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Tepco wraps up latest round of treated water release in Fukushima

 Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said Sunday that it has completed
the second round of its fiscal 2025 release of treated water into the ocean
from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

The discharge of the water, containing radioactive tritium, was suspended due to a tsunami caused by a major earthquake near Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula last week, but there
were no problems with the facilities involved in the operation. In the
second round, which began on July 14, Tepco diluted 7,800 tons of treated
water with large amounts of seawater before releasing it about 1 kilometer
off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture through an undersea tunnel. In the
current fiscal year through next March, a total of 54,600 tons will be
released into the sea in seven rounds, at the same pace as the previous
year.

 Japan Times 3rd Aug 2025, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/08/03/japan/tepco-2nd-round-treated-water-release/

August 7, 2025 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, wastes | Leave a comment

Hiroshima’s fading legacy: the race to secure survivors’ memories amid a new era of nuclear brinkmanship.

Eighty years on from the destruction of the city, registered survivors of the blast – known as hibakusha – have fallen below 100,000

Justin McCurry in Hiroshima, Tue 5 Aug 2025 , https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/05/hiroshima-atomic-bomb-80-year-anniversary-survivors

The fires were still burning, and the dead lay where they had fallen, when a 10-year-old Yoshiko Niiyama entered Hiroshima, two days after it was destroyed by an American atomic bomb.

“I remember that the air was filled with smoke and there were bodies everywhere … and it was so hot,” Niiyama says in an interview at her home in the Hiroshima suburbs. “The faces of the survivors were so badly disfigured that I didn’t want to look at them. But I had to.”

Niiyama and her eldest sister had rushed to the city to search for their father, Mitsugi, who worked in a bank located just 1km from the hypocentre. They had been evacuated to a neighbourhood just outside the city, but knew something dreadful had happened in Hiroshima when they saw trucks passing their temporary home carrying badly burned victims.

As Hiroshima prepares to mark 80 years since the city was destroyed in the world’s first nuclear attack, the 90-year-old is one of a small number of hibakusha – survivors of the atomic bombings – still able to recall the horrors they witnessed after their home was reduced to rubble in an instant.

At 8:15am on 6 August, the Enola Gay, a US B-29 bomber, dropped a nuclear bomb on the city. “Little Boy” detonated about 600 metres from the ground, with a force equivalent to 15,000 tonnes of TNT. Between 60,000 and 80,000 people were killed instantly, with the death toll rising to 140,000 by the end of the year as victims succumbed to burns and illnesses caused by acute exposure to radiation.

Three days later, the Americans dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, killing 74,000. And on 15 August, a demoralised Japan surrendered, bringing an end to the second world war.

Niiyama, one of four sisters, never found her father or his remains, which were likely incinerated along with those of his colleagues. “My father was tall, so for a long time whenever I saw a tall man from behind, I would run up to him thinking it might be him,” she says. “But it never was.”

With the number of people who survived the bombing and witnessed its immediate aftermath dwindling by the year, it is being left to younger people to continue to communicate the horrors inflicted on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

For decades Niiyama, who is a registered hibakusha, said nothing of the trauma she had suffered as a schoolgirl, not even to members of her own family. “I didn’t want to remember what had happened,” she says. “And many hibakusha stayed quiet as they knew they might face discrimination, like not being able to marry or find a job. There were rumours that children born to hibakusha would be deformed.”

It was only when her granddaughter, Kyoko Niiyama, then a high school student, asked her about her wartime experiences that Niiyama broke her silence.

“When my children are older, they’ll naturally ask about what happened to their grandmother,” says the younger Niiyama, 35, a reporter for a local newspaper and the mother of two young children. “It would be such a shame if I wasn’t able to tell them … that’s why I decided to ask my grandmother about the bomb.”

She is one of a growing number of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki studying to become “family successors” – a local government initiative that certifies the descendants of first-generation hibakusha to record and pass on the experiences of the only people on earth to have lived through nuclear warfare.

“Now that the anniversary is approaching, I can talk to her again,” Kyoko says. “This is a really precious time for our family.”

‘I don’t want to think about that day’

Last year, survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks won recognition for their campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons when Nihon Hidankyo – a nationwide network of hibakusha – was awarded the Nobel peace prize.

But survivors face a race against time to ensure that their message lives on in a world that is edging closer to a new age of nuclear brinkmanship.

The world’s nine nuclear states are spending billions of dollars on modernising, and in some cases expanding, their arsenals. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has refused to rule out the use of tactical nuclear weapons in his war against Ukraine, and last week a veiled nuclear threat by the country’s former leader, Dmitry Medvedev, prompted Donald Trump – who had earlier compared US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks – to claim that he had moved two nuclear submarines closer to the region. North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons continues unchecked.

