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March 9, 2016
On Forgetting Fukushima
http://apjjf.org/2016/05/Jacobs.html
On Forgetting Fukushima
Robert Jacobs
March 1, 2016
This month the media and social networks are busy remembering Fukushima on the fifth anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown, but what we are really observing is the beginning of the work of forgetting Fukushima. Fukushima is taking its place alongside the many forgotten nuclear disasters of the last 70 years. Like Mayak and Santa Susana, soon all that will be left of the Fukushima nuclear disaster are the radionuclides that will cycle through the ecosystem for millennia. In that sense we are internalizing Fukushima into our body unconsciousness.
Forgetting begins with lies. In Fukushima the lies began with TEPCO (the owner of the power plants) denying that there were any meltdowns when they knew there were three. They knew they had at least one full meltdown by the end of the first day, less than 12 hours after the site was struck by a powerful earthquake knocking out the electrical power. TEPCO continued to tell this lie for three months, even after hundreds of thousands of people had been forced to or voluntarily evacuated. Just last week TEPCO admitted that it was aware of the meltdowns much earlier, or to put it bluntly, it continued to hide the fact that it had been lying for five years (I've written about the dynamic behind this here).
The government of Japan had such weak regulation of the nuclear industry that it was completely reliant on TEPCO for all information about the state of the plants and the risks to the public. It was reduced to being an echo chamber for the denials coming from a company that was lying. The people living near the plants, and downwind as the plumes from explosions in three plants carried radionuclides high into the air and deposited large amounts of radiation far beyond the evacuation zones, had to make life and death decisions as they were being lied to and manipulated.
Lying about nuclear issues is not unique to Japan or Fukushima. It began with the first use of nuclear weapons against human beings, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When announcing the first attack President Harry Truman referred to Hiroshima as a "military base," and said it was chosen specifically to avoid civilian casualties. Hiroshima was a naval base (in a country whose navy was already destroyed), but the truth is that the city was chosen to demonstrate vividly the power of the super weapon and the bomb was aimed at the city center, the area most densely populated with civilians. After the war the US claimed that these attacks, in which over 100,000 people were killed instantly, actually saved lives.
The most powerful legacy of Chernobyl, besides its long-lived radiation, is the widespread use of the word "radiophobia" by nuclear industry apologists to describe the public response to large releases of radiation: fear. Look for this word and sentiment in the many articles being published this month about Fukushima. When you see it, or read the claim that more people were harmed at Fukushima by their own irrational fears than by radiation, you are seeing the work of forgetting turn its cruel wheels. Behind those wheels are the shattered lives and emotional wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of people whose communities were destroyed, and whose families were ripped apart by the Fukushima disaster. People whose anxieties will rise every time they or their children run a high fever, or suffer a nosebleed or test positively for cancer. People whose suffering-at no fault of their own-is becoming invisible. Soon when we talk about Fukushima we will reduce the human impact to a quibbling over numbers: how many cases of thyroid cancer, how many confirmed illnesses. Lost-hidden-forgotten will be the hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee their homes, in many cases permanently, and try to rebuild their shattered lives. Public relations professionals and industry scientists will say that these people did this to themselves (see here, and here). And the curtain will draw ever downward as we forget them.
This is the tradition of nuclear forgetting.
<snip>
On Forgetting Fukushima
Robert Jacobs
March 1, 2016
This month the media and social networks are busy remembering Fukushima on the fifth anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown, but what we are really observing is the beginning of the work of forgetting Fukushima. Fukushima is taking its place alongside the many forgotten nuclear disasters of the last 70 years. Like Mayak and Santa Susana, soon all that will be left of the Fukushima nuclear disaster are the radionuclides that will cycle through the ecosystem for millennia. In that sense we are internalizing Fukushima into our body unconsciousness.
Forgetting begins with lies. In Fukushima the lies began with TEPCO (the owner of the power plants) denying that there were any meltdowns when they knew there were three. They knew they had at least one full meltdown by the end of the first day, less than 12 hours after the site was struck by a powerful earthquake knocking out the electrical power. TEPCO continued to tell this lie for three months, even after hundreds of thousands of people had been forced to or voluntarily evacuated. Just last week TEPCO admitted that it was aware of the meltdowns much earlier, or to put it bluntly, it continued to hide the fact that it had been lying for five years (I've written about the dynamic behind this here).
The government of Japan had such weak regulation of the nuclear industry that it was completely reliant on TEPCO for all information about the state of the plants and the risks to the public. It was reduced to being an echo chamber for the denials coming from a company that was lying. The people living near the plants, and downwind as the plumes from explosions in three plants carried radionuclides high into the air and deposited large amounts of radiation far beyond the evacuation zones, had to make life and death decisions as they were being lied to and manipulated.
