The Japanese Nuclear Establishment vs. the Two-Thirds ‘Minority’
By Jim Naureckas | FAIR | January 26, 2012
There’s a news article in the Washington Post today that really captures that paper’s view of the way the world works, and how it ought to work. Headlined “After Earthquake, Japan Can’t Agree on the Future of Nuclear Power,” Chico Harlan’s piece begins:
The hulking system that once guided Japan’s pro-nuclear-power stance worked just fine when everybody moved in lockstep. But in the wake of a nuclear accident that changed the way this country thinks about energy, the system has proved ill-suited for resolving conflict. Its very size and complexity have become a problem.
And what exactly is that problem?
Nearly a year after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi facility, Japanese decision-makers cannot agree on how to safeguard their reactors against future disasters, or even whether to operate them at all.
Some experts say this indecision reflects the Japanese tendency to search for, and sometimes depend on, consensus–even when none is likely to emerge. The nation’s system for nuclear decision-making requires the agreement of thousands of officials. Most bureaucrats and politicians in Tokyo want Japan to recommit to nuclear power, but they have been thwarted by a powerful minority–reformists and regional governors.
The obstruction by this “powerful minority,” the Post goes on to say, has “heavy consequences”: “record financial losses for major power companies and economy-stunting electricity shortages.” The story warns that “Japan, once the world’s third-largest nuclear consumer, could be nuclear-free, if it is unable to win approval from local communities to restart the idled units.”
Then, after musing about the “elaborate network of hand-holding” that used to govern Japan’s nuclear infrastructure, Harlan slips in a fact that changes everything:
Since the March 11 accident, just enough has changed to stall that cooperation. Two-thirds of Japanese oppose atomic power. Politicians in areas that host nuclear plants are rethinking the facilities; they hold veto power over any restart. A few vocal skeptics have emerged in the government, and in the aftermath of the accident, Japan has created at least a dozen commissions and task forces for energy-related issues.
So when the pro-nuclear goals of “most bureaucrats and politicians” are “thwarted by a powerful minority,” that’s a sign of the dysfunctional Japanese system, with its “tendency to search for, and sometimes depend on, consensus.” The fact that this “minority” actually represents the large majority of the Japanese public who oppose the technology that has rendered substantial parts of their country uninhabitable–well, that’s just another roadblock that the establishment is going to have to overcome.
Fukushima Update: Why We Should (Still) Be Worried
By Karen Charman | WhoWhatWhy | January 20, 2012
After the catastrophic trifecta of the triple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in Japan last March—what the Japanese are referring to as their 3/11—you would think the Japanese government would be doing everything in its power to contain the disaster. You would be wrong—dead wrong.
Instead of collecting, isolating, and guarding the millions of tons of radioactive rubble that resulted from the chain reaction of the 9.0 earthquake, the subsequent 45- to 50-foot wall of water that swamped the plant and disabled the cooling systems for the reactors, and the ensuing meltdowns, Japanese Environment Minister Goshi Hosono says that the entire country must share Fukushima’s plight by accepting debris from the disaster.
The tsunami left an estimated 20 million tons of wreckage on the land, much of which—now ten months after the start of the disaster—is festering in stinking piles throughout the stricken region. (Up to 20 million more tons of rubble from the disaster—estimated to cover an area approximately the size of California—is also circulating in the Pacific.) The enormous volume of waste is much more than the disaster areas can handle. So, in an apparent attempt to return this region to some semblance of normal life, the plan is to spread out the waste to as many communities across the country as will take it.
At the end of September, Tokyo signed an agreement to accept 500,000 metric tons of rubble from Iwate Prefecture, one of eight prefectures designated for cleanup under a new nuclear decontamination law passed on January 1. The law allows for much of the radioactively contaminated rubble to be incinerated, a practice that has been underway at least since the end of June.
But the sheer amount of radioactive rubble is proving difficult to process. The municipal government of Kashiwa, in Chiba Prefecture to the west and south of Tokyo, recently shut down one of its main incinerators, because it can’t store any more than the 200 metric tons of radioactive ash it already has that is too contaminated to bury in a landfill.
According to the California-based Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN), burning Fukushima’s radioactive rubble is the worst possible way to deal with the problem. That’s because incinerating it releases much more radioactivity into the air, not only magnifying the contamination all over Japan but also sending it up into the jet stream. Once in the jet stream, the radioactive particles travel across the Northern Hemisphere, coming back down to earth with rain, snow, or other precipitation. Five days after the Fukushima meltdowns began, radioactive fallout from the disaster reached the West Coast of the United States. Approximately a week later, Fukushima fallout was measured as far away as France.
