Japanese protest against restart of nuclear reactors
Japanese protest over planned restart of nuclear reactors Reuters TOKYO Jun 1, 2012 – Hundreds of Japanese anti-nuclear protesters gathered outside the prime minister’s office on Friday, beating drums and chanting slogans against the planned restart of reactors a year after the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.
“We oppose restarts,” the crowd of about 1,000, which stretched for around 200 meters down the block, shouted in the peaceful demonstration. Public mistrust of nuclear power has grown since the earthquake and tsunami on March 11 last year triggered the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl….. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/01/us-japan-nuclear-protest-idUSBRE8500OE20120601
Japan – 37 tons of deadly plutonium, and planning to produce more
Other countries, including the United States, have scaled back the separation of plutonium because it is a proliferation concern and is more expensive than other alternatives, including long-term storage of spent fuel.
Fuel reprocessing remains unreliable and it is questionable whether it is a viable way of reducing Japan’s massive amounts of spent fuel rods
Japan’s plutonium stockpile — most of which is stored in France and Britain — has swelled despite Tokyo’s promise to international regulators not to produce a plutonium surplus.
Japan to make more plutonium despite big stockpile, Fox News June 01, 2012 Associated Press TOKYO – Last year’s tsunami disaster in Japan clouded the nation’s nuclear future, idled its reactors and rendered its huge stockpile of plutonium useless for now. So, the industry’s plan to produce even more has raised a red flag.
Nuclear industry officials say they hope to start producing a half-ton of plutonium within months, in addition to the more than 35 tons Japan already has stored around the world. That’s even though all the reactors that might use it are either inoperable or offline while the country rethinks its nuclear policy after the tsunami-generated Fukushima crisis. Continue reading
India’s Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) Bill aims to hide information
Aruna Roy to Sonia: Nuclear Safety bill is anti-transparency First Post India, by FP Staff Jun 1, 2012 Refusal by the Nuclear Corporation of India (NPCIL) to abide by the Central Information Commission’s order to make public the Kudankulam nuclear plant’s safety report has been strongly criticized by leading RTI activist and national advisory council (NAC) member Aruna Roy.
NPCIL is constructing the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu in collaboration with Russia.
In a strongly worded letter to NAC chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Roy has also brought up issue of the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) Bill 2011, which seeks to amend the Right to Information Act.
“It (referring to the Bill) also permits the creation of special nuclear safety regulatory authorities which will be born vaccinated from the RTI Act. There is no rationale for safety and regulatory authorities to be outside the purview of the RTI,” says Roy in her letter. (Read full letter here ) The NSRA, 2011, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha in September, proposes two amendments to the RTI Act.
The first seeks to remove from the scope of the RTI Act sensitive information relating to nuclear and radiation safety issues. And the second seeks to shield regulatory bodies that oversee nuclear facilities established for strategic and defence purposes.
It may be recalled that earlier this year, information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi had written to the Prime Minister expressing ‘serious concern’ on the government’s proposal to amend RTI act through the Nuclear Safety Bill. PMANE to move Supreme Court
The SP Udayakumar-led People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) , which has been leading the struggle against the Kudankulam nuclear plant from neighbouring Idinthakarrai village since September last year, has in a press statement today condemned the NPCIL’s refusal to follow the CIC order.
As per the CIC order NPCIL was directed to “provide an attested photocopy of the Safety Analysis Report and Site Evaluation Report after severing any proprietary details of designs provided by the suppliers to the appellant before 25 May, 2012.” The NPCIL was also directed to upload the two reports on its site by May 30.
PMANE has said that it will now “intensify our struggle to get all the relevant information about the KKNPP for our safety and well being and we will also take all possible legal steps to that effect.”
Pusparayan, one of the leading members of the PMANE, told Firspost they had begun the process to move Supreme Court….. Pusparayan, meanwhile, has appealed to the government to “be democratic and genuine in sharing information with the public.” http://www.firstpost.com/india/aruna-roy-to-sonia-nuclear-safety-bill-is-anti-transparency-329280.html
China not such a nuclear threat to USA
China nuclear no ‘direct threat’: US commander http://www.brecorder.com/general-news/172/1195339/, MAY 31, 2012 China’s nuclear weapons do not pose a “direct threat” to the United States, the man in charge of America’s arsenal said Wednesday in calling for greater dialogue with the Chinese military. “We would like to have routine contact and conversations with China’s military,” said General Robert Kehler, head of Strategic Command or STRATCOM, which oversees America’s nuclear deterrence operations around the globe.
