Author sees parallels between prewar, nuclear indoctrination
Survivor, chronicler warns of lessons unlearned from 3/10 Great Tokyo Air Raid
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
By JUSTIN AUKEMA
The March 10, 1945, Great Tokyo Air Raid was the most destructive air attack in history. Nearly 100,000 people lost their lives after approximately 300 B29 bombers attacked Tokyo's present-day Sumida, Koto and Taito wards. Some 1,700 tons of napalm and incendiary bombs created a firestorm that raged at speeds of up to 112 kph at temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius. The bombers' mission was to break enemy "morale" by killing as many civilians as possible.


Devastation: The Nihonbashi district in Tokyo's Chuo Ward lies in ruins after bombing raids in 1945. COURTESY OF THE CENTER OF THE TOKYO RAID AND WAR DAMAGES


Antiwar author Katsumoto Saotome was 12 years old and living in Mukojima Ward (present-day Sumida) during the early-morning raid. He rushed to escape with his parents and siblings as flames enveloped the area and bombs exploded around them.

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Around 40 sq. km of the city was burned to the ground in the attack. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey stated that "all combustible material was completely consumed" and that "more persons were killed in one six-hour period . . . than in any other recorded attack of any kind."

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"It was just like a miniature army," Saotome explained, describing his middle school during the war. Students trained with bamboo spears to defeat the "devil" Americans and British (kichiku beiei). Militaristic wartime education taught that Japan was the land of the gods and was fighting a war for Asian peace (tōyō heiwa), uniting Asia under a "co-prosperity sphere."


"There are a number of similarities between the militaristic wartime education in Japan and the education surrounding power plants," Saotome told The Japan Times recently. The idea of the " 'peaceful uses' of nuclear power and the myth of nuclear safety were (during the war) found in the form of 'Asian peace' and the idea of Japan as the 'land of the gods.' It was taken for granted that such phrases were making use of the word 'peace' and being used to foster a belief in resolute victory, and many citizens were deceived."

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Naked Man Arrested In Iowa City, Says He Was Forced To Handle A Nuclear Bomb
The Huffington Post | By Andy Campbell
Posted: 03/20/2012


William Bliss told cops that four men made him carry a nuke -- but he later admitted to being drunk.
His excuse was a dud.

A drunk, naked Iowa City man claimed during his arrest on Monday that four unknown assailants forced him to carry a nuclear bomb.

Johnson County cops were responding to a report of a naked man at about 3:30 a.m. when they found 41-year-old William Bliss, who was "excited" and allegedly smashed at the time, the Press-Citizen reported.

Bliss was allegedly stumbling around near his apartment, but made a break for it after he made the wild nuke claim, cops said. A chase ensued, and one officer was injured as Bliss was taken down.

The nude nuker allegedly had a blood-alcohol level of .111 when he got to jail. He ...

U.S. Big Business Pushing Nuclear Power
Written by David May
Tuesday, 14 June 2011 00:00

Across the country, state budgets are in the red while the biggest companies and the wealthiest individuals are showered with tax breaks and other give-aways. In many states, the nuclear industry and utility companies are seeking to cash in too. In Missouri, Republicans, alongside Democrats in the state legislature, are pushing for a bailout of energy monopoly Ameren, which wants $9 billion from rate-payers to build two new nuclear reactors. Never mind that unemployment insurance and Social Security are under the axe and unemployment remains near 9 percent, or the severe crisis caused by the Fukushima Daiichi disaster which will have implications for decades to come--nuclear power generates big profits!

Ameren wants to build the reactors by eliminating the “No-CWIP” law, which was passed 2-1 by voters in a 1976 referendum. The law forbids power utilities from using CWIP to build new power plants. Standing for “Construction Work In Progress,” the innocuous-sounding law would allow power utilities to build new plants and then pass all the construction costs and financial risk to rate-payers through higher electric bills over a period of several years, all before the plants are even built.

As opposed to the way the original anti-CWIP law was passed--by popular referendum --- the backers of the law repealing it want to do this by a vote inside the state legislature. Interestingly, CWIP has supporters and opponents from both the Democratic and Republican parties, who are not divided by whether or not they support Big Business, but rather by which section of Big Business “butters their bread,” so to speak. The two biggest corporate opponents of CWIP are Walmart and Noranda, an aluminum company which produces 263,000 metric tons of aluminum per year and uses more than 25% of all the electricity Ameren generates in the process.

Both sides are out to maintain their own profits and are only concerned with safety in the last place. Ameren is what is called a “regulated monopoly,” a private company that in exchange for being given a monopoly to generate and sell electricity has to submit to public regulation. In Ameren’s case, the state government guarantees Ameren 11% profits per year from rates alone. In 2010, the company made $633 million. But this not enough as far as the company’s execs are concerned.

From 1953 to 2008, 253 nuclear plants were ordered by U.S. utility companies, but ...

Kepco faces demand to exit nuclear power
Energy strategy body tells Osaka to put case to investors in June

By ERIC JOHNSTON
Staff writer

OSAKA — The city of Osaka should issue a demand at Kansai Electric Power Co.'s June shareholders' meeting that the utility get out of the nuclear power business and rely instead on renewable energy sources, a joint prefectural-municipal committee has recommended.

The proposal made Sunday by the joint energy strategy panel came a few days after the mayors of Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe were told by Kepco that nuclear power would remain an important energy resource. The mayors had called on the utility to provide a clear timetable for weaning itself from nuclear power.

