Tokyo
mayor claims Japan PM lied about Fukushima
Inose
publicly denounced the Prime Minister’s claim after telling
reporters from Fuji TV that the water leak was “not necessarily
under control”.
23
September, 2013
The
Mayor of Tokyo,
Naoki Inose, has indicated that the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe lied to the International Olympic Committee when he reassured
them that contaminated water leaking from the Fukushima
Nuclear Plant were “under control.”
Inose
publicly denounced the Japanese Prime Minister’s claim after
telling reporters from Fuji TV that the water leak was “not
necessarily under control” on Friday.
Shinzo
Abe flew directly from the G20 Summit in Russia to the Argentine
capital of Buenos Aires where he declared water outside the immediate
area safe from radiation, resulting in Tokyo
defeating its rivals Istanbul and Madrid to host the 2020 Olympic
games. However, Tokyo
Mayor Inose later said, “The
government must acknowledge this as a national problem so that we can
head toward a real solution.”
After
conducting an internal investigation, the operator of the Fukushima
nuclear plant TEPCO found that the water-leak may have been caused by
five loose bolts on an iron plate.
Fukushima residents question radiation cleanup effort
Local
governments desperate for evacuees to return
20
September, 2013
Across
much of Fukushima’s rolling green countryside they descend on homes
like antibodies around a virus, men wielding low-tech tools against a
very modern enemy: radiation.
Power
hoses, shovels and mechanical diggers are used to scour toxins that
rained down from the sky 30 months ago. The job is exhausting,
expensive and, according to some, doomed to failure.
Today,
a sweating four-man crew wearing surgical masks and boiler suits
labours in 32 degree heat at the home of Hiroshi Saito, 71, and his
wife Terue, 68. Their aim is to bring down average radiation around
this home from approximately 3 to 1.5 microsieverts per hour.
“My
youngest grandchild has never been here,” he says, because
radiation levels in this hilly part of the municipality remain
several times above what they were before the accident. Since 2011,
the family reunites in Soma, around 20 km away.
For
a few days during March 2011, after a string of explosions at the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant roughly 25 kilometers to the south,
rain and snow laced with radiation fell across this area. It
contaminated thousands of acres of rich farming land and forests.
More
than 160,000 people nearest the plant were ordered to evacuate. The
Saito’s home is a few kilometres outside the 20-km compulsory
evacuation zone, but like thousands of others, they left voluntarily.
When
they returned two weeks later their neat, two-story country house
appeared undamaged, but it was covered in an invisible poison only
detectable with beeping Geiger counters.
Nobody
knows for certain how dangerous the radiation is.
Cleanup
effort
Japan’s
central government refined its policy in December 2011, defining
evacuation zones as “areas where cumulative dose levels might reach
20 millisieverts per year,” the typical worldwide limit for nuclear
power plant engineers and other radiation workers.
Readings
in several towns and villages remain far above the evacuation
threshold. Areas where they reach more than 50 milliseverts per year
are understatedly referred to as zones where it will be “difficult
to return home” – meaning that many of the 160,000 refugees won’t
be able to return, a conclusion that few political leaders, if any,
are willing to admit openly.
Outside
the zones, thousands have stayed away voluntarily. Local authorities
are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on decontamination to
persuade them to come back.
The
price tag for cleaning a heavily mountainous and wooded area covering
2,000 square kilometres – more than one-third the size of Prince
Edward Island - has government heads spinning. In August, experts
from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and
Technology put the total cost of decontamination at $50 billion US.
The government has set aside $2.9 billion for decontamination in
fiscal 2013, and requested another $3.26 billion for next year.
Mr
Saito’s home falls within the boundaries of Minamisoma, a city that
has never recovered from the disaster.
Most
of its 71,000 population fled voluntarily from the Daiichi accident
20 km south. A third have yet to return, spooked by lingering
radiation and the fear of another calamity at the still unstable
facility.
“We’ve
worked hard to make our city livable again,” says mayor Katsunobu
Sakurai. “But everything we’ve done could be for nothing unless
the problems at the plant are fixed.”
Soaring
bill
Fighting
radiation is now one of Minamisoma’s few growth industries. The
city has set up a permanent office to coordinate decontamination,
with a budget this year alone of $230 million.
Since
last September, a crew of 650 men has laboured around the local
streets and countryside, cleaning schools, homes and farms. By the
end of the year, the operation will employ nearly 1,000 people – a
large chunk of the town’s remaining able-bodied workforce.
Local
governments are desperate for evacuees to return and must decide on
what basis, in terms of exposure to radiation, evacuation orders will
be lifted.
