Posted on

Landmark Court Ruling Puts Safety First in Japan, Olympics Should Do the Same

français | 日本語訳 | Deutsch

 

by Akio Matsumura

A district court in Japan has ruled that the two Oi nuclear reactors cannot be restarted by the Kansai Electric Power Company, citing structural deficiencies . The Fukui District Court said in its ruling, according to an editorial in the Mainichi Shimbun:

“Individuals’ personal right to protect their lives and livelihoods are of the highest value under the Constitution. The court then concluded that ‘it would be only natural to suspend nuclear plants if they pose specific risks of danger -- though it would be an extreme argument to say the existence of such plants is impermissible under the Constitution.’"

Until this ruling, Japan’s federal government and legal system had made decisions in favor of strengthening its economy and minimizing imports. This court ruling emphasized caution and prioritized human and environmental health above trade balances.

Summarizing further, the Japan Times wrote:

The crucial point of the ruling is its contention that it is inherently impossible to determine on scientific grounds that an earthquake more powerful than assumed in the operator’s worst-case scenario would not happen. It noted that since 2005, four nuclear power reactors around the country have experienced quake shocks more powerful than the maximum level anticipated on their sites. It is “groundless optimism” in this quake-prone country that such a temblor would never hit the Oi plant, the ruling stated.

We will have to wait and see whether Japan respects the Fukui Court’s decision or proceeds with its planned restarts.… Continue reading

Posted on

Unwelcome Science: Japan Ignores UN Rapporteur’s Call for Better Fukushima Health Measures

français | 日本語訳

Akio Matsumura

“Why don’t we have a urine analysis, why don’t we have a blood analysis? Let’s err on the side of caution.”

UN Special Rapporteur Anand Grover, who visited Fukushima in 2012, spoke in Tokyo this month about the continued lack of appropriate health research surrounding Fukushima and related health issues.

Since shortly after the Fukushima accident three years ago, doctors throughout Fukushima prefecture have been looking for unusual cysts, nodes, and other bumps that might indicate thyroid cancer, one possible effect of radiation. The numbers of irregularities the doctors have been finding is alarming, but also puzzling: By most counts, thyroid cancers should only begin to show up five years or so after radiation exposure.

What, then, should Japanese doctors and health officials do with this information?

Information and caution, it turns out, are unwelcome in Japan. The country plans to restart its nuclear reactors and move Fukushima’s refugees back into the former evacuation zones. Any studies pointing to negative effects of radiation exposure will hinder this move toward economic progress.

So, Japan has taken subtle measures to slow any proof that these moves aren’t in its citizens’ best interest. Japan can hamper scientific studies that can lead to new information and evidence in two ways: by cutting funding and by imposing a culture of secrecy and an unwillingness to talk to the press among researchers. A March 16 article by David McNeill in the New York Times chronicled this process. Timothy Mosseau, a researcher from the University of South Carolina, has found his three trips to the Fukushima area “difficult.”… Continue reading

Posted on

Fukushima: Three Years Later

français

Toshio Nishi

As Japan teeters on the brink of nuclear disaster, has it learned any lessons at all?

When the worst earthquake in Japan’s history pulverized its northern coastline in 2011, walls of black saltwater from the deep Pacific surged over four of six nuclear reactors located on the Fukushima coast. Though they were supposedly designed to withstand the worst quake imaginable along the Ring of Fire, the reactors quickly succumbed to the natural disaster, breaking like toys. To be precise, three reactors had outright meltdowns or, more correctly, melt-throughs. One, Reactor No. 4, broke beyond repair and posed further catastrophe. Two others simply stopped dead. Within hours, one of the melt-throughs exploded, spewing lethal radioactive waste into the air, soil, underground water veins and, steadily, into the Pacific. Some eighteen thousand and five hundred souls died that cold March day. Many of the dead remain missing even now.

Three years on, a dark threat of further tragedy yet hangs over Fukushima. On the fourth floor of Reactor No. 4—the reactor that exploded on the first day of the earthquake—1,331 spent fuel rods remain stored in cooling water in a large steel tank. The tank, jolted by the quake, tilts to about 30 degrees. The six reactors at Fukushima have produced 14,225 spent fuel rods, all of which are stored in the same way at the reactor sites. To underscore the lethal potential of this situation, a single exposed spent fuel rod, 4 meters-long and 1 centimeter in diameter, will kill a man in four seconds.… Continue reading

Posted on

Decontamination Efforts 3 Years after the Fukushima Daiichi Disaster

Gordon Edwards

March 11, 2014, was the third anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi triple meltdown disaster.

