Fukushima Flunks Decontamination
Japan’s Abe administration is pushing very hard to decontaminate land, roads, and buildings throughout Fukushima Prefecture, 105 cities, towns, and villages. Thousands of workers collect toxic material into enormous black one-ton bags, thereby accumulating gigantic geometric structures of bags throughout the landscape, looking evermore like the foreground of iconic ancient temples.
Here’s the big push: PM Abe committed to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which shall be a crowning achievement in the face of the Fukushima disaster. Hence, all stops are pulled to repopulate Fukushima Prefecture, especially with Olympic events held within Fukushima, where foodstuff will originate for Olympic attendees.
The Abe government is desperately trying to clean up and repopulate as if nothing happened, whereas Chernobyl (1986) determined at the outset it was an impossible task, a lost cause, declaring a 1,000 square mile no-habitation zone, resettling 350,000 people. It’ll take centuries for the land to return to normal.
Still and all, is it really truly possible to cleanse the Fukushima countryside?
Already, workers have accumulated enough one-ton black bags filled with irradiated soil and debris to stretch from Tokyo to LA. But, that only accounts for about one-half of the job yet to be done. Still, in the face of this commendable herculean effort, analysis of decontamination reveals serious missteps and problems.
Even though the Abe government is encouraging evacuees to move back into villages, towns, and cities of Fukushima Prefecture, Greenpeace nuclear campaigner Heinz Smital claims, in a video – Fukushima: Living with Disaster d/d March 2016: “Radiation is so high here that nobody will be able to live here in the coming years.”
Greenpeace has experts on the ground in Fukushima Prefecture March 2016, testing radiation levels. The numbers do not look good at all. Still, at the insistence of the Abe government, people are moving back into partially contaminated areas. In such a case, and assuming Greenpeace is straightforward, it’s a fair statement that if the Abe government can’t do a better job, then something or somebody needs to change. The Olympics are coming.
The Greenpeace report of March 4, 2016: Radiation Reloaded – Impacts of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident 5 Years Later, exposes deeply flawed assumptions by the IAEA and the Abe government in terms of both decontamination and ecosystem risks.
Ever since March 2011, for over 5 years now, Greenpeace has conducted 25 radiological investigations in Fukushima Prefecture, concluding that five years after the Fukushima nuclear accident, it remains clear that the environmental consequences are complex and extensive and hazardous.
A 17-minute video entitled “Fukushima: Living with Disaster,” shows Greenpeace specialists in real time, conducting radiation tests in decontaminated villages and towns of the prefecture. Viewers can see actual real time measurements of radiation on dosimeters.
For example, in the Village of Iitate, 40 kilometers northwest of the Daiichi nuclear plant, Toru Anzai, an evacuee of Iitate, is told decontamination work on his plot of land nearly complete, and he is to rehabitate in 2017. However, Toru has personal doubts about governmental claims. As it happens, Greenpeace tests show abnormally high levels of radiation where decontamination work is already complete.
“Here we have around 0.8 microsieverts (μSv) per hour,” Heinz Smital, nuclear campaigner Greenpeace, “0.23 was the government target for decontamination work.” An adjoining space registers 1.5-2.0 μSv sometimes up to 3.5 μSv. “This is not the kind of count where you can say things are back to normal.”
Throughout the prefecture, decontamination is only partially carried out. For example, decontamination is confined within a 20-meter radius of private plots and along the roads as well as on farmland, leaving vast swaths of hills, valleys, riverbanks, streams, forests, and mountains untouched. Over time, radiation contamination runoff will re-contaminate many previously decontaminated areas.
Alarmingly, Greenpeace found large caches of hidden buried toxic black bags. Over time, it is likely the bags will rot away with radioactivity seeping into groundwater.
At Fukushima City, 60 km from the plant, Greenpeace discovered unacceptable radiation levels with spot readings as high as 4.26, 1.85, 9.06 μSv. According to Greenpeace: “These radiation levels are anything but harmless.”
The government officially informed Miyoko Watanable, an evacuee of Miyakochi, of “radiation eradicated” from her home. But, she says, “I don’t plan to live here again.” Greenpeace confirmed her instincts: “Although work has only recently finished here, we find counts of 1-to-2 μSv per hour… That’s not a satisfactory for the people here in this contaminated area” (Heinz Smital).
Once an area is officially declared “decontaminated,” disaster relief payments for citizens like Miyoko Watanable stop. The government is off the hook.
Without a doubt, the government of Japan is confronted with an extraordinarily difficult challenge, and it may seem unbecoming to ridicule or find fault with the Abe administration in the face of such unprecedented circumstances. But, the issue is much bigger than the weird antics of the Abe government, which passed an absolutely insane secrecy law providing for 10 years in prison to anybody who breathes a secret, undefined.
Rather, whether nuclear power is truly safe is a worldwide issue. In that regard, the nuclear industry has an unfair PR advantage because of the latency effect of radiation. In general, the latency period for cancers is 5-6 years before statistically discernible numbers. People forget.
Consequently, it is important to reflect on key facts:
In a 2014 RT interview, Katsutaka Idogawa, former mayor of Futaba in Fukushima Prefecture, said: “It’s a real shame that the authorities hide the truth from the whole world, from the UN. We need to admit that actually many people are dying. We are not allowed to say that, but TEPCO employees also are dying. But they keep mum about it.”