Despite
the investment of money and manpower, the results of the cleanup
effort are questionable.
Radiation
levels in most areas of Fukushima have dropped by around 40 per cent
since the disaster began, according to government estimates, but
those figures are widely disbelieved. Official monitoring posts
almost invariably give lower readings than hand-held Geiger counters,
the result of a deliberate strategy of misinformation, say critics.
“They
remove the ground under the posts, pour some clean sand, lay down
concrete plus a metal plate, and put the monitoring post on top,”
says Nobuyoshi Ito, a farmer who opted to stay behind in the heavily
contaminated village of Iitate, about 40 km from the plant. “In
effect, this shields the radiation from the ground. I asked the
mayor, why don’t you protest to the central government? But the
municipality isn’t doing anything to fix this situation.”
The
disagreement over actual radiation levels is far from academic. Local
governments are desperate for evacuees to return and must decide on
what basis, in terms of exposure to radiation, evacuation orders will
be lifted.
But
if they unilaterally declare their areas safe, evacuees could be
forced to choose between returning home and losing vital monthly
compensation from Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), operator of the
Daiichi complex.
For
the refugees, one worrying precedent has been set in the municipality
of Date, which lies outside the most contaminated areas. In December
2012, the local government lifted a “special evacuation” order
imposed on 129 households because of a hotspot, arguing that
radiation doses had fallen below 20 millisieverts per year (mSv/yr).
Three months later the residents lost the $1,000 a month they were
receiving from Tepco for “psychological stress.”
Still,
local leaders say they believe the decontamination will work.
“Field
tests have demonstrated we can bring levels down to 5 millisieverts
per year, and that is our objective,” says Norio Kanno, mayor of
Iitate.
He
accepts that some residents might refuse to return until exposure
falls further – the limit recommended by the International
Commission on Radiological Protection is 1 mSv/yr. But he insists
nobody will be excluded from any relocation plan.
"It's
all a question of balance, of where to put our priorities,” he
says. “In the end, we need to reach a consensus as a community.”
Dump
sites
The
Fukushima cleanup, however, faces another problem: securing sites to
store contaminated soil, leaves and sludge.
Workers
move waste containing radiated soil, leaves and debris from the
decontamination operation at a storage site in Naraha town, inside
the 20 km evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear power plant. Communities are wary of storing the growing
amount of contaminated material. (Issei Kato / Reuters)
Local
governments throughout Japan have refused to accept the toxic waste,
meaning it will probably stay in Fukushima for good.
Many
landowners balk at hosting “interim” dumps where contaminated
material can be held – in principle for three years – until the
central government builds a mid-term storage facility. The waste is
stored under blue tarpaulins across much of the prefecture, sometimes
close to schools and homes.
At
Mr. Saito’s home, the decontamination crew has finished a 10-day
shift, power-hosing his roof, digging drains and removing 5
centimetres of topsoil from his land. The cleanup has cut radiation
by about half, to about 1.5 microsieverts, but in the contaminated
trees a few metres behind his house the reading is still 2.1
microsieverts. The trees are on a different property, meaning they
cannot be cut down without the approval of the owner.
“Unless
you do something about those trees, all your work is useless,” he
berates an official from the city.
Sometime,
perhaps, the crew will have to return, he speculates.
“Whatever
happens, we will never have the kind of life we had before. It’s
clear that my grandchildren will never come here again.”
This report is back from February
This report is back from February
Yakuza
member arrested for sending workers to Fukushima clean-up site
1
February, 2013
A
high-ranking member of a local yakuza
group has been arrested for allegedly sending workers to the
Fukushima clean-up site without a license. A government license is
required for anyone acting as an employment agent.
40
year old Yoshinori Arai, a senior member of a local yakuza group with
links to the Sumiyoshi-kai crime syndicate, was being questioned for
allegedly sending three men to work in clean-up crews in the
Fukushima
nuclear power plant last November. He is also suspected of sending
workers in the construction of temporary housing in the region, a
police spokesman said. Arai was going to profit by taking a cut of
the workers’ wages, which is higher than usual because of the
hazardous nature of their work.
Tomohiko
Suzuki, a journalist who worked at Fukushima after the nuclear plant
accident in 2011, said that other members of the yakuza are also very
much involved in supplying people for clean-up crews. In fact, some
of the crime groups have made it a habit of sending debtors to
nuclear power plants to work off their debts gained from sky-high
rates. The yakuza has long been involved in gambling, drugs,
prostitution as well as loan sharking, protection rackets,
white-collar crime and business conducted through front companies.
They have historically been tolerated by the authorities, but
sometimes, police have clamped down on their less savoury activities.
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