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Court rules Fukushima nuclear disaster preventable, increases liabilities
Fukushima nuclear disaster preventable, court rules, with more damages claims likely
Government and company Tepco ordered to pay some damages for 2011 event, but ruling could spur further claims
Plaintiffs and their supporters march in Japan ahead of the court ruling in Sendai on the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster on Wednesday.
A Japanese court has found the government and Tepco, the operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, negligent for failing to take measures to prevent the 2011 nuclear disaster, and ordered them to pay 1bn yen ($9.5m) in damages to thousands of residents for their lost livelihoods.
The ruling on Wednesday by Sendai high court could open up the government to further damage claims because thousands of other residents evacuated as reactors at the coastal power station overheated and released a radioactive cloud, following the devastating tsunami. While some people have returned home, areas close to the plant are still off limits.
The plaintiffs had sought monthly compensation of about 50,000 yen ($470) per person until radiation levels subside to pre-disaster levels, seeking a total of 28bn yen ($265m).
The plaintiffs' head lawyer, Izutaro Managi, hailed the ruling as a major victory, saying: "We ask the government to extend relief measures as soon as possible, not only for the plaintiffs but for all victims based on the damage they suffered."
The latest ruling follows 13 lower court decisions, which were divided over government responsibility in the disaster. The latest ruling doubles the amount of damages against Tepco ordered by a lower court in 2017
In 2011, 3,550 plaintiffs were forced to flee their homes after a magnitude-9 earthquake triggered a tsunami that devastated the country's north-east and crippled the Fukushima nuclear plant, known as the triple disaster.
Decommissioning work is underway at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, north-eastern Japan.
Radiation that spewed from the plant's melted reactors contaminated the surrounding areas, forcing about 160,000 residents to evacuate at one point. More than 50,000 are still displaced because of lingering safety concerns. The plant is being decommissioned, a process expected to take decades.
The court said that the government could have taken measures to protect the site, based on expert assessments available in 2002 that indicated the possibility of a tsunami of more than 15 metres, reported public broadcaster NHK, which aired footage of the plaintiffs celebrating outside the court after the ruling.
The government has yet to say whether it will appeal in the supreme court against the decision. "We will consider the ruling and take appropriate action," chief cabinet secretary Katsunobu Kato said after the ruling.
Officials at Tepco were unavailable when Reuters tried to reach them outside regular business hours.
In court, the government argued it was impossible to predict the tsunami or prevent the subsequent disaster. Tepco said it had fulfilled its compensation responsibility under government guidelines.
Plaintiffs said the ruling brought some justice, but that their lives could never return to normal and their struggle was far from over.
"For more than nine years, I have planted seeds on the contaminated soil and grown vegetables, always worrying about the effects of radiation," plaintiff Kazuya Tarukawa, a farmer from Sukagawa in Fukushima, said at a meeting after the ruling. "Our contaminated land will never be the same."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/01/fukushima-nuclear-disaster-preventable-court-rules-with-more-damages-claims-likely?fbclid=IwAR36150Www7rdCRHKktTAwu57KZ3tOYGqCCm5pczYANUxAnF3aLgvQq7ngs
Court increases state liability, compensation for nuclear disaster
Plaintiffs hold up signs in front of the Sendai High Court on Sept. 30 stating victory in their lawsuit against the central government and Tokyo Electric Power Co.
SENDAI—A high court here on Sept. 30 more than doubled the amount of compensation awarded to victims of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and issued a scathing critique against the central government for its inaction.
The Sendai High Court found the central government equally at fault as plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. for failing to take anti-tsunami measures and ordered the defendants to pay a total of about 1.01 billion yen ($9.6 million) to around 3,550 evacuees and residents living in Fukushima Prefecture and elsewhere.
It was the first high court ruling in various lawsuits seeking compensation from TEPCO and the central government for the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant caused by a quake-triggered tsunami in March 2011.
In October 2017, the Fukushima District Court ordered the defendants to pay about 500 million yen to about 2,900 evacuees. That decision was appealed to the Sendai High Court, which increased both the compensation amount and the number of recipients.
"We won a total victory over the central government and TEPCO," Izutaro Managi, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said. "The effect on the various lawsuits to be decided in the future will be huge."
A major point of contention in the case was a long-term assessment of the probability of major earthquakes released by the science ministry's Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion in 2002. The report pointed out that Fukushima Prefecture could be hit by a major tsunami.
The high court found the assessment to be a "scientific finding that had a considerable level of objective and rational basis," making it an important perspective that differed greatly from various views presented by individual scholars or private-sector organizations.
The court ruled that if the economy minister at the time had immediately ordered TEPCO to calculate the height of a possible tsunami, a forecast could have been made of the likelihood of a tsunami striking the nuclear plant.
But the ruling said, "The regulatory authority did not fulfill the role that was expected of it" and that "not exercising regulatory powers was a violation of the law regarding state compensation."
The Fukushima District Court found that the central government only had a secondary responsibility to oversee the utility.
The high court, however, ruled that the government had the same level of responsibility. It said both the central government and TEPCO avoided making tsunami calculations because they feared the effects that would arise if the urgent measures were taken.
The high court ruling also expanded the range of plaintiffs who could receive compensation to people living in the Aizu district of Fukushima Prefecture as well as Miyagi and Tochigi prefectures where evacuation orders were not issued.
Experts said the high court ruling is a game-changer because of the positive assessment given to the long-term evaluation about possible tsunami.
Other district courts have ruled that the central government was not responsible because even if it had ordered measures to be taken, there would not have been enough time to complete such steps to prevent damage from the tsunami.
"Plaintiffs in the other lawsuits have provided testimony at a similar level so this could turn the tide in the recent trend of plaintiffs losing their cases," said Masafumi Yokemoto, a professor of environmental policy at Osaka City University who is knowledgeable about nuclear plant issues.
Yotaro Hatamura, a professor emeritus of engineering at the University of Tokyo who headed the government panel that investigated the Fukushima nuclear accident, said, "This was an unprecedented ruling that pointed out in a rational manner the stance of both the central government and TEPCO of not looking at data that they did not want to see."
Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said at his Sept. 30 news conference that the central government would carefully go over the court ruling before making a decision on whether to appeal.
TEPCO also issued a statement with similar wording.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13777556?fbclid=IwAR36TBfK7X8gdO1FuWLG0rLq0XhEN3hofWwWufZ1bjHuPk3CJcUvXu1WCOM
October 2, 2020 Posted by dunrenard | Fukushima 2020	| Fukushima Evacuees, Government, Sendai court, Tepco | 2 Comments
Japanese Government Is Ordered to Pay Damages Over Fukushima Disaster
The Sendai High Court said the state and the plant's operator must pay $9.5 million to survivors of the 2011 nuclear accident. They have until mid-October to appeal to the country's Supreme Court.
A damaged reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan in 2011.
TOKYO — A high court in Japan on Wednesday became the first at that level to hold the government responsible for the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, saying in a ruling that the state and the plant's operator must pay about $9.5 million in damages to survivors.
The overpowering earthquake and tsunami that ripped through northern Japan in March 2011 caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, leading to the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
Under Wednesday's ruling by the Sendai High Court, the government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, known as Tepco, must compensate 3,550 plaintiffs, the Kyodo news agency reported. The plaintiffs had sought monthly compensation payments of about $475 per person until radiation at their homes returns to pre-crisis levels.
In 2017, a lower court had ordered the government and Tepco to pay about half that amount to about 2,900 plaintiffs. But the ruling by Sendai's high court, one of eight such courts in Japan, is significant because it could set a legal precedent for dozens of similar lawsuits that have been filed across the country.
The government has long argued that it could not have prevented the tsunami or the nuclear accident, while Tepco says it has already paid any compensation that was ordered by the government. Last year, a Japanese court acquitted three former Tepco executives who had been accused of criminal negligence over their roles in the accident.
Hiroshi Kikuchi, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, called Wednesday's decision "groundbreaking."
"The court carefully collected facts for this judgment," Mr. Kikuchi said at a news conference. "We feel now it will largely impact on other actions nationwide."
Workers removing the top soil from a garden in Naraha, inside Fukushima's evacuation zone, in 2013.
Izutaro Managi, another lawyer on the team, said in a brief interview that if the government and Tokyo Electric Power appeal the decision, he expects it to go to the country's Supreme Court. The deadline for filing that appeal is Oct. 14.