Lying about nuclear issues is not unique to Japan or Fukushima. It began with the first use of nuclear weapons against human beings, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When announcing the first attack President Harry Truman referred to Hiroshima as a "military base," and said it was chosen specifically to avoid civilian casualties. Hiroshima was a naval base (in a country whose navy was already destroyed), but the truth is that the city was chosen to demonstrate vividly the power of the super weapon and the bomb was aimed at the city center, the area most densely populated with civilians. After the war the US claimed that these attacks, in which over 100,000 people were killed instantly, actually saved lives.
The most powerful legacy of Chernobyl, besides its long-lived radiation, is the widespread use of the word "radiophobia" by nuclear industry apologists to describe the public response to large releases of radiation: fear. Look for this word and sentiment in the many articles being published this month about Fukushima. When you see it, or read the claim that more people were harmed at Fukushima by their own irrational fears than by radiation, you are seeing the work of forgetting turn its cruel wheels. Behind those wheels are the shattered lives and emotional wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of people whose communities were destroyed, and whose families were ripped apart by the Fukushima disaster. People whose anxieties will rise every time they or their children run a high fever, or suffer a nosebleed or test positively for cancer. People whose suffering-at no fault of their own-is becoming invisible. Soon when we talk about Fukushima we will reduce the human impact to a quibbling over numbers: how many cases of thyroid cancer, how many confirmed illnesses. Lost-hidden-forgotten will be the hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee their homes, in many cases permanently, and try to rebuild their shattered lives. Public relations professionals and industry scientists will say that these people did this to themselves (see here, and here). And the curtain will draw ever downward as we forget them.
This is the tradition of nuclear forgetting.
<snip>
March 9, 2016
Russia, West Differ on UN Report on Iran's Nuclear Program
Source: Associated Press
Russia and the West overcame differences to strike a landmark nuclear deal with Iran but are now divided on how well the U.N. atomic agency is reporting on whether Tehran is meeting its commitments. Western nations want more details while Moscow opposes their push.
Because the U.S. and its five negotiating partners want to avoid conflicts that could complicate Iranian compliance of a deal that was years in the making, their differences are mostly playing out behind the scenes.
Vladimir Voronkov, Moscow's chief delegate to the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, which is monitoring the deal, acknowledges there is a dispute that could affect the amount of information made public about Iran's nuclear program in the future.
<snip>
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/russia-west-differ-report-irans-nuclear-program-37494636
March 9, 2016
EE Times: Failed Risk Analysis that Felled Fukushima
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329126
Failed Risk Analysis that Felled Fukushima
Junko Yoshida
3/8/2016 00:01 AM EST
<snip>
Now, five years later, we've followed up on the issue by scouring the Japanese media and government reports issued in recent months.
We also talked to Prof. Rodney Ewing, earth scientist at Stanford University, and chair of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. In addition to the lessons we’ve learned from the disaster, we asked him specifically, where the so-called experts have gone wrong (and if they could still go wrong) when it comes to risk or safety assessments in the science and engineering world.
<snip>
Failed safety analysis
Meanwhile, last week, Stanford University issued a news report on the lessons from the Fukushima disaster, which focused on testimony by Rodney Ewing, a professor of geological sciences in Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.
Ewing has emphasized that the Fukushima tragedy was not an ‘accident.’ He specifically cited the lack of protection Tepco provided for backup power at Fukushima. Placed low along the coast, the backup power systems — the diesel generators for reactors 1 through 5 — were swiftly flooded and could not cool the reactors. They could have been located farther back and higher, like they were at reactor 6. Ewing believes that these were “clearly failures in design, not an accident.”
The late Ulrich Beck, a German sociologist known for his “risk society” theory, last year anticipated Ewing’s position. The argument that the catastrophe was caused by a natural disaster “is ... categorically a mistake,” Beck told Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese daily newspaper. “The decision to build an atomic industry in the area of an earthquake is a political decision.”
<snip>
First, Ewing noted that the assessment has failed to capture the real impact of the Fukushima disaster. Because the Japanese government’s assessment focuses only on deaths — the quantity of lives lost — “it has missed the point,” he said.
<snip>
The Fukushima disaster triggered the displacement of more than 100,000 people. “They are still displaced,” Ewing said. That element of the disaster is “not captured in the risk assessment.” For those Japanese people who lived in small villages, Ewing said, “My understanding is that losing homes and being placed somewhere else is not a small inconvenience. It has serious consequences.”
Keeping a “narrow view” only on the number of people killed must be “called into a question,” he said.
