Scandalous nuclear worker conditions in nuclear Japan
The Nuclear Mafia Derails Democracy in Japan Dissident Voice, by Richard Wilcox / August 31st, 2012 “…..Nuclear Situation Prime Minister Noda recently rejected protester’s requests to shut down the nuclear reactors. As the Metropolitan Coalition Against Nukes told Noda in a face to face meeting, “[w]e the people do not believe you” regarding his empty promises to phase out nukes in the future. The Nuclear Mafia are restarting reactors even though they are unnecessary for electricity production. An overwhelming majority of people want to abolish nuclear power. Having contaminated the world with quadrillions of becquerels of radiation (petabecquerels), Tepco is under a pseudo nationalization process that funnels tax money into their pockets yet maintains their autonomy.
Worker Shortage A common practice among workers in nuclear plants is to hide their real exposure rate of radiation. Because there are legal limits of radiation exposure, workers will take off their dosimeters, or cover them with lead. In normal times in Japan workers could also migrate from one plant to the other without indicating previous work experience, and work “under the table.” How long it takes to get sick and or die from such a practice is anyone’s guess. Continue reading
Fukushima Prefecture’s forests contaminated with radioactivity
Fukushima to expand forest areas for radiation decontamination, The Mainichi 30 Aug 12 The Ministry of the Environment accepted a request on Aug. 29 from Fukushima Prefecture to expand forest areas for radiation decontamination from the nuclear plant disaster, ministry officialssaid.
Currently, forest decontamination is limited to areas around 20 meters from where people live, and places where people gather, like camping sites or mushroom-raising facilities. Fukushima Prefecture, which is hit hard by the nuclear disaster and has 70 percent of its area covered by forests, requested an expansion of decontamination
areas…..
. Fukushima Prefecture Vice Gov. Masao Uchibori, who submitted a request to the Ministry of the Environment to push forward with forest decontamination, says, “Even if we decontaminate an area, after a week, two weeks, or a month, the radiation levels return. We think it is because of radioactive material coming from the mountains.”
The national government will study factors including radioactive material movement and buildup in forests, the leaking and spreading of radioactive material from forests to other areas, and the effects on radiation levels from tree-thinning. The Fukushima Prefectural Government, meanwhile, will this fall examine the decontamination effects of tree-thinning over a 10-hectare area. http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20120830p2a00m0na003000c.html
Notorious A Q Khan to enter Pakistan politics
Pakistani scientist accused of leaking nuclear secrets starts political movement MUNIR AHMED ISLAMABAD, Globe and Mail, Pakistan — The Associated Press , Aug. 29 2012 The man who made Pakistan into a nuclear power and later admitted to leaking atomic secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya is going into politics, aiming to shake up the country ahead of national elections. Continue reading
Report from Japan’s nuclear inquiry panel avoids policy recommendations
Panel avoids tough nuclear power questions / Report refrains from policy suggestions; some members say they needed more time for discussions Daily Yomuiri, Ryosuke Yamauchi and Hironori Kanashima / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers, 30 Aug 12,
A summary report by a government panel of experts that analyzed recent public polls on future nuclear power dependency refrained from making concrete suggestions on a future energy policy, but said most people want to move away from nuclear power. Continue reading
Facing up to the reality of Fukushima radiation, and its effect on children
The Nuclear Sacrifice of Our Children: 14 recommendations to help radiationcontaminated Japan http://akiomatsumura.com/2012/08/the-nuclear-sacrifice-of-our-children-14-recommendations-to-help-radiation-contaminated-japan.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-nuclear-sacrifice-of-our-children-14-recommendations-to-help-radiation-contaminated-japan By Helen Caldicott, M.D. 24 Aug 12
When I visited Cuba in 1979, I was struck by the number of roadside billboards that declared ”Our children are our national treasure.” (Dr. Helen Caldicott is a pediatrician specializing in cystic fibrosis and the founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, part of a larger umbrella group that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.)
This resonated with me as a pediatrician, and of course it is true. But as Akio Matsumura said in his article, our children are presently being sacrificed for the political and nuclear agenda of the United Nations, for the political survival of politicians who are mostly male, and for “national security.” The problem with the world today is that scientists have left the average person way behind in their level of understanding of science, and specifically how the misapplication of science, in particular nuclear science, has and will destroy much of the ecosphere and also human health.
The truth is that most politicians, businessmen, engineers and nuclear physicists have no innate understanding of radiobiology and the way radiation induces cancer, congenital malformations and genetic diseases which are passed generation to generation. Nor do they recognize that children are 20 times more radiosensitive than adults, girls twice as vulnerable as little boys and fetuses much more so.