Tepco said in a statement on Wednesday that it would examine the judgment before responding to it.
"We again apologize from our heart for giving troubles and concerns to people in Fukushima as well as in the society largely caused by our nuclear power plant's accident," the statement said.
Toyoshi Fuketa, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, an agency that was created after the Fukushima accident, said on Wednesday that he would not comment until the details of the judgment were released.
"The Nuclear Regulation Authority was set up based on reflection over, and anger against, the nuclear accident in Fukushima," Mr. Fuketa added. "I would like to advance strict rules on nuclear power so that a nuclear accident will never happen again."
Takashi Nakajima, one of the plaintiffs in the case, told reporters that the ruling was a reminder that the consequences of the Fukushima disaster were still real, even if many people in Japan were starting to forget about it.
"Some people say that I'm damaging Fukushima's reputation," Mr. Nakajima said. "But now I think we are encouraged by the court to say what we think."
Another plaintiff, Kazuya Tarukawa, said in a tearful statement that he had been tilling contaminated soil in the area for nearly a decade, and waiting for the government and the plant's operator to take responsibility.
He said the money was beside the point, and that the ruling raised a larger question about the long-term risks of nuclear energy.
"What will come of Japan if there is another nuclear disaster like that?" he asked.
A roadblock in a contaminated area northwest of the nuclear plant in 2013.
October 2, 2020 Posted by dunrenard | Fukushima 2020	| Fukushima Evacuees, Government, Sendai court, Tepco | Leave a comment
Sendai court upholds ruling that state and Tepco must pay Fukushima evacuees
A group of plaintiffs demanding compensation for the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant disaster rally in Sendai on Wednesday prior to the high court's ruling that held the state and Tepco responsible.
Sendai – The Sendai High Court on Wednesday ordered the state and the operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant to pay ¥1 billion ($9.5 million) in damages to residents over the 2011 earthquake- and tsunami-triggered disaster.
It was the first time a high court has acknowledged the state's responsibility for the incident in about 30 similar lawsuits filed nationwide.
The Sendai court told the government and Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. to pay about ¥1.01 billion to 3,550 out of some 3,650 plaintiffs, up from the sum of ¥500 million that a lower court ordered them to pay to around 2,900 plaintiffs in an October 2017 ruling.
In line with the 2017 ruling by the Fukushima District Court, the high court made its decision based on three points in dispute, including whether a major tsunami could have been foreseen.
The two other points were whether countermeasures could have been implemented to prevent a disaster, and whether the compensation levels outlined by the government were sufficient.
The plaintiffs had sought monthly compensation payments of around ¥50,000 per person until radiation at their residences returns to the pre-crisis level, bringing their total final demand to approximately ¥28 billion.
The state, meanwhile, argued it was impossible to predict the tsunami and prevent the subsequent disaster. Tepco claimed it had already paid compensation in accordance with government guidelines.
In the district court ruling, the government and Tepco were both blamed for failing to take steps to counter the huge tsunami.
It ruled that the two should have been able to foresee the risks of a maximum 15.7-meter-high wave, based on a quake assessment issued in 2002, and that the disaster could have been prevented if the state had instructed the operator to implement measures that year.
The magnitude 9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami struck Tohoku on March 11, 2011, causing multiple meltdowns and hydrogen blasts at the nuclear power plant.
Around 55,000 people remained evacuated both within and outside Fukushima Prefecture as of the end of August.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority issued a comment that said, "We will consider appropriate ways to respond while closely examining the ruling and consulting with relevant authorities."
Tepco said in a statement, "We deeply apologize again for causing great trouble and worries to the people of Fukushima Prefecture and the whole of society because of the nuclear power plant accident. We will closely examine the ruling by the Sendai High Court and consider ways to respond."
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/09/30/national/crime-legal/sendai-court-tepco-fukushima-evacuees/
Remembering Hitoshi Yoshioka, who fought gov't nuclear policy from inside
"I feel sorry for the next generation that they must take on the burden of Fukushima. What we have been doing is something we must feel embarrassed about," said Hitoshi Yoshioka at a symposium following the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant. Those words still linger in me.
Yoshioka was a strong opponent of Japan's nuclear energy policy. At 43 years old he took a spot on the committee that decided the government's nuclear policy. He was a unique presence in that he continued to criticize the government from the inside, raising questions over Japan's policy of forging ahead with nuclear power. Perhaps his regret that he was unable to prevent the Fukushima disaster before it unfolded was behind his statement above.
Yoshioka passed away on Jan. 14, 2018, of a hepatic neuroendocrine tumor. He was 64. He studied physics at the University of Tokyo, but upon meeting Tetsu Hiroshige, a history of science expert known for his criticism of the sciences, Yoshioka shifted his focus to the history of science as well.
From the late 1980s, Yoshioka devoted himself to research on nuclear energy. He continued raining down scalding criticism of the civilian use of nuclear energy as a power source, saying that Japan's system was "second-class at best and undeveloped" and that "what the government really wants (with nuclear power) is to maintain the structure of vested interests and the potential capabilities for nuclear weapons." Yoshioka's book "Genshiryoku no Shakaishi" (The social history of nuclear energy) remains as a sort of bible to those related to the industry.
"Public policies (like nuclear power) do not belong solely to politicians and bureaucrats," Yoshioka would expound. "I would like everyone to do their own investigative research and participate in policy formation." He hoped for the effort of every single citizen to reform government policies. Even when I, someone he barely knew, came to him asking for advice about wanting to summarize my experiences covering the Fukushima nuclear disaster into a dissertation three years ago, he readily provided me with guidance.
As the chairman of the Citizens' Commission on Nuclear Energy, Yoshioka fought for the reconstruction of the lives of those in Fukushima affected by the disaster as the nation's top priority. Also concerned about the global unrest surrounding nuclear weapons, Yoshioka said that nuclear power was just the outer moat, and the total elimination of nuclear arms was the castle keep.
Aiming for a future coexisting with science that could create a "fair society," Yoshioka fought to the very end as an opponent of Japan's nuclear energy policies.
(By Shinji Kanto, Saga Bureau)
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180312/p2a/00m/0na/003000c
March 15, 2018 Posted by dunrenard | Fukushima 2018	| Fukushima, Government, Nuclear Policy | Leave a comment
Pro-Nuclear Propaganda: How Science, Government and the Press Conspire to Misinform the Public
by Lorna Salzman at Hunter College, Energy Studies program, 1986
After the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster in the Soviet Union, there was much finger-wagging in the US about the suppression of information there, and the purported differences in reactor design and safety requirements between Russia and the US, which made a similar accident here unlikely if not impossible.
But the similarities between how technical information and failure are handled there and here, as well as those in reactor design and the potential for reactor failure are striking. These similarities extend to the press as well as government, but in this respect there is a major difference. In the Soviet Union censorship is imposed by the central government. In the US it is self-imposed.
For example, there was and is nothing in this country to prevent a scientist or journalist or academic researcher from reporting fully and accurately on the consequences of the Chernobyl accident. In this respect we are indeed fortunate to have had independent and impartial scientists like Dr. John Gofman, the leading radiation health expert in the US and formerly of the government-supported Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California.
Dr. Gofman, using the admittedly incomplete data released by Russia and other European countries, applied rigorous analysis in the context of what is known about Chernobyl-type and size reactors and in the context of highly responsible statistical and epidemiological calculations based on standard radiation dose/response relationships. What Gofman came up with, and what no one in government or the nuclear industry has been able to refute, is an estimate that about one million people throughout the world will develop cancer from Chernobyl fallout, half of whom will eventually die.
Gofman delivered the results of his study before the American Chemical Society annual meeting in Anaheim, California. His figures pointed to 424,300 cancers in the Soviet Union, and 526,700 in Europe and elsewhere over a 70-year period as a result of cesium exposure and ingestion from the accident of April 1986, plus another 19,500 leukemias and an unknown number of thyroid and other cancers from other radioisotopes. These figures are over five times greater than the highest previous estimates, which range from 2000 to 75,000 premature deaths.