Alas, two hundred fifty U.S. sailors of the USS Ronald Reagan, on a Fukushima humanitarian rescue mission, have a pending lawsuit against TEPCO, et al claiming they are already experiencing leukemia, ulcers, gall bladder removals, brain cancer, brain tumors, testicular cancer, dysfunctional uterine bleeding, thyroid illness, stomach ailments and other complaints extremely unusual in such young adults. Allegedly, the sailors were led to believe radiation exposure was not a problem.
Theodore Holcomb (38), an aviation mechanic, died from radiation complications, and according to Charles Bonner, attorney for the sailors, at least three sailors have now died from mysterious illnesses (Third US Navy Sailor Dies After Being Exposed to Fukushima Radiation, Natural News, August 24, 2015.) Among the plaintiffs is a sailor who was pregnant during the mission. Her baby was born with multiple genetic mutations.
Reflecting on 30 years ago, Adi Roche, chief executive of Chernobyl Children International, care for 25,000 children so far, says (2014): “The impact of Chernobyl is still very real and very present to the children who must live in an environment poisoned with radioactivity.”
“Children rocking back and forth for hours on end, hitting their heads against walls, grinding their teeth, scraping their faces and putting their hands down their throats… This is what I witnessed when I volunteered at Vesnova Children’s Mental Asylum in Belarus (February 2014),” How my Trip to a Children’s Mental Asylum in Belarus Made me Proud to be Irish, the journal.ie. March 18, 2014 (Cliodhna Russell). Belarus has over 300 institutions like this hidden deep in the backwoods.
Chernobyl is filled with tear-jerking, heart-wrenching stories of deformed, crippled, misshaped, and countless dead because of radiation sickness. It’s enough to turn one’s stomach in the face of any and all apologists for nuclear power.
According to Naoto Kan, Japanese PM 2010-11 during the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant meltdown: “For the good of humanity it is absolutely necessary to shut down all nuclear power plants. That is my firm belief” (source: Greenpeace video, March 2016).
Over 60 nuclear reactors are currently under construction in 15 countries. China has 400 nuclear power plants on the drawing boards. Russia plans mini-nuclear floating power plants to power oil drill rigs in the Arctic by 2020. Honestly!
(part 2) Young woman from Fukushima speaks out
This interview was filmed on February 12, 2016, in Fukushima Prefecture. The young woman was 15 at the time of the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, and we are releasing this interview with her permission. She is one of the 166 Fukushima residents aged 18 or younger at the time of the nuclear disaster who has been diagnosed with or suspected of having thyroid cancer (as of February 2016).
Fukushima residents who were 18 years old or younger at the time of the nuclear accident have been asked to participate in the voluntary thyroid ultrasound examination which is part of the Fukushima Health Management Survey. However, 18.8% of this age group were not tested in the 1st round of testing.* While the final results for the 2nd round of testing are not yet complete, every year the number of children participating in the official thyroid examinations is decreasing; the number of children who have not participated in the 2nd round of testing is currently 50.7%** For those young people aged 18-21 (as of April 1, 2014) and who were living in Fukushima at the time of the nuclear accident, 74.5% have not yet taken part in the official thyroid ultrasound examination.**
This young woman’s reason for speaking out is to motivate the families of children who have not yet received the thyroid ultrasound examination to have their children tested. However, in sharing her story about a topic which has become increasingly difficult to talk publicly about in Japan, she faces inherent risks which may include those to her work, community life and personal relationships. I therefore ask that her privacy is respected.
Ian Thomas Ash, Director
contact : info@documentingian.com
INSIGHT: Fukushima’s ‘caldrons of hell’ keep questions unanswered
A convenience store in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, on March 12, 2016, remains as it was when the 2011 earthquake and tsunami triggered the nuclear accident
After spending slightly more than two years in the capital of Fukushima Prefecture, I was assigned to The Asahi Shimbun’s Tokyo head office starting on May 1. I moved house the other day.
I had previously never been based in Fukushima, although I have long covered energy policy and a number of nuclear accidents as a reporter for the newspaper.
On April 11, 2014, shortly after I was assigned to Fukushima, I was told the words that would serve as a starting point for my news-gathering activities there. I am citing that phrase, which I quoted in a previous column, for a second time here:
“Whatever the future of nuclear power generation, it will remain essential to expand renewable energy sources to ensure a stable energy supply and to fight global warming. Fukushima Prefecture has swaths of land and a historical background for doing so.
The energy industry has always been its leading local industry. The prefecture is home to the Joban coal field, and Iwaki was a city of coal mines. Nobody will be able to change Japan unless Fukushima takes it upon itself to do the task.”
The remark was made by Yukihiro Higashi, then professor of thermal energy at Iwaki Meisei University.
After the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, the Fukushima prefectural government defined “building communities that do not rely on nuclear energy” as a leading principle of its post-disaster rebuilding efforts.
It set a goal of having renewable energy sources cover all energy demand in the prefecture by around 2040. Higashi played a central role in working out that vision.
The goal may seem preposterous, but the professor’s remarks led me to realize that it isn’t.
LEADING ENERGY PLAYER
Fukushima Prefecture produced 10 percent of Japan’s electricity before it was hit by the nuclear disaster. Most of that electricity was sent to the greater Tokyo area, so the prefecture was sometimes sarcastically referred to as a “colony of Tokyo.”
But all that would have been impossible had it not been for the “swaths of land” and the “historical background” suitable to having electric power generated there.