“The hibakusha have spent their lifetimes courageously telling their stories again and again, essentially reliving their childhood traumas – to make sure the world learns the reality of what nuclear weapons actually do to people and why they must be abolished, so that no one else goes through what they have suffered,” says Melissa Parke, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

“These brave hibakusha deserve to have their decades of campaigning vindicated and to witness the elimination of nuclear weapons in their lifetimes. This would provide some nuclear justice.”

The number of registered survivors of both attacks fell to just below 100,000 this year, according to the health ministry, compared with more than 372,000 in 1981. Their average age is 86. Just one of the 78 people confirmed to have been within 500 metres of the hypocentre of the blast in Hiroshima is still alive – an 89-year-old man.

On the eve of the anniversary, the ministry said it would no longer conduct a survey every 10 years to assess the living conditions and health of hibakusha, saying it wanted to “lessen the burden” on ageing survivors.

Niiyama, who struggles to walk, will watch Wednesday’s ceremony at home and pause to remember her father, whose memory is represented by a teacup he used that was retrieved from the devastation.

“I don’t like the month of August,” she says. “I have nightmares around the anniversary. I don’t want to think about that day, but I can’t forget it. But I’m glad I still remember that I’m a hibakusha.”

Niiyama, who struggles to walk, will watch Wednesday’s ceremony at home and pause to remember her father, whose memory is represented by a teacup he used that was retrieved from the devastation.

“I don’t like the month of August,” she says. “I have nightmares around the anniversary. I don’t want to think about that day, but I can’t forget it. But I’m glad I still remember that I’m a hibakusha.”

August 6, 2025 Posted by | history, Japan | Leave a comment

Tepco ordered to pay ¥100 million in damages over 2011 disaster

 Japan Times 30th July 2025

The Tokyo District Court ordered Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings on Wednesday to pay about ¥100 million ($675,000) in damages over the 2011 accident at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

Presiding Judge Masahiko Abe ordered the payment mainly as compensation for damage to property and consolation money for life during evacuation while dismissing the claim against the state.

In the lawsuit, Katsutaka Idogawa, 79, former mayor of Futaba, a town in Fukushima Prefecture, blamed the central government and Tepco for their inadequate handling of the accident, arguing that it led to his exposure to radiation…………………………. (Subscribers only) https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/07/30/japan/crime-legal/tepco-ordered-to-pay-damages-nuclear-disaster/

August 4, 2025 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, Legal | Leave a comment

TEPCO logs net loss in April-June on Fukushima plant cleanup.

The company booked an extraordinary loss of 903 billion yen, as it prepares for the removal of nuclear fuel debris

August 1, 2025 (Mainichi Japan), https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250801/p2g/00m/0bu/008000c

TOKYO (Kyodo) — Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. said Thursday it posted a net loss of 857.69 billion yen ($5.8 billion) for the April-June period, pressured by a special loss related to decommissioning work at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The second largest quarterly loss since the 2011 nuclear crisis is a sharp deterioration from a profit of 79.24 billion yen in the same period a year earlier.

Operating profit rose 2.9 percent to 64.70 billion yen in the quarter on sales of 1.43 trillion yen, down 4.5 percent.

The company booked an extraordinary loss of 903 billion yen, as it prepares for the removal of nuclear fuel debris, considered the most challenging phase of the decommissioning work.

“We are not expecting any big spending over the next three years and (the special loss) won’t be a problem for our decommissioning work,” TEPCO vice president Hiroyuki Yamaguchi said at a press conference.

TEPCO said Tuesday the full-scale removal of melted fuel debris, initially set for the early 2030s, will be delayed to fiscal 2037 or later, raising concerns that its target of completing the work to scrap the power plant by 2051 will become increasingly difficult to meet.

The company said it has about 700 billion yen earmarked for future demolition work.

August 3, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, Japan, wastes | Leave a comment

Debris removal at Fukushima nuclear plant pushed back to 2037 or later

30 July 25, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/07/30/japan/fukushima-nuclear-plant-debris-removal/

Full-scale removal of nuclear fuel debris from the No. 3 reactor of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings’ crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant will not start before fiscal 2037, officials said Tuesday.

The removal was previously planned to begin in the early 2030s. This delay may push the completion of the plant’s decommissioning process beyond the target year of 2051 set by the government and Tepco.

The new timeline for the work was announced by Tepco and Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation, or NDF, at separate news conferences. They determined that preparations for the work, such as the demolition of an adjacent building, will take about 12 years to 15 years.

“We aren’t in a situation where we should deny (the feasibility of) the decommissioning target,” said Akira Ono, head of Tepco’s in-house company in charge of the decommissioning work. “We remain committed to the goal of completing (the decommissioning process by 2051.)”

