Fukushima disaster continuing for decades

This is a music video of Japanese Fukushima punk rock band Scrap, consisting of people who lost everything because of the nuclear disaster, performing their song Fuck TEPCO, in Koriyama, 10/2/2011.

Here is another video of that song, with English subtitles of the lyrics.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Clean-up ‘to take over 40 years’

Monday 22 April 2013

A UN nuclear expert warned today that Japan may need more than 40 years to decommission its tsunami-crippled nuclear plant.

International Atomic Energy Agency team leader Juan Carlos Lentijo said that damage at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is so complex that it is “impossible” to predict how long the cleanup may last.

The government and plant operator Tepco have said the cleanup will be accomplished in 40 years.

But they still have to develop technology and equipment to operate under fatally high radiation levels to locate and remove melted fuel.

Mr Lentijo warned of problems to come.

“It is expectable that in such a complex site, additional incidents will occur as happens in nuclear plants under normal operation,” he said.

Related articles

• IAEA says Fukushima cleanup may take more than 40 years – try 140 years! (nuclear-news.net)
• Fukushima nuclear trouble continues (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• UN nuclear watchdog IAEA says Fukushima clean-up might take more than 40 years (japandailypress.com)
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• Japan: Fukushima nuclear cooling system offline for third time in five weeks (reuters.com)
• Fukushima Clean-Up Will Last More Than Forty Years, says Nuclear Watchdog (commondreams.org)

Fukushima nuclear trouble continues

This is a Japanese TV video of today about the continuing trouble at Fukushima nuclear plant.

From Kyodo news agency in Japan:

TEPCO suspects water leak at another storage tank at Fukushima plant

April 09

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Tuesday that it suspects radioactive water is leaking from another underground storage tank at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, as it continues to grapple with massive accumulation of radioactive water at the site.

The suspicion of a leak at the No. 1 tank arose after TEPCO started transferring contaminated water inside the No. 2 underground tank where leakage was confirmed over the weekend.

TEPCO spokesman Masayuki Ono told a press conference the utility is considering removing the liquid inside the two tanks to other water tanks placed on the ground.

Related articles

• UPDATE1: TEPCO confirms 2nd leak of radioactive water at Fukushima plant (english.kyodonews.jp)
• Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant finds second tank leak (reuters.com)
• Japan: New Radioactive Water Leak Reported At Fukushima Nuclear Plant (albanytribune.com)
• New Radioactive Leak Found At Fukushima After ‘Ratzilla’ Causes Second Cooling System Failure (infiniteunknown.net)
• New radioactive water leak at Fukushima (bigpondnews.com)
• UPDATE1: Radioactive water leak at another tank detected at Fukushima plant (english.kyodonews.jp)
• Up to 120 Tons of Radioactive Water Leak from Fukushima Daiichi Storage Tank (inhabitat.com)
• Another toxic water leak suspected at TEPCO’s Fukushima plant (japandailypress.com)

Fukushima forests are radioactive

This video says about itself:

Published on March 9, 2013

Two years after the triple calamities of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster ravaged Japan’s northeastern Pacific coast, forests that cover 70 percent of the Fukushima Prefecture have been found to contain high concentrations of radioactive cesium.

With traces revealed not only in the fallen leaves and soil, but in the trees themselves, the findings suggest that radiation has permanently found its way into the ecosystem. The government is already spending billions of dollars decontaminating various towns in Fukushima, but the forests continue to emit radioactivity, putting the residents at risk.

Scientists suggest cutting down the trees as soon as possible because the cesium will gradually be transferred to the earth itself. Many residents are now suing TEPCO, the nuclear plant’s operator, for the impact the disaster has had on surrounding communities. It is estimated the power company will pay some about $400bn in cleanup costs and compensation. Al Jazeera’s Steve Chao reports from Fukushima.

By Jason Clenfield on March 10, 2013:

Every morning, 3,000 cleanup workers at the Fukushima disaster site don hooded hazard suits, air-filtered face masks and multiple glove layers. Most of the gear is radioactive waste by day’s end.