<snip>
Instead of a typical risk assessment that usually only considers the fate of a single reactor at a specific location, "You could ask, 'What if I have a string of reactors along the eastern coast of Japan? What is the risk of a tsunami hitting one of those reactors over their lifetime, say, 100 years?'" he said. "In this case, the probability of a reactor experiencing a tsunami is increased, particularly if one considers the geologic record for evidence of tsunamis."
Failed Risk Analysis that Felled Fukushima
Junko Yoshida
3/8/2016 00:01 AM EST
<snip>
Now, five years later, we've followed up on the issue by scouring the Japanese media and government reports issued in recent months.
We also talked to Prof. Rodney Ewing, earth scientist at Stanford University, and chair of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. In addition to the lessons we’ve learned from the disaster, we asked him specifically, where the so-called experts have gone wrong (and if they could still go wrong) when it comes to risk or safety assessments in the science and engineering world.
<snip>
Failed safety analysis
Meanwhile, last week, Stanford University issued a news report on the lessons from the Fukushima disaster, which focused on testimony by Rodney Ewing, a professor of geological sciences in Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.
Ewing has emphasized that the Fukushima tragedy was not an ‘accident.’ He specifically cited the lack of protection Tepco provided for backup power at Fukushima. Placed low along the coast, the backup power systems — the diesel generators for reactors 1 through 5 — were swiftly flooded and could not cool the reactors. They could have been located farther back and higher, like they were at reactor 6. Ewing believes that these were “clearly failures in design, not an accident.”
The late Ulrich Beck, a German sociologist known for his “risk society” theory, last year anticipated Ewing’s position. The argument that the catastrophe was caused by a natural disaster “is ... categorically a mistake,” Beck told Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese daily newspaper. “The decision to build an atomic industry in the area of an earthquake is a political decision.”
<snip>
First, Ewing noted that the assessment has failed to capture the real impact of the Fukushima disaster. Because the Japanese government’s assessment focuses only on deaths — the quantity of lives lost — “it has missed the point,” he said.
<snip>
The Fukushima disaster triggered the displacement of more than 100,000 people. “They are still displaced,” Ewing said. That element of the disaster is “not captured in the risk assessment.” For those Japanese people who lived in small villages, Ewing said, “My understanding is that losing homes and being placed somewhere else is not a small inconvenience. It has serious consequences.”
Keeping a “narrow view” only on the number of people killed must be “called into a question,” he said.
<snip>
Instead of a typical risk assessment that usually only considers the fate of a single reactor at a specific location, "You could ask, 'What if I have a string of reactors along the eastern coast of Japan? What is the risk of a tsunami hitting one of those reactors over their lifetime, say, 100 years?'" he said. "In this case, the probability of a reactor experiencing a tsunami is increased, particularly if one considers the geologic record for evidence of tsunamis."
March 8, 2016
Book review: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima
http://www.thenational.ae/arts-life/the-review/book-review-the-revolution-will-not-be-televised-protest-music-after-fukushima#full
Book review: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima
James McNair
January 7, 2016
<snip>
In The Revolution Will Not be Televised, Manabe explores how musicians post-Fukushima have protested against nuclear power despite censorship of their work and against powerful social mores. These include koe o dasanai, which translates as the built-in Japanese reluctance to speak up, and kuki, the prevailing atmosphere of compliance that tends to characterise wider Japanese society.
If the book’s title name-checks the 1970 poem and song by Gil Scott-Heron, it’s also appropriate shorthand for the Japanese media’s general reluctance to report on the activities of the anti-nuclear movement. But as Manabe explains, “the government doesn’t explicitly censor the media. The industry imposes it upon itself in deference to its advertisers, and the nuclear industry is among the biggest.”
Manabe is a professor of music at Princeton University with a doctorate in ethnomusicology and music theory, so naturally this is an academic book. Its musicology-imbued chapter on Japanese protest music at demonstrations won’t be for everyone, but for all its recherché infographics and specialisms, The Revolution Will Not be Televised is clearly and engagingly written.
<snip>
Japan is the world’s second-largest market for pop music, and given the genre’s traditional alliance with protest of all kinds, one might expect the country’s anti-nuclear musicians to be highly visible and transparently vocal. But Manabe’s book shows that things aren’t that simple – and for many reasons. For one, the lyrics of all commercial recordings have to be cleared by the Recording Industry Ethics Regulatory Commission, aka Recorin. Established in 1952, Manabe calls it a group mindful of music’s “powerful influence on the psychological state, spirit and behaviour of the nation’s people”.
An even more taxing hurdle, Manabe explains, is the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters, a body that prohibits attempts – or perceived attempts – “to disgrace the authority of the government or its agencies”.