A total of 880 metric tons of debris, or a mixture of melted nuclear fuel and reactor structures, is believed to be in the No. 1 to No. 3 reactors at the nuclear plant, which suffered a triple meltdown following the March 2011 massive earthquake and tsunami.

Tepco began to extract debris from the No. 2 reactor on a trial basis last year, and has collected a total of about 0.9 gram so far.

According to Tepco and the facilitation organization, debris removal will be carried out using a combination of what is known as the nonsubmerged method, in which the debris is collected from the air, and what is called the filling and solidification method, which involves pouring a filling agent into the reactor and solidifying it.

A small hole will be opened in the upper part of the reactor building to insert a device that will crush the debris into fine pieces, while a filling agent will be injected as needed. The debris will be collected using a device inserted from the side of the building.

Tepco and the organization said demolishing a waste treatment building on the north side of the No. 3 reactor is necessary to ensure work safety and create space for new equipment. They also said that necessary facilities need to be built in the upper part of the reactor building, and such preparations are expected to take about 12 years to 15 years.

August 1, 2025 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, wastes | Leave a comment

Chinese hackers gain access to US oversight of nuclear weapons in widespread Microsoft hack: report

The tech giant blamed a vulnerability in its SharePoint document software

Anthony Cuthbertson,Rhian Lubin, Wednesday 23 July 2025, https://www.the-independent.com/tech/security/china-hack-nuclear-microsoft-sharepoint-b2795333.html

Chinese hackers gained access to the U.S. government agency that oversees nuclear weapons in a widespread Microsoft hack.

Microsoft issued an alert Tuesday warning that hackers affiliated with the Chinese government have been exploiting cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the company’s SharePoint software.

Tens of thousands of servers hosting the software, which is used for sharing and managing documents, were said to be at risk as a result.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy responsible for maintaining the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, was breached in the attacks on July 18, Bloomberg first reported.

The agency is responsible for providing the Navy with nuclear reactors for submarines and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the U.S. and overseas. No sensitive or classified information has leaked in the cyber attack, according to Bloomberg.

“On Friday, July 18th, the exploitation of a Microsoft SharePoint zero-day vulnerability began affecting the Department of Energy,” an agency spokesman said in a statement to the outlet. “The department was minimally impacted due to its widespread use of the Microsoft M365 cloud and very capable cybersecurity systems. A very small number of systems were impacted. All impacted systems are being restored.”

Security firm Eye Security said that 400 organizations and agencies globally were impacted, including national governments in Europe and the Middle East.

Microsoft linked the attack to two main groups, Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon, and flagged that another China-based group, Storm-2603, had also targeted its systems.

The Education Department, Florida’s Department of Revenue and the Rhode Island General Assembly were also breached in the attack, according to Bloomberg.

Eye Security warned that the breaches could allow hackers to impersonate users or services by stealing cryptographic keys — alphabetical codes or sequences of characters — even after software updates. Users should take further steps to protect their information, the firm said.

Microsoft said in a message to customers that it has since released “new comprehensive security updates” to deal with the incident.

But security researchers warned that the full extent of the breach and its consequences are yet to be fully revealed.

“This is a critical vulnerability with wide reaching implications,” Carlos Perez, director of security intelligence at TrustedSec, who previously trained U.S. military cyber protection teams, told The Independent.

“It enables unauthenticated remote code execution on SharePoint servers, which are a core part of enterprise infrastructure. It is already being actively exploited at scale, and it only took 72 hours from the time a proof of concept was demonstrated for attackers to begin mass exploitation campaigns.

“What makes it even more severe is the way it exposes cryptographic secrets, effectively allowing attackers to convert any authenticated SharePoint request into remote code execution. That is a dangerous capability to put into the hands of threat actors.”


Microsoft said it had “high confidence” that firms who do not install the new security updates could be targeted by the groups.

The tech firm said the attackers had been uploading malicious scripts which are then “enabling the theft of the key material” by hackers.

In a statement, the company added: “Investigations into other actors also using these exploits are still ongoing.”

Additional reporting from agencies.

July 27, 2025 Posted by | China, incidents, USA | Leave a comment

Poisoned water and scarred hills

The price of the rare earth metals the world buys from China

By Laura Bicker and the Visual Journalism team: 08/07/2025, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-66cdf862-5e96-4e6e-90b8-a407b597c8d9

When you stand on the edge of Bayan Obo, all you see is an expanse of scarred grey earth carved into the grasslands of Inner Mongolia in northern China.

Dark dust clouds rise from deep craters where the earth’s crust has been sliced away over decades in search of a modern treasure.

You may not have heard of this town – but life as we know it could grind to a halt without Bayan Obo.