Energy has always been the representative local product of Fukushima Prefecture. That history dates back to the late Edo Period (1603-1867), when the Joban coal field was discovered.
Energy created in the prefecture continued to support Japan’s modernization even after electricity replaced coal as the leading player.
Living in Fukushima Prefecture provides plenty of opportunities to learn about that history.
A cluster of old hydroelectric plants stands in the environs of Lake Inawashiroko. A dozen of these plants, which were built during the Meiji (1868-1912) and Taisho (1912-1926) eras and taken over by Tokyo Electric Power Co., continue to send electricity to the greater Tokyo area to this day.
A step-like array of hydroelectric plants along the Tadamigawa river in the prefecture’s western Oku-Aizu district was built in the postwar period in a desperate drive to “rebuild Japan.”
Both hydroelectric undertakings drew on the bountiful water resources that are the blessings of the prefecture’s terrain.
Nuclear reactors and a bunch of giant thermal power plants began to spring up along the Pacific coast during the high economic growth of the postwar period.
When cast in the context of that history, the goal set forth by the prefectural government appears to betray the pride of its own “leading local industry.” The prefecture’s people pledged that they are the ones who will replace the leading player of energy.
Ten days after I met Higashi, I visited the Yamatogawa Shuzoten sake brewery in Kitakata, Fukushima Prefecture, to see Yauemon Sato, the ninth-generation chief of the brewery, which has been operating since the mid-Edo Period.
Sato had founded Aizu Electric Power Co. in August 2013, setting out on an ambitious plan to help rebuild the prefecture by means of renewable energy sources.
“You know the caldron of hell?” Sato asked me. “You will be sent to hell and will be boiled in that caldron if you do evil. There are four such caldrons in Fukushima Prefecture. And they are still gaping.”
The No. 1 through No. 4 reactors of TEPCO’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, which caused a calamity that will go down in the history of humankind, could certainly be called “caldrons of hell.”
The use of renewable energy sources is a means for closing those caldrons and for obliterating them from Fukushima Prefecture.
More than two years later, the use of renewable energy sources is steadily gaining ground in the prefecture, covering 26.6 percent of all energy demand as of the end of March. The goal remains far in the distance, but the ratio has been gaining about 1 percentage point every year.
The caldrons are still gaping. TEPCO has yet to solve the question of how to block groundwater from flowing into the reactor buildings, which is only increasing the stockpile of water contaminated by radioactive substances. That is preventing the utility from starting serious work to decommission the reactors.
LEFT IN LIMBO
“What should we do?” a 59-year-old woman, evacuated from Okuma, which co-hosts the crippled nuclear power plant, to Koriyama, also in Fukushima Prefecture, asked me when I interviewed her about a year ago.
“Should we go on with our new life here, or should we return to our hometown? My thoughts remain in limbo, and I cannot get around to making up my mind.”
I did not know how to answer her question.
More than 94,000 people of Fukushima Prefecture continue to live as evacuees. The government of the town of Okuma, where all residents remain evacuated, plans to create a rebuilding base with a “habitable environment,” hopefully by fiscal 2018.
But full rebuilding of the town lies far beyond that goal. And that is leaving many people “in limbo.”
What should we do? My pursuit of that unanswered question will continue.
Former Prime Minister Koizumi backs U.S. sailors suing over Fukushima radiation
Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi speaks at a news conference Tuesday in Carlsbad, California.
CARLSBAD, CALIFORNIA – Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Tuesday he stands behind a group of former U.S. sailors suing the operator of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, who claim health problems they now suffer were caused by exposure to radiation after three reactors melted down in the days after a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
Koizumi made the remarks at a news conference in Carlsbad, California, with some of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit brought in the United States in 2012 against plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., which has renamed itself Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.
The plaintiffs include crew members of the U.S. aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, which provided humanitarian relief along the tsunami-battered coastline in a mission dubbed Operation Tomodachi.
“Those who gave their all to assist Japan are now suffering from serious illness. I can’t overlook them,” Koizumi said.
The former premier spent Sunday through Tuesday meeting with roughly 10 of the plaintiffs, asking about the nature of the disaster relief they undertook and about their symptoms.
“I learned that the number of sick people is still increasing, and their symptoms are worsening,” he told the news conference.
Koizumi called on those in Japan, both for and against nuclear power, to come together to think of ways to help the ailing U.S. servicemen.
The group of about 400 former U.S. Navy sailors and Marines alleges the utility, known until recently as Tepco, did not provide accurate information about the dangers of radioactive material being emitted from the disaster-struck plant.
This led the U.S. military to judge the area as being safe to operate in, resulting in the radiation exposure, the group claims.
One of the plaintiffs at the news conference, Daniel Hair, said Koizumi’s involvement made him feel for the first time that Japan is paying serious attention to their plight.
According to lawyers for the group, seven of its members have died so far, including some from leukemia.
Koizumi, who served as prime minister between 2001 and 2006, came out in opposition to nuclear power in the wake of the 2011 disaster. He has repeatedly urged the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to halt its efforts to restart dormant reactors across Japan.
Young woman from Fukushima speaks out (part 1)
This interview was filmed on February 12, 2016, in Fukushima Prefecture. The young woman was 15 at the time of the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, and we are releasing this interview with her permission. She is one of the 166 Fukushima residents aged 18 or younger at the time of the nuclear disaster who has been diagnosed with or suspected of having thyroid cancer (as of February 2016).