Multiply those cast-offs by the 730 days since a tsunami wrecked the Dai-Ichi nuclear station two years ago and the trash could fill six Olympic swimming pools. The tens of thousands of waste bags stored in shielded containers illustrate the dilemma of dealing with a nuclear accident: Everything that touches it becomes toxic.

Contaminated clothing represents just a fraction of the waste facing Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501) in a cleanup that may take four decades. A tour of the plant last week went past rows of grey and blue tanks holding enough irradiated water to fill 100 Olympic pools on the plateau overlooking Dai-Ichi’s four ruined reactors. And the water keeps coming.

The utility estimates it may be eight years before radiation levels fall enough to let workers start the main task of removing 260 tons of melted nuclear fuel. That process took more than a decade at the U.S. accident on Three Mile Island, a partial meltdown at a single reactor containing about one fifth the amount of fuel at Fukushima.

Related articles

• TV: Japan radiation expert says drastic measures are needed – Radioactive contamination now permanently in ecosystem – Fukushima forests must be cut down asap (VIDEO) (enenews.com)
• Japan’s cleanup lags from tsunami, nuke accident (sacbee.com)
• WHO faulted on Fukushima radiation – Sky News Australia (skynews.com.au)
• News & World Events – Re: Fukushima forests found to be radioactive (disclose.tv)
• Washington state engineers reflect on Fukushima nuclear disaster response (miamiherald.com)
• Fukushima Rad News 3/10/13: Fukushima Forest Cesium 750,000 bq/kg;World Wide Anti-Nuke Protests (nuclear-news.net)
• 2 years after Fukushima, daily life marked by concerns for kids’ health (stripes.com)

No more Fukushimas, Japanese say

This video from Japan is called Tens of Thousands Protest Nuclear Power in Tokyo.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Japan marks Fukushima anniversary

Sunday 10 March 2013

by Our Foreign Desk

Thousands of people marched in the Japanese capital Tokyo today demanding the government turns its back on nuclear power permanently.

The demonstration was timed to coincide with the second anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that triggered the Fukushima atomic disaster.

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in central Hibiya Park where anti-nuclear activists and trade unionists packed a concert hall to voice their opposition.

Academics, business people and volunteers gave anti-nuclear talks as musicians performed, before the crowds marched through the government district of Kasumigaseki to parliament.

They planned to hand petitions to anti-nuclear lawmakers, urging the government to stop its nuclear programmes.

Similar rallies were held elsewhere in Tokyo and across the rest of the nation, with local media reporting as many as 150 anti-nuclear events planned for the weekend and tomorrow.

In many tsunami-hit cities, residents dressed in black for ceremonies to mourn the victims of the disasters.

In the city of Rikuzentakata, where almost 1,600 people died and 217 people are still missing, Mayor Futoshi Toba reiterated his pledge to rebuild the city.

“We will move forward to build a beautiful city that is the pride of the nation where its citizens live happily and comfortably,” he said.

Japan is still coming to terms with the disaster that ravaged its north-eastern region two years ago – the earthquake and tsunami killed more than 15,000 people and several thousand are still unaccounted for.

The nuclear meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power‘s (Tepco) Fukushima Daiichi plant forced 160,000 people from their homes and many of them will never return.

Tepco faces a decades-long effort to decontaminate and decommission the wrecked nuclear plant after the worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

All of Japan’s 50 reactors were gradually shut down after the Fukushima disaster and all but two of them remain idle.

But the sweeping December victory of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party, which supports nuclear power, is a worry for nuclear power’s opponents.

Britain: Campaigners urged the government to reject “dangerous and expensive” nuclear power today as they marked the second anniversary of the Fukushima disaster in Japan: here.

North eastern Japan still a disaster zone: here.

