Release of radioactive water made at request of U.S.: Cabinet adviser

SEOUL — Japanese playwright Oriza Hirata, who serves as a special adviser to the Cabinet, claimed in a recent lecture given in Seoul that the dumping of low-level radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean followed a "strong request" from the United States, a person who attended the lecture said Wednesday.

The release of the water from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant last month generated anxiety about the possible spread of radioactive contamination from the seaside power station.

The Japanese government had apparently given its permission for the release of the water after receiving a report from plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Hirata's remarks, made Tuesday, that the release was not carried out based on Tokyo's independent judgment but rather on a request from Washington is likely to ignite a debate.

South Korea and other neighboring countries have protested the lack of prior notification of the discharge.

Hirata's lecture in Seoul was titled "Earthquakes and the Revitalization of Japan." In response to a question at the venue, he called Japan's failure to give advance notification a communication error.

While acknowledging that the release of the water caused concern in South Korea, he said the thousands of tons of water were not highly radioactive.

Source: japantimes.co.jp

Fukushima No. 4 Reactor Now Boiling

Tuesday, the water meant to cool spent fuel rods in the No. 4 reactor was boiling. If the water evaporates and the rods run dry, they could overheat and catch fire, potentially spreading radioactive materials in dangerous clouds.

Temperatures appeared to be rising in the spent fuel pools at two other reactors at the plant, No. 5 and No. 6, said Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary. Meanwhile, workers continued to pump seawater into the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors, where cooling systems remained unusable.

If any of the spent fuel rods in the pools do indeed catch fire, nuclear experts say, the high heat would loft the radiation in clouds that would spread the radioactivity.

A spokesman for the Japanese company that runs the stricken reactors said in an interview on Monday that the spent fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini plants had been left uncooled since shortly after the quake.

The company, Tokyo Electric, has not been able to cool the spent fuel pools because power has been knocked out, said Johei Shiomi, the spokesman. “There may be some heating up,” he said.

Depending on the freshness of the spent fuel, Mr. Lochbaum said, the water in an uncooled pool would start to boil in anywhere from days to a week. The water would boil off to a dangerous level in another week or two.

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16fuel.html

Vivian Norris: Deadly Silence on Fukushima

TEPCO, a giant media sponsor, has an annual 20 billion yen advertising budget.

Freelance journalists and foreign media are pursuing the facts, even going into the radiation exclusion zone. However, surprisingly, the Japan government continues to prevent freelance journalists and overseas media from gaining access to official press conferences at the prime minister's house and government.

Macrobiotic Diet Prevents Radiation Sickness Among A-Bomb Survivors in Japan - In August, 1945, at the time of the atomic bombing of Japan, Tatsuichiro Akizuki, M.D., was director of the Department of Internal Medicine at St. Francis's Hospital in Nagasaki. Most patients in the hospital, located one mile from the center of the blast, survived the initial effects of the bomb, but soon after came down with symptoms of radiation sickness from the fallout that had been released. Dr. Akizuki fed his staff and patients a strict macrobiotic diet of brown rice, miso soup, wakame and other sea vegetables, Hokkaido pumpkin, and sea salt and prohibited the consumption of sugar and sweets. As a result, he saved everyone in his hospital, while many other survivors in the city perished from radiation sickness.

I gave the cooks and staff strict orders that they should make unpolished whole-grain rice balls, adding some salt to them, prepare strong miso soup for each meal, and never use sugar. When they didn't follow my orders, I scolded them without mercy, 'Never take sugar. Sugar will destroy your blood!'...

This dietary method made it possible for me to remain alive and go on working vigorously as a doctor. The radioactivity may not have been a fatal dose, but thanks to this method, Brother Iwanaga, Reverend Noguchi, Chief Nurse Miss Murai, other staff members and in-patients, as well as myself, all kept on living on the lethal ashes of the bombed ruins. It was thanks to this food that all of us could work for people day after day, overcoming fatigue or symptoms of atomic disease and survive the disaster" free from severe symptoms of radioactivity.

Why is this not on the front page of every single newspaper in the world? Why are official agencies not measuring from many places around the world and reporting on what is going on in terms of contamination every single day since this disaster happened? Radioactivity has been being released now for almost two full months! Even small amounts when released continuously, and in fact especially continuous exposure to small amounts of radioactivity, can cause all kinds of increases in cancers.

Uesugi stated that since March 11th, the government has excluded all internet media and all foreign media from official press conferences on the "Emergency Situation." While foreign media have scrambled to gather information about the Fukushima Reactor, they have been denied access to the direct information provided by the government and one consequence of this is that "rumor-rife news has been broadcast overseas."