The reasons for this huge discrepancy – reasons never explored by the press nor revealed by our government and therefore unknown to the public – lie in the fact that the long-term effects of low-level radiation exposure have consistently been downplayed, distorted or concealed by scientists, the nuclear industry and the government. Even though a patient search of government information can sometimes reveal the phrase "There is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation", this simple sentence conceals multitudes of information. Gofman says: "There is no dose so small that the body can perfectly repair all resulting damage to DNA and the chromosomes". The nuclear industry and the government have long promoted the notion that non-observable, long-term latent effects of low doses of radiation are in effect non-existent; they can safely do this because such effects are not manifested for years or decades, and a specific cancer or genetic defect cannot be traced back to any particular radiation exposure. Accordingly, as Gofman puts it, nuclear power is "mass, random, premeditated murder".
"Undetectable" of course does not mean non-existent. For each amount of radioactivity released into the environment, there will be a statistically certain number of cancers, leukemias and other ill effects that will occur somewhere at some time; only the date and victims' names are unknown. Right down to a zero radiation dose, these victims will appear. And, as Gofman's Chernobyl figures show, people outside the immediate area can be at greater risk than those closer in. As a means of comparison, Gofman notes that the malignancies that arise from one nuclear reactor accident rival the number caused by all the above-ground nuclear bomb tests of the US, UK and USSR combined.
An information blackout occurred in this country as a result of directives from the White House, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the Dept. of Energy (DOE), and the Dept. of Agriculture (DOA) right after Chernobyl. Government scientists were instructed not to talk to journalists. Even United Press International (UPI) backed down by saying that it could not stand by its initial estimate of 2000 immediate deaths, all of which led the public to conclude that the Soviets were the victims of censorship, while we here in the US had a free press.
It seems that while the US and the USSR had a hard time cooperating on nuclear arms at that time, they had a tacit agreement to cover up each other's nuclear power mistakes. In 1957, what was probably the worst nuclear accident in the world before Chernobyl took place in the Ural Mountains at what is believed to be a nuclear waste dump. Over a thousand square kilometers in the southern Urals were drenched with radioactivity and rendered permanently uninhabitable. Hundreds died immediately, and long-term effects will never be known. The entire industrial area was evacuated; whole rivers, lakes and watersheds became irreversibly contaminated and the area was fenced off to prohibit entry.
Zhores Medvedev, a renowned Soviet scientists, knew about the accident, and in 1973, living in England, was astounded to learn that no one in the West knew about (or cared to admit they knew) the accident. Medvedev published an article in 1976 about the accident which was then reprinted in many western newspapers. The response from the UK, France and the US nuclear establishment was unanimous: they denied that such an accident was technically possible. The then-chairman of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, Sir John Hill, called Medvedev's report "rubbish" and his comments were printed in the NY Times on Nov. 8, 1976 in a Reuters dispatch. Though Medvedev's research, published later in his book "Nuclear Disaster in the Urals", provided detailed information that indicated a nuclear waste accident, nuclear scientists preferred to blame the Soviets for poor radioactive waste handling, thus averting the issue of nuclear power safety entirely. Medvedev's Freedom of Information Act requests to the US Energy Research & Development Authority and the CIA came back to him heavily censored; most documents he had requested were classified and never released.
The Soviets were not the only ones willing to kill their own people, however. In the 1950s, the US Army, with the complicity of Congress, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), nuclear scientists and physicians, and top levels of government, deliberately marched American soldiers to within 100 yards of ground zero in nuclear bomb tests in Nevada; those victims are still dying today as may any defective offspring. Here are some of the testimonials to those tests:
"Nuclear testing, by and large, has been one of the safest things that was ever done", Robert Newman, Nevada test site manager.
"No one has ever been crippled, killed or severely maimed in a nuclear weapons test", Gordon Jacks, former Army Colonel, 18-year veteran of atomic testing.
"People have got to learn to live with the facts of life, and part of the facts of life are fallout", Willard Libby, AEC Commissioner, AEC meeting of Feb. 23, 1955.
What was behind these blanket denials of the truth? First, keep in mind that these facts, like all those about nuclear power and nuclear weapons testing, were kept secret and released only through the efforts of private citizens and a few courageous researchers and journalists. The AEC, in the 1950s, was fearful of being put out of business and in particular of the consequences if the public became suspicious about nuclear fallout, especially because they had gone to such lengths to separate the civilian nuclear power program from the military nuclear weapons program. Data on actual fallout as well as human exposure and the resultant health effects were held only by the AEC lab at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The AEC in fact dismissed the notion that humans could ingest strontium from milk and insisted they could ingest it only from eating bone splinters from poorly butchered animals. Regarding radioactivity in the food chain, from animals eating plants growing in fallout areas, they said: "…experiments have indicated that there is no hazard to human health from this source", although it is doubtful that such experiments ever took place.
At least 250,000 American troops were directly exposed to atomic radiation during the 17 years of bomb testing here and in the Pacific, but they have been totally ignored by the government and the Army. Receiving continual unabated assurances of complete safety, these troops were employed literally as human guinea pigs to demonstrate how people could function in a fallout-contaminated area in the event of a nuclear war. It took 30 years before the US government even agreed to conduct any studies of health effects on these troops, and even now the government and Army reject the notion that they are liable in any way for the horrendous and pitiful condition of the survivors and the families of those who died. The Smoky test in Nevada in 1957 showed over twice the normal leukemia rate among servicemen, and later this was amended to three times the rate…and this test exposed only 1% of all those servicemen exposed to nuclear test fallout. There is little doubt that hundreds died and that countless others developed illnesses that led to death from various cancers, blood disorders and chronic body ailments. Today the government still rejects all claims for such illnesses.*
How did the media handle this? On Sept. 28, 1980, on CBS" "Sixty Minutes", there were brief interviews with some atomic veterans but the program concentrated mainly on the Defense Nuclear Agency director, Vice-Admiral Robert Monroe. Monroe stated to Morley Safer and millions of viewers that the Army took "meticulous precautions to insure that exposures were within limits" and denied that there was any statistical increase in cancer deaths from the tests, adding: "This weapon testing is a very, very, very, very tiny amount of low-level radiation". No opposing views were presented on the program, nor was any mention made of the Center for Disease Control's new study that showed a leukemia rate for veterans of over twice the expected rate. In response to angry viewers, which included some atomic veterans, CBS told them to get in touch with –you guessed it – the Defense Nuclear Agency.
The press also played a role in soothing public fears. NY Times science writer William Laurence, writing about the Bikini tests in the Pacific, said: "Before Bikini, the world stood in awe of this new cosmic force. Since Bikini, this feeling of awe has largely evaporated and has been supplanted by a sense of relief…"
The Nevada test site fallout didn't stay put, however. It drifted downwind into Mormon areas in Utah. Several years later, leukemias, lymphomas and other cancers and genetic defects began emerging in this area, particularly among children. The AEC continually stated to local residents that "There is no danger", and most studies done about this area and about nuclear tests in general were secret until 1979. An AEC booklet distributed six years after testing said: "…Nevada test fallout has not caused illness or injured the health of anyone living near the test site".
The effects of weapons testing fallout wasn't limited to nearby residents. The cast and film crew of a Howard Hughes movie, filmed near St. George, Utah in 1954 for three months, took an enormous toll over the next 25 years. John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead and Dick Powell all died of cancer between 1960 and 1979. Of a total number of 220 in cast and crew, 91 had gotten cancer by 1980 and half of those had died by then, not counting the native Americans who served as extras in the film.
What did the press do about public protests? The Los Angeles Examiner writer Jack Lotto, in March 1955, blamed these on a Communist scare campaign to stop weapons testing. US News & World Report published an article by Willard Libby citing AEC evidence that fallout would "not likely be at all dangerous". Syndicated columnist David Lawrence cited "world-wide propaganda" that was duping people and "some well-meaning scientists" were "playing the Communist game unwittingly by exaggerating the importance of radioactive substances known as 'fallout', and contended that the Nevada tests were "for a humanitarian purpose".
It is interesting to note that two years prior to the Smoky test, in 1955, AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss suppressed a paper by geneticist Hermann Muller on the genetic effects of radiation. Muller was the discoverer in 1927 of the fact that X-rays caused increased mutations in plants and animals, for which he later received the Nobel Prize. The AEC also was responsible for removing his paper from a UN meeting on "peaceful uses of the atom", held that year in Geneva, mostly, they said, because he mentioned Hiroshima, which they considered "definitely inadmissible" at such a conference.