Related articles

• Thousands in Japan anti-nuclear protest two years after Fukushima (updatednews.ca)
• Tokyo stages mass anti-nuclear rally (nuclear-news.net)
• Thousands in Japan anti-nuclear protest two years after Fukushima (reuters.com)
• Thousands gather for Tokyo anti-nuclear protest 2 yrs post-Fukushima (PHOTOS) (rt.com)
• Tokyo demonstrates again in force against nuclear power on eve of Fukushima’s second anniversary (nuclear-news.net)

Fukushima bosses admit guilt

From daily The Morning Star in England:

Fukushima nuclear plant firm admits safety culture shortfalls

Friday 14 December 2012

Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuc­lear plant operator Tepco admitted today that its poor safety culture and collusion with Japanese regulators were to blame for the disaster that followed the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The firm said it fully accepted the findings of a parliamentary inquiry.

Tepco’s reform chief Takefumi Anegawa said the report spelled out its “lack of a safety culture and our bad habits.”

He admitted that the meltdowns and explosions at the plant were preventable and the result of “collusion” with regulators.

That was in contrast to the position take a few months ago by Tepco president Naomi Hirose, who said he was baffled by criticism of the privateer.

But asked today what Tepco had done to improve matters, company adviser Dale Klein said only that it had carried out a critical self-assessment and was sharing information.

Related articles

• Fukushima worker sues TEPCO bosses (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Fukushima operator Tepco admits culpability (guardian.co.uk)
• UPDATE1: TEPCO admits poor safety culture as root cause of Fukushima crisis (english.kyodonews.jp)
• TEPCO unable to locate source of leak in Fukushima reactor (fukushimaupdate.com)
• National › TEPCO admits lack of safety, bad habits led to nuclear disaster (japantoday.com)
• Fukushima operator Tepco admits culpability (fukushimaupdate.com)
• TEPCO finally owns up to bad decisions that led to Fukushima nuclear disaster (japandailypress.com)
• Japanese operator in most frank admission over nuclear disaster (reuters.com)

Fukushima worker sues TEPCO bosses

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Fukushima worker sues over safety

Thursday 01 November 2012

by Our Foreign Desk

A worker at the beleaguered Fukushima nuclear power station filed a lawsuit against his former employers today, saying they had failed to protect employees from safety risks.

The man – identified only as Shinichi, 46 – worked for Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) subcontractor Kandenko immediately after an earthquake and tsunami triggered a meltdown at the plant in April 2011.

He wants Japan’s labour office to issue Tepco with improvement orders and expects Kandenko company directors to face six-month jail terms or 500,000 yen (£3,900) fines.

He was part of a six-member team sent to lay cables to get the Unit Three reactor’s cooling system operational again.

He was sent down to a flooded basement to reconnect electrical switchboards but said he wasn’t told about the water and so only two of the group wore knee-high rubber boots.

“If you’re a nuclear plant worker, you know that water on the floor is bad news. You just don’t touch it,” he said.

And he said dosimeters measured unsafe levels of radiation but a supervisor said the equipment must have been faulty and told them to press on.

His lawyers – who are representing a number of Fukushima workers in other cases – said he was illegally sent to work without full protection.

Tepco admitted last week that it had played down the risk posed to the plant by a tsunami because it was worried it might be forced to shut down and incur financial penalties if it had to bring defences up to scratch.

Chernobyl cleanup workers had significantly increased risk of leukemia: here.

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• Fukushima worker sues over radioactive water ordeal (thetimes.co.uk)

Fukushima reconstruction money wasted in Japan

This is the song FUCK TEPCO!! by Fukushima punk rock band Scrap; whose members lost everything to the nuclear disaster.

By Ben Chacko:

Fukushima fund frittered away on unrelated projects

Wednesday 31 October 2012

There was outrage across Japan yesterday as it emerged that a quarter of the 11.7 trillion yen (£90 billion) Fukushima reconstruction fund has been spent on unrelated projects.

Another half of the total funding – earmarked to help the area recover after a March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant – has not been allocated at all.

And local officials said reconstruction efforts had hardly begun.

Money intended for rebuilding the affected provinces Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima had instead been spent on a wide variety of totally unconnected enterprises while 325,000 of 340,000 displaced residents remained “homeless or away from their homes” according to the government’s own figures.