Fukushima residents who were 18 years old or younger at the time of the nuclear accident have been asked to participate in the voluntary thyroid ultrasound examination which is part of the Fukushima Health Management Survey. However, 18.8% of this age group were not tested in the 1st round of testing.* While the final results for the 2nd round of testing are not yet complete, every year the number of children participating in the official thyroid examinations is decreasing; the number of children who have not participated in the 2nd round of testing is currently 50.7%** For those young people aged 18-21 (as of April 1, 2014) and who were living in Fukushima at the time of the nuclear accident, 74.5% have not yet taken part in the official thyroid ultrasound examination.**
This young woman’s reason for speaking out is to motivate the families of children who have not yet received the thyroid ultrasound examination to have their children tested. However, in sharing her story about a topic which has become increasingly difficult to talk publicly about in Japan, she faces inherent risks which may include those to her work, community life and personal relationships. I therefore ask that her privacy is respected.
Ian Thomas Ash, Director
Fukushima police arrest 6 construction company employees after body found
Police arrested the head of a construction company and 5 employees for dumping a body believed to be that of a former colleague
FUKUSHIMA (TR) – Fukushima Prefectural Police have arrested six employees of a construction after the body believed to be that of a colleague who had gone missing was found buried on the firm’s premises in Iwaki City, reports Kahoku Shimpo (May 17).
Police arrested Daizo Hyugaji, 35, the president of Musashi Construction, and five other employees for allegedly abandoning a body at a sand storage area for the company company, located in the Hisanohama area.
On Sunday, investigators using a backhoe began digging at the site after receiving a tip that the body of man, who performed decontamination work, had been buried there in the fall of last year. A body believed to be that of the man, aged in 40s, was found on Monday evening.
Police suspect the crime was committed in September of last year. The family of the victim reported him missing the following month.
After confirming the identity of the body, police may apply murder charges to the suspects.
Poet Ryoichi Wago tries to bridge hearts after Fukushima
“For example, Wago says the argument that Japan must rely on nuclear power to some extent may sound rational, but if one spares a thought for the misery of people directly affected by the nuclear disaster then surely championing nuclear power generation does not offer a viable future.
Despite the lack of common ground and the prospect of never resolving such differences, Wago concluded that starting conversations to talk about issues related to the disaster would be a fundamental first step in the right direction.”
FUKUSHIMA–Ryoichi Wago, a high school teacher who doubles as a poet, rose to national prominence with a series of tweets he posted days after the March 11, 2011, nuclear disaster in his native Fukushima Prefecture.
On March 16 of that year, he tweeted the following short free verse about the drama unfolding at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant:
“Radiation is falling.
“It is a quiet night.”
Plunged into despair by the nuclear accident, Wago began groping for ways to get a dialogue going involving all sectors of society to bridge differences brought on by the catastrophe.
At the time of the disaster, Wago, now 47, was at his home in Fukushima city, which is situated inland and northwest of the crippled nuclear power plant. It has been estimated that radioactivity levels there were as much as 500 times higher than before the accident.
Like many other local residents, his wife and son left town and took refuge in Yamagata Prefecture, north of Fukushima. But he stayed on, even though the neighborhood felt like a ghost town. A radio station kept blaring, “Keep calm and evacuate.”
“Will I be forced to leave?” Wago feared. “Fukushima will be abandoned by the nation.”
Two months later, he published “Shi no tsubute,” or “Pebbles of poetry,” a compilation of free verse he had tweeted expressing his fears and anguish. Prior to the disaster, he had only four followers. The number quickly rose to 15,000 by the time the book was released.
Clearly, his words and thoughts were reaching a wider audience. But not everyone was in his corner.
One day a message sent through Twitter gave him pause for thought: “You live inland so you are not a disaster victim. You have not lost your hometown nor your family,” the message read, questioning his legitimacy to talk about the disaster as “one of them.”
By April, gas pumps were working again and Wago was able to visit other parts of Fukushima Prefecture to listen to what people were saying. He spent a year doing this, mostly at weekends, and talked to 60 or so people.
During these chats, he noticed a wide disparity in the way people viewed the disaster.
“I want the government to promise to return us to our hometown,” one individual would venture. “I cannot go back, I will make a new life somewhere else,” another would say.
A mother’s wish that her children would ”be able to play outside” invites a stinging rebuke: “Are you trying to make them sick from radiation exposure?”
It occurred to Wago that such disparities must be felt everywhere in Japan after the 3/11 disaster.
For example, Wago says the argument that Japan must rely on nuclear power to some extent may sound rational, but if one spares a thought for the misery of people directly affected by the nuclear disaster then surely championing nuclear power generation does not offer a viable future.
Despite the lack of common ground and the prospect of never resolving such differences, Wago concluded that starting conversations to talk about issues related to the disaster would be a fundamental first step in the right direction.
That was Wago’s starting point for creating Fukushima Mirai (future) Kagura. Kagura is dance and music performed at festivals and rituals as offerings to Shinto deities.
Wago gathered 50 or so locals as production staff and dancers, and held a talk session to get them to state what they wanted to get out of the project.
“I want to tell how much my tsunami-drowned friends would have wanted to live,” said one. “I want to express my anguish that my hometown was contaminated by radiation,” said another.
Wago recalls “some kind of intangible solidarity” was born among the participants.