The fact is that the US has led the world in setting examples of deliberate deceit, suppression of information and harassment of nuclear critics, of which the best example was the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. Just twelve days before the accident, Gov. Richard Thornburgh had appointed as state Secretary of Health a distinguished doctor and engineer, Gordon MacLeod, in order to restore the reputation of the state health department. Eight months after the accident, only a little over one-quarter into the two-year term MacLeod had agreed to serve, Thornburgh called MacLeod into his office and requested his resignation, claiming a "difference in institutional style".
More to the point was the fact that MacLeod had been a critic of the Thornburgh administration's handling of the TMI accident. The day after the accident news got out, MacLeod urged the governor to evacuate pregnant women and children from a five-mile radius around the plant (later he said he should have urged this for puberty-age children too, who are extremely radiation-sensitive). But no one else in the state agencies agreed and said the evacuation was unnecessary. Thornburgh finally, two days later, agreed to the evacuation after consulting with the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Joseph Hendrie.
MacLeod tried valiantly to take all possible steps to minimize radiation exposure. He requested, in vain, a Federal radiation health expert from the NRC and was told they had no radiation physicians on staff or anyone trained in radiation medicine. He tried to get potassium iodide pills from the Federal government, to block thyroid absorption of iodine-131. Five days later, far too late to be of any use, 11,000 vials arrived, more than half of which were unlabelled. Many had only half the dose required, some droppers did not fit the vials, and others had visible contamination. MacLeod also took issue publicly with the testimony of Pennsylvania's chief of radiation monitoring, Thomas Gerusky, before the Federal Kemeny investigative commission and stated his objections in a letter to Kemeny. That seemed to be the "last straw for the Thornburgh administration", and MacLeod was removed soon after.
Meanwhile, what scientists call "cooked" statistics started emerging from the Pennsylvania Dept. of Epidemiological Research, headed by Dr. George Tokuhata. Vital statistics on infant mortality began looking inordinately small, but Tokuhata claimed "printing error". The NY Times enthusiastically printed the state's claims about no increase in infant mortality. The statistics, still being held confidential by the state, did begin leaking out through anonymous calls to MacLeod, who then released what he knew in a church sermon to force the state to release them. The figures showed a sharp increase in the six-month period after TMI. It was later shown that the state had deliberately eliminated the black population in Harrisburg when calculating the data, because of their higher rate of infant mortality than whites. Such subtraction had been done only for the 1979 statistics, the year of the TMI accident, not for any other years, and when the black infant mortality was added in, the local rates for the area under study showed a sharp increase.
Similar withholding and distortion of information occurred regarding thyroid deficiency problems in young children to the southeast of the plant; again, Tokuhata trimmed off some cases to bring the state's figures down to a normal rate. MacLeod pointed out that even accepting Tokuhata's subtractions, there was still a five- to ten-fold increase. Again the NY Times accepted Tokuhata's figures unquestioningly, and printed an editorial about "scare stories" regarding radiation damage from TMI,savagely attacking MacLeod who, they said, "irresponsibly publicized some of the raw data suggesting the existence of health problems".
The question I am most often asked by the pblic is: if the nuclear establishment and its families are equally at risk from nuclear power as the rest of us, why do they lie about its dangers? There are various reasons. Professionals, in order to perform their work, resist truth strongly if it calls the morality of their work into question. They sincerely believe they are helping humankind. In addition, scientific research involves so many uncertainties that scientists can, with an easy conscience, rationalize away dangers that are hypothetical or not immediately observable. They also have an intellectual investment if not a financial one in continuing their work as well as families to support, and nuclear science in particular has been endowed not only with government money and support but great status and prestige. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which publishes the journal Science, just chose a nuclear physicist and former Assistant Director of Research for the AEC, Alvin Trivelpiece, as its executive director.
In order to perform professional work, one must not only believe one is doing good but must also rationalize the dangers. Indeed, with regard to ionizing radiation, this is quite easy inasmuch as the risks of radiation exposure at any level are statistical and not immediately manifested. If the odds of dying from a given amount of exposure are one in 100,000, it is easy for a scientist to rationalize that it won't be him. A recent article in the NY Times on the obituary page caught my eye; a man named Mack, aged 52, died of cancer. The article noted that he and his sister were the first two children who ventured onto the site of a nuclear test in the 1950s, where their father worked as a scientist. The article also noted that Mack's sister had died of cancer the previous year. I wondered if the father is still alive, and if he ever had second thoughts about allowing his young children onto that site, or whether his pride (or guilt) had prevented him from acknowledging that he had literally sacrificed his children to the nuclear priesthood.
As you may have noticed, there is no relationship between these incredible conspiracies of silence and distortion and the political party in power. Those in Congress who permitted these things have first loyalty to the institution in which they serve, not to truth; anything that threatens that institution is subversive, even if what they are doing harms the public. It is the same in foreign policy. The illegal violent intervention – state terrorism actually -committed by the US government against innocent Nicaraguans is a policy whose roots were planted deeply not by right-wingers or Republicans but by New Deal-type democrats, primarily Pres. Harry Truman, as was the virulent anti-Communism of that same era.
With regard to the various US interventions in Latin America, and specifically Nicaragua, the press meekly accepts the government handouts as fact, along with the myth that Commnists will take over the world and south Texas unless we overthrow the Sandinistas. But the facts are otherwise and indisputable as any reading of Nicaraguan history will show. Ignoring such history the US Congress readily accepts the Reagan-Kennedy-Truman doctrine of "containing" Communism at all costs, accompanied by "excuse us, we're really sorry about the deaths of those innocent farmers, doctors, teachers, nurses and babies".
Some of this history is in order. Nicaragua is not a Marxist-Leninist state. Most of its directorate were Social Democrats, some were Christian Democrats and some were Conservatives. What none of them were was Communist. Communists were excluded from the Sandinista directorate because they OPPOSED the revolution against Somoza (not the first or last time the Communist Party would oppose popular pro-democracy uprisings). Why did they oppose it? Because the revolution was not inspired or controlled by Moscow and the Communist Party. It was, rather, a homespun, nationalist, socialistic revolution stressing social welfare reforms, not a centralized authoritarian revolution. Some Left critics of the Sandinistas are upset because land reform has not gone far enough. The notion that Nicaraguans pose a threat to the US is on a par with the notion that Grenada's former left government posed such a threat. Half of Nicaragua's population is under the age of sixteen, and Nicaragua does not even possess an air force.
The Reagan doctrine of hegemony was developed long ago, and is best expressed by a statement made by George Kennan, in a 1948 document, when he headed the planning staff of the Dept. of State. He wrote: "…we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction…We should cease to talk about vague and -for the Far East – unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better".
After a democratic civilian government was overthrown with US help in El Salvador, John F. Kennedy said that "governments of the civil-miltary type of El Salvador are the most effective in containing Communist penetration in Latin America". Of course what he and modern-day "liberals" call Communism has nothing to do with Soviet Russia. Rather, as a 1955 study of the National Planning Association and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation noted, the main threat of "Communism" is that it could lead to transformation of Communist powers "in ways which reduce their willingness and ability to complement the industrial economies of the West". Such complementary roles were and are played magnificently not only by the former Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua but by similar military dictatorships in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Thus, the real threat posed by Nicaragua lies in its nature as a nationalist, non-aligned, independent revolution not beholden to and controlled by the US interests – in other words, that it was a true popular democratic revolution that put human social welfare and equity first, in direct confrontation with foreign hegemonic powers, US or Soviet. Such popular-based revolutions set a powerful example to other oppressed nations, hence their unacceptability to the US.
That Congress, the press, academia, the military and Big Science collaborate and conspire with whichever faction rules the White House is not recent nor surprising. Their interests and the continuation of political and economic conditions that reinforce their powers and the institutions that support them – corporations, universities, research institutions, think tanks, mass media, often the courts, supranational agencies like the World Bank and other international agencies not accountable to the public – are what both rule this country and facilitate domestic and foreign policy. This is a lesson that political activists need to heed. American society, in its diversity and tolerance, supported by a remarkable Constitution, has many ways of absorbing various demands such as equal rights for minorities, welfare state programs, etc. Such incremental reforms pose no threat whatsoever to either the economic or foreign policy hegemony exerted over the rest of the world. Social issues can and will eventually be accommodated, without rocking the real boat.
What is threatening, however, are movements that directly challenge such hegemony, whether in the form of Star Wars nuclear weapons in space or ecologically based movements questioning the US (and global) model of untrammeled economic growth and resource consumption, and of course anti-intervention movements. These go to the heart of the very values and objectives of the central state, which in the case of the US is not readily indistinguishable from the Soviet Union. In fact, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the existence of civil rights and liberties in the US has functioned to draw attention away from the execrations of foreign policies that assist in, directly or indirectly, the commission of some of the most revolting human rights violations in history, accurately called state terrorism.
