Fukushima operator accused of cover-up over ‘contaminated’ water set to be poured into the Pacific
Fukushima Dai-ichi operator Tepco said that concerns over security prevented independent testing of the water being stored in vast tanks
Fukushima operator accused of cover-up over ‘contaminated’ water set to be poured into the Pacific
19 November 2019
The Japanese government has been accused of a cover-up after it refused to allow independent testing of water from the Fukushima power plant that is likely to be released into the Pacific Ocean.
Officials at the industry ministry on Monday said the water stored at the crippled nuclear site was “safe” to release into the Pacific Ocean, despite concerns about radioactive material from environmental and citizens’ groups.
Following a recent visit to the plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) told The Telegraph that concerns over security prevented independent testing.
“Other organisations are not permitted to carry out tests of the water”, Hideki Yagi, a spokesman for Tepco, told The Telegraph.
“If we are going to allow external organisations to test the treated water then we would need to go through very strict procedures and due process because that water is contaminated. If it is taken outside this facility, then there need to be strict regulations”.
Both Greenpeace and the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre (Cnic), an anti-nuclear lobbying group, suggested that Tepco may be trying to cover up the true scale of contamination of water stores at the site.
Shaun Burnie, senior nuclear specialist for Greenpeace, says the refusal to permit third-party testing only serves to raise new concerns about plans to discharge the water into the ocean.
“Moving nuclear material always carries risk, but for the purpose of independent analysis it would be justified”, he said. “Tepco has lost trust across society in Japan as well as in the international community, including in South Korea, and providing samples for analysis would be in their best interests – unless they are covering something up.
“There are many questions about the effectiveness of Tepco’s … technology so providing samples that could verify their reports on content would go some way to demonstrating their commitment to transparency”, Mr Burnie added.
“It won’t remove doubts that they are covering up major issues at the site – but would be an improvement on the current situation”.
Hideyuki Ban, co-director of Cnic, said: “There would need to be lots of checks because there is a lot of water, but right now it looks very much to the outside world that they are trying to cover something up – as they have a long history of doing – and it would be very much in their best interests to be transparent on this.
“If they don’t, how will they ever get back any of the public trust that they have lost completely since the accident?” Mr Ban said.
During a recent visit to the plant, Tepco officials told The Telegraph that a decision on how to dispose of the water must be made soon as tanks at the site are already near capacity and there is limited space to construct new storage facilities. The company estimates that capacity will be reached in the summer of 2022.
The industry ministry on Monday told a government committee considering methods to dispose of the more than a million tons of water presently being stored in hundreds of tanks at the site that the risk to humans associated with releasing the water into the ocean would be “small”.
Discharging the water into the Pacific over the course of a year would amount to between just one-1,600th and one-40,000th of the radiation to which humans are naturally exposed, the ministry officials told the committee.
Estimates indicate that annual radiation levels near the release point after a release would be between 0.052 and 0.62 microsieverts at sea, the officials said, and 1.3 microsieverts in the atmosphere. That compares with around 2,100 microsieverts that humans come into contact with each year in everyday life.
The ministry how emphasised that no final decision has been reached on how or when the water will be disposed of.
The water became contaminated with radiation when it was used to cool three of the six reactors at the plant that suffered melt-downs after being damaged in the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Ground water is also seeping into the basement levels of the reactor buildings, with an additional 120 tons of water accumulating every day.
Tepco was forced to admit earlier this year that efforts to remove varying amounts of 62 radionuclides – including strontium, iodine, caesium and cobalt – from the water through the ALPS equipment had not been completely successful.
Officials of the company have added that testing of the water is presently carried out by Tokyo Power Technology Ltd, which it claims has advanced analytical skills and “very high” reliability. Tokyo Power Technology is a subsidiary of Tepco that was set up two years after the Fukushima disaster.
Monitoring is also conducted by the government-funded Japan Atomic Energy Agency and the Japan Chemical Analysis Centre.
Azby Brown, lead researcher for Tokyo-based monitoring organisation Safecast Japan, a group that monitors radiation, said the lack of transparency means the risks to marine life of releasing the water are relatively unknown.
“We don’t have enough data to evaluate the impact that any release with those concentrations will have on marine life,” he said.
“The expected doses that they are talking about are quite low and therefore the amount of radiation that is absorbed into marine life and then into humans when they eat fish would also be quite low.
“But that has to be full of caveats because the way that information has been presented is confusing and not transparent so ordinary people do not understand and cannot make informed decisions.”
Tepco has been accused of shielding up the trusty scale of contamination of water stores at the positioning
Fukushima accused of cover-up over ‘contaminated’ water set to be poured into the Pacific
November 19, 2019
The Eastern authorities has been accused of a quilt up after it refused to enable honest checking out of water from the Fukushima vitality plant that is doubtless to be launched into the Pacific Ocean.
Officers at the industry ministry on Monday said the water saved at the crippled nuclear plan used to be “capable” to release into the Pacific ocean, despite concerns about radioactive cloth from environmental and citizens’ groups.
Following a most modern consult with to the plant, the Tokyo Electrical Energy Co (Tepco) instructed The Telegraph that concerns over security prevented honest checking out.
“Assorted organisations are now not permitted to internet exams of the water”, Hideki Yagi, a spokesman for Tepco, instructed The Telegraph.
“If we’ll enable exterior organisations to take a look at the treated water then we would deserve to struggle thru very strict procedures and due route of because that water is rotten. If it is taken originate air this facility, then there wish to be strict rules”.
The corporate estimates water storage ability will seemingly be reached within the summer season of 2022
Both Greenpeace and the Electorate’ Nuclear Files Centre (Cnic), an anti-nuclear lobbying community, instructed that Tepco might perhaps well perhaps be attempting to quilt up trusty scale of contamination of water stores at the positioning.
Shaun Burnie, senior nuclear specialist for Greenpeace, says the refusal to permit third-internet collectively checking out only serves to fetch unique concerns about plans to discharge the water into the ocean.
“Transferring nuclear cloth repeatedly carries possibility, but for the unbiased of honest diagnosis it might perhaps perhaps truly perhaps be justified”, he said. “TEPCO has misplaced belief across society in Japan moreover within the worldwide community, including in South Korea, and providing samples for diagnosis might perhaps well perhaps be in their most efficient interests – unless they are maintaining something up.
“There are a form of questions regarding the effectiveness of Tepco’s … technology so providing samples that can additionally voice their reports on affirm material would scamper some technique to demonstrating their dedication to transparency”, Mr Burnie added.
“It will additionally now not settle away doubts that they’re maintaining up foremost points at the positioning – but might perhaps well perhaps be an development on the sizzling worry”.
Hideyuki Ban, co-director of Cnic, said: “There would deserve to be tons of assessments because there is a form of water, but decent now it looks to be very powerful to the originate air world that they’re attempting to quilt something up – as they bear a lengthy history of doing – and it might perhaps perhaps truly perhaps be very powerful in their most efficient interests to be clear on this.
“In the occasion that they don’t, how will they ever internet attend any of the general public belief that they bear misplaced fully since the accident?” Mr Ban said.
The tsunami water engulfed the vitality plant
Credit:
AP
During a contemporary consult with to the plant, Tepco officers instructed The Telegraph that a resolution on easy suggestions to internet rid of the water desires to be made rapidly as tanks at the positioning are already advance ability and there’s dinky suppose to create unique storage facilities. The corporate estimates that ability will seemingly be reached within the summer season of 2022.
The industry ministry on Monday instructed a authorities committee brooding about suggestions to internet rid of the higher than 1 million a form of water presently being saved in tons of of tanks at the positioning that the possibility to humans connected to releasing the water into the ocean might perhaps well perhaps be “small”.
Discharging the water into the Pacific over the route of a yr would quantity to between decent one-1,600th and one-40,000th of the radiation to which humans are naturally exposed, the ministry officers instructed the committee.
Estimates conceal that annual radiation phases advance the release level after a release might perhaps well perhaps be between 0.052 and nil.62 microsievert at sea, the officers said, and 1.3 microsieverts within the ambiance. That compares with spherical 2,100 microsieverts that humans reach into contact with each and each yr in everyday lifestyles.
The ministry how emphasised that no final resolution has been reached on how or when the water will seemingly be disposed of.
The water turned rotten with radiation when it used to be used to frosty three of the six reactors at the plant that suffered soften-downs after being broken within the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Ground water is additionally seeping into the basement phases of the reactor buildings, with an further 120 a form of water collecting each and on daily basis.
Tepco used to be compelled to admit earlier this yr that efforts to settle away varying quantities of 62 radionuclides – including strontium, iodine, caesium and cobalt – from the water thru the ALPS instruments had now not been fully a hit.
Officers of the corporate bear added that checking out of the water is presently implemented by Tokyo Energy Technology Ltd, which it claims has evolved analytical expertise and “very high” reliability. Tokyo Energy Technology is a subsidiary of Tepco that used to be arrange two years after the Fukushima catastrophe.
The magnitude 9 earthquake caused a large natural catastrophe
Credit:
EPA
Monitoring is additionally performed by the authorities-funded Japan Atomic Energy Agency and the Japan Chemical Prognosis Centre.