The town gets its name from the district it sits in, which is home to half of the world’s supply of a group of metals known as rare earths. They are key components in nearly everything that we switch on: smartphones, bluetooth speakers, computers, TV screens, even electric vehicles.

And one country, above all others, has leapt ahead in mining them and refining them: China.

This dominance gives Beijing huge leverage – both economically, and politically, such as when it negotiates with US President Donald Trump over tariffs. But China has paid a steep price for it.

To find out more, we travelled to the country’s two main rare earth mining hubs – Bayan Obo in the north and Ganzhou in the province of Jiangxi in the south.

We found man-made lakes full of radioactive sludge and heard claims of polluted water and contaminated soil, which, in the past, have been linked to clusters of cancer and birth defects. These journeys were challenging.

Beijing appears sensitive to criticism of its environmental record. We were pulled over by police, questioned by them and stuck in a three-hour standoff with an unidentified mining boss who refused to let us leave unless we deleted our footage.

Our calls for an interview or a statement have gone unanswered, but the government has published new regulations to try to strengthen its supervision of the industry.

Authorities have been making an effort to clean up these mining sites, scientists told the BBC. Still, China’s mining operations in the north just keep growing.

Machines are constantly on the hunt for rare earths called neodymium and dysprosium that go into making powerful magnets for a variety of modern technology, from electric vehicles to computer hard drives.

To find these rare earths, the machines strip away the topsoil layer-by-layer, kicking up harmful dust, some of which contains high levels of heavy metals and radioactive material.

Satellite images from the last few decades show how the Bayan Obo mine has spread.

The mine sits in the vast, aridness of Inner Mongolia, a nine-hour drive from the capital, Beijing.

There were once more than a thousand mining sites, some of them illegal, dotted throughout this one county. Companies got what they needed from one mine, and then moved to another.

Then in 2012, the Chinese government stepped in to regulate, dramatically reducing the number of mining licences they issued.

But significant damage had been done to the area already. Research going back decades has linked the rare earth mines to deforestation, soil erosion and chemical leaks into rivers and farmland.

Local farmer Huang Xiaocong, whose land is surrounded by four rare earth sites, believes landslides are still being triggered by improper mining practices.

He has also accused the state-owned company of grabbing land illegally. The firm refused to answer the BBC’s questions.

“This problem is way too big for me to solve. It’s something that has to be dealt with at the higher levels of government,” Mr Huang said.

“We ordinary people don’t have the answers… Farmers like us, we’re the vulnerable ones. To put it simply, we were born at a disadvantage. It’s pretty tragic.”

It is rare and often risky in China for villagers to take on huge companies – and even rarer for them to speak to international media. But Mr Huang is determined to be heard and has taken his case to the local Natural Resources Bureau.

Satellite images show the mining ponds surrounding Mr Huang’s village and land. Within a six kilometres wide square, at least four sites are visible.

During our interview with Mr Huang, we were surrounded by men wearing uniforms branded with what appeared to be the logo of the same rare earth company. At least 12 other men used their vehicles to block our car from leaving.

Eventually, someone who identified himself as a local manager of China Rare Earth Jiangxi Company arrived. He confronted Mr Huang and us, and wouldn’t let us leave for nearly three hours, despite our attempts to negotiate and our offers to hear his argument.

Those living around the mines in Bayan Obo and Ganzhou appear to be victims of what used to be China’s “develop first and clean up later” approach to mining, says Professor Julie Klinger, author of Rare Earth Frontiers. That has changed now as they try harder to mitigate the damage, she adds, but the consequences are here to stay.

“I think it’s very difficult to know the true human and environmental cost of that sort of development model,” she told the BBC.

The worst health effects were found in and around the largest tailing pond south of Bayan Obo in the city of Baotou. In the decades leading up to 2010, villagers were diagnosed with bone and joint deformities caused by too much fluoride in the water and acute arsenic toxicity, according to Professor Klinger.

Most of them lived close to the Weikuang Dam, a man-made lake built to dump mining waste in the 1950s. Authorities have since moved villagers away from the site, but the 11km-long tailings pond is still full of grey clay sludge, including radioactive thorium.

Studies suggest this toxic mix could be slowly seeping into the groundwater and moving towards the Yellow River, China’s second-largest, and a key source of drinking water for the north of the country.

As the demand for pocket gadgets, electric vehicles, solar panels, MRI machines and jet engines surges, there is one worrying statistic to contend with – mining just one tonne of rare earth minerals creates some 2,000 tonnes of toxic waste.

China is now trying to rein in the environmental harm its rush for rare earths has caused, while expanding its mining operations abroad. Others, including the United States, are in a hurry to catch up with their own rare earth enterprises.

But scientists warn that no matter where these metals are mined, without the right solutions, landscapes and lives will be put at risk.