The Philadelphia Inquirer courageously printed a series of articles on the Pentagon's' "Black Budget" the $35 billion or so of under-the-counter money given them, with carte blanche with Congressional approval. The Iran-Nicaragua arms deal to support the contras in Nicaragua was part of this, as are indeed many of the other assassinations and subversions of the CIA and NSA. There is no public oversight over this budget or over the use of these funds; it is the equivalent of the KGB in the Soviet Union. The Philadelphia Inquirer stood virtually alone in sticking out its neck, to show the dirty underside of what purports to be a democracy. Let us hope others follow their example.
(Sources: Cover Up: What you are not supposed to know about Nuclear Power, Karl Grossman, Permanent Press; The Washington Connection & 3rd World Fascism, Noam Chomsky & Edward S. Herman, South End Press; The Turning Tide, Noam Chomsky, Pluto-South End Press; Killing Our Own, Harvey Wasserman & Norman Solomon, Delta (Dell) Publishing.)
*As of 2001, the DOE has acknowledged culpability and has agreed to compensate survivors for damages.
(Lecture delivered by Lorna Salzman at Hunter College, Energy Studies program, 1986).
http://www.lornasalzman.com/collectedwritings/pro-nuclear.html
January 15, 2017 Posted by dunrenard | Nuclear	| Government, Misinformation, Press, Propaganda, Science | Leave a comment
Where is the Responsibility of the Government and TEPCO?
It is up to each individuals to a carry glass badge to measure and avoid the irradiation. It is up to them to choose food. Now it is up to them to treat the nuclear waste.
Special workshop to learn how to treat the waste resulting from the accident.
It takes only one day
No charge for the workshop and documents.
Open the black bags.
Separate the waste items.
Then break, burn or bury.
At Iwaki city: December 7th 2016
At Fukushima city: December 20th 2016
At Kôriyama city: January 24th 2017
Open to the people who:
Plan to return to the zone where the evacuation order has been or will be lifted or plan to get a job there;
Plan to get a job in 12 evacuated localities in the future ( Tamura city, Minamisoma city, Kawamata town, Hirono town , Naraha town, Tomioka town, Kawauchi village, Okuma town, Futaba town, Namie town, Katsurao village, Iitate village );
Plan to create firms in the 12 evacuated localities;
Are 18 years or older and;
Not belonging to a Yakuza organization
https://fkkoyou.net/seminar/detail.php?seminar=178
October 14, 2016 Posted by dunrenard | Fukushima 2016	| Contaminated Waste, Government, Responsibility, Tepco | Leave a comment
Govt. Mulls Ways to Promote Fukushima Produce
The Japanese government plans to create ways to encourage consumers to buy food from Fukushima Prefecture. The area still suffers from the perception that its foodstuffs are unsafe due to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident.
Reconstruction Minister Masahide Imamura and senior government officials held a meeting on Friday.
The officials reported that a lot produce and processed foods from Fukushima are forced to be sold at prices lower than their pre-accident levels.
They explained farmers and food producers from the region face numerous challenges, such as fewer sales routes and reluctance to buy their products.
They decided to offer benefits to consumers who purchase the food.
Imamura stressed simply advertising won't be enough and he wants the officials to create a framework that will entice consumers. He noted giving them rewards in a point system is one idea.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20161007_35/
October 7, 2016 Posted by dunrenard | Fukushima 2016	| Contamination, Fukushima continuing, Government, Processed Foods, Produce, Promotion | Leave a comment
Japan Reverts to Fascism
Tsunami in Japanese politics.
This week, Japan's Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partners won a two-thirds majority in the legislature's upper house, to go along with their two-thirds majority in the lower house. A two-thirds majority is required in each house to begin the process of amending Japan's constitution. And amending the constitution is one of the central planks in the LDP's platform.
The constitution was imposed on Japan by the United States after the Second World War; it has never been amended. Why should it be amended now? As Bloomberg reports, the LDP has pointed out that "several of the current constitutional provisions are based on the Western European theory of natural human rights; such provisions therefore [need] to be changed."
What has the LDP got against the "Western European theory of natural human rights"? you might ask. Well, dozens of LDP legislators and ministers — including Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe — are members of a radical nationalist organization called Nippon Kaigi, which believes (according to one of its members, Hakubun Shimomura, who until recently was Japan's education minister) that Japan should abandon a "masochistic view of history" wherein it accepts that it committed crimes during the Second World War.
In fact, in Nippon Kaigi's view, Japan was the wronged party in the war.
According to the Congressional Research Service, Nippon Kaigi believes that "Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia" during WW2, that the "Tokyo War Crimes tribunals were illegitimate," and that the rape of Nanking was either "exaggerated or fabricated." It denies the forced prostitution of Chinese and Korean "comfort women" by the Imperial Japanese Army, believes Japan should have an army again — something outlawed by Japan's current constitution — and believes that it should return to worshipping the emperor.
When, in the wake of Nazi-level war crimes, the U.S. forced Japan to become a liberal democracy, it also forced Japan's emperor to issue the following statement denying his divinity: "The ties between us and our people have always stood upon mutual trust and affection. They do not depend upon legend and myths. They are not predicated on the false conception that the Emperor is divine, and that the Japanese people are superior to other races and fated to rule the world."
And members of Nippon Kaigi are still mad.
In 2013, at a Nippon Kaigi party celebrating Shinzo Abe's new appointments to his cabinet — 15 of whose 18 members were Nippon Kaigi-niks — the old imperial "Rising Sun" flag was flown, pledges to "break away from the postwar regime" were made, and the (very short and controversial) imperial national anthem was sung. The lyrics are addressed to the emperor:
"May your reign Continue for a thousand, eight thousand generations, Until the pebbles grow into boulders Lush with moss."
The LDP's draft for an amended constitution would eliminate the prohibition on imbuing religious organizations with "political authority," clearing the way for the return of state Shintoism and emperor worship.
The draft would also repeal the provision that the "Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes," along with the provision that "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained." (Not that Japan has, hitherto, been too strict about this particular rule: According to the Credit Suisse Military Strength Index, Japan currently has the fourth-strongest military in the world, behind only the U.S., Russia, and China.)
The new constitution also repeals the right to free speech, adding a clause stating that the government can restrict speech and expression that it sees as "interfering [with] public interest and public order."
(In fact, Japan's current government has been working on the free-speech problem for a few years now: According to the Japan Times, in 2014, the internal affairs and communications minister warned that broadcasters could be shut down if they aired programming that the government deemed was "politically biased." The director of Japan's public broadcasting corporation — a friend of Prime Minister Abe — has said publicly that it was his policy that the NHK (Japan's BBC) "should not deviate from the government's position in its reporting."
In just the last five years, Japan's press freedom — as ranked by Reporters without Borders — has fallen from 11th globally to 72nd.
The new draft constitution adds a warning that "the people must be conscious of the fact that there are responsibilities and obligations in compensation for freedom and rights." These "obligations" include the mandate to "uphold the [new] constitution" and "respect the national anthem" quoted above. Also that "the people must comply with the public interest and public order," and "the people must obey commands from the state" in times of "emergency."
But not everyone is bound by these obligations: The Emperor is exempt from the requirement to uphold the constitution. Likewise, the Emperor is required, under the new constitution, to seek "advice" from the cabinet — but not, as he is currently required, to seek "advice and approval."
If the new constitution is approved by two-thirds of each house of the Japanese legislature, its adoption will be voted on in a national referendum requiring a simple majority. Who can say if 51 percent of Japanese voters would vote against their own civil rights? On the one hand, it seems absurd; on the other, they did give the LDP's coalition a two-thirds majority in both legislative chambers.
Five years ago, President Obama called for a foreign-policy "pivot to Asia." With China seizing and militarizing the South China Sea, and North Korea testing delivery systems for its new nuclear weapons, it would probably be a good idea — "pivot to Asia"–wise — not to stand idly by while our most important Asian ally, and the second-richest democracy in the world, reverts to fascism.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/437950/japans-new-fascism
July 17, 2016 Posted by dunrenard | Japan	| Fascism, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Press, Government, Revisionism | 1 Comment
How rights and liberties may be downsized under the LDP
A revisionist path: Men walk past a poster for the July 10 Upper House election with the image of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, leader of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, at the LDP headquarters in Tokyo. The slogan on the poster reads: 'Forward with strength this path.'