Azby Brown, lead researcher for Tokyo-essentially based totally mostly monitoring organisation Safecast Japan, a community that shows radiation, said the dearth of transparency technique the dangers to marine lifetime of releasing the water are quite unknown.
“We blueprint now not bear ample recordsdata to deem the affect that any release with these concentrations might perhaps well perhaps bear on marine lifestyles”, he said..
“The anticipated doses that they’re talking about are fairly low and attributable to this truth the quantity of radiation that is absorbed into marine lifestyles after which into humans after they eat fish would additionally be fairly low
“Nevertheless that must be paunchy of caveats for the reason that technique that recordsdata has been provided is confusing and now not clear so traditional of us carry out now not understand and might perhaps well perhaps now not assemble instructed decisions.”
10 Reasons You Might Want to Think Twice about the Tokyo Olympics
Fukushima Cover-Up and Denial
New study says Minami-soma as safe as Western Japan cities – do they really expect us to believe this?
On September 5, 2017, Minami-soma city made a statement on the city’s radiation levels compared to 3 cities in West Japan, which has been reported in several newspapers. It’s important to comment on this study because the statement is intended to persuade the population to return to live there.
We are publishing comments on the articles below after having discussed with M. Ozawa of the citizen’s measurement group named the “Fukuichi Area Environmental Radiation Monitoring Project“. For English speaking readers, please refer to the article of Asahi Shimbun in English. For our arguments we refer to other articles published in other newspapers – Fukushima Minyu and Fukushima Minpo – which are only in Japanese.
Here are the locations of Minami-soma and the 3 other cities.
Here is the article of the Asahi Shimbun
Fukushima city shows radiation level is same as in west Japan
By SHINTARO EGAWA/ Staff Writer
September 5, 2017 at 18:10 JST
MINAMI-SOMA, Fukushima Prefecture–Radiation readings here on the Pacific coast north of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant are almost identical to those of sample cities on the other side of Japan.
The Minami-Soma government initiated the survey and hopes the results of the dosimeter readings, released Sept. 4, will encourage more evacuees to return to their home areas after they fled in the aftermath of the 2011 nuclear disaster.
A total of 100 portable dosimeters were handed out to 25 city employees from each of four cities–Minami-Soma, Tajimi in Gifu Prefecture, Fukuyama in Hiroshima Prefecture and Nanto in Toyama Prefecture. They were asked to take them wherever they went from May 29 through June 11.
The staff members were evenly dispersed with their homes in all corners of the cities they represented.
In addition, only those living in wooden houses were selected as different materials, concrete walls, for example, are more effective in blocking radiation.
In July 2016, evacuation orders for most parts of Minami-Soma were lifted, but not many residents have so far returned.
The city’s committee for health measures against radiation, which is made up of medical experts, analyzed the data.
The median value of the external radiation dosage of the 25 staff of Minami-Soma was 0.80 millisieverts per annum, while the average value was 0.82 mSv per annum, according to Masaharu Tsubokura, the head of the committee and a physician at Minami-Soma general hospital.
No significant difference was found in the three western cities.
Both figures were adjusted to include the natural radiation dose, and are below the 1-mSv per annum mark set by the national government as the acceptable amount of long-term additional radiation dosage, which is apart from natural radiation and medical radiation dosages.
The radiation doses in all cities were at levels that would not cause any health problems, according to Tsubokura.
“Making comparisons with other municipalities is important,” Tsubokura said. “I am intending to leave the survey results as an academic paper.”
Our comments
1) The difference of life style between city employees and local agricultural population
As we see in the article, portable dosimeters were handed out to city employees. They spend most of their day time in an office protected by concrete walls which are efficient for blocking radiation as stated in the article. However, in Minami-soma, most of the population spends more time outside, very often working in the fields. Their life style is different and therefore the external radiation dose cannot be similar to those of city employees. The result of the comparison between the external radiation dose of city employees cannot be used as an argument to say that it is safe for the local population to live in Minami-soma.
2) In the article of Fukushima Minyu, it is stated that in Minami-soma the radiation dose has a wider range than in the other three cities. This means that there are hotspots, which leads to higher risks of internal irradiation.
3) The radiation dose expressed in terms of Sieverts is relevant for radioprotection when the source of radiation is fixed and identified. This is the case for most of the nuclear workers. However, in the case of Fukushima after the nuclear accident where the whole environment is radio-contaminated and the radioactive substances are dispersed widely everywhere, it is not a relevant reference for radioprotection. It is important in this case to measure surface contamination density, especially of soil.
4) 6 years and 6 months since the accident, cesium has sunk in the soil. It is thought to be between 6 and 10 cm from the surface. This means the top layer of soil from 0 to 5 cm is blocking the radiation, reducing the measures of the effective dose. However, this does not mean that the population is protected from internal irradiation, since cesium can be re-scattered by many means, by digging or by flooding, for example.
5) The reliability of individual portable dosimeters has already been raised many times. This device is not adequate to capture the full 360° exposure in radio-contaminated environments as described in point 3 above.
6) In the article, it is stated that background radiation is included in the compared values, but it does not mention the actual background radiation measurements in the 4 cities.
The Table of Fukushima Minyu
Radiation dose of the 4 cities
Values include the background radiation dose
To summarize, the sample study group does not represent the overall population. The study doesn’t include the risks of internal radiation, for which the measurement of contaminated soil is indispensible. The dosimeters are not adequate to measure the full load of radio-contaminated environments. So, the research method is not adequate to draw the conclusion to say that it is safe for the population to return to live in Minami-soma.
TEPCO apologizes to Niigata for meltdown cover-up
A top official of the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has apologized to the Niigata Prefecture governor for having concealed the 2011 reactor meltdowns for more than two months.
Takafumi Anegawa, Managing Executive Officer of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, met Niigata Governor Hirohiko Izumida on Thursday.
In February this year, TEPCO admitted the utility could have ascertained there was a meltdown three days after its occurrence if utility workers had followed an in-house manual. It was also later found that TEPCO’s then-president had instructed officials not to use the words “core meltdown.”
The prefecture, which hosts another TEPCO nuclear power plant on the Japan Sea coast, has put together a panel of experts to study the utility’s handling of the Fukushima accident.
Anegawa told the governor that TEPCO apologizes for not having presented a report based on an adequate investigation.
Izumida said information on meltdowns is critical for residents living near nuclear power plants to decide whether to flee or not. He said the prefecture expresses regret that TEPCO has not admitted its meltdown cover-up for five years.
Later this month, a joint panel set up by Niigata Prefecture and TEPCO plans to begin a detailed investigation.
Governor Izumida said additional probes are necessary to find out what in-house problems TEPCO had.
The governor said it is too soon to discuss resuming operations at the nuclear plant in his prefecture without a complete review of the Fukushima accident.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20160825_21/
Tokyo Accused of Cooking Fukushima Radiation Data
Radiation readings conducted by private activists, 40 km from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility are about eight to ten times higher than those published by authorities, said Yoichi Tao who majored in physics. Research by Toshihide Tsuda, professor of environmental epidemiology at Okayama University, showing that the rate of children suffering from thyroid cancer in Fukushima Prefecture was as much as 20 to 50 times higher than the national average as of 2014 is being dismissed as based on “over diagnosing”.
Japanese grassroots activists and independent journalists continue to accuse Tokyo of cooking the data about the impact of the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility (NPP).
Local government authorities in Iiate village in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture have recently been reporting the radiation levels at 0.38 microsieverts per hour. The village is located some 40 kilometers from the crippled nuclear power facility where cleanup operators struggle with not even knowing where the molten corium from three meltdowns went. It is “assumed” that it has molten its way into the ground underneath the crippled reactors. Some 300 tons of radioactive contaminated water per day continue to leak out into the Pacific Ocean.
The population is growing increasingly suspicious of the reliability of official data. For one, Tokyo adopted legislation that threatens citizens, including journalists, with up to ten years prison for releasing “unauthorized information” about the ongoing disaster.
The administration, in part pressured by Japan’s banking and finance industry, plans to re-start NPPs despite known, extreme earthquake risks. Data about adverse health impacts on clean-up workers and especially on children are suppressed. Funds for evacuated populations are cut for those who refuse to move back to so-called de-contaminated areas. De-contamination consists of removing the top soil in an approximately 100 meter wide zone around roads, residential areas and homes.
Yoichi Tao, who majored in physics, is one of the activists who is braving the central and local governments. Tao said that readings conducted by grassroots organizations show that the radiation levels are about 8 – 10 times higher than those that are being reported by official sources. Tao added that the government dispatched the military to de-contaminate isolated patches to the figures “look good”. “That’s how they do it”, he added.
Toshihide Tsuda, professor of environmental epidemiology at Okayama University, discovered that the rate of children suffering from thyroid cancer in Fukushima Prefecture was as much as 20 to 50 times higher than the national average as of 2014, three years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. His finding, however, did not arouse concern from the Japanese and local governments. It was rejected by the Fukushima prefectural government, attributing the phenomenon to a surge of “over diagnosis.” The local government insisted the cancer incidents and nuclear radiation were not related.