Here is a graphic showing the original 211 evacuation zone, within 20 km of the plant, and the band between 20 km and 30 km where people were ordered to be “evacuation ready.”

The town of Iitate — a bit more than 30 km northwest of the plant — also had to be evacuated and remains evacuated to this day due to heavy fallout.

20140312-095538.jpg

The most heavily contaminated areas include the original 20 km evacuation zone and some irregular areas northwest and a bit south of that. The yellow area in the next graphic shows that radiation levels there were higher than the maximum exposure allowed for atomic workers in the European Union (that is, 20 millisieverts per year).

20140312-095640.jpg This graphic was modified from a 2013 video by the Japanese Ministry of Environment — a link to that video is given below in the post-script. Many other graphics presented in this article are also adapted from that video.

In the next graphic, the “Special Decontamination Area” identified above appears as a green patch inside a large yellow area where the radiation levels are below the 20 millisievert/year radiation limit for atomic workers but above the 1 millisievert/year radiation limit for members of the general public. Similar splotchy yellow areas appear right up to the outskirts of Tokyo, located about 240 km to the south (SSW) of Fukushima Daiichi.

20140312-095730.jpg

There are about 100 communities contained in the yellow areas, designated as “Intensive Contamination Survey Areas.”… Continue reading

Posted on

Risking Coubertin’s Vision: Japan and the International Olympic Committee

日本語 | français | Deutsch

Akio Matsumura

What did you take away from the Sochi Olympics? Was it the dazzling, digitized opening ceremony? The fantastic hockey? A heartbreaking ski crash? Whichever moments you choose to remember, hundreds of millions of others – proud of their athletes, proud of their countries – will select their own after yesterday’s closing ceremony.  Above all, the Olympic Games stir within us a sense of national pride and connect us with an international awe.

The International Olympic Committee, which oversees all Olympic activities, is responsible for sustaining this sense of wonder every two years.  Their roles are rather straightforward. Among them are to “encourage and support the promotion of ethics in sport…” and to “encourage and support measures protecting the health of athletes.” Pierre de Coubertin, the father of the modern Olympic Games, was a renowned humanist, interested in competition and education as promoters of peace.

“The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.” – Pierre de Coubertin

Recent decades have brought the Games new types of peaks and nadirs. The opening ceremony in Beijing comes to mind as a triumph, the three bombs and resulting casualties at the Atlanta Games as a tragedy. Terrorism has haunted the games for longer than that, but its specter seems ever more threatening at large international events, especially after the 2013 Boston Marathon.  In the past 13 years almost all countries have taken strides to mitigate the risk of terrorism or and as individuals we are more aware of the threat.… Continue reading

Posted on

The Nuclear Olympics: Crisis and Opportunity in Tokyo’s Election

Akio Matsumura

français | 日本語

Since the Fukushima accident, I have presented the opinions of several eminent scientists on the Fukushima disaster and we have received many insightful responses from other experts in many fields. Many thanks to our friends for constantly translating this work into French, Spanish, Japanese, and German – hard work that brought in thousands of new readers. Our joint efforts have gained a high level of international credibility and helped bring these issues the urgent attention they deserve.

Over these past three years I have begun to understand nuclear power and how its heavy risks – 10,000 years of environmental damage – are beyond what most are willing to accept as reality.

Next month the Japanese people have an opportunity to question Fukushima’s safety again. A special election for the governor of Tokyo will take place February 9, an election the entire world will watch and comment on, and one which include serious discussion of energy. Candidates have already declared themselves for or against nuclear power.

Why is a gubernatorial election of international importance? The honor and responsibility of hosting the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.

Over the next weeks, as election debates revisit the question of the ongoing crisis at Fukushima and nuclear power’s safety, it is useful to review the lessons learned from the March 2011 and the disaster that ensued.

  1. We have arrived at a very basic realization: every potentially dangerous machine should have an emergency “off” switch that shuts everything down completely — but nuclear power reactors don’t have one, because radioactivity cannot be shut off and therefore the irradiated nuclear fuel will continue to produce dangerous amounts of heat for many years after the plant’s shutdown.
… Continue reading
Posted on

Can Nuclear Power Be an Answer to India’s Electricity Needs?

Read in German, Spanish, Japanese (日本語 ), and French.