The funds had been spent on renovating government offices in Tokyo, an air force fighter-pilot training scheme and even whaling – 2.3bn yen (£18 million) was given to the Fisheries Ministry for “countermeasures against the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling group.”

And anti-nuclear activists were aghast that 10.7bn yen (£85m) had been handed to a nuclear power research organisation to study nuclear fusion.

Officials in towns wrecked by the triple disaster said real rehabilitation projects had yet to get off the ground.

Takashi Kubota, deputy mayor of the fishing town of Rikuzentakata where 1,800 people were killed or went missing and 4,000 homes were destroyed, said: “In 19 months there have been no major changes. There is not one single new building yet.”

Government adviser Jun Iio said the government needed to allow affected areas to decide how to spend their money rather than trying to allocate it centrally.

“The government thinks it has to be in the driver’s seat,” he said. “Unfortunately only if the local residents can agree on a plan will they move ahead.”

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda admitted that “the government has not done enough and has not done it adequately” and pledged to “strictly wring out” unrelated projects from the budget.

But critics said the reconstruction fund’s vague remit left it open to abuse, as it authorised spending on ambiguous schemes such as “supporting employment measures.”

Deepening economic crisis in Japan: here.

Britain: environmentalists warned that Hitachi’s role in designing the disaster-stricken Fukushima power plant in Japan should convince the government to abandon nuclear power for good: here. And here.

Related articles

• Fukushima can’t store polluted water (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
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Fukushima nuclear capitalists linked to Yakuza criminals

This Japanese punk rock video is by Scrap, a band consisting of people who lost all through the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The song is in Japanese, except the English language chorus, which is not very complimentary for the TEPCO nuclear corporation, the bosses of Fukushima. There are English subtitles with the video.

From the Atlantic Wire in the USA:

How the Yakuza and Japan’s Nuclear Industry Learned to Love Each Other

Jake Adelstein

May 24, 2012

After the arrest of a yakuza boss for his alleged role in supplying workers to TEPCO’s Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Plant, we are learning the details of how Japan’s nuclear industry relied on organized crime. Since July of last year, a few months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami resulted in a triple meltdown at the Fukushima plant, investigators have been probing possible yakuza links to TEPCO and the nuclear industry under the guidance of the National Police Agency.

“Yakuza involvement in the nuclear industry is believed to go back to 2007 or earlier,” said a police source, “and the gangs involved were dispatching yakuza to nuclear sites all over Japan.”

The yakuza boss arrested has been identified as Makoto Owada, a high-ranking member of the Sumiyoshi-kai (住吉会) crime group, the second largest organized crime group in Japan with roughly 12,000 members. Owada is charged with illegally dispatching workers to the reconstruction site from May to July of last year. The Fukushima plant is located in Sumiyoshi-kai territory (in yakuza parlance nawabari). However, in his initial statements to the police at the time of his arrest, Owada admitted that he had dispatched workers, including his own yakuza soldiers, to nuclear power plant construction sites all over Japan from as early as 2007.

“If we didn’t do it, who would?” asked one mid-level yakuza boss, who defended the criminal groups’ involvement.

Japanese punk rock against TEPCO

Today, there is not just punk rock in Ireland.

This video is called Punk band sings about Fukushima disaster.

From CNN:

Fukushima ‘punks’ rage against evacuation

By Kyung Lah, CNN

March 1, 2012 — Updated 0604 GMT (1404 HKT)

Tokyo (CNN) — You wouldn’t know the punk band was Japanese, a culture self-programmed for propriety.

I can’t write the chorus (sung in English) of the band’s favorite song here, as my editor would first delete the offensive word and then report me to my superiors.

Let’s just say it’s an obscenity that begins with the letter “F” and rhymes with what hockey players call the vulcanized rubber disk that’s hit into the goal.

The four-piece band screams the word over and over again to a Ramones tune, “Rockaway Beach,” directed at the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), operator of the crippled Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant.