Other experts, like Dr. Christopher Busby, warned that the distribution of the top soil from contaminated areas throughout Japan will make it even more difficult to extrapolate the statistical data that are required to assess the impact of the nuclear disaster. D. Busby suggests that this could be a deliberate policy.
The official narrative touted by the administration of prime Minister Shinzo Abe is that Japan has the situation “totally under control”. The administration also rejects that there should be any issues with holding the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
In November 2015 the former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland, Mitshei Murata, called on the President of the International Olympic Committee to move the 2020 Olympics from Tokyo or to cancel the games over the situation at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Murata wrote:
Not only do we have a continued contamination of the groundwater and the Pacific Ocean by the unstable plant, but the brittle structure of the damaged plant represents itself a serious threat, in particular in our earthquake prone region. Given the relative proximity of Tokyo, just some 200km South of Fukushima, represents in my view an ongoing risk for our largest city, for its citizens and all visitors. You might agree that one more alarming development as the recent earthquake of magnitude 8.1 just some weeks ago might indeed increase the pressure to stop the planning process of the 2020 games all together.
Murata urged IOC President Dr. Thomas Bach to discuss sending independent experts to Japan to assess the current and future risk situation emanating from the damaged nuclear plant. Murata added:
Personally I believe, that the IOC cannot and should not take on the responsibility to plan for the Olympic games in a region where daily 7000 workers are attempting to clean up a contaminated nuclear reactor. The meltdown of three of the four reactor cores in Fukushima, where the contamination is clearly not under control and where a natural disaster as an earthquake quickly could increase the danger, in my opinion should strongly advocate restraint.
Mitshei Murata offered that he would gladly cooperate with the IOC President and could help finding independent scientists and experts, who could assist the IOC assessing the current situation and the future risks. Mitshei Murata concluded his letter, stating that he had copied the letter to Physician friends of his who are part of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War IPPNW (Peace Nobel Prize 1985) and with others who have repeatedly issued critical statements on the poor management of the serious nuclear power plant accident in Fukushima.
http://nsnbc.me/2016/05/23/tokyo-accused-of-cooking-fukushima-radiation-data/
Interview: Japan should learn lessons from Chernobyl — Russian expert
MOSCOW, May 24 (Xinhua) — The improper handling of the Fukushima aftermath by the Japanese government has had grave consequences and that’s partly attributed to the fact that Japan didn’t learn lessons from the Chernobyl tragedy, a Russian radiation expert has said.
For starters, Japan followed the suit of the former Soviet Union in playing down the disastrous consequences, said Valery Stepanenko, a leading specialist in medical and environmental dosimetry and radiation safety, said in a recent interview with Xinhua.
In stead of timely reporting complete information to the public, the Japanese government attempted to hide the truth in the beginning, wasting precious time for evacuation of more people from the polluted area, the expert said.
After the disaster, lies and contradictive information emerged, making it impossible to decide the level of exposure to radioactive iodine of pregnant women and children using tap water.
“There have been many reports about the necessity to develop international standards for providing timely information during such accidents, but there has been no progress so far, probably, due to the complexity of elaboration of such standards,” said Stepanenko.
He also called for immediate data of radiation levels after the accident, especially the internal exposure of residents who drunk polluted water in the affected area, because such exposure poses threat to the thyroid gland.
At the first stage of the Fukushima accident, “a very limited number of practical estimates of radiation levels in the population was made,” said Stepanenko.
“Subsequently, Japan started carrying out very detailed checks of children and adolescents who had radiation exposure, but data of internal exposure were still left out,” he said.
“Radiation suffered by children at that time remain unknown, but they are very important for proper follow-up treatment,” the Russian expert said.
The consequence is dire. Till now, more than 160 teenagers in Fukushima Prefecture have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, including suspect cases, according to a report by the local healthy authority.
However, the Fukushima government rebutted the link between the disease and the nuclear accident in March, 2011. Some Japanese experts claimed that no evidence can prove the relationship between thyroid cancer and radiation.
Stepanenko said he has tried to pursue why there was no retrospective analysis of the radiation levels received by the population, but he has come empty handed after all these years.
The Fukushima crisis suggested that, according to Stepanenko, nuclear plants should not be built in areas of high seismic activity and those built in such areas should be shut down.
A number of nuclear plants in Japan are built on the coast, where an earthquake and tsunami, or a combination of both, is expected at any moment.
“Indeed, you can build a wall to resist a tsunami. The Fukushima had a six-meter wall to protect the nuclear plant, but the waves reaching a height of 12-13 meters destroyed the plant after all,” said Stepanenko.
After Fukushima accident, the Japanese started to realize their mistakes and started to revive their nuclear power network, taking into account the new, post-Fukushima safety requirements, the expert said.
But perhaps Japan should be the last region to build any nuclear plants under the current technological basis given its location in risky earthquake zone, he added.
The leaking radiation is still polluting the underground water of Fukushima which flows to the Pacific in uncountable amounts. Consumers in Japan’s neighboring countries are widely cautious about consuming the imported food from near Fukushima.
Three decades ago, the radiation dust threatened a considerable area of Europe after the Chernobyl accident. Likewise, the affected population of the Fukushima crisis is not only the Japanese people.
Given the fact that the United Stated registered elevated levels of radiation on the Pacific coast, Japan’s neighbors should be thankful to the wind blowing eastwards following the Fukushima disaster, said Stepanenko.
“Who knows how the wind will blow next time when another nuclear accident happens in such a country with high earthquake risks?” asked Stepanenko.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-05/24/c_135383778.htm
Opinion: Tokyo’s handling of Fukushima aftermath lacks responsibility
BEIJING, May 23 (Xinhua) — In the story of one famous Chinese idiom, a man plugs his ears while trying to steal a bell, foolishly believing that by doing so others won’t hear the sound of the bell when it is moved away.
Of course they do, and he gets caught.
The cautionary tale of burying one’s head in the sand aptly applies to the handling of the Fukushima incident by the Japanese government, which has chosen to turn a deaf ear to the aftermath of the worst nuclear accident in decades triggered by quake-related Tsunami five years ago.
Tokyo’s irresponsible attitudes and acts such as speeding up the return of displaced residents to some nuclear disaster-affected areas of Fukushima Prefecture and reluctance to share relevant information, have sparked doubt and anger domestically and internationally.
A joint opinion poll conducted by The Asahi Shimbun, a national daily, and the Fukushima local press in 2015 showed that over 70 percent of the Fukushima residents were unsatisfied with the government’s response.
In an editorial published on the fifth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear accident, French newspaper “Le Monde” said the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is “eager to turn over the page of Fukushima” and has shown a “willingness to forget.”
On March 11, 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck Japan’s eastern coast and triggered a 15-meter tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and sent its nuclear reactors into meltdown. The nuclear disaster was the worst since the Chernobyl incident in 1986.
As a result, up to 120,000 Japanese were relocated as “nuclear refugees” from the region.
A 2015 research found that children living near the Fukushima nuclear facilities are significantly up to 50 times more likely to develop thyroid cancer compared to those children living elsewhere in Japan.
Data on radiation levels collected by Japanese volunteers near the Daiichi nuclear power plant is 8 to 10 times higher than the official number.
At least 300 tons of radiation-contaminated underground water kept pouring into the ocean each day in 2013, but Abe, then vying for Tokyo’s right to host the Olympics, claimed that nuclear contamination was “totally under control.”
Questions over the Fukushima aftermath have never ceased to pop up.
The International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, a global organization, sent a message to the Japanese government this January expressing worry over the high incidence of thyroid cancer among children in the Fukushima region and offering as a professional organization to support the investigation on this matter.
The Japanese government, however, gracefully declined the offer.
The lack of transparency and independent investigation has led to limited access to information about the accident, one of the only two level-seven nuclear disasters according to the international nuclear watchdog.
Tokyo’s approach shows a weak sense of responsibility and the intention to avoid political pressure ahead of the G7 summit later this week and the 2020 Olympic Games.
Japan is concerned with its national image, food security, tourism, nuclear policy, medical compensation and possibility of public lawsuits. But not single one of them should be the country’s excuse for preventing the post-disaster situation from being known to the public.
Given the scale and impact of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, there is no ground for Tokyo to stay secretive and evasive over the handling of the issue.
The international community should urge the Japanese government, if it sticks to the passive attitude, to make public relevant information and its post-disaster management.
The selective amnesia over a disaster out of political or any other purposes is even more terrifying than the disaster itself. Tokyo owes an explanation to the world.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-05/23/c_135381193.htm
Spotlight: Five years on, Fukushima remains shrouded in untold stories
BEIJING, May 23 (Xinhua) — In front of the local government of Iidate Village in Japan‘s Fukushima Prefecture stands a big radiation measuring device. On its spotless dashboard flashes a red number: 0.38 microsieverts/hour.
The spot is about 40 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was crippled by the monstrous earthquake-triggered tsunami in March 2011.
Looking at the display, Yoichi Tao, a volunteer with a physics background, smiled in mockery. “The figure is too low,” he said, pointing to a humble measuring device not far away. “This is a measuring equipment we set up ourselves,” he said. “The figure of radiation is eight to 10 times of the official one.”
Tao’s feeling presents a stark contrast to the Japanese government’s official statements, which claimed that the crisis was “totally under control” and that “any negative impact of radioactive water on the environment is completely blocked.”