Hence the response of Japanese politicians to the Fukushima disaster has been ludicrously irresponsible, not just because of their fundamental ignorance but because of their political ties with TEPCO and the nuclear industry which tends to orchestrate a large part of the Japanese political agenda.
Because the Fukushima accident released 2.5 to 3 times more radiation than Chernobyl and because Japan is far more densely populated than the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, and because one million people have died within 25 years as a result of Chernobyl, we expect to see more than one million Japanese casualties over the next 25 years. But the incubation time for cancer after radiation exposure varies from 2 to 90 years in this generation. These facts also apply to all future generations in Japan that will be exposed to a radioactive environment and radioactive food.
It seems that the people in charge in Japan are busily ignoring or covering up these ghastly medical predictions and deciding in their ignorance that people can return to live highly contaminated areas or else remain living there. Even areas of Tokyo are recording dangerous radioactive isotopes that originated in Fukushima in house-dust, in plants, and in street soil. Continue reading
Minister Manmohan Singh urged to cancel Jaitapur nuclear project
A new breed of anti nuclear protestors in Japan
Anti-nuclear protests signal new activism in Japan Knox News, MARI YAMAGUCHI – Associated Press August 26, 2012 TOKYO (AP) — This is Japan’s summer of discontent. Tens of thousands of protesters — the largest demonstrations the country has seen in decades — descend on Tokyo every Friday evening to shout anti-nuclear slogans at the prime minister’s office. Many have never protested publicly before.
The government’s much-criticized handling of the Fukushima nuclear crisis has spawned a new breed of protesters in Japan. Drawn from the ranks of ordinary citizens rather than
activists, they are a manifestation of a broader dissatisfaction with government and could create pressure for change in a political system that has long resisted it.
What started as relatively small protests in April has swollen rapidly since the government decided to restart two of Japan’s nuclear reactors in June, despite lingering safety fears after the meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant triggered by the March 2011 earthquake
and tsunami. Continue reading
42% of Japan’s lawmakers want nuclear power ended by 2030
ASAHI SURVEY: 42% of Diet members want end to nuclear power August 26, 2012 THE ASAHI SHIMBUN Forty-two percent of Diet members favor a government proposal for abandoning nuclear energy by 2030, showing growing support for a drastic policy shift following last year’s nuclear disaster, an Asahi Shimbun survey found. Continue reading
Many students avoided pools over radiation fears FUKUSHIMA
Asia One The Yomiuri Shimbun/Asia News Network 26 Aug 12, – About 1 in 20 primary and middle school students in the city of Fukushima refused to swim in outdoor pools during physical education classes this summer due to radiation fears, according to a municipal board of education survey.
Public primary and middle schools in the city resumed swimming classes at outdoor pools this summer. The classes were cancelled last summer after the outbreak of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant…. http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Edvantage/Story/A1Story20120826-367626.html
Radioactive sewerage accumulation in Japan
Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog, Asahi Shimbun, By NOBUTARO KAJI/ Japan May 22 2012 http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201205220055 Incinerating radioactive sewage sludge could contaminate environment Continue reading
Prominent Japanese spearhead a Bill to abolish nuclear power
Oe, Sakamoto lead charge for no-reactor bill http://www.japantimes.co.jp text/nn20120824a5.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+japantimes+(The+Japan+Times:+All+Stories) Kyodo
A group led by Nobel literature laureate Kenzaburo Oe, Academy Award-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and other noted celebrities has launched a nationwide network seeking passage of a bill to abolish all nuclear power plants in Japan.
“We must bring an end to nuclear power plants if humankind is to continue living in the next century,” Oe said during a news conference Wednesday in Tokyo. “By speaking out
loud, we can have the bill passed.”
Group members said they want to see the bill that they have compiled
passed as soon as possible before 2025. Oe and Sakamoto have been leading rallies against nuclear power, with the most recent protest on July 16 drawing what organizers said was an estimated 170,000 people to Yoyogi Park.
Other members of the group include Kenji Utsunomiya, former president of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, and Tatsuya Murakami, the mayor of Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, where the country’s first nuclear reactor was set up in 1957.
In its bill, the group calls nuclear power an extremely fragile system in terms of security, noting the devastating damage that accidents can cause and that no safe method of disposing of nuclear waste has been established.
The group aims to prohibit construction of new nuclear plants and expansion of existing ones, and to abolish all nuclear plants between 2020 and 2025. It also seeks a ban on operation of reactors that are more than 40 years old, as well as a halt to the reprocessing of spent fuel.