During a recent TV program, the vice president of the Liberal Democratic Party, Masahiko Komura, insisted "there is zero possibility" that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would revise war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution even if the ruling coalition wins a two-thirds majority in the upcoming Upper House elections. But why believe him? Abe has made clear his intentions of promoting constitutional revision. Until he publicly pledges not to do so, voters are right to be wary.
Komura wants to bamboozle voters because he understands that public support for revising the Constitution is weak. An NHK poll in June indicated only 26 percent of Japanese citizens support his plans and only 11 percent think it is a priority. This lack of enthusiasm is also evident in a Kyodo poll in June indicating that 46.6 percent of all Upper House candidates oppose revising the Constitution, while only 34.6 percent support doing so. Broken down by party, 72.1 percent of the LDP favors revision while no candidate from coalition partner Komeito does, and only 28 percent of Osaka Ishin no Kai (One Osaka) candidates support revision. Virtually all the candidates of the Democratic Party and all of those fielded by the Japanese Communist Party and Social Democratic Party oppose revision.
Significantly, despite Abe's enthusiasm, only 11.7 percent of all candidates think constitutional revision is a priority, according to the Kyodo poll.
DP leader Katsuya Okada has pointed out that Abe doesn't seem to understand the role of the Constitution, which is to restrain state powers and protect the people's civil liberties.
Where would Okada ever get that idea? Perhaps he glanced through the LDP's 2012 draft constitution or the Q&A pamphlet the party distributed to explain its plans.
Indeed, the LDP seeks to fundamentally shift the relationship between the people and the state, imposing duties on citizens while lifting curbs on state powers. The LDP pamphlet asserts that there are "big" and "small" rights after a state of emergency is declared. The prime minister can declare a state of emergency in the event of a natural disaster, an armed attack by external forces or social disorder due to domestic turmoil, and the Cabinet could then suspend these small rights if they are deemed a threat to the undefined "public interest and public order." So-called big rights are specified as those related to lives, bodies and property. Exactly what the mingy freedoms are is left to our imagination, but the implication is that they are a trivial but necessary sacrifice that must be made in service of the indispensable.
The LDP has cited the recent Kumamoto earthquake as an example of why it would be useful to have such a provision to facilitate relief and recovery efforts, but it is not clear that any problems in such operations had anything to do with the government's inability to temporarily suspend civil liberties and human rights, or to concentrate power in the Cabinet. A state of emergency provision means that the government would have authority to suspend constitutional rights and bypass the Diet.
Good idea? Well it is troubling that the LDP believes that certain rights not only trump others, but can suspend them. The LDP is arguing that it may be necessary to sometimes put the Constitution on hold and, other times, to enforce it.
How would restrictions on human rights help in an emergency and what civil liberties might get in the way? This raises more questions: What are the criteria for deciding, and who gets to decide, that social turmoil has reached the tipping point for suspension of civil liberties and constitutional freedoms?
In the May 26 edition of the Mainichi Shimbun, the LDP says, "Some are of the opinion that fundamental human rights should not be restricted even in times of emergency. But we believe that it is possible that in order to protect big human rights, such as people's lives, bodies and properties, we could be forced to place restrictions on smaller human rights."
The notion that "small" human rights exist in the Constitution and can be violated with impunity is a novel concept. Constitutional scholars do not differentiate between rights by privileging some over others and distinguishing the vital from the inconsequential. Such a regressive view is antithetical to constitutionalism because it means that the government decides on an ad hoc basis what counts and what doesn't, whereas a constitution is supposed to establish the legal foundations and rules through thick and thin.
Freedom of expression is likely one of the smaller rights that would be jettisoned in a state of emergency. This is the basis of press freedom in the Japanese Constitution. It is hard to imagine how a functioning democracy can exist without freedom of expression or how that small right would be detrimental in an emergency. How would its sacrifice protect property rights and lives? How would freedom of expression threaten such rights?
The LDP's concern about pesky civil liberties like freedom of thought and conscience or freedom of expression enshrined in the Constitution reflects discomfort with the Western values and notion of "natural rights" that the U.S. wrote into the text in 1947. The LDP is eager to claw back rights for the state that the current Constitution bestows on citizens. The foreign DNA of the current Constitution rankles conservatives, but even former prime minister — and longtime pro-revision politician — Yasuhiro Nakasone now believes that, during the decades since it was written, the spirit and text have been assimilated by society. He sees no pressing need for revision.
Essentially, the only thing that the proposed state-of-emergency proviso allows the state to do that it can't do now is suspend constitutional rights and effect what amounts to a coup d'etat. It is about boosting powers of the state in the name of protecting big human rights and suppressing dissent or criticism of the state. Rather than Western "natural rights," the LDP is pushing "natural duties" that are allegedly in line with Japanese traditions and values. It means writing the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights out of the Constitution by renouncing the preamble of Japan's current Constitution, which states:
"Government is a sacred trust of the people, the authority for which is derived from the people, the powers of which are exercised by the representatives of the people, and the benefits of which are enjoyed by the people. This is a universal principle of mankind upon which this Constitution is founded." Further on, it reads, "laws of political morality are universal; and that obedience to such laws is incumbent upon all nations who would sustain their own sovereignty and justify their sovereign relationship with other nations."
Preserving these commitments and derailing the LDP's revision juggernaut seem reason enough to vote, but my guess is that low turnout persists because citizens find politics in Japan so uninspiring and dispiriting. With a supermajority in both houses, Abe will seek to revise the Constitution without being able to claim a mandate to do so.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2016/07/09/commentary/rights-liberties-may-downsized-ldp/#.V4GqCVNXkrB.facebook
July 11, 2016 Posted by dunrenard | Japan	| Government, Revisionism, Shinzo Abe | Leave a comment
Tepco chief likely banned use of 'meltdown' under government pressure: report
The president of Tokyo Electric Power Co. during the Fukushima nuclear crisis told employees not to publicly use the term "meltdown," apparently in response to government pressure, a third party report released Thursday said.
The report, compiled by three lawyers, said it is highly likely the government at the time pressured Masataka Shimizu, then Tepco's president when the monstrous earthquake and tsunami disabled the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011, about the utility's disclosures in the early stages of the crisis.
The report said someone in the government, then headed by Prime Minister Naoto Kan of the Democratic Party of Japan, was unhappy Tepco had revealed a photo of the blown-up building for reactor No. 1 on March 12 without telling the government in advance.
The Prime Minister's Office then called Shimizu the same day. After Shimizu returned to Tepco's Tokyo headquarters, he told his fellow executives that they needed to check with the Prime Minister's Office whenever disclosing information to the public, according to the report.
The report also said Shimizu sent a note on March 14 to Vice President Sakae Muto, who was overseeing the plant and holding a news conference, to warn him not to say meltdown.
"Considering this fact, it is presumable that the Prime Minister's Office requested Shimizu to be careful about admitting to a meltdown in public," the report said.
The panel thought this was a critical point that required further investigation but was unable to track down a specific bureaucrat who made such a request. Yasuhisa Tanaka, who headed the panel, said it conducted hearings with 60 Tepco employees but did not talk to anyone from the government side.
Tepco did not acknowledge that a reactor meltdown had occurred until May 15, 2011 — two months after the fact.
Asked whether Tepco was intentionally covering up the meltdowns, Tanaka said that was probably not the utility's intention at the time.
"Looking at the situation back then, we think it was difficult for Tepco to use the term meltdown because even the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency couldn't use it" due to apparent government pressure, Tanaka said.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency was Japan's nuclear watchdog at that time.
The panel spent about three months investigating why Tepco could not publicly reveal the meltdowns occurred earlier than it did.
In February, nearly five years after the crisis, Tepco announced it should have declared the meltdowns earlier, citing the existence of a company manual that listed what constitutes a meltdown. The manual says that meltdown is a state in which 5 percent or more of the fuel rods is damaged.
As of March 14, 2011, Tepco estimated that 55 percent of the fuel rod assemblies in reactor No. 1 and 25 percent of those in reactor No. 3 were damaged but did not declare that they had melted until May that year.
Niigata Prefecture has been pressuring Tepco to look into why it took about two months for the utility to admit to a meltdown.