Tao was suspicious and angry, and the like-minded are many. Some of them suffer from radioactive-related diseases, and some are seeking help but having nobody to turn to.
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear accident, as well as the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. On the latter, various investigations and commemorations have never ceased over the past three decades. Yet on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, probes have always been wrapped in an ominous cloak for the past five years.
How many years are needed to handle the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear accident? What are the exact ecological impacts on the environment? How much progress has been made in the decontamination process? How should the nuclear waste be disposed of?
As regards those questions, many experts around the world give a similar answer:” It’s hard to tell, as we don’t have enough information.”
RADIATION EXPOSURE: HIGH
Why are the radiation measuring figures 10 times different? “This shining measuring device was set up by the government later than us,” explained Tao. “It dispatched the military to wipe out the nearby nuclear radiation on the ground in advance, so the official figure looks very low. That’s how the government did it.”
However, concealing the truth will not lead people’s memory to oblivion, but arouse anger.
A joint opinion poll conducted by The Asahi Shimbun, a national daily, and the Fukushima local press in 2015 showed that over 70 percent of the Fukushima residents were unsatisfied with the government’s response. One focal point is the local children’s poor health, especially thyroid cancer, possibly triggered by nuclear radiation.
Toshihide Tsuda, a professor of environmental epidemiology at Japan’s Okayama University, found that the incidence of thyroid cancer among children in Fukushima Prefecture was 20 to 50 times higher than the national average as of 2014, three years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
His finding, however, fell on deaf ears of the central and local authorities. The Fukushima prefectural government attributed the phenomenon to a surge of “over-diagnosis.” The local government insisted that the cancer incidents and nuclear radiation were not related.
The International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, a global organization, sent a message to the Japanese government this January expressing worry over the high incidence of thyroid cancer among children in the Fukushima region and offering as a professional organization to support the investigation on this matter. However, its offer has been gracefully declined by the Japanese government.
At the fifth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear crisis, the parents of the children who were diagnosed with thyroid cancer in Fukushima formed a mutual help group to demand that the government provide convincing evidence that their children’s sufferings were not related to the nuclear accident.
WILLINGNESS TO FORGET
In an editorial published on the fifth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear accident, French newspaper “Le Monde” said the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is “eager to turn over the page of Fukushima” and has shown a “willingness to forget.”
The Japanese government admitted in August 2013 that at least 300 tons of highly-contaminated water flowed freely into the Pacific Ocean every day and the problem might linger for ages.
However, in September the same year, when Japan was bidding for the 2020 Olympic Games, Abe told the international community that the crisis was “totally under control.”
It has also been revealed this February that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the operator of the Fukishima nuclear power plant, had knowledge of multiple meltdowns at the plant’s reactors following the tsunami, but intentionally withheld that information until months later.
Yuko Yoshida, secretary-general of Japan Women’s Network for Chernobyl Health Survey and Health-Care Support for the Victims, noticed the different attitudes of the Japanese media reporting the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents.
She pointed out that during the past three decades, mainstream Japanese media have been constantly fixing their eyes on Chernobyl. Yet after Fukushima, they have basically refrained from in-depth investigation and reporting on the health hazards caused by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Similar attitudes existed in the research community. Professor Valery Stepanenko, a leading Russian specialist in medical and environmental dosimetry and radiation safety, told Xinhua that he asked his Japanese counterparts why Japan had not performed a retrospective analysis of the radiation doses received by the population, but the Japanese scholars were either silent or vague about it.
“As a result, doses of iodine tablets received by children at that time remain unknown, but they are very important for proper follow-up treatment,” Stepanenko said.
FEAR OF IMAGE DAMAGE
According to Ken Buesseler, a senior researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a U.S. private non-profit organization, the Japanese government has not been doing a good job communicating with the public.
Information disclosure needs to be improved, so that the general public would know more about the level of nuclear contamination and its influence on health, he suggested.
The expert, who has been studying the Fukushima nuclear accident’s impact on maritime environment since 2011, told Xinhua that the impact was unprecedented, as 80 percent of the leaked radioactive substance has flown to the sea.
However, the Japanese government has kept claiming that everything is “completely under control” and that any negative impact on the environment “is completely blocked.”
Observers from around the world have pointed out that the Japanese side has deliberately toned down the nuclear accident’s long-term impact on health, food safety and the environment. Adding to Tokyo’s worry are concerns that the image of Japan would be stained and the safety of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics be questioned.
However, underestimating the long-term impact of the accident could lead to slack supervision on affected food, and might also produce unrealistic optimism in the Japanese government that could result in careless handling of the aftermath, experts warned.
According to Chen Xiaoqiu, deputy chief engineer with the Radioactive Safety Center of the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection, remedial efforts include restoring the environment, cleaning up nuclear contamination and processing nuclear waste and studying the biological survival environment and the radiation impact on human bodies.
Given Japan’s handling of the incident, an independent investigation initiated by international experts is necessary to reveal the truth of the disaster whose aftermath spills well beyond the Japanese border, said Buesseler.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-05/23/c_135381065.htm
Internal Exposure Concealed: The True State of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident
Yagasaki Katsuma, emeritus professor of Ryukyu University, has been constantly sounding the alarm about the problem of internal exposure related to nuclear weapons testing and nuclear electricity generation. Since the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP), he has drawn on his expertise to conduct field research, and to support those who evacuated to Okinawa. We asked him to reflect on the five years since the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, and to lay out the issues that lie ahead.
Heading to the blast site 12 days post-explosion
On March 17, 2011, a friend who lived in Fukushima City contacted me. “They’re reporting an onslaught of radioactivity, but we have no idea about any of that”, he said. “We need dosimeters, but there’s no way to get our hands on them.”
I ended up making my way to Fukushima along with several dosimeters for measuring radioactivity. I set up the dosimeters. Fukushima was under a petrol provision restriction, and I could not travel freely. I needed to make arrangements for an “emergency vehicle” to use. I had left Okinawa on March 24, traveled via Osaka by plane to Fukushima Airport, and entered Fukushima City by a bus that went through Kōriyama. The Japan Railways (JR) trains had stopped running. It had been 12 days since the first explosion, which had occurred at reactor No. 1 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). It snowed the next morning, and I saw that a torrent of radioactivity – 12 microsieverts/hour – was relentlessly falling on the living spaces of Fukushima’s citizens.
From March 25 to 31, I went to eight areas to measure radiation doses in the air, farmland and water: Fukushima City, Iwaki City, Aizu-Wakamatsu City, Kitakata City, Minami-Sōma City, Kōriyama City, Iitate Village, and Kita-Shiobara Village. I engaged in discussions with farmers and other locals about what steps they should take.
At the time, the dose readings from farmland went down by half when just the top layer of weeds and straw litter were removed; digging 3 cm deep reduced the readings by 80%. So I suggested that if people did not plant crops this year, and removed 5 cm of topsoil from their land, they could prevent future batches of crops from radioactive contamination. It was a situation in which both national and local governments were at a loss about what to do; they could not even come up with countermeasures, and were practically without policies. In the end, apart from a few enterprising farmers who followed my recommendations, most farm-owners felt compelled to plant crops, and ended up ploughing the soil to spread radiation up to 20 cm deep.
Of the 2 dosimeters I had brought with me to conduct my survey, I lent one to a farmers’ union for one year, thus doing what I could for them in terms of temporary assistance.
No Measures to Protect Residents
One of the things which stunned me was the absoluteness of the safety myth (anzen shinwa). Even though radioactive dust was falling, no one knew anything about how to protect their bodies. The local governments had not a single dosimeter among them. The evacuation manual for NPP accidents used in Fukushima City’s elementary schools was exactly the same as the evacuation manual for earthquakes.
Furthermore, all attempts to talk about demonstrations of the danger of NPPs were categorically suppressed. Herein lies the root of why no countermeasures were taken to protect residents from radioactivity. No stable iodine tablets were distributed; no SPEEDI (System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information) data was announced, and so on.
Before the accident, I had published a book called Concealed Radiation Exposure in 2009 with Shin Nihon Shuppansha, which expounded my view that internal exposure was a hidden kind of exposure more dangerous than external exposure.
The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) and the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) have suppressed information about those sacrificed in the atomic bombings. The International Commission for Radiation Protection (ICRP) has concealed the issue of internal exposure in the context of their commitment to the cause of the United States’ nuclear strategy.1 The Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident, through multiple explosions, has scattered between one hundred and several thousand more radioactive materials than the Hiroshima bomb into the environment, resulting in health damage caused by internal exposure. This would ineluctably lead the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the ICRP to cover up internal exposure and exposure casualties. In other words, I believed that they would do everything they could to cast off health damage to Fukushima residents, and support the Japanese government’s policies to abandon its own citizens. This is what drove me to rush down to Fukushima.
The Accident on Televised Programmes
For two years in 2011 and 2012, I delivered more than 120 lectures each year, and held interviews with the mass media. The mass media did courageously report on the reality and danger of internal exposure, but a distressing incident occurred in the process. This happened during my appearance, on July 2, 2011, as a guest on NHK Television’s Weekly News Insights.
