-video-nuclear-strike.html?_r=0
Protesters slam ‘radiation-exposed’ Japanese sake festival
Civic groups protest in front of the Japanese Embassy in Jongno-gu, Seoul, demanding to stop the Seoul Sake Festival 2016 that may bring sakes contaminated with radiation from the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster five years ago.
By Ko Dong-hwan
Civic groups protested against a Japanese sake festival in Seoul on Friday, in a bid to prevent visitors from tasting possibly dangerous alcohol produced in areas near the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster five years ago.
Eleven civic groups held a press conference in front of the Japanese Embassy in Jongno-gu, demanding that Japan stop the Seoul Sake Festival 2016.
“Seven of the participating Japanese breweries made their liquor in areas near Fukushima, where our government has warned of possible danger from radiation,” a protester said. “The breweries must have made their liquor using water and rice from the areas. Such liquors will jeopardize our health.”
Three breweries in Miyagi Prefecture, as well as from Iwate Prefecture, Ibaraki Prefecture, Gunma Prefecture and Tochigi Prefecture participated in the festival. The Korean government stopped importing seafood from those areas in September 2013 to prevent possible radioactive contamination.
One hundred Japanese breweries introduced about 400 sakes at COEX, eastern Seoul, from Saturday to Sunday.
In March 2011, Fukushima 1 Nuclear Power Plant was hit by an earthquake-triggered tsunami. The impact caused a meltdown and release of radioactive material.
The Japanese embassy, according to Hankook Ilbo, said, “The festival organizers didn’t check whether the participating breweries were from areas that possibly were compromised by radioactive contamination, but all the food and liquor in the festival were tested in Japan and Korea.”
One hundred Japanese breweries introduced about 400 sakes at COEX, eastern Seoul, from Saturday to Sunday.
http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/phone/news/view.jsp?req_newsidx=201227
Interim storage schedule set for contaminated soil
The Environment Ministry has compiled its first project schedule for the interim storage of soil and other matter contaminated by the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, sources said.
The ministry estimates that by fiscal 2020, it will have acquired between 640 and 1,150 hectares of land, which could store 5 million to 12.5 million cubic meters of contaminated soil.
This is the first concrete schedule the government has created. It is expected to be presented to local government officials at a Sunday meeting in Fukushima Prefecture
.
If things go as planned, the government would acquire 40 percent to 70 percent of the land expected to be needed, which could store from 20 percent to slightly over 50 percent of the contaminated soil. However, it is unclear whether things will proceed as planned.
There is currently estimated to be about 10 million cubic meters of contaminated soil in Fukushima Prefecture, which could eventually rise to 22 million cubic meters.
The national government wants to purchase about 1,600 hectares straddling the municipalities of Okuma and Futaba in the prefecture as an interim storage facility.
However, as of the end of February only 18.5 hectares, or about 1 percent of the land, had been acquired.
Still, about 960 of the 2,365 landowners have given approval for the government to conduct surveys to estimate compensation. A ministry official said, “The pace of purchases is expected to pick up.”
If between 100 and 460 hectares are acquired every year starting in fiscal 2016, the ministry’s estimate of 640 to 1,150 hectares would be reached by the end of fiscal 2020.
As land is acquired, more contaminated soil can be brought to the interim storage facility.
The ministry estimates that if 2 million to 6 million cubic meters are brought to the facility in fiscal 2020, that would bring the total amount to 5 million to 12.5 million cubic meters by the end of that fiscal year,
http://www.the-japan-news.com/news/article/0002835558
These Fukushima residents are determined to reclaim their land from nuclear radiation
By G. Sundarrajan
Two years ago, when I visited Fukushima as part of a Greenpeace team, what deeply impressed me about the local residents was their resilience. They were ordinary citizens of a town devastated by a nuclear disaster, yet the bond they shared with their soil ran so deeply that they kept hoping to go back to Fukushima.
It was at once their dream and their challenge. They couldn’t stop talking about how good and simple life was back in Fukushima till the disaster struck. I was amazed by the fact that they wanted to go back to their homes though they knew the town would not be as they had left it.
It was from such a deep bond, from that sense of love, that the will to fight against nuclear energy emerged. “We are the lessons you need to learn” most of them told me.
It was the same kind of love, and bond, that I found in them when three survivors of Fukushima visited Chennai on March 23. Running around with them in Chennai I realized they still carry their love for their land and have now found ways to reconnect. Even if it means doing what is prohibited and what could endanger their lives.
For 62-year-old Masami Yoshizawa, it is about rearing 300-odd cows that are under a government kill order. As the manager of Ranch of Hope, Yoshizawa decided to defy government orders and rear the cattle so they ‘would be a living testimony to what Fukushima had undergone.’ The kill order was issued because after the radioactive contamination, the livestock was not a commercial success.
But rearing them in a no-entry zone, Yoshizawa feels the sight and sound of the cattle offers a ray of hope to an otherwise devastated land. “The government wants to kill them because it wants to erase what happened here, and lure Japan back to its pre-accident nuclear status quo. I am not going to let them,” he says.
The farm was started by his father four decades ago and Yoshizawa wouldn’t give it up easily – something that is in the residents of Fukushima. “I live 14 kms away from where the accident took place. There were four explosions on four days. I could have left like many of my neighbours. At least 80 people committed suicide in my town because they didn’t want to leave Fukushima. But I have decided to be a living lesson for the rest of my life” he says.
It is exactly the same emotion that guided 28-year-old Mizuho Sugeno to come back to Fukushima and resume her organic farming. Sugeno had just completed her studies and was practicing organic farming for about a year when the disaster struck.
“I lived 47 kms away from the power plant and evacuated for about a week. I came back and founded Seeds of hope. What else could I do?” she asks.
Besides distributing Sugeno’s organic produce, Seeds of Hope demonstrates successful methods to prevent crops from absorbing radiation. “Farms were abandoned and people were left behind. I was advised not to go back to Fukushima but I didn’t just come back. I began planting seeds. I felt the power of the soil could be restored by planting seeds.”
But deep down Sugeno had her own misgivings. She was not sure if it would really be possible to continue with agriculture.
“I spent a lot of time on it and finally found out that there was scientific proof (as well as measures and methods to take) about no soil-to-plant transfer of radio cesium in soil that has been cultivated organically over a long period of time. I was able to reduce the radiation level detected in crops down to a reading that falls below the minimum capability of the sensor,” Sugeno says.
She began to get certain results and ship crops with no radioactive contamination.
“This was our land and it was from here that we had reared cattle and cultivated fruits for several years. Now we are doing it as a form of protest. Our strawberry rice cake – a delicacy you will find only in Fukushima – has become a symbol of protest. Even now we are looked at with disbelief outside Fukushima. But again, like they say, we shall overcome”
Sugeno gets a complete body check-up once every six months, “just to be on the safer side”. For the moment, it is important that she is in good health to make Fukushima heard everywhere. “After all, we are the lessons you still need to learn,” she says again, with that wry smile.
G. Sundarrajan is an environmental and anti-nuclear activist and is a volunteer with Poovulagin Nanbargal.
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
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