<snip>
Manabe’s book also has a fascinating chapter on how Japanese anti-nuclear music/protest functions in cyberspace. For campaigning musicians both professional and amateur, the internet’s attractions are manifold. The lack of censorship and the anonymity offered are key, but as the author explains, cyberspace also allows protesting musicians to collaborate freely, and to mobilise and sometimes even educate like-minded followers. She also notes that the Web has become “a repository of (protest) music that the recording industry would not normally release”.
<snip>
The Revolution Will Not be Televised also explores anti-nuclear demonstrations at music festivals, and via music-fuelled street protests, and one of the key points Manabe makes is that brushes with the law can be far more damaging and stigmatising for the individual than in the West. Protesters arrested in Japan can be held for up to 23 days while the police decide whether to indict them, and there is no bail. “If you’re held for several days, you’ll lose your job,” notes Hajime Matsumoto, leader of the band Shiroto no Ran.
Book review: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima
James McNair
January 7, 2016
<snip>
In The Revolution Will Not be Televised, Manabe explores how musicians post-Fukushima have protested against nuclear power despite censorship of their work and against powerful social mores. These include koe o dasanai, which translates as the built-in Japanese reluctance to speak up, and kuki, the prevailing atmosphere of compliance that tends to characterise wider Japanese society.
If the book’s title name-checks the 1970 poem and song by Gil Scott-Heron, it’s also appropriate shorthand for the Japanese media’s general reluctance to report on the activities of the anti-nuclear movement. But as Manabe explains, “the government doesn’t explicitly censor the media. The industry imposes it upon itself in deference to its advertisers, and the nuclear industry is among the biggest.”
Manabe is a professor of music at Princeton University with a doctorate in ethnomusicology and music theory, so naturally this is an academic book. Its musicology-imbued chapter on Japanese protest music at demonstrations won’t be for everyone, but for all its recherché infographics and specialisms, The Revolution Will Not be Televised is clearly and engagingly written.
<snip>
Japan is the world’s second-largest market for pop music, and given the genre’s traditional alliance with protest of all kinds, one might expect the country’s anti-nuclear musicians to be highly visible and transparently vocal. But Manabe’s book shows that things aren’t that simple – and for many reasons. For one, the lyrics of all commercial recordings have to be cleared by the Recording Industry Ethics Regulatory Commission, aka Recorin. Established in 1952, Manabe calls it a group mindful of music’s “powerful influence on the psychological state, spirit and behaviour of the nation’s people”.
An even more taxing hurdle, Manabe explains, is the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters, a body that prohibits attempts – or perceived attempts – “to disgrace the authority of the government or its agencies”.
<snip>
Manabe’s book also has a fascinating chapter on how Japanese anti-nuclear music/protest functions in cyberspace. For campaigning musicians both professional and amateur, the internet’s attractions are manifold. The lack of censorship and the anonymity offered are key, but as the author explains, cyberspace also allows protesting musicians to collaborate freely, and to mobilise and sometimes even educate like-minded followers. She also notes that the Web has become “a repository of (protest) music that the recording industry would not normally release”.
<snip>
The Revolution Will Not be Televised also explores anti-nuclear demonstrations at music festivals, and via music-fuelled street protests, and one of the key points Manabe makes is that brushes with the law can be far more damaging and stigmatising for the individual than in the West. Protesters arrested in Japan can be held for up to 23 days while the police decide whether to indict them, and there is no bail. “If you’re held for several days, you’ll lose your job,” notes Hajime Matsumoto, leader of the band Shiroto no Ran.
March 8, 2016
Radiation is More Harmful to Girls and Women
http://safeenergy.org/2016/03/07/japan-diary-2016-fukushima5-part-4/
Japan Diary 2016, Fukushima+5, Part 4. Atomic Radiation is More Harmful to Girls and Women
Mary Olson, Shinagawa, Japan
March 7, 2016
<snip>
I first spoke on disproportionate harm to females at the Global Conference on the Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons in Vienna (2014), then at the United Nations (May, 2015). I am finally here, speaking in Japan. These findings are rooted here, in the atomic ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Since my work is extremely visual, I encourage you to also visit the slides of my presentation.
Click here for a version of slides with accompanying text. Click here for a version without text but larger slides.
Read my original 2011 paper “Atomic Radiation is More Harmful to Women” LINK:
Or watch the 5 minute video created for Gender Day at the Climate Talks in Paris (2015).