The NHK flipchart that disappeared was based on this graph. 2
I had asked them to make a flipboard for me which showed data on how the rate of child cancer deaths in Japan had jumped five years after the atomic bombings of 1945 to three times their original rate (see graph). It was data which clearly demonstrated that these children were the world’s first casualties of internal exposure. The night before the show, I was handed a script and sat in a meeting discussing the show until past 10 PM. However, the next morning, when I headed to NHK, the director told me that due to time constraints, we could not follow the script we had discussed the previous night. On entering the studio, the flipboard which I had expected to be at my feet was nowhere to be seen. When I asked a nearby staff member to please bring it for me, quickly, the reply was that they could not do that. With 30 seconds to go before showtime, I had no choice but to appear on the show bereft of my data.
The following day, when I requested a written explanation of these events, NHK did not oblige me. Faced against my will with such a situation, I feel strongly that I am responsible for not being able to properly deal with it.
The Society for Connecting Lives
My deceased wife, Okimoto Yaemi, established a society called “Connecting Lives – The Society to Connect Okinawa with Disaster Sites” together with Itō Michiko, an evacuee from Fukushima, and others. They demanded that the Tokyo Electric Power Company explain compensation claims to the victims of the disaster, and even made them come to Okinawa to explain this in person to the evacuees here. It was the first time TEPCO had travelled outside of Fukushima Prefecture to hold an information session. In Okinawa, a group of plaintiffs for a lawsuit to “return our livelihoods, return our region” also came together. 3
In the midst of all her work, Okimoto always came to send me off and to pick me up from Naha Airport. Now that she is gone, I have taken up her role as the representative for the “Connecting Lives” society.
After the accident, the melted-down reactor core was too radioactive to be properly disposed of. It is clear as day from this fact alone that nuclear power generation should not be permitted. In these 5 years, there has been a regime brimming with pollution: it is manifest in things like the lack of intelligence and care on the part of the Japanese government, the utilitarianism that places profits and power above human rights, and the political concealment of the worst environmental radiation disaster in history.
******
It is now 5 years since the Fukushima Daiichi accident, and we are in an abnormal state of affairs in which TEPCO and the national government are forcing people to silently accept their victimization.
Under the Atomic Energy Basic Law, the maximum annual exposure limit for the public is set at 1 millisievert. But people are being forced to accept a revised threshold that is 20 times larger, that of 20 millisieverts per year.
In Fukushima Prefecture, the cessation of compensation payments and the lifting of the evacuation order in highly contaminated regions has forced people to return, at the same time that housing support for the evacuees is also being ended. Of course, there are no measures at all in place to deal with radioactivity outside Fukushima Prefecture.
The Chernobyl NPP accident of 1986 led Ukraine (also Belarus and Russia) to establish laws that protected human rights, which stands in great contrast with the human rights situation surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident.4
Claiming Radiation Effects as Psychological
The media reports on the occasion of 3.11’s 5th anniversary contain references to the “fūhyō higai” (damage caused by rumors of radiation) that they claim is hampering the reconstruction process. Why do they not call this as it is, “radioactivity damage”? “Fūhyō higai”is a term that they use in order to replace radiation effects as psychological problems.
Under appointment of the IAEA, Shigematsu Itsuzō (now deceased), the former chairman of RERF(formerly ABCC), carried out a health survey of Chernobyl residents. He remarked in a report he made in 1990 that “there are virtually no diseases that are caused by radiation, but attention must be paid to the psychological stress that is caused by wondering whether or not one has been exposed to radiation”. The theory that “psychological stress causes illness” is a method used to conceal the radiation victimization of the nuclear age.
In Chernobyl, uncontaminated food was distributed to residents of contaminated areas. Respite trips for children are also ensured by the state. And yet, in Fukushima, there is a huge push to “support by consumption” (tabete ouen) and the administration has implemented a policy of “locally-grown and locally-consumed” in providing children’s school lunches. Japan is not attempting to avoid internal exposure as Chernobyl-affected states did; it is doing the exact opposite.
What is at the bottom of this response? Whether it is protecting residents from radiation exposure, or decommissioning of the melted reactor core, or indeed dealing with the contamination of underground water, there are numerous things that need to be addressed even by diverting the budgets of the forthcoming Tokyo Olympics. However, the Japanese government is trying to overcome all these issues with cheaper costs at the expense of people’s suffering. Underlying this is their utilitarianism – an ideology which prioritizes economics over human rights and human lives – as well as their philosophy of abandoning the people.
Following what the government is saying, one is left speechless. “If it’s under 100 becquerels, then sell it [produce]”; “If you don’t sell it you won’t be able to support yourself”; “If you talk about radioactivity you won’t be able to sell [your produce]”; “Don’t talk about radioactivity”. Media reports are controlled by the government, and people can only remain silent.
Providing safe food is the mission of agriculture. Surely there is no more cruel infraction of human rights than to force producers, against their will, to make food that might adversely affect human health by radioactive contamination. There is no solution to this injustice other than to get rid of this system that has been imposed by fiat. Although farmers’ labors have lowered the amount of radioactive contamination in their produce, tragedies will continue as long as they keep the allowable radioactivity in food up to 100 becquerels/kilogram.
Such standard stems from the thinking that economic profits comes before health. Radioactivity even in small amounts can cause harm. International Commission on Radiological Protection has it that carcinogenesis starts with DNA mutation of a single cell. Human susceptibility to radioactivity depends on individuals, and more vulnerable ones, particularly fetuses are affected first. The natural miscarriage rate of the four prefectures including Fukushima since 311 has risen by 13%.5
Consumption of one becquerel of C-137 (with biological half-life of approximately 80 days) every day will result in an internal accumulation of 140 becquerels within about 2 years. If we have to inevitably set any standard for allowable radioactivity in food, we should use the guidelines set forth in the recommendation by German Society for Radiation Protection, which is “no food with a concentration of more than 4 becquerel of the leading radionuclide Cesium-137 per kilogram shall be given to infants, children and adolescents. Grown-ups are recommended to eat no food over 8 becquerel per kilogram of the leading nuclide Cesium-137.”6
Deceitful Dosimetry
The Japanese government’s philosophy of abandoning its people starts with its refusal to trust them, in other words it views them as unintelligent citizens. Fearing that a panic would result, it did not announce SPEEDI data, nor did it distribute solid iodine tablets. It prioritized “emotional stability” over protecting residents from radiation danger. Moreover, it implemented thorough control of information.
It is not simply that residents are seen as ignorant. The government has even actively betrayed their trust. A classic example of such actions by the state is the presentation of data on the radioactive contamination levels in the environment. The government set up monitoring posts (MP) in Fukushima Prefecture and neighboring prefectures and made the readings from them into official data. Along with Yoshida Kunihiro and others from the “Safety and Reassurance Project”, in the autumn of 2011, I checked the dose measurements of the MP. We found clear evidence that the publicly available data of the MP only showed 54% of the actual level of contamination in our readings.
Comparison of Radiation Dose Readings from the Monitoring Posts and Actual Doses
X-axis: amount of radiation (microsieverts/hour
Y-axis: actual doses for residents and measurements at monitoring posts
Black dot-dash line: Actual absorbed dose received by residents
Dotted red line: Measurements at monitoring posts without decontamination
Red line: Measurements at monitoring posts with decontamination
[When laid alongside a graph of the actual recorded radiation doses taken by the authors at the monitoring posts (black line; the absorbed dose to residents), the same displayed readings taken from the same monitoring posts were 58% of that value in the case of non-decontaminated areas and 51% for decontaminated areas.]
[2011 autumn, taken with a certified scintillator counter, model HITACHI-ALOKA YCS172B]
On top of that, there was also a deliberate downplaying in government processing of the numerical data. The level of soil contamination is directly related to the amount of radiation in the air, and an objective measurement of this thus should be obtained from the air dose. However, on the assumption that there is a uniform exposure dose to the whole body, this reading was converted to 60% of its full amount based on the projected dose, an amount called the “effective dose”, a number that divides the exposure dose among the body’s various organs. Furthermore, they made a hypothetical estimate of the time people spent inside and outside their homes, and created a “substantive dose” reading that was another 60% lower. In the background to these machinations lies the will of the international nuclear energy industry.
The health survey being conducted by the Fukushima Prefecture Health Survey Evaluation Committee continues to progress, and the sad news is that it has already located 163 cases of cancer. From a scientific point of view, it is clear that these cases are undeniably caused by radioactivity. I also found, from the ratio of male to female patients, that about 75% of cancers in each sex were induced by radiation. Despite this, the Evaluation Committee continues to assert that there is no proof that these cancers are linked to the NPP accident.
Just as the committee insists that the numerous stark cases of thyroid cancer are not linked to radioactivity, so they will attempt to bury all other adverse health impacts in the sand.
******
Environmental pollution by radiation in Japan is ongoing, and, following the Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident, it is the worst it has ever been. This is true whether we look at the amount of radioactivity being released via the long-term meltdown of the reactor core, which is spewing uncontrollably, while the government and mass media collaborate in the cover-up. From the standpoints of society, economics and preventative medicine, a terrible state of affairs will result if we do not provide public protection to the people affected by the accidents and clarify the nature and extent of environmental damage.