And yet, some farmers in Bayan Obo have adjusted to life in the the world’s rare earth capital.

The metals that have scarred their land and poisoned their water have also brought them jobs.

“With the rare earths, there’s money now,” one farmer told us. “The mines pay 5,000 or 6,000 yuan ($837; £615) a month.”

He says he lost money herding horses, among the traditional livelihoods in a region that has long been home to nomadic people. Horses still roam the pastures next to the mines, as diggers continue their search for more rare earths.

“Farming’s fine,” he told us as he planted green onions. “You just grow your crop and sell it – simple as that.”

July 17, 2025 Posted by | China, environment, RARE EARTHS | Leave a comment

China backs Southeast Asia nuclear ban; Rubio, Lavrov at ASEAN meeting

US President Trump’s tariffs loom over gathering in Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur which will also feature US-Russia talks.

Aljazeera, 10 Jul 2025

China has agreed to sign a Southeast Asian treaty banning nuclear weapons, Malaysia’s and China’s foreign ministers confirmed, in a move that seeks to shield the area from rising global security tensions amid the threat of imminent United States tariffs.

The pledge from Beijing was welcomed as diplomats on Thursday gathered for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers’ meeting, where US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is also due to meet regional counterparts and Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.

Malaysia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohamad Hasan told reporters China had confirmed its willingness to sign the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone (SEANWFZ) treaty – an agreement in force since 1997 that restricts nuclear activity in the region to peaceful purposes such as energy generation.

“China made a commitment to ensure that they will sign the treaty without reservation,” Hasan said, adding that the formal signing will take place once all relevant documentation is completed.

ASEAN has long pushed for the world’s five recognised nuclear powers – China, the United States, Russia, France and the United Kingdom – to sign the pact and respect the region’s non-nuclear status, including within its exclusive economic zones and continental shelves.

Last week, Beijing signalled its readiness to support the treaty and lead by example among nuclear-armed states.

Rubio, who is on his first visit to Asia as secretary of state, arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday amid a cloud of uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff strategy, which includes new levies on six ASEAN nations as well as key traditional allies Japan and South Korea……………………………………………………………….

………………………..Reporting from Kuala Lumpur, Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride says Southeast Asian nations are finding themselves at the centre of intensifying diplomatic competition, as global powers look to strengthen their influence in the region.

“The ASEAN countries are facing some of the highest tariffs from the Trump administration,” McBride said. “They were also among the first to receive new letters announcing yet another delay in the imposition of these tariffs, now pushed to 1 August.”

The uncertainty has pushed ASEAN states to seek alternative trade partners, most notably China. “These tariffs have provided an impetus for all of these ASEAN nations to seek out closer trade links with other parts of the world,” McBride added.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been in Kuala Lumpur for meetings with ASEAN counterparts, underscoring Beijing’s growing engagement.

Meanwhile, Russia’s top diplomat, Sergey Lavrov, has also been holding talks in Malaysia, advancing Moscow’s vision of a “multipolar world order” – a concept backed by China that challenges what they see as a Western-led global system dominated by the US………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/10/china-backs-southeast-asia-nuclear-ban-rubio-lavrov-at-asean-meeting

July 14, 2025 Posted by | China, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Atomic bomb survivors in Japan fear nuclear weapons could be used again: poll

Newly released survey shows close to 70 percent of survivors fear a resurgence in nuclear risks as Japan readies for the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

14 July 25 https://trt.global/world/article/0c8b4e3aec45

Nearly 70 percent of atomic bomb survivors in Japan believe nuclear weapons could be used again, citing growing global tensions, including Russia’s war in Ukraine and North Korea’s weapons development, a survey by Kyodo News Agency revealed on Sunday, ahead of the 80th anniversary of the US atomic bombings.

Around 1,500 survivors took part in the survey, with 68.6 percent saying the risk of nuclear weapons being used again is increasing.

Some 45.7 percent of respondents said they “cannot forgive” the US for the bombings, while 24.3 percent said they have “no special feelings” and 16.9 percent said they “did not know.”

This year marks 80 years since the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in western Japan near the end of World War II.

On August 6, 1945, the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing an estimated 140,000 people.

A second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later, resulting in about 70,000 additional deaths.

Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, officially marking the end of World War II.

July 14, 2025 Posted by | Japan, public opinion | Leave a comment

Tepco plans to move spent nuclear fuel from Fukushima to Mutsu facility

 Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco) suggested Monday that it
plans to transfer spent nuclear fuel from its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power
plant to an interim storage facility in the city of Mutsu in Aomori
Prefecture. The plan was included in a medium- to long-term program for the
facility, presented to Aomori Gov. Soichiro Miyashita by Tepco President
Tomoaki Kobayakawa at a meeting in the Aomori Prefectural Government office
the same day.