KEY POINTS FROM MY TALKS:
Gender in the Lifespan data (The National Academies of Science published the data in the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation “BEIR VII” in 2005; here is NIRS’ press release upon its publication.) from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors has been analyzed by three separate authors, each making these findings:
*Those exposed as infants and young children got the most cancer at some point in their lives;
* For every boy who eventually got cancer, two girls eventually got cancer (see slide 1 of my presentation);
* This is cancer across the lifetime, not only in childhood.
*There is a gender difference across the entire lifetime (see slide 2)
*Among those who were adults: for every two men who died of cancer, three women died (see slide 3).
I draw these further points:
• Why is gender a factor in cancer from radiation? Today, we do not know. Dr. Rosalie Bertell suggested that a greater concentration of reproductive tissue in the female body could be the cause (see slide 4). We do not yet know.
• We must not wait! Now we know there is greater harm to the young, particularly females, we must act to protect and prevent exposures now.
• Decision-makers only see information based on the Reference Man (adult male).
• Radiation regulations and standards are all based on pre-2006 information and therefore Reference Man.
• Even the units of dose [REM = Roentegen Man] are based on Reference Man.
• In order to protect the lifecycle of our species, we must reframe radiation protection around the phase that suffers the most from radiation exposure: female infants and children.
<snip>
Japan Diary 2016, Fukushima+5, Part 4. Atomic Radiation is More Harmful to Girls and Women
Mary Olson, Shinagawa, Japan
March 7, 2016
<snip>
I first spoke on disproportionate harm to females at the Global Conference on the Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons in Vienna (2014), then at the United Nations (May, 2015). I am finally here, speaking in Japan. These findings are rooted here, in the atomic ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Since my work is extremely visual, I encourage you to also visit the slides of my presentation.
Click here for a version of slides with accompanying text. Click here for a version without text but larger slides.
Read my original 2011 paper “Atomic Radiation is More Harmful to Women” LINK:
Or watch the 5 minute video created for Gender Day at the Climate Talks in Paris (2015).
KEY POINTS FROM MY TALKS:
Gender in the Lifespan data (The National Academies of Science published the data in the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation “BEIR VII” in 2005; here is NIRS’ press release upon its publication.) from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors has been analyzed by three separate authors, each making these findings:
*Those exposed as infants and young children got the most cancer at some point in their lives;
* For every boy who eventually got cancer, two girls eventually got cancer (see slide 1 of my presentation);
* This is cancer across the lifetime, not only in childhood.
*There is a gender difference across the entire lifetime (see slide 2)
*Among those who were adults: for every two men who died of cancer, three women died (see slide 3).
I draw these further points:
• Why is gender a factor in cancer from radiation? Today, we do not know. Dr. Rosalie Bertell suggested that a greater concentration of reproductive tissue in the female body could be the cause (see slide 4). We do not yet know.
• We must not wait! Now we know there is greater harm to the young, particularly females, we must act to protect and prevent exposures now.
• Decision-makers only see information based on the Reference Man (adult male).
• Radiation regulations and standards are all based on pre-2006 information and therefore Reference Man.
• Even the units of dose [REM = Roentegen Man] are based on Reference Man.
• In order to protect the lifecycle of our species, we must reframe radiation protection around the phase that suffers the most from radiation exposure: female infants and children.
<snip>
March 8, 2016
Playing Pass the Parcel With Fukushima
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/opinion/playing-pass-the-parcel-with-fukushima.html?_r=0
Playing Pass the Parcel With Fukushima
PETER WYNN KIRBYMARCH 7, 2016
OXFORD, England — In the five years since the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns that devastated Fukushima Prefecture, the Japanese government has undertaken mammoth efforts to decontaminate irradiated communities.
Thousands of workers have removed millions of tons of radioactive debris from backyards and fields, roadsides and school grounds. They have scraped away acres and acres of tainted soil, collected surface vegetal matter, wiped down entire buildings and hosed and scrubbed streets and sidewalks.
<snip>
The Japanese authorities call these efforts josen (decontamination), but the word is misleading and the activity largely a fallacy. What’s happening is more like transcontamination: Once the radioactive debris is collected and bagged, it is transferred from one part of Fukushima to another, and then another.
The waste is placed in bags, which are periodically collected and brought to provisional storage areas (kari-kari-okiba), before being moved to more secure, though still temporary, storage depots (kari-okiba). Officials at the Ministry of the Environment have said up to 30 million tons of radioactive waste will eventually be moved to yet another, third-level interim storage facility near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant. But no significant construction has begun. In fact, the authorities haven’t even managed to convince all the relevant absentee landowners in the area to sell the necessary plots.
So for now the radioactive waste is either lying around or being moved around. Throughout Fukushima, there are large cylindrical plastic sacks — each roughly the size of a hot tub and weighing about a ton when full — stacked in desultory heaps by the side of roads, near driveways or in abandoned lots. In the town of Tomioka in mid-October, I saw three dozen bags piled along the edges of a small cemetery, overtaken by weeds.