“Cheaper” Countermeasures
The Japanese government has deemed the amount of radioactivity released from the Fukushima accident as one sixth of that which was released from Chernobyl. However, the subsequent revelations suggest that Fukushima’s radioactivity is actually anywhere from 2 to 4 times as high as Chernobyl’s.7 Compared to the explosion of just one reactor at Chernobyl, which had a 1,000,000 kilowatt capacity, the explosion at Fukushima Daiichi involved 4 reactors with a combined output of 2,810,000 kilowatts.
The post-accident maintenance of nuclear reactors between Fukushima and Chernobyl also differs. Seven months after Chernobyl, a steel and cement sarcophagus was built to cover the reactor, thus stopping the further release of radioactive materials. Japan, even after 5 years, continues to let radioactive substances spew out into the air and water, thus worsening the world’s environment.
Without using the necessary basic procedures, they are simply trying to implement “cheaper” countermeasures. The fact that the stricken reactor cannot be managed alone can demonstrate that nuclear power lacks practicality and there is no choice but to abolish it.
As mentioned before, Japan is not honestly disclosing the degree of contamination and is using various measures to underestimate it. They have not published dose readings for radioactive nuclides such as uranium, plutonium, and strontium-90. The monitoring posts, which are supposed to provide public data of radioactivity, give readings that are only around half of the actual doses.
Pediatric thyroid cancer cases in Fukushima have risen to 163. It has been proven scientifically that these are due to radiation. (Tsuda Toshihide et al. have demonstrated this via statistics8; Takamatsu Isamu has examined the relationship between exposure dose and cancer onset rate9; Matsuzaki Michiyuki10 and Yagasaki Katsuma11have studied the relationship of radiation with the sex-differentiated ratio of cancer).
In response to this research, the Fukushima Prefectural Health Evaluation Committee has continued to insist that there is no clear link between cancer and the NPP accident. They are trying to bury all the injuries to health by this denial of a link between radioactivity and the many recorded cases of thyroid cancer. By expunging the record of health damages caused by radiation, they hope to heighten the false impression that NPPs are “safe”. In Japan, excessive utilitarianism goes unmentioned; companies’ profits and the state’s convenience take priority over human life.
The Systemization of Dispersal
The countries surrounding Chernobyl created a “Chernobyl Law” to protect their residents 5 years after the accident. Under this law, the government designated areas that received more than 0.5 millisieverts of radiation each year as “dangerous”, and areas that received between 1 and 5 millisieverts of radiation each year as “areas with relocation rights”, while areas receiving more than 5 millisieverts each year could not be used as residential or agricultural sites. Health checkups and respite trips for children have been covered in a massive budgetary investment by the state in order to protect its residents.
What about Japan? The legal exposure limit for the public is 1 millisievert per year. As previously mentioned, the government has raised the upper threshold to 20 millisieverts per year in their drive to push Fukushima residents to return. The Chernobyl law forbids residence and agriculture in areas where more than 5 millisieverts (per year) of irradiation is expected; in Japan, approximately 1,000,000 people live in such areas.
Under the Basic Law on Atomic Energy, which governs nuclear reactors and related phenomena, the standard for radioactive waste management (the level considered for safe recycling use) is 100 becquerels per kilogram. Notwithstanding this rule, the special law for measures to handle contamination by radioactive substances permits up to 8000 becquerels per kilogram. Contamination dispersal is thus becoming systematized.
A law to support child victims was established, but no maps of radioactive contamination were made, and the areas specified to receive assistance under this law’s “Basic Policy” are limited to Fukushima Prefecture. With this law they have thus made all areas outside Fukushima Prefecture ineligible to receive radioactivity countermeasures.
When looking at the measurements taken by the Nuclear Regulation Authority of the contamination levels in all prefectures, we see that contamination exists everywhere in the country, Okinawa being no exception.
In particular, eastern Japan shows high levels of contamination. 10 prefectures show contamination of more than 1,000 becquerels of Iodine-131 per square meter of land –Tochigi, Ibaraki, Tokyo, Yamagata, Saitama, Chiba, Gunma, Kanagawa, Nagano, and Shizuoka (Readings for Fukushima and Miyagi were not available for a period of time because the measurement equipment were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami, but other sources confirm high I-131 dispersion in Fukushima). 11 prefectures show more than 1,000 becquerels of Cesium-137, and Cesium-134 – Fukushima, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Tokyo, Yamagata, Saitama, Chiba, Gunma, Kanagawa, Iwate, and Nagano.
These readings are taken from a fixed point, which means that if a radioactive plume does not pass over these points, it will not be measured, and is liable to produce an under-estimation gap by 1 to 2 digits.
Although the Ministry of Education has implemented airborne monitoring, cities with a density of buildings higher than 3 stories present obstacles to this technology, making it unable to record their levels of contamination. Severe contamination is concealed in the Tokyo metropolitan area and other places in the region.
Legal Protection of Citizens
The above facts demonstrate an intentional ignoring of the serious level of radiation pollution. Japanese citizens should recognize radioactivity pollution as a de facto state of affairs.
In order to protect Japanese citizens from radioactivity pollution, the government and administration should take responsibility for protecting victims via a swift application of the regulations exactly as they are laid out under the Basic Law on Atomic Energy. Here we raise some suggestions for administrative policies to enact not only towards evacuees, but all residents. 1. The state should recognize and guarantee citizens’ right to evacuate and relocate. It should also bear responsibility in enacting measures to protect vulnerable victims, especially children.
- Health damages that emerge from NPP accidents should be studied on a nation-wide scale, and a study of the conditions of evacuees should be quickly implemented.
- Those most vulnerable to radiation should be protected by measures based on a sincere commitment to preventive medicine.
- With regard to the numerous early-onset cases of child thyroid cancer that have far exceed such early cases caused by Chernobyl, medical care and compensation should be provided; children and all residents should be protected. Thyroid screening should also be carried out for the entire country.
- Measures to prevent the entrance and exit of radioactive substances in all regions should be enacted.
- TEPCO’s social responsibility as a victimizer corporation in radioactivity pollution should be clarified.
This is a translation of a modified version of Yagasaki’s three-part article series “Kakusareru naibu hibaku – Fukushima genpatsu jiko no shinso” that appeared in Ryukyu Shimpo on March 16, 17, and 18, 2016.
Notes
Mind Control and Peaceful Murder
May 15, 2016 by Mikkai
The sentence: “What will our children think” – is an anachronism. Nothing they will think, because they lack the comparison. The whole organization of public life, of learning in schools and universities, the work of agencies, think tanks and experts has only one aim: The reality is taken as an always “self” updating structure, a constant presence. Thus, disasters become accidents, and accidents become an event. Embedded into “risks” – meaning nothing to worry about. Invisible disasters such as in Japan are perfect to persuade us, as if nothing had happened.
We should not rely on the power of our children, and simultaneously reduce their perception. But that’s what happens every day. Along with the radiation damage, each second.
Why are there protections hoaxes in cyberspace all the time? The sun flowers, the radiation eating bacteria, and the “positive thinking”?
– Fake science, fake ethic.
– To keep claims for compensation small and / or unjustified (long time effects of radiation are not accepted by IAEA and WHO, and so by the Health Ministry
– keep evacuation zones small
– The invention of trivialization of nuclear accidents
– Limitation of the policy of Decontamination
– How to re integrate irradiated areas into economy
– (increasing or flexible) dose limits for all people
– To force the Japanese population to accept on behalf of the economic efficiency unhealthy living conditions and contaminated food and contaminated water
– To relieve TEPCO: The burden of proof is imposed on the victims rather than on the polluter of the contamination
RESULT: The industry can go on.
Who is behind all this? Well, here is your answer:
Rockefeller founded many organisations and think tanks during World War II. The search was on, for Mind Technology during War Times, to be implemented into the masses, the public. The dream of a solider who sacrifices oneself without thinking (like a japanese kamikaze) for the rulers, without even thinking of it. The public sould become like this, the normal man, even the pregnant women.
Among these organisations and agencies founded was the Centre d’Etudes de Problemes Humaines de Travail, which today is the Centre d’études de l’emploi (CREAPT): http://www.cee-recherche.fr/partenariats-et-evenements/partenariats/creapt
Founded at the same time was also the Association pour la Recherche er L’Intervention Psycho-sociologiques in France: http://www.arip-ics.org
10 years before Chernobyl the Centre d’étude sur l’Evaluation de la Protection dans le domaine Nucléaire was founded: http://www.cepn.asso.fr/en/
As they say on their website, this program has four members (financing) their research: “The association currently has four members: the French public electricity generating utility (EDF), the Institute of Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), the French Alternatives Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and AREVA.”
What has CEPN done? Well, it founded Radiation “Protection” Programs in Belarus and Japan: CORE and ETHOS:
In Japan is the Psychological Institute at Kyushu University, which is represented by the Graduate School of Human-Environment Studies: http://www.hues.kyushu-u.ac.jp/english/
In the U.S.A. there is of course the American Medical Association and the American Psychatric Association: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama and https://www.psychiatry.org/
Reactors explode, irradiate the masses and these organisations, brainwash the victims to stay where they are, in irradiated areas. This avoids the cost explosion of evacuation of maybe hundreds of million of people. With psychological back power they transform the public, the media, the politicians, and even the victims’s thinking, that nothing is as bad as it seems, that one could protect againt radiation effects.