Kepco, which has 11 reactors, all on the Sea of Japan coast in Fukui Prefecture and all currently idled, relied on them for about 44 percent of Kansai's electricity. The mayors have urged the utility to switch to liquefied natural gas and renewable sources.

The energy committee offered eight basic reform proposals that will be decided next month by the city assembly, where Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto's Osaka Ishin no Kai (One Osaka) is the largest group. The city also owns about 9 percent of Kepco's stock, making it the largest shareholder....

What Intersections Would Look Like in a World of Driverless Cars
EMILY BADGERMAR 01, 2012COMMENTS
Reuters

OK, so first you have to accept the idea that we will one day all be in driverless cars. But the people who think about such things for a living are seriously convinced this will happen.

“The technology is pretty much already there,” says Peter Stone, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. And this was also the jarring promise of Tom Vanderbilt’s recent profile of the autonomous car in Wired. “But the question is when will it be cost-effective? When will the legal industry wrap its head around it, and the insurance industry, and when will people buy into it? I don’t know when it will actually happen. But the potential advantages are so huge that it has to happen eventually.”

Stone is thinking of the advantages for the disabled and elderly who can’t currently drive, for parents who don’t have time to take their kids to soccer (they can take themselves!), and above all for traffic safety and the more efficient movement of people everywhere.

It’s one thing, though, to realize that Google engineers have been zipping through our midst in autonomous concept cars. It’s another to picture what will happen when we’re all in these things – when the eye contact and social rules that currently govern urban driving are replaced by computer systems chatting with each other.

“When they do interact,” Stone says, ...

AARP watching nuclear power votes closely

DES MOINES, Iowa — The AARP is putting lawmakers on notice that they are watching closely votes on a nuclear power bill and plans on informing the public how each voted.

The group, which has 378,000 members in Iowa, opposes a bill that would allow MidAmerican Energy to seek permission from regulators to move forward with a nuclear power plant. The bill narrowly passed a Senate committee and next goes before the full Senate.

The group says the bill does not cap consumer rate increases and requires customers to pay planning, construction, and regulatory costs, shifting risk from investors to consumers...

Seniors urged to eat Fukushima rice to help farmers, protect young people
By MINORU MATSUTANI Staff writer

A Tokyo senior is waging an individual effort to get elderly people to eat rice grown in Fukushima Prefecture to help local farmers struggling with rumors that their crops are radioactive, and to make sure the grain isn't consumed by more vulnerable younger generations.

Consumers have shunned Fukushima rice due to radiation fears stemming from the triple-meltdown crisis that started last March at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 atomic plant.

"The elderly must eat Fukushima rice," Hino resident Hidekazu Hirai, 68, told The Japan Times on Monday. Compared with young people, the elderly are believed less prone to the harmful effects of radiation...

Plan to N-shrine reactors for millennia

By EDAN CORKILL
Staff writer

What do nuclear power plants and Shinto shrines have in common?



Long-term plan: Architect Katsuhiro Miyamoto's novel means of safely mothballing the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, and the highly radioactive fuel likely to remain there even after the current crisis is resolved, is to turn it into a Shinto shrine — seen here in a model and a computer rendering. KATSUHIRO MIYAMOTO



For a start, they tend to be hidden from view — the former in remote coastal locations, the latter behind stands of trees or atop hills or mountains. They are also sources of untold energy — one electrical, the other spiritual.

And if a reactor at a nuclear power plant melts down, another similarity emerges: They are expected to be preserved for thousands of years.

It is this latter similarity that sparked the imagination of Hyogo Prefecture-based architect Katsuhiro Miyamoto, who has recently made an extraordinary proposition about what to do with the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, which suffered three reactor meltdowns following the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011.

The 51-year-old who, in 1996, represented Japan at the "Olympics of architecture" — as the Venice Biennale is known — has suggested erecting giant shrine-style thatched roofs over each of the crippled reactor buildings — and so creating what he dubs "The Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant Shrine." This, he tells The Japan Times, will "pacify a malevolent god."

As yet, no long-term strategy for ...

Small-Town Solar Revolution Has Created Jobs Galore & Driven Down Price of Power in Germany
MARCH 19, 2012 BY ZACHARY SHAHAN

Solar energy policies in Germany have resulted in a jobs boom and have driven down the price of power on the EPEX Power Exchange. More people work in Germany’s solar energy sector than in its coal and nuclear sectors combined. (Don’t tell this year’s GOP candidates — they somehow think clean energy and green jobs is all just talk.) But there’s a lot more to get excited about than just jobs (even though those are pretty sweet).


Solar Energy Is (or Can Be) Community Energy
Solar energy can allow “the little guy” to power the country (well, a lot of little guys). “A small-town energy revolution is going on in Germany, with more than 100 rural communities becoming 100% renewable,” Craig Morris of Renewables International writes. The result? Money for electricity goes back into one’s own community, rather than out to some mega energy company. Even if that electricity were to cost you a bit more, it would go back into services and people in your community who would improve your life in other ways.

“Yes. Germany is replacing central-station plants that can only be run by large corporations with truly distributed renewable power. While Germany’s Big Four utilities make up around three quarters of total power generation, they only own seven percent of green power. Roughly three quarters of renewable power investments have been made by individuals, communities, farmers, and small and midsize enterprises.”

This is how clean energy can help individual citizens, of course, but it’s not necessarily how it’s done everywhere (i.e. in the U.S.).

“The US is slowly switching to renewables, but it is nearly completely shutting out the little guy, with...