Spent nuclear fuel stored at the plant’s No. 5 and No. 6
reactors, a joint storage pool and the Fukushima No. 2 plant at the time of
the March 2011 nuclear meltdown at the No. 1 plant is set to be transferred
to the Mutsu facility.

 Japan Times 8th July 2025, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/07/08/japan/tepco-move-mutsu/

July 12, 2025 Posted by | Japan, wastes | Leave a comment

Nuclear comeback? Japan’s plans to restart reactors hit resistance over radioactive waste

 The Japanese government wants to turn its nuclear power
stations back on – but some local residents and Indigenous Ainu people
don’t want nuclear waste stored near them. Fourteen years after the
Fukushima disaster, Japan is restarting its nuclear reactors – and two
wind-blown near-deserted fishing villages on the northern island of
Hokkaido could be the destination for all their radioactive waste. But,
while some residents of Suttsu and Kamoenai welcome the government money
that volunteering to store the waste will bring, others are fiercely
opposed due to fears that the nuclear waste will contaminate their land and
water. The controversy could delay Japan’s goals to use carbon-free
nuclear energy to replace electricity generation from expensive imported
fossil fuels and cut greenhouse gas emissions on the way to net zero by
2050.

 Climate Home News 6th July 2025, https://www.climatechangenews.com/2025/07/06/nuclear-comeback-japans-plans-to-restart-reactors-hit-resistance-over-radioactive-waste/

July 12, 2025 Posted by | Japan, politics | Leave a comment

China lifts a nearly 2-year ban on seafood from Japan over Fukushima wastewater

 China has reopened its market to seafood from Japan after a nearly
two-year ban over the discharge of slightly radioactive wastewater from the
tsunami-destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant. A notice from the customs
agency said the ban had been lifted Sunday and that imports from most of
Japan would be resumed. The ban, imposed in August 2023, was a major blow
to Japan’s fisheries industry. China was the biggest overseas market for
Japanese seafood, accounting for more than one-fifth of its exports.

 Daily Mail 30th June 2025, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-14859601/China-lifts-nearly-2-year-ban-seafood-Japan-Fukushima-wastewater.html

July 1, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, China, Japan | Leave a comment

Pacific Rim countries say no to U.S.-China war

The question that the people of the Pacific and Pacific Rim countries are asking is: Why do we have to respond to this demand by the U.S.? We are not threatened by China. Where is the dire urgency that demands such a huge distortion of our public spending on the military?

The indications are that the United States is preparing for war against China, but cannot wage such a war from the West Coast of the USA. It needs military bases, port facilities and airfields in the countries on the west side of the Pacific Rim; for example, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Guam, Micronesia and Australia. Without these bases, without the backing of the military forces and munitions and manufacturing capabilities of the Pacific Rim countries, the United States cannot launch and sustain a war against China.

By Bevan Ramsden | 16 June 2025, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/pacific-rim-countries-say-no-to-us-china-war,19837

As the U.S. pushes Pacific Rim allies to ramp up military spending for a possible war with China, a new campaign asks: at what cost and for whose benefit? Bevan Ramsden writes.

THE PACIFIC and Pacific Rim countries have a geographical commonality. They are encircled by, or have a border with, the vast, blue, peaceful Pacific Ocean. They also share a political commonality. The people and countries of this region are under pressure to lift their military spending at the expense of addressing their social needs.

The pressure comes from the United States, whose Defence Secretary, Peter Hegseth, at the recent Singapore Defence Summit, declared that the U.S. expects its allies in this region to increase their defence spending to 5% of their GDP. His justification was a “possibly imminent threat” posed by China. He emphasised how the U.S. is “reorienting towards deterring aggression by China” and made it clear that the Donald Trump Administration’s defence strategy revolves around stifling the rise of China.

Responding to this expectation would involve the doubling of South Korean expenditure on military defence, from 2.6% of its GDP to 5%.

It would mean Japan’s military defence spending would have to triple from 1.8 % of its GDP to 5%.

In Australia, such an increase would represent a two-and-a-half times increase from 2% to 5% of its GDP.

These examples show that the 5% target represents a massive increase in military spending, which can only be made by reducing funding for urgent infrastructure, social needs such as health and education and loss of resources to address the real threat to their living environments, the climate crisis. 

The question that the people of the Pacific and Pacific Rim countries are asking is: Why do we have to respond to this demand by the U.S.? We are not threatened by China. Where is the dire urgency that demands such a huge distortion of our public spending on the military?

Another commonality among the countries of the Pacific Rim, particularly those on the western and southern rim of the Pacific, is U.S. troops and U.S. military installations stationed on their territory. In the case of South Korea, these are substantial, close to 30,000 and put that country’s military virtually under the control of the U.S.