In August 2015, the presentation of kagura at Fukushima Inarijinja shrine in Fukushima city received an ovation from the 700 or so spectators gathered for the performance.
His kagura is made up of several parts, including poetry reading accompanied by live calligraphy and a drum performance, and dance performance representing foxes and a dragon.
“A willingness to have conversation rather than confrontation is important. It is not necessarily in words either,” said Wago.
In March 2016, Wago published a new poetry book titled “Kinou yorimo yasashiku naritai” (I want to be kinder than yesterday).
One of those poems goes to the heart of what Wago is trying to express.
“From that day, I am having fruitless discussion with him.
“He tells me he cannot understand a single thing I say.
“I also respond flatly that I cannot understand him.
“Still, we have no way but to keep up our dialogue.”
Fukushima cops launch search for decontamination worker’s body
Police received a tip about the burial of the body of male decontamination employee at the office of a construction company
FUKUSHIMA (TR) – Fukushima Prefectural Police have started to excavate a yard in Iwaki City after receiving a tip about the burial of a man’s corpse, reports Fuji News Network (May 16).
On Sunday, investigators using a backhoe began digging on the premises of a construction company, located in the Hisanohama area, after receiving a tip that the body of male decontamination employee had been buried there in the fall of last year.
During the work, police discovered items belonging to the man. The search for his body is expected to continue today.
Police suspect that the case is the result of a crime involving six male decontamination employees.
http://www.fnn-news.com/news/headlines/articles/CONN00324767.html
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/
School to close in Fukushima as too few children able to attend
Graduates and local residents attend the last athletic meet at Iwaisawa Elementary School in Tamura, Fukushima Prefecture, on May 14.
TAMURA, Fukushima Prefecture–Despite a proud 140-year history, the Iwaisawa Elementary School here has to close–as not enough children come to classes any more due to the 2011 nuclear disaster.
The school held its last annual athletic meet on May 14. It will merge with another school after this academic year ends next March.
The school currently has 19 pupils, down from 52 before the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
In the lead-up to the athletic meet, the school, located in the Miyakoji district of Tamura, Fukushima Prefecture, sent out about 500 invitation letters to its graduates and local residents. About 150 people turned up.
After the nuclear accident, residents in the district were forced to evacuate to other areas. Although the evacuation order was lifted in April 2014, many of them opted to stay where they were while keeping their resident registries in the district.
As of the end of April this year, 2,564 people were officially registered as residents in the district. But of that number, only 1,600 or so actually lived there.
After the nuclear accident, pupils at Iwaisawa Elementary School temporarily took classes using classrooms of a different school in central Tamura, which had been already closed. In April 2014, they returned to their original school.
But only 29 came back, compared with the pre-accident figure of 52. The number has since further declined to 19. Because of that, it was decided the school will be merged with another school next spring.
Seniors mull share house to keep Fukushima evacuee community intact
Masaharu Fujishima, who is proposing to build a share house for temporary housing residents, explains his plan to residents in a meeting in April in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture.
FUKUSHIMA – As the government looks to lift the evacuation zone for part of Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, elderly people currently living in temporary dwellings are considering a share house so they can stay together.
If the no-go zone is lifted, residents at temporary housing units are likely to be asked to leave. One option is to return to their hometown of Minamisoma’s Odaka district — a choice few are likely to make. Another option is to move in to city-provided public housing where they would have to start again in unfamiliar surrounds.
In Odaka, residents will be allowed to stay inside the evacuation zone to prepare for their permanent return after the designation is lifted. But of the area’s 11,700 residents, only 1,870 have registered to go back, suggesting few plan to return permanently.
It’s for this reason that Masaharu Fujishima, 70, a resident at Minamisoma’s temporary housing complex, is pitching a plan to create a share house with individual rooms and common space that will allow temporary housing residents who have bonded since the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster to live together.
Fujishima evacuated from Odaka to temporary housing in the city center. Serving as head of the community association until January, he was able to talk with many residents about the troubles they faced as they attempted to rebuild their lives.
Many were worried about leaving a community of friends they bonded with over the past five years for a new one they would need to create from scratch.
“After the nuclear disaster, many people had to move around before they finally settled in the temporary housing,” said Fujishima. “I’m worried that if they leave here, they would have to go through all the trouble again of searching for a new place to live.”
So far, Fujishima has held three meetings for temporary housing residents to explain his proposal. While some feedback has been positive, with residents saying it will prevent them from becoming senile, others have voiced concern about what will happen when one of the dwellers becomes ill or dies.
To put the plan in motion, Fujishima submitted about 16,000 signatures to the Minamisoma Municipal Assembly.
The city is expected to consider the proposal, though a city official in charge of housing construction was not sure if the idea is feasible.
“It is difficult because public houses are not designed for many people to live together like a share house,” the official said.
Collision on the Joban Expressway in Fukushima
On May 4, 2016, a head-on collision between a car and a bus on the Joban Expressway in Fukushima killed a mother and her daughter on the passeger car. *link for Yahoo Japan article
The accident happened in Okuma town which is within “Difficult-to-return” zones, due the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
The designated area has been exposed to more than 50 millisieverts per year of radiation from the melted-down power plant. It is considered difficult for local residents to return possibly for the next several decades.
Since the entire area has been evacuated, the injured passengers on the crashed bus had be transported as far as 37Miles.