Source: HuffingtonPost

Job seeker says ending up at nuclear plant not mentioned in ad

An Osaka man was made to work at the crippled nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture for about two weeks, when he had been expecting to work in neighboring Miyagi Prefecture, said a job placement center in Osaka on Monday.

The worker in his 60s received daily wages of about 24,000 yen, double the sum he was initially promised, but complained that the pay undervalued the work he did at the Fukushima plant, the Nishinari labor welfare center said after interviewing the man and the company that hired him.

‘‘I was finally issued with a radiation dosimeter on my fourth day of work there,’’ he was quoted as saying.

On March 17, the man accepted the offer of a job—details of which had been posted at the agency—in the Miyagi Prefecture town of Onagawa. Instead, he was immediately sent to the Fukushima Daiichi plant to work for six hours a day clad in protective gear, handling water to cool the Nos. 5 and 6 reactors there, the center said.

The president of the subcontractor firm in Gifu Prefecture, which hired the man, told Kyodo News that its client, a construction company, requested workers who can drive 10-ton water trucks in Onagawa and the Gifu company recruited workers in Osaka. The Gifu company told the man to go directly to the firm for the work, it added.

The job center is located in Osaka’s Airin district, which is known as Japan’s largest gathering place for day laborers.

Earlier, a support group for the man spoke out against his treatment by the employer, saying, ‘‘It’s an unpardonable act to send a day laborer in a socially weak position to a dangerous place.’‘

The labor ministry’s Osaka district bureau has also started investigating the case, according to the center.

Unlike the badly damaged Nos. 1 through 4 reactors at the Fukushima plant, Nos. 5 and 6 reactors, which were undergoing regular checkups at the time of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, are in a stable condition called ‘‘cold shutdown.’’

Source:

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/job-seeker-says-ending-up-at-crippled-nuclear-plant-was-not-mentioned-in-ad

Fukushima Groundwater Contamination Worst in Nuclear History

from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

TEPCO discovery of Fukushima sediment contamination in areas identified by Greenpeace

TEPCO, the owners of the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, just announced that they found contamination levels 100 to 1,000 times higher than normal in sediment from the Fukushima coast.

TEPCO did the sediment testing late last week—in areas Greenpeace identified for testing in our research plan—after we were denied permission to research inside Japan's 12 mile territorial waters.

The buzz around Japanese Twitter has been saying that Greenpeace is the reason why the authorities have actually done this research.

Following this announcement, Greenpeace Japan Executive Director Junichi Sato said:

"Our flag ship the Rainbow Warrior is already doing what it can to monitor marine contamination based on the very limited permission granted by the Government for areas outside the 12 mile territorial limit. We had previously identified the newly declared contaminated areas as areas at risk, and stand ready to assist within the 12 mile limit to provide independent monitoring and advice to the Japanese public."


"It has been noted by many that the authorities only surveyed the area as a result of our request and the pressure that accompanied it. This is no way to go about protecting public health. The prime ministers office should now immediately grant the Rainbow Warrior access to Japan's territorial waters to conduct its proposed radiation survey. It has nothing to lose and everything to gain from independent assessment and public information."

Here in the United States, even the Nuclear Regulatory Commission agrees that the public deserves to receive more information to keep them safe.

In testimony on Capitol Hill and other public statements, chairman of the regulatory commission, Mr. Jaczko has avoided criticizing his Japanese counterparts. But on Monday he said that “if we had a similar type of event in the U.S., we certainly would like to be providing a lot more information to the public.’’

It’s important that the Japanese government reverses its decision to block our research and allow us to provide clear, independent information to the people for whom help is needed.

Source: greenpeace.org

Tepco offers average of $12 per person to fallout stricken towns

Tokyo Electric Power Co. plans to pay provisional compensation by the end of the month to residents and farmers living around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant as their livelihoods have been heavily impacted by the emergency, Tepco officials said Tuesday.

The utility began paying relief money last Thursday in ¥20 million installments to nine municipalities where residents have been ordered out because of the nuclear crisis, company officials said. All nine towns and villages are located within the 20-km evacuation zone.

However, the municipal government of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, north of the Tepco plant, has refused to take the money, saying damages payments to residents should be made first, according to Kosei Negishi, a Namie official.

Negishi said the town has a population of about 26,000, so each resident would receive only ¥2,000 ($12 USD) if the ¥20 million from Tepco was distributed equally.

Source: japan.org