The Nuclear Industrial Military Complex explodes reactors, studies the effects via their own programs, and forces the people into the role of guinea pigs. They eat up all remaining NGOs. And then act for the people. Our perception is then brainwashed by their psychological task force. This causes a psychotic holocaust, which then becomes a cellular holocaust, because of the radiation. Normally this kind of reversing something, a good thing which is bad, feels quite “satanic”.
This is the reason, why there is this radiation “Protection” hoax going around, from sun flowers, to bacteria, that eat radiation and event the crazy “think positive” ideology, especially in Japan’s culture and the 2011 aftermath. It is all done by the same people, who caused all these disasters.
Here is a typical, cynical statements which shows it all, it was said b a CORE expert in Belarus:
“If we continue to treat them like victims, they feel like victims” Zoya I. Trafimchik, coordinator of the CORE program: http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=55022&keybold=nuclear%20AND%20%20accident%20AND%20%20fallout%20AND%20%20land
This is the Crime of CORE. Mind Control of the Radiation Victims, and then Peaceful Murdering them.
The Main Pro Nuclear Program in Japan is ETHOS right now, acting as if they help the victims: http://ethos-fukushima.blogspot.de/
To understand this criminal program in Japan, look at the CORE program in Belarus: The Budget of the CORE program: 5 Million EUROs was the CORE budget. But there are also papers which show a Budget of 4 Million EUROs. The truth is: You need Billions of EUROs to “handle” Chernobyl: More than 6 Million people are still living in irradiated areas in Belarus. How to evacuate them? Build endless houses? Why such a small budget? If you would push more money into it you would admit that Chernobyl was what it was: An unpayable Catastrophe. And one 2nd thing: You would admit that atomic power is unpayable – none of the atomic reactors on this planet are assured. A big crash like the Chernobyl one would cause a damage of 2 – 5,000,000,000,000 EUROs in the U.S. or in the E.U.
Here is an Opinion about CORE Program: http://spring96.org/en/news/1244
Chernobyl program CORE has the aim to “end” Chernobyl. By helping people to die (not to live!) in irradiated areas. The only state supported program.
The Chernobyl aid-program in Belarus was stopped in 1994 / 95: PAGE 62 of this presentation : http://www.life-upgrade.com/DATA/NesterenkoChernobyl-Belarus.pdf and a new “pro nuclear” program replaced it
CORE – or “on how to end Chernobyl (atomic reactor explosion 1986 / radiation) and the resettlement of people in contaminated areas in Belarus”
CORE – from “Cooperation” and “Rehabilitation”. Rehabilitation means: Restoration.
CORE – program launched in Belarus: “Bragin”, “Chetschersk”, “Slavgorod” and “Stolin”.
CORE – the successor program of the failed program “ETHOS” http://www.cepn.asso.fr/en/publications/communications/102-radiation-protection-culture-at-school-lessons-from-the-ethos-and-core-projects-in-belarus.html
(http://www.cepn.asso.fr/spip.php?article56).
The already existing Chernobyl NGO’s do not play a role in the CORE program, beside themself participate on CORE – with their own (already short) budget – raised from international donations. Pro nuclear programs CORE and SAGE are powered by french atomic industry: EDF, Areva and the CEA. http://web.archive.org/web/20080110114120/http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/34/10015
“For a quarter of a century a systematic crime against humanity has been perpetrated by people in senior positions at the heart of Europe. The people living in Western Europe, so advanced technologically, remain indifferent and largely disinformed. In order to preserve the consensus around the military and civilian nuclear industry, the nuclear lobby and the official medical establishment have, for the past 26 years, knowingly condemned millions of human guinea pigs to an experiment on their bodies with new diseases in the vast laboratory provided by the territories contaminated by Chernobyl. Children are being treated like laboratory animals, under observation from French and German scientists, and French NGO’s like the CEPN, Mutadis Consultants, ETHOS and CORE, who must take their share of the responsibility. (Translator’s note: CEPN is the Centre d’étude sur l’Evaluation de la Protection dans le domaine Nucléaire ; Mutadis, ETHOS and CORE are all offshoots of the French nuclear industry, financed either through Electricité de France or the Autorité de Sureté Nucléaire.) The same fate awaits the Japanese people and their children living in areas contaminated by the Fukushima disaster because the same strategy is being put in place in Japan with the same players, the same pseudo-scientific justifications and under the aegis of the same authorities.” MORE: http://independentwho.org
“…the IAEA will endeavour to organize conferences, seminars and workshops, in cooperation with the University, with the aim of enhancing public awareness of radiological effects on human health and addressing the issue of “radiation fear” and post-traumatic stress disorders in the Fukushima population…” http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/energy/fukushima_2012/pdfs/fukushima_iaea_en_06.pdf
“it is recognized by the World Health Organization that the International Atomic Energy Agency has the primary responsibility for encouraging, assisting and coordinating research and development and practical application of atomic energy for peaceful uses throughout the world without prejudice to the right of the World Health Organization to concern itself with promoting, developing, assisting and coordinating international health work, including research, in all its aspects.” http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/Others/inf20.shtml#note_c
It is remarkable how reports always include “stress” / “fear” / “might” / “concern” / “risk” / “Danger” in their headlines and MAINgoals of reporting. The real damage occurring moves into the background. The dead, the injured, not worth looking at, only the concern counts. This is important, especially during nuclear catastrophes (which never end), to create the illusion of an “end”, to overcome the “current situation”. This is not about hope or strength, but to cover up, so that the Holocaust industry can live on.
Nourished by the death of children, sponsored by the IAEA and the World Health Organization. I present you two instruments which are used: 1) The invention of an unethical, non-medical term: “Radiophobia” and 2) the exclusion of NGOs as alarmists. Compare everything you have read and seen with this information. Be ready to see everything in a totally new light. Even the term “stress” is today overused, for everything, as if stress is something new in human history and could be responsible for all the diseases. It’s not. Internal Emitters from Reactors are. Risk is a virtual term, which conceals existing, current, happening damage.
Japanese people hear it from Fukshima day One: “Panic and fear of radiation is much worse than radiation itself” At the Chernobyl IAEA forum the term “Radiophobia” was invented and used: “What’s worse, the IAEA is going public these days with statements ridiculing the so called “radiophobia” of the population and calling for an end of aid programs, which, according to the IAEA report of 2005, only serve to instil a victim mentality in a totally healthy population – a claim not only cynical, but potentially dangerous for the health of the affected population.” Source: http://www.ippnw-students.org/chernobyl/coverup.html
Source: https://tekknorg.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/mind-control-and-peaceful-murder/
What is True?
What is true about Chernobyl’s legacy? I offer two competing accounts.
The first account describes Chernobyl as a “wildlife wonderland”:
Karin Brulliard. April 26, 2016. 30 years after Chernobyl disaster, camera study captures a wildlife wonderland. The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/04/26/30-years-after-chernobyl-disaster-camera-study-captures-a-wildlife-wonderland/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_evening
Anecdotal reports of wildlife doing well in the ruins of Chernobyl have been controversial. Some scientists argue that the disaster has taken a deleterious toll on fauna, causing genetic damage and population declines. A study published last fall, however, backed up the idea of the fallout zone-turned-enchanted forest with data from helicopter observation and animal tracks. They pointed to flourishing animal populations.
The big picture of these pictures? According to Beasley, it’s that radiation does not seem to have kept wildlife from self-sustaining and spreading out across the Belarus evacuation zone. He said he expects another camera trap study being carried out in the Ukraine half of the zone will find the same thing.
I wondered what study “published last fall” backed the idea that the “fallout zone-turned-enchanted forest” had a flourishing animal population. It was apparently Dr. James Beasley’s (from the University of Georgia). He has quite a record of funding from the US Departments of Energy and Defense and is currently a consultant for the IAEA on Fukushima. I recommend looking at his cv http://srel.uga.edu/facstaffpages/CVs/beasleyCV.pdf. There is no information available about his methodology in the publication, which is a “correspondence” here: http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.08.017.
In contrast to Dr. Beasley’s glowing account of “fallout zone-turned-enchanted forest” there is Dr. Tim Mousseau’s account of transgenerational effects that include reduced sperm count and smaller bird brains.
I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Mousseau describe his research and his extensive field work capturing, sampling and releasing a range of animals in the Chernobyl and Fukushima zones. He is a very careful and methodical scientist who is not funded by US government agencies or the IAEA. He and his research partner have concluded that animals are not in fact adapting to radiation-contaminated zones ( see academic study here ). Dr. Mousseau describes his findings here:
Timothy Mousseau. April 25, 2016. At Chernobyl and Fukushima, radioactivity has seriously harmed wildlife. The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/at-chernobyl-and-fukushima-radioactivity-has-seriously-harmed-wildlife-57030
…in the past decade population biologists have made considerable progress in documenting how radioactivity affects plants, animals and microbes. My colleagues and I have analyzed these impacts at Chernobyl, Fukushima and naturally radioactive regions of the planet.