40 passengers including the bus driver had to wait for the ambulance for two hours on the side of the road. No face masks were provided.
(Cars and buses are allowed around this section of Joban Expressway, but not motorcycles due to the extreme level of radioactive contamination.)
*Photo of the Japanese newspaper article courtesy of Facebook group, “NPO法人チェルノブイリへのかけはし“.
Background radiation level in Okuma town as of March 24, 25 of 2016, measured by Okuma town.
Source: http://www.mp-nuclear-free.com/main-articles/news-snippets_20160507.html
The ‘uncanny’ in Fukushima’s nuclear aftermath: anxiety-provoking attachment to home
Yohei Koyama, doctoral researcher in the Department of Languages and Cultures of Japan and Korea, SOAS, University of London, UK.
“I’m afraid to say it, but we love Chernobyl. It’s become the meaning of our lives. The meaning of our suffering” (Alexievich 1997, 215), says Natalya Roslova. She is one of the voices in Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl. Her monologue continues:
On the way back, the sun is setting, I say, “Look at how beautiful this land is!” The sun is illuminating the forest and the fields, bidding us farewell. “Yes,” one of the Germans who speaks Russian answers, “it’s pretty, but it’s contaminated.” He has a dosimeter in his hand. And then I understand that the sunset is only for me. This is my land. I’m the one who lives here. (Alexievich 1997, 216)
The monologue reveals her strange affection to Chernobyl which awakens what Freud called the uncanny. In short, the Freudian uncanny is what evokes not only fear and dread but also affection – it is the ambivalence of fear and affection (Freud 1919, 123). And this ambivalence is something that Chernobyl shares with Fukushima.
In this piece, I will shed light on the strange affection of the uncanny. Particularly, I would like to present a story of Momoko who I met during my fieldwork in Fukushima in 2014. Although she was an ordinary 30-something woman in Fukushima, extraordinary was that she forfeited marriage with her fiancé to stay in Fukushima after the nuclear accident. Her story reveals not only her strong attachment to her hometown and willingness to stay there but also her fear of radiation and anxiety about health risks. It is a manifestation of the same kind of strange affection which belongs to the realms of the Freudian uncanny.
***
Ever since Momoko was born, she has always lived in her hometown located in the western part of Fukushima. There are always people who never leave their hometowns and continue to live with their family, and Momoko is one of them. On the contrary, her ex-fiancé is not from Fukushima – his family moved to Momoko’s town when he was a child due to work circumstances. He spent some years in Fukushima, but he left for good to go to a university in Tokyo. Despite the distance, she was happy in the relationship with him for a few years before the accident. Sometimes a rural life felt inconvenient to her, but she could go to Tokyo on some weekends and even travel abroad at least once a year. She said she was not always happy about her rural life, but she was not unhappy about it either. It was perhaps a simple pastoral life, but it was about to change on 11 March 2011.
The nuclear accident was a life-threating experience for Momoko, not to mention the preceding severe earthquake and continuous aftershocks. “I thought I could die by radiation! I guess I was oversentimental and naïve at that time,” she said with a laugh. She confessed that she was feeling her own death for the first time in her life after she saw the multiple explosions at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on television and when everyone started talking about radiation. But after this initial oversentimental phase, she quickly learned radiation protection through study meetings on radiation and its health effects organized by the local government and online research. When I met her in 2014, she showed great familiarity with the terminologies such as different names of radioisotopes, units of radioactivity and radiation dosage, and with the particular situation of radiation contamination in her living environment. This very much resembles how people affected by the Chernobyl accident became heavily informed by bio-scientific knowledge – what Adriana Petryna (2002) described a biomedical subject.
In the meantime, the initial oversentimental phase never ended for her ex-fiancé. He was eager for her to evacuate not only from Fukushima but also from East Japan with his family. Although she knew she would leave her hometown to live with him once she gets married (and she was actually looking forward to the day to come), she could not leave her family and friends who were stuck in the middle of the nuclear crisis. She felt she was a part of them, and more importantly, she felt there was a growing affection for her hometown. Despite knowing the risks she was taking, she wanted to stay for one simple reason – because it was her home. So they were destined for a never-solving dispute about whether or not she should evacuate. She confessed that she had been yelled at and called “foolishly stubborn” by him over the phone. Even though she was trying to understand how much he cared about her, their relationship was falling apart. “After all,” she said, “he didn’t have a ‘home’ like I did. He would have never understood how I felt about my hometown.” A few months after the accident, she was single again.
Momoko expressed her strong affection for her hometown and self-determination to live there which eventually set her apart from her ex-fiancé, but it does not mean that she was not concerned about possible risks. Also, even though she formed her opinions of risk perception and decided to stay on her own terms, such decision making could be an art of balancing the fear with the available knowledge. Moreover, there are displays of real-time spatial radiation dose, everyday monitoring of locally-produced food, examination of human bodies and on-going decontamination works throughout the prefecture. They are all constant reminders of the presence of radiation in everyday life. In such situation, it seemed as if she was in a constant struggle with her fear. She mentioned that her willingness to learn radiation protection could be her fear of radiation just reversed. To use her own word, “I know the spatial dose is a lot lower now and radiation contamination is no longer detected in the food we eat, but it still weighs on my mind. And that’s probably why I keep checking the dose and screening results.”
