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Japan’s Nuclear Water Woes

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Almost four years ago, we switched our focus on this website from international security to the unknown issues at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants – the potential consequences of a larger accident there were impossible to ignore. We covered the meltdowns themselves, the unimagined consequences of an accident with the cooling pool of Reactor No. 4, the ice walls, and the potential for radiation to harm humans, wildlife, and the environment itself.

Perhaps most important, we linked together physicists, biologists, decision makers, nuclear experts (and more nuclear experts), physicians, journalists, UN officials, spiritual leaders, teachers and students to build a more comprehensive understanding of nuclear power’s relationship with people and the environment that surrounds it. We are often restricted, in engineering and science as well as business and politics, to narrow, vertical styles of thinking. Our mission is to connect professions — and individuals at their top – horizontally. The debate over the effects of March 11, 2011, will continue on for decades, and probably remain unresolved. We hope we were able to broaden the conversation.  From this point on, Finding the Missing Link will turn its focus back to issues of security, religion, and politics across the world, building on what we learned through our work on Fukushima, and hoping to build connections otherwise unmade.

Earlier this month Gordon Edwards sent us the following Associated Press article, which descriBes in detail where the clean up of the nuclear power plants stands now and what issues TEPCO and Japan will face going forward.… Continue reading

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How Can Harvard Best Instill Vision in Our Leaders?

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By Akio Matsumura

The heat of August is a time for many to seek a rare vacation. This is as true for President Obama as it is for a small business owner or a teacher. Indeed, for students, parents, and teachers it is also the last pause before a headlong dive into the coming school year.

Syrian Situation: Farah Pandithf, Institute of Politics resident fellow and former State Department special representative to Muslim communities, makes a point to Belfer Center Future of Diplomacy Director Nicholas Burns during a JFK Jr. Forum on the Syrian crisis. (Photo Credit: Harvard Kennedy School)Syrian Situation: Farah Pandith, Institute of Politics resident fellow and former State Department special representative to Muslim communities, makes a point to Belfer Center Future of Diplomacy Director Nicholas Burns during a JFK Jr. Forum on the Syrian crisis. (Photo Credit: Harvard Kennedy School)

Since the Global Forum conferences in Oxford, Moscow, Kyoto, Rio de Janeiro, Konya, and Jerusalem I have had the privilege to work with many extraordinary students. Their fresh ideas and dynamic energy helped produce better outcomes at each meeting. In 2007 I was fortunate to be introduced to Chris Cote, then a sophomore at Tufts University, whose contributions, from managing our blog to developing our strategy, have been indispensable. Next month, he will begin his studies at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Many of his classmates will be from other countries, sent by their governments for an elite education and on whom their countries will rely to lead them through a difficult but hopeful future.

Beyond the academic curriculum, future leaders benefit from the idealism a class fosters. The friendships that grow during school — benefitting from trust only classmates can share — will be an invaluable asset that the students will lean on throughout their careers, invisible connections that help transcend institutional and hierarchical norms.… Continue reading

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Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Sanctity of Remembering

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Dear Mr Matsumura,

The novel The Sanctity of Remembering was written to resurrect Nagasaki and Hiroshima and to purge modern history of the myth and abuses that still surrounds the use of atomic bombs. While changing the voice of America by one and thus one at a time the novel took on both form and purpose. A voice previously not yet heard was to be created in the art of fiction, the best conveyance of truth. As in all poetic prose the plangent sound of the ill treated and unexpected becomes audible as I knew it might if I just stayed the task and kept writing and revising until help arrived. I wrote the novel because I conceived that one nation under God conceived in liberty would so endure and one world under the same God would learn to know each other in the truth. My characters were charged to address all on this globe in every way they knew until all things are made new. Too bad I have only a novel to give to the cause but it is a good one and I am happy to have it completed to honor another anniversary in Japan. I was exposed to four atomic bombs as teenage soldier in the United States Army and this is the fallout and my fall out and my fall in to the ranks of truth seekers without borders. Also know please that this specially conceived commentary is very much overdue.… Continue reading

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

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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

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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

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Fukushima: Three Years Later

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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

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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.

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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.

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

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

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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

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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
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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