The bags deteriorate after three years, meaning that the waste has to be repackaged regularly. Sacks are sometimes moved from one facility to another, based on their levels of radioactivity, which vary and can shift over time. By last fall, there were more than 9 million one-ton bags of radioactive waste. Standard trucks carry fewer than 10 bags at a time — meaning that radioactive material is regularly rotating around Fukushima in a slow-motion version of pass the nuclear parcel.
<snip>
Playing Pass the Parcel With Fukushima
PETER WYNN KIRBYMARCH 7, 2016
OXFORD, England — In the five years since the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns that devastated Fukushima Prefecture, the Japanese government has undertaken mammoth efforts to decontaminate irradiated communities.
Thousands of workers have removed millions of tons of radioactive debris from backyards and fields, roadsides and school grounds. They have scraped away acres and acres of tainted soil, collected surface vegetal matter, wiped down entire buildings and hosed and scrubbed streets and sidewalks.
<snip>
The Japanese authorities call these efforts josen (decontamination), but the word is misleading and the activity largely a fallacy. What’s happening is more like transcontamination: Once the radioactive debris is collected and bagged, it is transferred from one part of Fukushima to another, and then another.
The waste is placed in bags, which are periodically collected and brought to provisional storage areas (kari-kari-okiba), before being moved to more secure, though still temporary, storage depots (kari-okiba). Officials at the Ministry of the Environment have said up to 30 million tons of radioactive waste will eventually be moved to yet another, third-level interim storage facility near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant. But no significant construction has begun. In fact, the authorities haven’t even managed to convince all the relevant absentee landowners in the area to sell the necessary plots.
So for now the radioactive waste is either lying around or being moved around. Throughout Fukushima, there are large cylindrical plastic sacks — each roughly the size of a hot tub and weighing about a ton when full — stacked in desultory heaps by the side of roads, near driveways or in abandoned lots. In the town of Tomioka in mid-October, I saw three dozen bags piled along the edges of a small cemetery, overtaken by weeds.
The bags deteriorate after three years, meaning that the waste has to be repackaged regularly. Sacks are sometimes moved from one facility to another, based on their levels of radioactivity, which vary and can shift over time. By last fall, there were more than 9 million one-ton bags of radioactive waste. Standard trucks carry fewer than 10 bags at a time — meaning that radioactive material is regularly rotating around Fukushima in a slow-motion version of pass the nuclear parcel.
<snip>
March 8, 2016
Crippled Fukushima Reactors Are Still a Danger, 5 Years after the Accident
Long article.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/crippled-fukushima-reactors-are-still-a-danger-5-years-after-the-accident1/
Crippled Fukushima Reactors Are Still a Danger, 5 Years after the Accident
Japan’s citizens, and scientists worldwide, do not have answers to basic health and environment questions
By Madhusree Mukerjee on March 8, 2016
On March 11, 2011, a giant tsunami from the Pacific Ocean swept over the 10-meter sea wall surrounding six reactors at the Fukushima power plant on Japan’s east coast. The crashing water caused reactor cores to overheat and melt, and subsequent hydrogen explosions damaged three reactor buildings. Radiation spewed in every direction. The country shut down all of its more than 40 reactors, and investigations began into radiation exposure to tens of thousands of nearby residents, as well as to wildlife on land and sea. But major questions still loom today, in part because the damaged reactors are too dangerous to enter, and in part because the plant's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), is reluctant to share information.
<snip>
Meanwhile, after five years, some 100,000 people are still waiting to return to their homes. Last year the Japanese government announced that it will eventually lift evacuation orders for regions where a person would receive an annual radiation dose of 20 millisieverts or less. That figure, several times higher than what the International Commission on Radiological Protection recommends for safety, poses an "unacceptable" risk, Matsukubo says. (According to a report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a dose of 20 millisieverts increases the chances of mortality from cancer by roughly one in 1,000, and residents would be receiving comparable doses year after year.) No matter: a year after this zone is opened up, Tepco will stop providing compensation to its 32,000 former residents. Exile may be permanent, however, for tens of thousands of people from the most contaminated areas.
<snip>
One reason is the scarcity of funds for such research, argues Mousseau. The Japanese government seems to be cutting off funds for monitoring radionuclides in water alongside Fukushima, Buesseler says. Shibata finds such concerns "biased," pointing out that several ministries offer funds for environmental research. But another Japanese scientist, who asked not to be named, claimed that whereas grants are readily available for researchers whose projects are unlikely to discover significant impacts from the disaster, they are exceedingly scarce for others.