Japan has 57,000 U.S. troops, including 20,000 on Okinawa, where the U.S. Kadena Air Base is its largest outside of the USA. Clearly, this level of foreign military occupation exerts substantial pressure on Japan’s foreign policy.

The Philippines has four U.S. bases with troops rotating through its territory and training with its defence forces, and is setting up logistic centres for equipment and munitions.

The people of Guam, a territory under direct U.S. control, are subject to 7,000 U.S. troops, with almost a third of the land controlled by the U.S. military. The Joint Region Marianas is a U.S. military command combining the Andersen Air Force Base and the Naval Base Guam.

Andersen Air Force Base hosts B-52 bombers and fighter jets. Naval Base Guam is the home port for four nuclear-powered fast attack submarines and two submarine tenders. American military commanders have referred to the island as their “permanent aircraft carrier”.

 Australian governments, in their subservience to the U.S., have signed the Force Posture Agreement, giving the U.S. military unimpeded access to Australia’s ports and airfields and enabling the establishment of a Northern Territory base for its B-52 bombers, some of which are nuclear-capable. The Agreement is giving the U.S. fuel and munitions storage areas to support war operations and an $8 billion port facility for servicing their nuclear submarines and storage of their nuclear waste.

The people of Pacific Rim countries, including Australia, need to ask: Why does the U.S. have these extensive military facilities in our countries and why are they demanding such huge military expenditures from us?

The answer, unfortunately, is not for the benefit of the people of this region but for its own foreign policy objectives, which include maintaining its dominance in the region by “containing” China and preventing the rise of its influence.

The indications are that the United States is preparing for war against China, but cannot wage such a war from the West Coast of the USA. It needs military bases, port facilities and airfields in the countries on the west side of the Pacific Rim; for example, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Guam, Micronesia and Australia. Without these bases, without the backing of the military forces and munitions and manufacturing capabilities of the Pacific Rim countries, the United States cannot launch and sustain a war against China.

So the United States needs us but we don’t need such a war.

It would only bring devastation to our lives and our economies, and if it turned nuclear, who would survive?

The Pacific Peace Network, with representatives from the Pacific Rim countries and together with World Beyond War, has produced a solidary campaign which is being launched on 21 June 2025.

This is a campaign in which the people of each country on the Pacific Rim, including Australia, can say no to such a war and no to an increase in military spending for it, through a common petition which is a call on their governments.

The common petition can be accessed here at the World Beyond War website.

This call on governments reads:

For sustainable peace and the survival of our peoples and environment, we ask you:

  • refuse to join military preparations for a U.S.-China war;
  • declare you will not fight in a U.S.-China war;
  • declare neutrality should such a war break out; and
  • do not allow your territory or waters to be used in such a war, including the collection and relay of military intelligence, sales of weapons and hosting combatant troops and facilities.

Later this year, the petitions will be presented to their respective governments by peace activists in each country.

June 16, 2025 Posted by | ASIA, AUSTRALIA, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘We Are Preparing for War’ With China ‘Threat’, Says US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered an extremely hawkish speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue 2025 summit in which he demonized China as a “threat” and said, “We are preparing for war” in the Asia-Pacific region.

By Ben Norton, 5 June 25, https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/06/06/preparing-war-china-threat-us-defense-secretary-pete-hegseth/

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered an extremely hawkish speech in which he demonized China as a “threat” and said, “We are preparing for war”.

“Those who long for peace, must prepare for war. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. We are preparing for war, in order to deter war — to achieve peace through strength”, Hegseth stated.

The top Donald Trump administration official made these aggressive remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue 2025, a summit held in Singapore on 31 May.

“The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent. We hope not, but it certainly could be”, Hegseth claimed, indicating that the Pentagon was preparing for a war over Taiwan.

“Beyond our borders and beyond our neighborhood, we are reorienting toward deterring aggression by Communist China”, he stressed.

The message of Trump’s Pentagon: war is peace

The Trump administration’s Pentagon has essentially pushed the message “war is peace”.

Hegseth has incessantly reiterated the slogan “peace through strength”.

“President Trump said it himself [in May] in Riyadh – and will never hesitate to wield American power swiftly and decisively if necessary. That is re-establishing deterrence”, the defense secretary emphasized in Singapore.

Hegseth is a war hawk and a religious fundamentalist. He made his name as a former host on the conservative TV network Fox News, where Trump discovered him.

In 2020, Hegseth published a book called “American Crusade”, in which he proudly identified as a “crusader” and wrote that the US right wing is waging a “holy war” against China, the international left, and Islam.

“Communist China will fall—and lick its wounds for another two hundred years”, he promised in the extremist book.