M. V. Ramana

The Indian government is engaged in discussions with the Japanese government aimed at concluding a bilateral nuclear cooperation pact; this would allow India to import nuclear reactor parts from Japan. The primary argument given for India’s plans to expand nuclear power is that the country already suffers electricity shortages and its electricity demand is fast growing.

There are at least three sad realities that underlie this discussion. The first, and perhaps most poignant, is that Japan, which is currently facing tremendous democratic opposition to restarting nuclear reactors within the country, is considering exporting nuclear reactor parts to a country where, again, there is significant opposition to nuclear power, especially at all the sites that have been selected for installing reactors imported from companies like Westinghouse, General Electric and Areva. Their reasons for such opposition are not difficult to discern. In the aftermath of 11 March 2011, people near an existing or proposed nuclear reactor can—and do—imagine themselves suffering a fate similar to those of the inhabitants of the areas around Fukushima. These nuclear reactors are also located in areas that support thousands of people living off farming, fishing, and other occupations, and these people see, quite correctly, the reactor as a major threat to their livelihoods. The Indian government’s response to the opposition has been a combination of coercion, bribery, and propaganda. Support for the Indian government’s nuclear efforts, therefore, cannot be considered respectful of democratic rights.… Continue reading

Posted on

Sacrifice and Spiritual Law: Solutions for Fukushima

Japanese (日本語 ), German and French

by Akio Matsumura

“Thirty seconds into what may ultimately be regarded as one of the defining speeches of his career, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe slowly raised his hands chest high, then spread them out sideways in a gesture of confidence.
“Let me assure you,” he said, addressing members of the International Olympic Committee on Sept. 7. “The situation is under control.”
The prime minister was attempting to convince his audience in Buenos Aires that the multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, initiated by tsunami triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, should not be a cause of concern for Tokyo hosting the Summer Olympic Games in 2020.
The nuclear accident, he said, “has never done and will never do any damage to Tokyo.” (Jun Hongo, The Japan Times)

Prime Minister Abe’s brash confidence is not supported by the news of flagging cleanup efforts at reactors 1, 2, 3, and 4. In fact, the volume of stories of unanticipated but ongoing mechanical failures and worker mistakes can be hard to follow. What do we do with figures like “400,000 becquerels per liter” or 1,533 spent fuel assemblies?  And any attempt at understanding is further complicated by the limited reliability of the information, an issue that could be resolved by true independent assessment on a wide range of technical issues, such as hydrology and mechanical and electrical engineering.

The fundamental question remains the same: what will be the outcome at Fukushima?… Continue reading

Posted on

The Environmental Hazards of Japan’s Reprocessing: An Interview with Gordon Edwards, Ph.D.

To follow our recent introduction of Frank von Hippel and Masafumi Takubo’s report on alternatives to Japan’s plan to reprocess at the Rokkasho plant, Finding the Missing Link interviewed Gordon Edwards, PhD, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, discusses the environmental hazards associated with reprocessing programs.

… Continue reading

Posted on

Needless Nuclear Reprocessing: The Bridge to Unnecessary Risk

Read in French and German

Introduction by Akio Matsumura

I decided to work full time on expanding the conversation on the Fukushima accident and cleanup process because of one reason:  nuclear power plant accidents have the ability to alter our land and society for tens of thousands years. We have seen major conflict over the last centuries, but even in the case of World War II, in which 60 million people died, our societies have proved resilient and recovered in a matter of decades, even if permanently altered. A full fuel pool fire would bring us a catastrophe like we’ve never seen.

The work of Frank von Hippel, a professor at Princeton University  and co-founder of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, has brought the issues of reprocessing spent fuel, another aspect of nuclear technology laden with risk, to my attention. Chris Cote, editor and contributor to this blog, summarizes a recent report by Frank von Hippel and Masafumi Takubo and describes the technology’s ability to be a bridge to further risk: the creation of plutonium, a nuclear weapon material. I’d like to thank Dr. von Hippel for his help in reviewing this summary for publication here.

 Needless Nuclear Reprocessing:

The Bridge to Unnecessary Risk

Chris Cote

Japan’s Other Nuclear Program

Irradiated water continues to flow into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima Daiichi, three reactors remain radioactive and unapproachable, and a fourth loaded with spent fuel could collapse under its own weight. Amidst this disorder, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has shifted attention away from the cleanup and at the same time is planning to expand Japan’s nuclear capabilities by opening the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant some 270 miles north of the Fukushima power plants.… Continue reading