Our studies provide new fundamental insights about consequences of chronic, multigenerational exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation. Most importantly, we have found that individual organisms are injured by radiation in a variety of ways. The cumulative effects of these injuries result in lower population sizes and reduced biodiversity in high-radiation areas….
Radiation exposure has caused genetic damage and increased mutation rates in many organisms in the Chernobyl region. So far, we have found little convincing evidence that many organisms there are evolving to become more resistant to radiation. You decide what is true.
Fukushima Five Years After: Health Researchers Turn Blind Eye to Casualties
Last month made five years since the nuclear plant at Fukushima, Japan suffered meltdowns. The release of highly toxic radiation from the reactors was enormous, on the level of the Chernobyl disaster a generation earlier. But Fukushima is arguably worse than Chernobyl. There were four reactors that melted down, vs. just one at Chernobyl. And the Chernobyl reactor was buried in a matter of weeks, while Fukushima is still not controlled, and radioactive contaminants continue to leak into the Pacific. In time, this may prove to be the worst environmental catastrophe ever.
Japan, which had 54 reactors in operation, closed them all to improve safety features. But the nation’s people, who had suffered from the two atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are adamantly against nuclear power. As a result, despite strong efforts of government and industry, only three (3) reactors have been brought back on line.
While the people struggle against leaders to determine the nuclear future of Japan, many questions remain. The most crucial question is, without doubt, how many casualties occurred from the 2011 disaster?
Public health leaders have addressed the topic with ignorance and deception. A search of the medical literature shows only two studies in Japan that review actual changes in disease and death rates. One showed that 127 Fukushima-area children have developed thyroid cancer since the meltdown; a typical number of cases for a similar sized population of children would be about 5-10. The other study showed a number of ectopic intrathyroidal problems in local children – a disorder that is extremely rare. No other studies looking at changes in infant deaths, premature births, child cancers, or other radiation-sensitive diseases are available.
But the literature also shows that researchers have been pouring out articles on mental health and psychological impacts on local residents. Journals from Japan and other nations have printed research on stress, behavioral changes, fears, and even changes in average blood pressure (blaming it on concerns about the meltdown). At least 51 of these articles are listed on the National Library of Medicine web site.
The same pattern occurred after prior meltdowns. The 1979 meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania was followed by a total denial that anyone had been harmed. The first journal article on changes in cancer cases didn’t appear until nearly 12 years after the meltdown; it showed a 64% rise in cancer cases within 10 miles of the plant during the first five years after the accident. The authors, from Columbia University, blamed this increase on stress and psychological reactions to the disaster.
After Chernobyl, the same corruption of scientific investigation occurred. The 31 emergency workers who helped bury the red-hot reactor and died from high exposures became almost a mantra (“Chernobyl caused only 31 deaths”) despite the massive amount of fallout it dispersed across the globe. A 2009 compendium of 5,000 articles, published by the New York Academy of Sciences, estimated about 1 million deaths from the meltdown occurred in the following 20 years. Unfortunately, nuclear supporters have made the assumption that nobody died from Fukushima, while churning out study after study on how a meltdown affects mental status – and no other part of the body.
But the truth is that Fukushima radiation, a mix of over 100 chemicals found only in atomic reactors and bombs, has caused considerable harm. University of South Carolina biology professor Timothy Mousseau has made multiple trips to Japan, collecting specimens of plants and animals. He and colleagues have published numerous journal articles showing DNA damage and actual disease near the plant. So if plants and animals are affected, it is logical that humans are as well.
And while the damage is worst in Japan, the harm spread for long distances. Right after the meltdown, prevailing winds drove Fukushima fallout across the Pacific, reaching the U.S. West Coast in 5 days, and moving through the air across the nation. EPA data showed that the West Coast, had the highest levels of fallout in the weeks following the accident, up to 200 times normal. In the years since, the slower-moving radiation in the Pacific has moved steadily eastward, reaching the U.S. West Coast, and contaminating fish and aquatic plant life along the way.
We published three journal articles showing that babies born in the West Coast in the nine months after Fukushima had a 16% jump in defective thyroids, compared to little change in the rest of the country. It’s time that health researchers stop its corrupt approach to Fukushima, and produce some actual statistics on changes in disease and death rates among affected populations – in Japan and in other countries. Not coming to grips with the truth will only raise the chance of another catastrophic meltdown in the future, raising the already-enormous number of casualties from nuclear power.
In total denial of the low-dose internal irradiation effects
Another marvelous spin propaganda article minimizing the dangers of the radiation in Fukushima, from the Asahi Shimbun.
If you watch that press conference from the beginning to the end, you may have different impression about their work. They do not pay any attention to the effect of the low-dose internal irradiation. Such omission being very convenient to promote the fallacy that life in Fukushima is very safe.
Haruka Onodera, a third-year student at Fukushima High School, holds a news conference with University of Tokyo professor Ryugo Hayano at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo on Feb. 8.
Fukushima students reach out to tell truth about radiation
Struck by ignorance about the 2011 nuclear disaster, high school science club members in Fukushima Prefecture enlisted the help of fellow students around Japan and abroad for a comparative study on radiation doses.
The results surprised even those living in the prefecture that hosts the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
“The individual doses (of external radiation exposure in high school students) were almost equal inside and outside of Fukushima Prefecture, and in European areas,” Haruka Onodera, 18, said in English at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ) in Tokyo on Feb. 8.
A German correspondent asked her, “Would you declare Fukushima now safe?”
“Actually, we didn’t measure the doses in people living in the contaminated areas, so we can’t say all of Fukushima is safe,” Onodera answered, often pausing in thought in the middle of her words and phrases. “But I hope we will send (personal dosimeters) to contaminated areas and help do risk management for people living there in the future.”
Onodera, a third-year student of Fukushima High School and member of the physics and radiation division of the school’s Super Science Club, also showed explanatory slides at the FCCJ news conference titled, “Fukushima and radiation monitoring. The goal of the project is to show the realities of Fukushima Prefecture to the rest of the world.
The club’s physics and radiation division started the project in summer 2014. It involved 216 high school students and teachers in Japan and abroad carrying personal dosimeters for two weeks.
Six high schools in Fukushima Prefecture–Fukushima, Adachi, Aizu Gakuho, Iwaki, Asaka and Tamura–and another six located elsewhere in Japan–including in Gifu, Kanagawa, Nara and Hyogo prefectures–were involved in the project.
They were joined by 14 high schools from France, Poland and Belarus.
According to the measurements taken by the students, the annual radiation doses in Fukushima Prefecture ranged between 0.63 and 0.97 millisievert. For elsewhere in Japan, the range was from 0.55 to 0.87 millisievert, while in Europe, the annual doses were between 0.51 and 1.1 millisieverts.
The similar levels of external doses are believed to be partly attributable to the lower level of natural background radiation in Fukushima Prefecture compared with that in western Japan. That finding came from an analysis of a database on the radioactive content of soil in areas surrounding the different high schools across Japan.
Onodera, who was seated next to Ryugo Hayano, a professor of physics with the University of Tokyo, at the FCCJ news conference, had also presented the study results last year to a workshop of high school students in France and a conference on Fukushima foodstuffs held on the sidelines of an international food exposition in Italy.
Two second-year students of the Super Science Club–Minori Saito, 17, and Yuya Fujiwara, 17–gave a talk at a workshop organized in Date, Fukushima Prefecture, by the International Commission on Radiological Protection late last year.
First- and second-year students who are members of the club, joined by eight high school students from France, visited peach farmers and shiitake mushroom growers in Fukushima Prefecture in summer last year. It was part of a program for studying the current state of Fukushima from diverse views.
The students wanted to address global audiences after they were shocked by how little was known about the actual state of Fukushima Prefecture.
“Can humans live in Fukushima?” a French high school student asked the Fukushima students over Skype as part of an international exchange program in 2014.
That prompted the Japanese students to determine the actual situation on their own, and compare it with circumstances elsewhere in Japan and abroad. Hayano advised them to undertake the endeavor when he visited Fukushima High School to give a talk.
The findings of the study were surprising. Most of the Fukushima students expected the doses in Fukushima would be the highest, even by a large margin.
The students also studied how behavior affected the dose levels.
The Fukushima High School students were being exposed to lower radiation levels when they were at school than when they were at home. They believe the school’s concrete buildings provided a more effective shield from radiation sources than the wooden houses did.
By contrast, students attending Ena High School in Gifu Prefecture were exposed to more radiation when they were at school, where granite, containing radiation sources, is used in the buildings.
Their analysis results were published in November in a British scientific journal on radiological protection. Onodera was involved in writing the research paper.
“The experience has brought home to me how important it is to address reality objectively and scientifically,” she said.
Onodera said she was growing more interested in basic sciences and dreams of doing research on molecular biology at university.
“We hope to solicit help from people in evacuation zones within Fukushima Prefecture, and from high schools in countries we have yet to address, in further broadening our study,” said Takashi Hara, a teacher and adviser to the science club’s physics and radiation division.
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
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See here the final program of the 12th International #Uranium Film Festival #Rio de Janeiro, May 18 – 28, 2023, Modern Art Museum (MAM Rio) #Cinematheque. uraniumfilmfestival.org/en/rio-2023-pr…
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