Trump admin pressures Asia-Pacific countries to minimize “economic cooperation with China”

In his speech in Singapore in May 2025, Pete Hegseth noted that it was his second time in his four months serving as secretary of defense that he had visited the Asia-Pacific region (which Washington has sought to rebrand as the “Indo-Pacific”).

In March, Hegseth traveled to Japan and the Philippines, where he threatened China and boasted of US “war-fighting” preparations and “real war plans”.

At the Shangri-La Dialogue conference, Hegseth half-jokingly threatened the Asia-Pacific region with his endless presence……………………………..

The Trump administration essentially told countries that they must choose between either the United States or China — that they can’t have good relations with both sides, because a war could be coming soon.

Hegseth said (emphasis added):

Facing these threats, we know that many countries are tempted by the idea of seeking both economic cooperation with China and defense cooperation with the United States. Now that is a geographic necessity for many. But beware the leverage that the CCP seeks with that entanglement. Economic dependence on China only deepens their malign influence and complicates our defense decision space during times of tension.

China opposes hegemony, while the US empire seeks it

Defense Secretary Hegseth claimed in his May speech in Singapore that, supposedly, “China seeks to become a hegemonic power in Asia. No doubt”.

This is false. China has consistently emphasized, over decades, that it does not seek hegemony. In fact, Beijing does not want any country to have hegemony.

Principled opposition to hegemony has been a constant since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under Mao Zedong in 1949, through the Reform and Opening Up initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, and into the New Era launched by President Xi Jinping in 2012.

The Chinese government has always stressed what it calls its “unequivocal commitment to supporting other developing countries in their efforts to defend national sovereignty, develop national economy and fight imperialism, colonialism, and hegemonism”.

In a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in 1974, Deng Xiaoping stated, “If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression, and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialism, expose it, oppose it, and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it”.

In fact, when the PRC normalized diplomatic relations with the United States and Japan in the 1970s, a source of diplomatic tension was China’s insistence that, in the joint statements signed by Beijing and Washington and Beijing and Tokyo, there had to be an “anti-hegemony” clause.

It is actually the United States that has consistently sought to impose its hegemony on the rest of the world.

This was spelled out clearly in a 1992 document published by the US Department of Defense, known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine (because it was co-written by Paul Wolfowitz, who then served as US under secretary of defense for policy, before later returning as secretary of defense under George W. Bush).

The Pentagon’s Wolfowitz Doctrine stated (emphasis added):

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.

The Trump administration’s foreign policy is still consistent with much of the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Although Trump has de-prioritized Western Europe and the territory of the former USSR, he has dedicated significant resources to US military operations in East Asia and Southwest Asia (also known as the Middle East).

In fact, the main theme of Hegseth’s speech was that the Pentagon will not accept China challenging US dominance in the Asia-Pacific region.

“We will not be pushed out of this critical region”, Hegseth said, in a clear message to Beijing.

This was the US empire stating clearly that it seeks to impose its hegemonic control over East Asia.

Bipartisan warmongering in Washington

This aggressive anti-China stance is bipartisan in Washington.

A former top Joe Biden administration official said he agreed with the thrust of the anti-China policy pursued by Pete Hegseth, a right-wing extremist and religious fanatic.

Ely Ratner, who served as the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs in Biden’s Pentagon, wrote approvingly on Twitter/X, “Rhetoric aside, on actual defense policy Secretary Hegseth’s speech was near total continuity with the previous administration”.

“That’s good, but we’ll need heightened urgency, attention, and resources to address the China challenge”, Ratner added.

Biden’s neoconservative Secretary of State Antony Blinken had also maintained a hardline anti-China position.

In a speech in 2022, Blinken announced what was essentially a containment policy targeting China.

“We cannot rely on Beijing to change its trajectory. So we will shape the strategic environment around Beijing”, he said.

Blinken added, “The scale and the scope of the challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China will test American diplomacy like nothing we’ve seen before”.

June 13, 2025 Posted by | China, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

China unveils world’s first AI nuke inspector

China creates artificial intelligence system to oversee nuclear warhead detection despite concerns it could leak tech secrets

 China creates artificial
intelligence system to oversee nuclear warhead detection despite concerns
it could leak tech secrets. Chinese scientists have developed an artificial
intelligence system that can distinguish real nuclear warheads from decoys,
marking the world’s first AI-driven solution for arms control
verification. The technology, disclosed in a peer-reviewed paper published
in April by researchers with the China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE),
could bolster Beijing’s stance in stalled international disarmament talks
while fuelling debate on the role of AI in managing weapons of mass
destruction.

 South China Morning Post 30th May 2025, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3312270/china-unveils-worlds-first-ai-nuke-inspector

June 2, 2025 Posted by | China, technology | Leave a comment

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