Other muddiness remains. Several Japanese researchers who aided Mousseau's team asked not to be credited in its published papers, fearing adverse impacts on their careers. Buesseler reports a similar experience. "There's this kind of self-censorship going on," Mousseau says.
<snip>
Crippled Fukushima Reactors Are Still a Danger, 5 Years after the Accident
Japan’s citizens, and scientists worldwide, do not have answers to basic health and environment questions
By Madhusree Mukerjee on March 8, 2016
On March 11, 2011, a giant tsunami from the Pacific Ocean swept over the 10-meter sea wall surrounding six reactors at the Fukushima power plant on Japan’s east coast. The crashing water caused reactor cores to overheat and melt, and subsequent hydrogen explosions damaged three reactor buildings. Radiation spewed in every direction. The country shut down all of its more than 40 reactors, and investigations began into radiation exposure to tens of thousands of nearby residents, as well as to wildlife on land and sea. But major questions still loom today, in part because the damaged reactors are too dangerous to enter, and in part because the plant's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), is reluctant to share information.
<snip>
Meanwhile, after five years, some 100,000 people are still waiting to return to their homes. Last year the Japanese government announced that it will eventually lift evacuation orders for regions where a person would receive an annual radiation dose of 20 millisieverts or less. That figure, several times higher than what the International Commission on Radiological Protection recommends for safety, poses an "unacceptable" risk, Matsukubo says. (According to a report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a dose of 20 millisieverts increases the chances of mortality from cancer by roughly one in 1,000, and residents would be receiving comparable doses year after year.) No matter: a year after this zone is opened up, Tepco will stop providing compensation to its 32,000 former residents. Exile may be permanent, however, for tens of thousands of people from the most contaminated areas.
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One reason is the scarcity of funds for such research, argues Mousseau. The Japanese government seems to be cutting off funds for monitoring radionuclides in water alongside Fukushima, Buesseler says. Shibata finds such concerns "biased," pointing out that several ministries offer funds for environmental research. But another Japanese scientist, who asked not to be named, claimed that whereas grants are readily available for researchers whose projects are unlikely to discover significant impacts from the disaster, they are exceedingly scarce for others.
Other muddiness remains. Several Japanese researchers who aided Mousseau's team asked not to be credited in its published papers, fearing adverse impacts on their careers. Buesseler reports a similar experience. "There's this kind of self-censorship going on," Mousseau says.
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March 8, 2016
Fukushima: Tokyo was on the brink of nuclear catastrophe, admits former prime minister
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/12184114/Fukushima-Tokyo-was-on-the-brink-of-nuclear-catastrophe-admits-former-prime-minister.html
Fukushima: Tokyo was on the brink of nuclear catastrophe, admits former prime minister
Five years on from the tsunami, the former Japanese prime minister says the country came within a “paper-thin margin” of a nuclear disaster
By Andrew Gilligan, Tokyo
10:00PM GMT 04 Mar 2016
Japan's prime minister at the time of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami has revealed that the country came within a “paper-thin margin” of a nuclear disaster requiring the evacuation of 50 million people.
In an interview with The Telegraph to mark the fifth anniversary of the tragedy, Naoto Kan described the panic and disarray at the highest levels of the Japanese government as it fought to control multiple meltdowns at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.
He said he considered evacuating the capital, Tokyo, along with all other areas within 160 miles of the plant, and declaring martial law. “The future existence of Japan as a whole was at stake,” he said. “Something on that scale, an evacuation of 50 million, it would have been like a losing a huge war.”
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He criticised his successor as prime minister, Shinzo Abe, for restarting some of the country’s nuclear power stations, all of which were shut down after the crisis, saying that Japan had “not learned the lessons enough” and was “closing its eyes” to the risk of a second disaster. He has joined protest demonstrations against the plant reopenings.
“There is a clear conflict between government policy and the wishes of the public,” he said. “Additional protective measures against tsunamis have been taken, such as raising the protective walls, but I don’t think they go far enough. We shouldn’t be building nuclear power plants in areas where there is a population to be affected. After the tsunami, Japan went without nuclear power for years, so it can be done.”
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Fukushima: Tokyo was on the brink of nuclear catastrophe, admits former prime minister
Five years on from the tsunami, the former Japanese prime minister says the country came within a “paper-thin margin” of a nuclear disaster
By Andrew Gilligan, Tokyo
10:00PM GMT 04 Mar 2016
Japan's prime minister at the time of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami has revealed that the country came within a “paper-thin margin” of a nuclear disaster requiring the evacuation of 50 million people.