Thus, Momoko’s affection for her hometown becomes extremely ambivalent which comprises her fear of radiation. In this way, it coincides with the Freudian sense of uncanny. Freud defines the particular state of feeling uncanny as “the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar” (Freud 1919, 123). In other words, the uncanny is something familiar that has long been repressed, and the uncanny effect arises when the repressed returns (Freud 1919, 150). To an extent, Freud’s intention here was to transgress conventional reality by this de-familiarization of the familiar. It is notable that what is de-familiarized overlaps with the excess of reality in Bataille’s sense. But for Freud, such excess could be associated with the attraction of death (1919,148). In fact, Freud (1919, 148) did not forget to mention that the uncanny could be represented by anything associated with death.
It should be noted that for many Japanese people, the word radiation is arguably the signifier of death because of its association with their collective memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although it was five years ago Momoko closely felt her own, radiation is still present in the everyday life in Fukushima today. In this sense, her life in Fukushima remains as something that brings her own death to her consciousness and her affection for her hometown becomes the uncanny.
…for many Japanese people, the word radiation is arguably the signifier of death because of its association with their collective memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
***
I keep in touch with Momoko by email. In this April, she sent me pictures of cherry blossoms – sakura in Japanese – in full bloom. People eat and drink under fully bloomed sakura throughout Japan every spring, and it is called hanami. It looked like she had it for this year. “I think the sakura in my town is the best after all”, she said.
Cherry Blossoms [Sakura] photographed by Mokomo near where she lives in Western Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. ‘I think the sakura in my home town is the best after all’ says Mokomo.
The image of people having hamami in Fukushima could be simply horrific because of radiation contamination. But for her, such image is also a landscape of her home that she loves in spite of the contamination. It is uncanny, but perhaps, it is also a manifestation of her self-determination to live with radiation.
Yohei Koyama is currently undertaking doctoral research in Japan focussing on the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear accident. His ongoing PhD research, supervised by Dr Griseldis Kirsch, is titled: ‘Life with Radiation: ethnography of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima’.
References:
Alexievich, S. 1997. Voices from Chernobyl. Normal; London: Dalkey Archive Press
Freud, S. 1919. “The uncanny”. In S. Freud. 2003. The uncanny. Translated by D. McLintock. New York: Penguin Books
Petryna. A. 2002. Life exposed: biological citizens after Chernobyl. Princeton, NJ; Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press
Fukushima and the Right NOT to Return: Nuclear Displacement in a System for “Hometown Recovery”
Bags of contaminated material seen near the town of Odaka on the edge of the Fukushima Exclusion Zone.
Dr Liz Maly, Assistant Professor in the International Research institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS), Tohoku University
On March 11, 2011, the 9.0 magnitude Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) unleashed a massive tsunami devastating over 500 square kilometers of Japan’s northeast Tohoku coast. This region has experienced tsunamis every 30-40 years, but the size and impact of the waves of the 3.11 tsunami vastly exceeded any in recent memory or predictions. The tsunami swallowed buildings and places thought to be safe, killing more than 18,000 people and reducing entire communities to rubble. Damage to the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on the coastline of Fukushima Prefecture caused the most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl—a nuclear meltdown which TEPCO and government officials did not publicly admit until almost 5 years later.
Over 1,000,000 house were destroyed or damaged. In the days that followed, 470,000 people evacuated to school gymnasiums or other facilities, as aftershocks and blackouts continued and cleanup efforts began. In the following months, disaster survivors moved into various temporary housing provided by government support. Five years later, 174,000 people are still displaced, living interim housing, including 99,000 from Fukushima.
For those fleeing nuclear radiation, evacuation and displacement is more complicated. In the days after 3.11, the evacuation zone around the NPP was increased to a 20km radius; people within 30km were ordered to stay inside and prepare to evacuate if necessary. However, the radioactive plume was carried further northwest by wind and rain on March 15th. Although information about the direction of the fallout was available from SPEEDI (the System for Prediction of Environment Emergency Dose Information), it was not made public until March 23, too late for people unaware they were in or evacuating directly into the path of the highest amounts of radiation.
People from areas near the NPP struggled with evacuation decisions amidst a lack of information. Some towns ordered evacuation following government directives; others outside designated areas ordered evacuation independently. Still areas were not evacuated until weeks later. Some towns’ residents evacuated collectively; others scattered to various locations inside and outside Fukushima Prefecture. Most moved multiple times. So-called “voluntary evacuees” made their own decisions to evacuate from areas officially deemed “safe.” Elderly people, especially those in nursing/care facilities, suffered severely; more people from Fukushima died as a result of physical and emotional stress related to evacuation and displacement than directly from earthquake or tsunami impact.
More people from Fukushima died as a result of physical and emotional stress related to evacuation and displacement than directly from earthquake or tsunami impact.
Restricted areas were later categorized into three zones based on contamination and possibility of residents’ return. Entry is forbidden to the most severely contaminated, euphemistically named “difficult to return” zone 1. In “residence restricted” zone 2, daytime visits are allowed. In zone 3, optimistically designated “preparing to lift evacuation orders,” daytime entry and business activities are allowed. Contamination levels are based on air samples from point sources; some municipalities include multiple zones, which have been revised several times.
Decontamination, the government’s primary measure for reducing the amount of radioactive material, involves cleaning house roofs, etc., and removing natural materials and a layer of topsoil, which is collected in black plastic bags, continuously piling up in growing storage areas.
While the promise of decontamination is every area can be made safe, there are limits.