Niigata hosts Tepco's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, which the firm desperately wants to restart, but Niigata Gov. Hirohiko Izumida has stressed that he won't give the green light until the Fukushima crisis has been thoroughly investigated.
Tepco had explained to Niigata that it did not use the term meltdown because there was no clear definition of it. But it found the manual in February, which contradicted the explanation and led to the third-party investigation.
The report said that workers at the Fukushima plant were apparently following the manual but seemed to avoid using the term meltdown, presumably because there was a common understanding within the company not to use it.
Tokyo Electric changed its name in April to Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.
http://jtim.es/kuKR301jNdr
June 16, 2016 Posted by dunrenard | Fukushima 2016	| Fukushima Daiichi, Government, Lies & Cover-up, Meltdowns, reactors, Tepco | Leave a comment


I had meeting with my lovely Technique Club girls last night. Each month for the last 8 months we have been learning a different technique. This month it was Cracked Glass.
This is a simple but very effective technique using layers of embossing powder that when cooled are cracked (like glass...wonder where the name comes from lol).
Here is a more detailed picture of the image...see the little cracks. It looks really effective in person.
The set we used is Good Cheer from the Spring Mini Catalogue (available until the end of November). The gorgeous striped ribbon is also from the Mini catalogue and will be gone at the end of the month too so if you would like to get your hands on some best place your order soon.
My next Technique Club will be starting in February 2010. If you are interested in joining please contact me for more details.
Hi Lisa, I just discovered your site. I haven't really stamped before, but like to dabble in a bit of scrapbooking. I'm thinking about giving stamping a go and noticed your Techniques club. Is this open to anyone! If so, where, when, how much, etc, etc.
Sorry if I just sent 2 messages the same, having a few technical difficulties, and am not sure whether the first message went through or not!!
Thanks for your interest Heather. I don't have your email to contact you directly but if you would like to email me (my email address is on the right hand side of my blog)I can fill you in on all the details of my Technique Clubs. My next one starts in Feb and I have a few vacancies.


text:
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OpenStax Textbooks offers a select number of peer-reviewed, high quality college textbooks that, if adopted, are customizable to individual course needs. Electronic formats are free for students and print copies are available at a low-cost. There are also supporting materials – solutions manuals and teaching guides that accompany each textbook.
Project Gutenberg hosts a collection of over 40,000 public domain eBooks available in a variety of electronic formats (HTML, ePub, Kindle, etc.). All books are available for free.
Wikibooks is an open-source textbook/eBook site that has a variety of resources for a wide range of age groups and educational levels. Like Wikipedia, it is collaborative and allows for open editing.
Content Collections (Resources, Lesson Plans/Modules, Multimedia) & Databases
California Digital Library (CDL)
California Digital Library (CDL) developed by the University of California system, includes online and print collections of materials from libraries and archives across California. The CDL includes publications from the UC Press eBooks Collection, 1982-2004 with 750 titles available to the public as well as the Digital Special Collections Program with a percentage of its online resources also available to the public.
ChemVantage
ChemVantage provides a variety of free materials to support college-level Chemistry courses. Materials include quizzes, links to OER textbooks, exercises, assessments and video tutorials.
College Open Textbooks
College Open Textbooks provides information about adopting OER in the classroom, reviews of OER textbooks/resources and a search engine for OER resources.
Connexions is a collaborative resource site that has content modules and collections (groups of modules consisting of materials such as textbooks, journal articles, multimedia, etc.). In Connexions you can author your own materials and add to existing materials. Everything in Connexions is downloadable for free and print copies are available for a small fee.
Creative Commons is not only a means of licensing work, but it also offers a filter to search for creative works that can be used, adapted or modified under the various creative commons licenses. Click on the Explore link to find photos, clip art, videos, songs or other multimedia content to use in your courses.
FREE (Federal Resources for Educational Excellence)
FREE (Federal Resources for Educational Excellence) offers an easy way to search for links to teaching and learning resources — animations, documents, photos and videos – that have been created through funding from the federal government.
Internet Archive Internet Archive is a searchable collection that either links to or provides a way to download historical document collections/public domain texts, audio, video, animation, and software.
Merlot is an online peer-reviewed collection of resources for higher education. In addition to academic papers, the Merlot repository also includes materials for course development (animations, images, case studies) and assessment as well as additional resources for creating course content. Within Merlot, you can also author online content.
OER Commons is a database of links to openly licensed teaching materials such as full courses, lectures, and mini-lessons. All materials listed in the OER database have been vetted according to strict quality standards.
OpenDOAR is a way to search for international institutional and subject-based repositories of full-text open access materials.
The Orange Grove
The Orange Grove is a repository of open textbooks which have been reviewed by the University Press of Florida. Textbooks are available for free online and low-cost for print copies. In addition to OGT texts, there are also links to other sources of OER courseware and content collections.
TED-Ed, an extension of the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) video repository, brings together educators and animators to create engaging video content with supplemental lessons and materials.
Multimedia Collections (Images, Video & Audiobooks)
Flickr is an online photo/video/animation sharing and management system. On Flickr you can not only organize your photo & image content, but you can also look for images to use in your classroom using the Creative Commons advanced search feature. Flickr integrates directly into CANVAS.
HippoCampus provides educational video content for students and instructors on a variety of general education topics. Videos are streamed on the website and are not available for download. Users can create playlists of content, which is often correlated to commercial publisher materials. Captioning is not available, but each video contains a text-based equivalent.
Khan Academy provides free educational videos. Even though it is aimed mostly at the K-12 audience, there are many videos related to STEM topics as well as history, finance and economics, providing a rich content resource for general education courses. Videos include interactive transcripts or translated subtitles. Those that are available on Khan Academy's YouTube channel include closed captioning.
Librivox is a free collection of volunteer-read audiobooks of public domain works that can be dowloaded in MP3 format. Works are sometimes available in different languages.
Vimeo is an online collection of video clips. With Vimeo you can search for videos, upload your own video content as well as create a channel for students to view course materials. Vimeo does not support a separate closed-captioned text-file/translation option. Any videos uploaded to Vimeo would need to be captioned prior to being put on Vimeo. To determine if you can use an existing non-captioned Vimeo video in your course, check out the following captioning guidelines.
YouTube is the largest online collection of video clips. With YouTube you can search for videos, upload and do basic editing of your own video content as well as create your own channel for students to view course materials. YouTube has CC capability and you can also easily upload and edit your own transcript for captioning.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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New Peterborough United signings Jason Naismith and Aaron Chapman will attend the club's 2018-19 kit launch at the ABAX Stadium on Sunday.
Posh will unveil their new shirt for the forthcoming campaign online at 9.30am and it will be on sale at the club shop from 10am.
Between 10am and 3pm there will be activities galore for Posh fans at the ABAX Stadium with a children's entertainer (magic and balloon modelling from 10am until 2pm), a professional face painter (from 10am-2pm) and a DJ all on offer.
The Speed Kick machine and various other fanzone favourites will be available all day as will refreshments.
The Posh Venue will be open and there well be competitions running all day withe the chance to win the new shirt.
Chapman and Naismith will on site from 11am to noon and will be happy to sign autographs. Other players will also attend.


text:
<?php

return [

    'reset_password' => 'Passwort zurücksetzen',
    'email_address' => 'E-Mail Adresse',
    'password' => 'Passwort',
    'confirm_password' => 'Passwort bestätigen',

];

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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This 18th annual race, formerly the First Light Marathon, features a full 26.2 mile course, a 13.1 half-marathon, and a 5-person relay. To keep the children active and entertained, a 1.2 mile fun run and a kid's marathon has been added. Over 1,500 participants competed in 2018. The start, finish and post-race Gala are in Bienville Park.
All events benefit L'Arche Mobile, an organization providing people with and without intellectual disabilities an opportunity to share life together. L'Arche Mobile is a member of the International Federation of L'Arche which consists of 147 communities in 35 countries. L'Arche Mobile began in 1974 and currently has 25 people with disabilities sharing life with 50 team members in midtown Mobile.
To register, please visit https://www.mobilemarathon.org/index.php/registration/online-registration.


I think it's generally well understood that process improvement should first start by understanding the current state before designing the future state. It's also somewhat understood that's it's important to understand current state for effective problem solving. It is less understood that innovation often actually starts with understanding the current state.