Conservatives and right wingers now part of Japan’s anti nuclear movement
“Some in the very right wing of conservative thinkers have become anti-nuclear after 3/11,”.. ”The Friday protests also have some right-wingers. It’s not just lefties,”
“Morality and economic growth are possible without nuclear power,” he concludes.
Nationatalist Japan manga author joins anti-nuclear fight Asahi Shimbun, 25 Aug 12, Japan’s anti-nuclear movement has a new supporter: bestselling nationalist “manga” author Yoshinori Kobayashi, known for his controversial defense of Tokyo’s wartime aggression, has joined the growing ranks of those who want the country to end its reliance on atomic power in the wake of the Fukushima crisis.
The attack from an unexpected quarter comes as Japan tries to decide the role nuclear energy should play in a new national energy portfolio amid growing pressure from voters worried about safety after last year’s Fukushima atomic disaster, the world’s worst in a quarter of a century. Continue reading
Teacher: “I’m lying to a room full of students” — Fukushima City should be evacuated
http://enenews.com/teacher-im-lying-to-a-room-full-of-students-fukushima-city-should-be-evacuated August 24th, 2012 By ENENews Title: Visiting the end of the world
Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Author: Senator Scott Ludlam, Australian Greens Senator for Western Australia
Date: Aug 24, 2012
[…]
Flash forward to August 2012, with 150,000 people evacuated from places like Iitate. The mood in the region is dark. A young high school teacher downloads the unvarnished truth in a loungeroom in Fukushima City the night before our trip down to the coast.
“I’m lying to a room full of students,” he tells me, daring me to break eye contact. Like many thousands of others, his wife and children now live in temporary accommodation well outside the contaminated area, but Japan has no social security net to speak of and people can’t just walk away from jobs.
Now he is grappling with a hateful dilemma, addressing a room full of students in a city he believes is no longer safe for children. Fukushima City, population 290,000. Kōriyama City, population 336,000. Both of them hit by the plume that carried fission products from the broken reactors to the north-west before the wind swung briefly towards Tokyo. I hesitate, then ask, should this city be evacuated? He pauses a long time before answering, and finally drops his gaze. Yes.
[…]
With a slightly different fall of the dice, the Fukushima meltdowns would have cost the people of Japan their country. Another cruel accident of plate tectonics and it still could.
There is no place on this archipelago for nuclear power, and tens of millions of Japanese now understand this. Everything has changed.
The Koodankulam nuclear plant a national issue in India
Koodankulam agitation is national issue http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2012/08/24/koodankulam-agitation-is-national-issue/ India Punchline By M K Bhadrakumar – August 24, 2012 While the attention of the political class is trained on the ‘Coalgate’ scam, it has been left to a Western news agency to highlight that the Comptroller and Auditor General issued yet another report Wednesday criticising the functioning of India’s Atomic Energy Regulatory Board [AERB] for being an appendage of the government without a mind of its own or a mandate or independent authority and, dismally enough, lacking in a radiation safety policy as such.
The agitation that mushroomed in faraway Koodankulam has reached the Indian capital and the involvement of high-profile activists such as Aruna Roy all but ensures that this issue is not going to go away. The government won’t have the option now to resuscitate the old allegation that the Koodankulam agitators are ‘foreign agents’. The national mood is becoming increasingly receptive to the cause of the agitators. Lest it is forgotten, Roy is a member of the National Advisory Council and an experienced social activist who is able to gauge the national mood.Beyond evacuation zone, high levels of radiation in Fukushima residents
Fukushima Residents With Exposures As High As Chernobyl Areas http://www.simplyinfo.org/?p=7187August 24th, 2012 Two couples from outside the evacuation zones have shown with some of the highest internal radiation exposure to date in Japan. One couple lives in Nihonmatsu, the other in Kawamata-machi.
Kawamata-machi
man 19,507 becquerels
his wife 7,724 becquerels
Nihonmatsu City
man 11,191 becquerels
his wife 6,771 becquerels
Dr. Tsubokura, one of the doctors conducting the exposure scans on residents said these levels are similar to internal exposure seen in Belarus.
The couples have been eating home grown mushrooms, bamboo shoots and local persimmons. The mushrooms were grown on logs from Namie, a highly contaminated area in the evacuation zone. It was not clear if they logs were gathered before the nuclear disaster or not. EX-SKF mentions they may not have understood the risks in doing this. Most of the elderly rely on TV and print newspapers for information, both sources have downplayed the risks in the region.
There may be more instances of high radiation in elderly residents. Many have been reluctant to leave or felt their age would spare them from the long term effects of radiation exposure. It is giving researchers a contrasting group of exposures that hint what could have happened to more residents had food restrictions not been implemented.
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