For example, there is no way to decontaminate forested mountains; every rainfall carries material to nearby communities, in effect re-contaminating them. Government plans rely on the underlying logic of a one-track plan for the future of contaminated towns: decontamination leads to lifting evacuation orders, then residents will move back. Based on level of contamination and speed of decontamination, the progress on this timeline towards its singular goal is shortened or extended.
Lifted restrictions mean people are allowed to move back, not that they will. In September 2015 restrictions were lifted for Naraha Town; 4 months later, only 6% of former residents moved back. Long term impacts of radiation exposure in Fukushima will not be known for years. But regardless of decontamination efforts and assurances of “safety,” many people will chose not to return, especially parents unwilling to risk children’s health. Conclusions about what areas are actually safe, made on a household or individual basis, also cause rifts within families such as “atomic divorce.” However, some people desperately want to move back, primarily elderly residents less concerned about long term health effects. As Japan is already facing a national demographic crises of an aging, shrinking population, the long-term future of these towns is uncertain at best.
Japanese disaster recovery policies strongly support a one-track ‘hometown recovery’ approach. Local governments have the main responsibility for post-disaster recovery planning (and other disaster management activities). With national funding, Tohoku’s local municipalities have created and are implementing recovery plans. Varying by town, common goals include bringing residents back and helping rebuild homes and lives. Temporary housing, also government-supported, is intended as an interim support until people can go back to new houses in old hometowns; the timeline to move out of temporary housing for those in Fukushima is longer, and their future is unclear. For permanent housing reconstruction, support options include provision of access to lots for private housing reconstruction, and public housing for those unable to rebuild on their own. Fukushima Prefecture is building public housing within the prefecture for residents from contaminated area. However, the main projects supporting residential relocation for rebuilding private houses on individual lots away from coastal areas, happening throughout the tsunami-affected area at a scale never before seen in Japan, limit relocation within single municipalities.
For towns affected by the nuclear accident, the recovery planning process has a vast internal contradiction: recovery plans and policies focus exclusively on rebuilding hometowns, but some towns will not be inhabitable for many years, and in others the majority of residents don’t want to return. Existing recovery policies don’t have a way to deal with relocating partial or entire towns. Several contaminated municipalities have established temporary town halls within other towns. But it is difficult for towns to consider a recovery plan that dissolves the town itself.
How can you put a price on the loss of a house, livelihood, and community?
While displaced, “official” evacuees (those from designated evacuation areas) receive compensation payments from TEPCO (actually the Japanese government, since TEPCO was nationalized). Although these are large sums of money, the real question is not if the amount is enough, but how can you put a price on the loss of a house, livelihood, and community? Compensation payments to nuclear evacuees can’t bring back what was lost.
Japan has well-established disaster recovery policies based on social welfare support for survivors. Yet even with a sizable national disaster recovery budget and governance experience, current policies can not adequately address the actual challenges for recovering the lives of nuclear evacuees and their contaminated hometowns. Beyond the disruptions of lives and communities, the cleanup and full decommissioning of the NPP will take decades, and leave a site that will be contaminated for a very long time.
Even with highly developed disaster preparations, such as the case in Japan, it is impossible to reduce all risk from natural disasters. Yet even if a nuclear accident is caused because of a natural hazard, it is in fact a man-made disaster. Everything possible should be done to prevent another nuclear accident, including decommissioning reactors; in Japan many are located near earthquake faults or coastal areas.
Japan is the only county whose people have been victims of both an atomic bombing and a massive nuclear accident. Beyond horrendous experiences of bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, their children and grandchildren suffered stigma and discrimination (sadly, evacuees from Fukushima have also faced discrimination). The experience of having been attacked by atomic bombs did not stop development and promotion of nuclear power in Japan, strongly supported by government. After the Fukushima Daichi accident, there was a massive swell of popular anti-nuclear opposition, and operation of all 44 active nuclear reactors in Japan was stopped. However, in August 2015, despite residents’ strong opposition, the first nuclear reactor restarted operation at the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant in Japan’s southernmost island, Kyushu.
On April 14, 2016, a large earthquake struck Kumamoto City, in Kyushu, followed by a larger M7.3 quake in the early hours of April 16th; strong aftershocks continuing for a week.
As of April 20, 48 people had been confirmed dead, included several people who died during evacuation, and more than 100,000 people had evacuated from damaged homes or those in danger due to aftershocks. Heavy rains caused landslides, sections of highways were destroyed and operation of bullet trains were suspended, making it difficult to get supplies to evacuees, and any potential evacuation from a nuclear accident impossible. Despite predictions that large quakes will continue, potentially triggering more landslides, and vocal calls from inside and outside Japan, the Japanese Nuclear Authority refuses to stop the reactors, which continue to operate nearby. It seems not enough has changed since 3.11; not only do problems of Fukushima’s nuclear evacuees from remain unsolved, they are in real danger of being recreated.
Dr Liz Maly’s work centers on disaster recovery, housing reconstruction and community-based recovery planning. She has previously researched post-Katrina and post-Sandy housing recovery and land use policy in the USA, as well as the Central Java Earthquake in Indonesia. Dr Maly continues to work on long-term community recovery for groups impacted by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Her website ‘Recovering Tohoku’ is highly recommended, and you can follow her on twitter here.
Fukushima and the Right NOT to Return: Nuclear Displacement in a System for “Hometown Recovery”
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