You can't assess if the future state is an improvement (resources, cycle time, quality, etc.) if you don't first understand the performance characteristics of the current state.
How would you know that you didn't replicate what wasn't working well?
Where the waste and what are the major problems?
How do know the impact of the changes that were made?
How do you stimulate possibilities without recognizing the gaps?
It's unreasonable, or at least difficult, to expect that you will focus on common goals without first having a common understanding of the current state. Have you ever tried to get high agreement on the "plan forward' when everybody is starting in a different place. We have to all start in the same place if there is going to be any chance of getting to the same place.
Understanding the current state can take you beyond the future state—it can stimulate the ideal state. Likely one of the least applied practices when redesigning a process is a focus on ideal state. We often simply look to improve the current state and develop a new future state. I'm not suggesting that they you can achieve ideal, it doesn't happen often. However, what does happen when focusing on an ideal state is that you will make step gains and not just incremental gains. I was worked with a factory that produced syringes. The needle in the syringe was manufactured on one side of the plant and the injection molding operations far away on the other side of the plant produced the plastic components in the syringe. These components are then married together in a piece of equipment that automatically assembles and packages syringe. The future state was to move the injecting molding operation closer to the needle manufacturing. After careful examination of the current state it was found that the issue with the waste in the process wasn't generated by the distance between opearations, , the issue was the significant handling. I won't go through their efforts but they ultimately designed and implemented a solution where the plastic components are vacuumed immediately from the injection molding equipment and deposited directly in the assembly equipment on the other side of the plant. Now the handling is totally eliminated—Ideal State. I experinced one instance where a business process was totally eliminated without any negative impact to the company. They would have struggled to improve a process that shouldn't even exist. I cannot stress enough how important it is to define ideal before designing future.


Roberts, who has recovered from the virus which hit several members of the squad last week, is the only player involved to have featured for the first team this season. Former Blues striker Billy Clarke is in the Charlton side.
The U23s, who drew 2-2 away at QPR in their last competitive game and are unbeaten in eight, remain top of the Professional Development League Two South table.
U23s: Wright, Ronan, C Smith, Marshall, Ndaba, Clements, McLoughlin, El Mizouni, McGavin, Roberts, K Brown. Subs: Vega, Egan, Hughes, Dobra.
I'll be there. Will try to update on the forum but mighthave my hands full with my boy! His first game.


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text:
ACCEPTED

#### According to
Index Fungorum

#### Published in
in de Candolle & Lamarck, Fl. franç. (Paris), Edn 3 6: 147 (1815)

#### Original name
Sphaeria lichenoides var. castaneaecola DC.

### Remarks
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text:
The road to London 2012: Somali athletes dare to dream of Olympics
Clar Ni Chonghaile
Amal Mohamed Bashiir received death threats and was forced to train under a different name when al-Shabaab were in Mogadishu. Photograph: Clar Ni Chonghaile for the Guardian
As Mogadishu breathes again after ousting Islamists, Somalis compete for two wildcard places at Games
Amal Mohamed Bashiir has risked her life to run. Now, the 18-year-old Somali hopes that determination will pay off with a place at the London Olympics.
In a cafe outside Mogadishu's airport, she described life as a female athlete when the Islamist rebels of al-Shabaab occupied parts of Somalia's capital.
"When al-Shabaab were in Mogadishu, I received many threats, phone calls from people saying they would kill me. I used to train inside a basketball hall and I used a different name," she said, wearing a long black veil with a lace band around her forehead. "But now I feel so happy because the security situation is changing. Things are easier," the 18-year-old added, speaking through an interpreter.
The al-Shabaab fighters, who impose a harsh form of sharia in areas they control, pulled out of Somalia's capital last August, after months of fighting African Union troops building by building. But the group still carries out suicide bombings and assassinations in the city, and there is also danger from freelance militias and guns for hire.
Like Ms Mohamed, Mohamed Hassan Mohamed is among the handful of Somalis hoping to be selected as one of two athletes – one male and one female – to compete at the Games on wildcard places. He hopes to run in the 1,500m and 5,000m. The 19-year-old is ambitious and driven, but just a few months ago, he nearly ditched his dream.
On 4 April, the head of the Somali Olympic committee, Aden Yabarow Wiish, died when a suicide bomber blew herself up at Mogadishu's newly reopened national theatre. Said Mohamed Nur, head of the country's football federation, was among five others killed.
The deaths were a huge blow to the community. Mr Mohamed thought the bombing marked the end of his Olympic hopes. "When something bad happens, you can imagine everything. I thought I could no longer be an athlete in Somalia because of the danger," he said.
The athletes' coach, Ahmed Ali, had to work hard to lift his young contenders' spirits. "We know death comes to every person but their deaths were so sad. We tried for days to calm ourselves. I was trying to encourage the athletes, to say that this would not influence our training," he said.
Mr Mohamed finally decided to push on. "My coach and colleagues encouraged me … and I decided to stick with it because I am trying to serve my country's reputation and I am running for Somalia."
The two athletes train six days a week at the Konis stadium in Mogadishu, which has started to breathe again since the Islamists were driven out. Somalis are returning from abroad with money to invest, locals are daring to start up coffee shops and internet cafes, and the streets are busy even as dusk descends, blurring the holes gouged by bullets and rockets in crumbling buildings.
The best-known Somali-born athlete is Britain's world 5,000m champion, Mo Farah, who moved to the UK when he was eight. He will compete in London in the same event as Mr Mohamed, if the young Somali makes the final cut. Farah is a role model along with Abdi Bile Abdi, who became 1,500m world champion in 1987, the first Somali to do so. "I will try to meet [Farah]," said Mr Mohamed. "I will express my gratitude and tell him I support him as a Somali guy."
Today Ms Mohamed, who hopes to compete in the 200m and 400m, can run in the streets, train in a local stadium, and dream of a better future for a country that has had no functioning government in her lifetime.
There are still challenges. Somali athletes do not have the resources of their competitors. Even their diet is simple: they eat bread, camel meat, fruit and eggs for breakfast, served with vitamin C-rich camel milk. Lunch is spaghetti or rice with meat and again, camel milk. There are no energy drinks on sale in Mogadishu so they drink fruit juices, such as mango.
And although the days of regular death threats are past, not everyone in this Muslim nation approves of female athletes. Ms Mohamed laughed softly as her coach spoke of the comments she gets as she trains in the streets. "Some people clap and welcome [the athletes] and others say, 'Why? You are a woman. Why don't you go to bed and sleep because women don't need to do such a hard job?'" said Ahmed Ali.
The 18-year-old has a quick retort: "I am a woman but I am also an athlete. I would be proud as a Somali girl to hold the flag of my country."
It is a country that is changing, perhaps slowly but for the first time in many years, young Somalis can start to believe in a better future. "Now I see that Mogadishu is being reborn. I hope one day I will drive my car through the streets of a peaceful Mogadishu," said Ms Mohamed.
Mr Mohamed wants to be part of the transformation: "I want the people of the world to see a Somali running in the Olympics in London, holding the country's flag … I want to change the international view of Somalia because people see it as a place of war, a country with no development."
Somali Farmers Call for Help to Improve Production - VOA
Kenya-Somali border under satellite surveillance - The Star
Girl killed after Somali gunmen attack village - The Standard
Top Israeli detectives in Kenya over terrorism - Xinhua
IT entrepreneurs find surprise success in Kenya's Dadaab refugee camps - Guardian
Political progress brings small window of hope in Somalia - Gulf News
Somali tribes reject al-Shabaab call for financing its war efforts - Sabahi Online
Kenya police arrest four Somali suspects in kidnapping of aid workers - Toronto Star
Kenyan Muslims, Christians vow to prevent violence - AP
Somali President meets with his Burundian partner in Bujumbura - allvoices
Museveni gets prestigious Burundi award - New Vision
US man stranded in Bahrain; told on no-fly list - Jakarta Post
Rawlings condemns dumping of toxic material on Somali Coast - Myjoyonline
Al-Shabaab claims responsibility for Garissa attacks - KBC
Rescued aid workers arrive in Kenyan capital - Aljazeera
Kenya: Unrest Fuels Rise In Small Arms Trade - IRIN
Somali judges learn to prosecute pirates - The National
Farah — carrying Britain's hopes - The Hindu
China aligns with India, Japan on piracy patrols - AP
Bill would help ease international money transfers for Minnesota Somalis who send money to families - Minnesota Daily