In an interview with The Telegraph to mark the fifth anniversary of the tragedy, Naoto Kan described the panic and disarray at the highest levels of the Japanese government as it fought to control multiple meltdowns at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.
He said he considered evacuating the capital, Tokyo, along with all other areas within 160 miles of the plant, and declaring martial law. “The future existence of Japan as a whole was at stake,” he said. “Something on that scale, an evacuation of 50 million, it would have been like a losing a huge war.”
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He criticised his successor as prime minister, Shinzo Abe, for restarting some of the country’s nuclear power stations, all of which were shut down after the crisis, saying that Japan had “not learned the lessons enough” and was “closing its eyes” to the risk of a second disaster. He has joined protest demonstrations against the plant reopenings.
“There is a clear conflict between government policy and the wishes of the public,” he said. “Additional protective measures against tsunamis have been taken, such as raising the protective walls, but I don’t think they go far enough. We shouldn’t be building nuclear power plants in areas where there is a population to be affected. After the tsunami, Japan went without nuclear power for years, so it can be done.”
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March 7, 2016
EDF unions call for Hinkley Point project to be postponed
Source: Guardian
Workers’ representatives say UK nuclear scheme is threat to EDF’s future and that finance chief’s resignation shows senior figures in company agree
Union leaders at the French energy company EDF have called for investment in Britain’s Hinkley Point nuclear power plant to be delayed for at least two years, warning that it represents a threat to the company’s future.
Workers’ representatives say the sudden resignation of EDF finance director Thomas Piquemal has revealed that doubts over the feasibility of the controversial project go right to the top.
“The resignation of such a high-ranking executive is pretty spectacular and shows the disagreement even at the highest levels,” Serge Gianorsi, trade union secretary for the Force Ouvrière union at EDF, told the Guardian.
“Until now, managers have not expressed themselves publicly, but we have known for a long time that our position is shared by the majority of specialists inside and outside the company.”
The union leader’s warning was backed up by Martin Young, an analyst with the investment bank RBC Capital Markets, who said proceeding with the Hinkley project would verge on “insanity”.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/mar/07/edf-unions-call-for-hinkley-point-project-to-be-postponed
March 6, 2016
Five Years Later, NRC Has Made Only Limited Progress Instituting Post-Fukushima Safety Upgrades
http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/post-fukushima-reforms-report-0678
March 3, 2016
Report: Five Years Later, NRC Has Made Only Limited Progress Instituting Post-Fukushima Safety Upgrades
Public Remains at Unacceptable Risk from Serious Accidents
WASHINGTON (March 3, 2016) — Five years after the Fukushima nuclear accident, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has made insufficient progress in improving U.S. nuclear power safety in light of lessons learned from the disaster, according to a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
The report, “Preventing an American Fukushima,” found that the NRC rejected or significantly weakened key common-sense recommendations made by its post-Fukushima task force and others to enhance nuclear safety and has yet to fully implement the reforms it did adopt. The report also found that all too often the agency abdicated its responsibility as the nation’s nuclear watchdog by allowing the industry to rely on voluntary guidelines, which are, by their very nature, unenforceable.
“Although the NRC and the nuclear industry have devoted considerable resources to address the post-Fukushima task force recommendations, they haven’t done all they should to protect the public from a similar disaster,” said report author Edwin Lyman, a UCS senior scientist and co-author of the 2014 book, “Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster.” “If the NRC is serious about protecting the public and plant workers, it should reconsider a number of recommendations it scrapped under pressure from plant owners and their supporters in Congress.”
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March 3, 2016
Report: Five Years Later, NRC Has Made Only Limited Progress Instituting Post-Fukushima Safety Upgrades
Public Remains at Unacceptable Risk from Serious Accidents
WASHINGTON (March 3, 2016) — Five years after the Fukushima nuclear accident, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has made insufficient progress in improving U.S. nuclear power safety in light of lessons learned from the disaster, according to a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
The report, “Preventing an American Fukushima,” found that the NRC rejected or significantly weakened key common-sense recommendations made by its post-Fukushima task force and others to enhance nuclear safety and has yet to fully implement the reforms it did adopt. The report also found that all too often the agency abdicated its responsibility as the nation’s nuclear watchdog by allowing the industry to rely on voluntary guidelines, which are, by their very nature, unenforceable.
“Although the NRC and the nuclear industry have devoted considerable resources to address the post-Fukushima task force recommendations, they haven’t done all they should to protect the public from a similar disaster,” said report author Edwin Lyman, a UCS senior scientist and co-author of the 2014 book, “Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster.” “If the NRC is serious about protecting the public and plant workers, it should reconsider a number of recommendations it scrapped under pressure from plant owners and their supporters in Congress.”
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