In October, the journal Nature reported that the Japanese government’s initial estimates of radiation from Fukushima were substantially less than what Scandinavian researchers calculated from a global network of radiation monitoring stations that the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization uses to detect nuclear weapons tests. … Full article
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The People Who Brought You Fukushima
Same Old Tricks From the Nuclear Gang
By SAUL LANDAU and JACK WILLIS | April 22, 2011
For 60 years the nuclear industry has promised the world cheap, safe and clean energy. As the Japanese government continues to extend its nuclear evacuation zone and with the eerie glow of the Fukishima plant as background, the pushers of nuclear power – including the President – still demand subsidies for new plants of Congress. As another Chernobyl-size disaster looms, the energy-fixated “problem solvers” continue to suffer from both temporary blindness and long-term amnesia – ignoring or down-playing the history of nuclear “mishaps.” […]
From the 1950s on, for example, “thousands of workers were unwittingly exposed to plutonium and other highly radioactive metals at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Kentucky Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Workers … inhaled radioactive dust while processing the materials as part of a government experiment to recycle used nuclear reactor fuel.” (Washington Post, August 22, 1999)
In July 2000, wildfires near the Hanford facility hit highly radioactive waste disposal trenches, raising airborne plutonium radiation levels in nearby cities to 1,000 times above normal. (http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html)
Compare those “little accidents” (multiply by a thousand) with the Chernobyl and now Fukishima catastrophes or with those who got cancer from the Three Mile Island (Pennsylvania) “mishap.” http://www.albionmonitor.com/9703a/3milecancer.html
The government nuclear agencies have shied away from doing the long-term studies of the impacts of low-level radiation. Indeed, in the 1970s they de-funded a study under the guidance of University of Pittsburg scientist Dr. David Mancuso when it became apparent he would find that the “precautions” taken were insufficient, and that low-level radiation (at government levels) had deleterious affects on human health.
The government did no health follow-up after the numerous “little” leaks, fires and “mishaps” that occurred routinely at the Rocky Flats plutonium trigger and Hanford nuclear weapons installations. Oh, they did at least check the radiation badges of the employees.
In 1981, we made a Public Television documentary: “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang.” In it, we documented how government officials obfuscated their failure to provide, as they promised, “cheap, safe and clean” energy and safe work environments in and around nuclear weapons facilities.
Jacobs had earlier reported on how the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and its successor three-letter agencies lied about, distorted, and then classified (thereby withholding) reports on the health impact of low level radiation.
One example provided in the film was Sergeant James Gates, who described how the army positioned men near the blast and had them cover their eyes. Bates said: “the blast threw me 15 feet into the air. It made all of us sick.” In 1978, he had terminal cancer.
Jacobs interviewed “downwinders” – those living in cities directly in the path of nuclear fallout after the Nevada tests. They described how hot hailstones pelted them after the blasts. Jacobs interviewed a man on horseback who told of large tumors growing from his neck right after his exposure.
In the 1950s and again in the early 1970s, Paul Jacobs inspected the government’s claims and then wrote award-winning articles featuring interviews with St. George, Utah residents. In this city directly east of the test site, Jacobs found inordinate numbers of cancer cases and a nuclear-nervous public. (“Clouds from Nevada,” The Reporter, May 16, 1957; (“Precautions Are Being Taken By Those Who Know,” The Atlantic, Feb. 1971)
In the film, Jacobs described how he surreptitiously acquired a classified document from a Public Health office in Las Vegas that revealed the Atomic Energy Commission knew “low-level radiation” constituted serious health hazards. Later, he found de-classified internal memos indicating why the government classified the health report: to keep the public from having to choose between nuclear tests and getting cancer.
In 1977, Jacobs’ doctors and his friend Linus Pauling (a chemistry Nobel prize-winner) concluded that Paul (a non-smoker) developed lung cancer during his exposure to “low level radiation” around the Atomic Test Site.
After 74 years, the evidence would lead one to conclude that “cheap safe and clean” sounds more like a condom ad than a believable promise from the nuclear gang. The public should think of two words that have been uttered in nuclear plants when “mishaps” occur. “Oops” and “duh.” And remember, there’s at least one Homer Simpson.
Saul Landau and Jack Willis also worked together on WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP available through Cinema Libre Studio.
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From the Archives
British weapons and personnel doing much of the killing in Yemen
Press TV – June 18, 2019
A detailed report published by the Guardian newspaper has shown how Britain is massively contributing to Saudi Arabia’s devastating war on Yemen as it suggests that London is not only supplying the bombs that fall on Yemenis, but it provides the personnel and expertise that keep the war going.
The comprehensive report by Arron Merat published on Tuesday showed that Britain was doing much of the killing in Yemen as the country continues to provide Saudi Arabia with everything it needs to turn its southern impoverished neighbor into a graveyard.
“Every day Yemen is hit by British bombs – dropped by British planes that are flown by British-trained pilots and maintained and prepared inside Saudi Arabia by thousands of British contractors,” said Merat in the report. … continue
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