“We think there would be tremendous benefit to that in both China and the United States, in particular to help us avoid some misunderstanding or some tension in the future.” Kehler said that although the United States and Russia account for roughly 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, dealing with the Chinese on the matter will become increasingly important. “I do not see the Chinese strategic deterrent as a direct threat to the United States. We are not enemies,” he said. “Could it be? I suppose if we were enemies it could be and therefore we at least have to be aware of that.”
America’s CIA helped to ‘con’ the Japanese public into accepting nuclear power
the media mogul worked with the CIA to promote nuclear power.
Mr. Shoriki, backed by the CIA, used his influence to publish articles in the Yomiuri that extolled the virtues of nuclear power
Japan’s Nuclear Industry: The CIA Link, WSJ, By Eleanor Warnock, June 1, 2012, “…….In the 15 months since the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi, Japan’s relationship with nuclear power has changed dramatically……. all 50 of its plants remain offline. Restarting reactors — a step the government says is necessary to support the economy — is proving to be politically tricky as a skeptical public questions the safety of atomic energy.
Rewind almost 60 years and the government had a similar problem: how to persuade the public to support its ambition to become a nuclear nation only nine years after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
According to one Japanese university professor, that ambition was achieved with help from an unlikely source: the CIA. Tetsuo Arima, a researcher at Waseda University in Tokyo, told JRT he discovered in the U.S. National Archives a trove of declassified CIA files that
showed how one man, Matsutaro Shoriki, was instrumental in jumpstarting Japan’s nascent nuclear industry. Continue reading
It’s OK, America, – in an Indian nuclear disaster, the supplier won’t be liable
Nuclear reactor supplier cannot be held for damages, says NPCIL Chairman, The Hindu, M. RAMESH CHENNAI, JUNE 1: The point whether the equipment supplier is liable for damages or not if something goes wrong in a nuclear power plant and results in a disaster has been a subject of intense debate in India.
Would it be the power plant operator, Nuclear Power Corporation of India or the equipment (reactor) supplier like GE or Westinghouse, who should pay up?
In an interview to Business Line, Mr S.K. Jain, Chairman and Managing Director, Nuclear Power Corporation of India, who incidentally relinquished his position on Thursday after serving the corporation as CMD for eight long years, explains why it equipment supplier cannot be held liable to pay.
It may be surprising that somebody should say “it is me, and not him, who is liable to pay”, but Mr Jain says that the reactor supplier cannot legally be held responsible….. Mr Jain said that the supplier will be liable for any ‘malafide defect’ in the design.
But what about non-malafide defect? Mr Jain said that even if there was something wrong with the ‘containment’, “six or seven more things would have to go wrong” for a disaster to occur, which are all “outside the control of the supplier”.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/article3479426.ece?homepage=true
Majority of Japanese firms want abandonment of nuclear power
Critics accuse utilities of exaggerating potential power shortages in order to win public support to restart off-line reactors
70 percent of firms are prepared to cooperate on power saving to the same degree as last summer
Three-quarters of Japanese firms oppose nuclear power, Chicago Tribune, by Tetsushi Kajimoto, TOKYO (Reuters) 25 May 12- Nearly three-quarters of Japanese companies support abandoning nuclear power after last year’s Fukushima disaster, although a majority set the condition that alternative energy resources must be secured, a Reuters poll showed on Friday.
The poll offers fresh evidence of the deep public distrust of nuclear
power, Continue reading
China’s campaign to cut greenhouse gases
China to spend $27bn on energy efficiency and renewables Country plans to promote solar and wind power and develop hybrid technologies to cut carbon emissions guardian.co.uk, 25 May 2012 China plans to spend $27 bn (£17bn) this year to promote energyconservation, emission reductions and renewable energy.
The country’s finance ministry said it wants to promote energy-saving products, solar and wind power and accelerate the development of renewable energy and hybrid cars…..
In the long term, China is targeting to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40-45% by 2020, compared with 2003 levels and aims to boost its use of renewable energy to 15% of overall energy consumption.