If you haven’t guessed it yet this band — known as the Scrap — is angry with TEPCO for a reason. Each member of the group was affected by the meltdown at the plant in northeastern Japan that followed last year’s earthquake and tsunami.

Why Fukushima will remain a threat

Lead singer and lyrics writer, Nobutaka Takahashi, lived in Namie, just a few miles away from the plant. He was evacuated as the plant leaked radiation across a swath of northern Japan. He is one of the 78,000 residents who have been unable to return to a 12.4-mile (20-km) exclusion zone around the plant, now a nuclear wasteland.

The song is also about loss and sadness, said Takahashi.

“My family far apart, looks up at the same sky, shattered by earthquake and betrayal. There is no such thing as the truth,” said Takahashi, sharing the lyrics of the song.

Takahashi lost his home and all of his possessions. He has essentially lost his job because the company he worked with is based inside the evacuation zone.

“I can’t go home,” he said. “I want to tell people the pain, sadness and isolation I feel because I can’t go home.”

A year after the disaster, Takahashi’s story is one shared by many of the evacuees from the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 25 years. Like Takahashi, all are uncertain about whether they will ever return home to their land and possessions. Most continue to seek refuge with friends and extended family members.

During a recent visit to the Fukushima plant, the manager of the disaster spoke to reporters about the possibility of evacuees being allowed home. Takeshi Takahashi, no relation to Nobutaka Takahashi, said the return date remained “uncertain,” and that TEPCO would continue to do its best in conjunction with the government to help the residents return.

The plant manager said some residents south of the nuclear plant might be able to return this spring.

Namie, Nobutaka Takahashi’s hometown, sits to the north. Namie is one of the more contaminated regions in the evacuation zone. Frustrated by the slow clean-up, Takahashi says singing is his outlet. It’s also his reminder to anyone who is willing to listen that the nuclear nightmare continues a year after the reactor buildings exploded.

Japan’s nuclear crisis: Fukushima’s legacy of fear: here.

Fukushima Fallout: Cancer Fears and Depression Plague Japanese Refugees: here.

Here is all of our reporting on the Japan earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster over the past year: here.

Britain: Anti-nuclear activists are set to descend on Bristol’s Hinkley Point on Sunday to mark a year since Japan’s Fukushima meltdown, writes Rory MacKinnon: here.

More Fukushima nuclear trouble

From the BBC:

Japan nuclear crisis: Xenon detected at Fukushima plant

By Roland Buerk
BBC News, Tokyo

A radioactive gas has been detected at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, the facility’s operator says.

Tepco said xenon had been found in reactor two, which was previously thought to be near a stable shutdown.

There has been no increase in temperature or pressure, but the discovery may indicate a problem with the reactor.

Boric acid – used to suppress nuclear reactions – has been injected as a precaution.

Ever since the meltdowns in March triggered by the huge earthquake and tsunami, engineers have been working to bring the Fukushima reactors under control.

The government and Tepco – the Tokyo Electric Power Company – have said they are on track to achieve a stable shutdown by the end of the year.

But now they have found what could be a problem – radioactive xenon gas detected in a filter in reactor two.

Since it has a short half-life, it indicates a possibility of resumed nuclear fission in recent days.

See also here.

Japan Starts Bailout of Tepco After Fukushima Causes More Losses: here.

In an episode of The Simpsons, nuclear power plant owner Mr. Burns tries to justify the existence of Blinky, a three-eyed fish caught in the local river, by saying it is the next step in evolution and not a horrible mutation. Strangely though, he refuses to eat Blinky when it is served to him — we’re not surprised. But while Blinky is the product of a fictional cartoon, this three-eyed fish caught nearby a nuclear facility in Argentina, is not. Read more: Three-Eyed Fish Caught Near Argentinian Nuclear Power Plant: here.

Ukraine’s Vice-PM Serhiy Tigipko retreated on plans to slash benefits for Chernobyl clean-up veterans today after over 1,000 protesters stormed the parliament building: here.