Negotiators from over 180 nations are meeting in Bonn, Germany, until Friday to work towards getting a new global climate pact signed by 2015. The aim is to ensure ambitious emissions cuts are made after the Kyoto protocol expires at the end of this year. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/25/china-renewable-energy-carbon-emissions
Radiation released right after Fukushima accident was much more than first estimated
Fukushima radiation higher than first estimated, By Kevin Krolicki TOKYO May 24 (Reuters) – The radiation released in the first days of the Fukushima nuclear disaster was almost 2-1/2 times the amount first estimated by Japanese safety regulators, the operator of the crippled plant said in a report released on Thursday. Continue reading
Nuclear fuel rods at Fukushima’s reactor no. 4 – highly dangerous
The workers are like Samurai warriors, they’re like suicide workers. They know they are getting huge amounts of radiation going to the site. They can only go in, seconds to minutes, at a time doing work and then the next batch has to come in.
Chernobyl had a half a million workers who worked minutes at a time. Here we have a situation much worse than Chernobyl simply because we have basically five reactors that could go up. One reactor setting off the next reactor, that’s a huge amount of radiation, over ten times the radiation inventory found in Chernobyl.
“People don’t realize that the Fukushima reactor (Number 4) is on a knife’s edge; it’s near the tipping point.
includes videos and audio http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2012/05/large-crack-on-south-wall-of-fukushima-nuclear-reactor-number-four-photo/ Large 
Crack on South Wall of Fukushima Nuclear Reactor Number Four? DBKP. May 20, 2012 By LBG1 We could have adisaster much worse, many times worse than Chernobyl.” Dr. Michio Kaku on the precarious state of the spent fuel rods in the severely damaged Fukushima nuclear reactor Unit Number Four building Continue reading
Severe radiation risk at Fukushima’s nuclear reactor Unit 4
Concerns focus on Fukushima unit stability TOKYO, May 23 (UPI) — Whether a pool where spent fuel is stored at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant could withstand another strong earthquake has become a source of growing concern.
The concerns among activists, experts and politicians focus on Unit 4, which contains most of the plant’s spent fuel not stored in dry, hardened storage casks, Stars and Stripes reported Wednesday.
After the 9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami, an investigative report by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, an independent think tank started to investigate the causes of the plant disaster, cited among risks a loss of cooling water in Unit 4.
If left exposed, the spent fuel could heat and melt, releasing a huge amount of radiation.
The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., has said on its Web site Unit 4 is sound and the building could withstand an earthquake of the magnitude of the March 11, 2011, temblor.
But public trust in Tepco remains low, Stars and Stripes said, and calls for more efforts to empty and secure Unit 4 continue in Japan and beyond…… http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/05/23/Concerns-focus-on-Fukushima-unit-stability/UPI-67051337797686/#ixzz1vpwgvulJ
Fukushima workers at risk of cancer
Fukushima 1 workers risk cancer, Voice of Russia, May 24, 2012 About 170 people who worked at the Japanese nuclear power plant “Fukushima-1”, received doses of radiation, which have increased their risk of cancer according to reports published on Wednesday covering the results of studies conducted by experts of the Scientific Committee of the UN….
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_05_24/75768400/
Infants in some areas at risk of thyroid cancer from Fukushima radiation
Infants in Namie were thought to have received thyroid radiation doses of 100-200 mSv, it added. The thyroid is the most exposed organ as radioactive iodine concentrates there and children are deemed especially vulnerable.
The report did not deal with radiation exposure suffered by emergencyworkers or people closest to the disaster site……
WHO releases mixed Fukushima radiation report Money Control , May 23, 2012 By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) – Spikes in radiation caused by the Fukushima nuclear disaster were below cancer-causing levels in almost all of Japan, but infants in one town appear to be at a higher risk of developing thyroid cancer, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday. Continue reading
Confusion in estimating Fukushima radiation
TEPCO estimate sees more radiation than NISA’s, The Yomiuri Shimbun, 24 May 12 Tokyo Electric Power Co. has estimated the total amount of radioactive substances discharged from its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant measured 760,000 terabecquerels, 1.6 times the estimate released by the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency in February. Continue reading
Release peaceful protestors of Koodankulam nuclear plant – Sandeep Pandey
Mr. Pandey said, “That there has been no violence so far is a unique feature of this movement and the credit goes to the fisherfolk of Tirunelveli. The government must withdraw all false cases and release two of the activists still in jail, Satish Kumar and Muhilan.”
Magsaysay awardee opposes KKNPP http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/tamil-nadu/article3433480.ece 19 May 12 Sandeep Pandey, Magsaysay award winner and a convener of the National Alliance of People’s Movements, said on Friday that Indian nuclear scientists were dealing with an unknown technology in the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) and that it should not be commissioned hastily as it was against the people’s interest. Continue reading
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