DECONTAMINATION OF JAPANESE VILLAGES IMPOSSIBLE. TOKYO OLMPICS 2020 THREATENS HEALTH OF VISITORS.

ABOVE, OPPENHEIMER ADMITTED WHAT THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS HAD UNLEASHED...

THE WORLD SHOULD HAVE HEEDED HIS AND OTHER SCIENTISTS' WARNINGS. 

IN JAPAN THE TRUTH IS BURIED BY THE REGIME. ABE PUTS THE OLYMPICS ABOVE HUMAN HEALTH.

“I am a newscaster, but I couldn't tell the true story on my news program," says Jun Hori, a former anchor for NHK, the Japanese state broadcaster. 
There was a media gag order with threatened imprisonment for those who reported anything but what the Abe regime wanted reported.

[SEE HIS SPEECH <HERE>]




ABOVE MAP SHOWS THE  PROXIMITY OF EACH VILLAGE/TOWN TO THE LEAKING NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, FUKUSHIMA DAI'ICHI.

REMEMBER THAT THERE IS STILL A 30-KILOMETER (19 MILES) EXCLUSION ZONE AROUND CHERNOBYL, WHICH HAD ONLY ONE AFFECTED REACTOR, AND THINK ABOUT THIS STATEMENT:

"Because of the long-lived radiation in the region surrounding the former Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the area won't be safe for human habitation for at least 20,000 years."

Later in 1986, after updated maps of the contaminated areas were produced, the zone was split into three areas to designate further evacuation areas based on the revised dose limit of 100 mSv.

--the "Black Zone" (over 200 µSv·h−1), to which evacuees were never to return.

--the "Red Zone" (50–200 µSv·h−1) where evacuees might return once radiation levels normalized.

--the "Blue Zone" (30–50 µSv·h−1) where children and pregnant women were evacuated starting in the summer of 1986.

The borders were based on soil deposits of strontium-90, caesium-137 and plutonium as well as the calculated dose rate (sieverts/h) as identified by the National Commission for Radiation Protection of Ukraine.

[SEE Environmental Radiation Monitoring in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone - History and Results 25 Years After. US: Savannah River National Laboratory / Savannah River Nuclear Solutions.] 

An area known as 'the Red Forest' was listed as being among the world's most radioactive places; to reduce the hazard, the Red Forest was bulldozed and the highly irradiated wood was buried, though the soil continues to emit SIGNIFICANT radiation. ALMOST 40 YEARS LATER.

JAPAN HAS NOT SHOWN THIS TYPE CONCERN FOR ITS POPULATION, NOR FOR FOREIGN VISITORS WHO ARE COMING TO THE 2020 OLYMPIC GAMES, GAMES WHICH WILL BEGIN IN FUKUSHIMA PREFECTURE, WHERE SOME ATHLETES WILL BE HOUSED.

VISITORS WILL ALSO BE SERVED FOOD PRODUCTS RECENTLY REMOVED FROM A PREVIOUS BAN FROM THAT CONTAMINATED PREFECTURE.
THEY WILL BATHE IN AND DRINK WATER THAT COMES FROM CONTAMINATED GROUNDWATER.

ABE OBVIOUSLY HAS NO CONCERN FOR THE EXPOSURE OF VISITORS OR RESIDENTS TO ONGOING RADIATION LEVELS, LEVELS THAT REMAIN HIGH  BECAUSE THE FORESTS AND MOUNTAINS THERE CANNOT BE DECONTAMINATED AND THEY RECONTAMINATE THE AREA EVERY TIME IT RAINS.

LET US REMEMBER ALSO THAT THE HIGHEST READINGS OF RADIATION IN AN AREA TO DATE HAS BEEN BEACHES LOCATED 60 MILES FROM THE CRIPPLED PLANT. IN OCTOBER 2017.
THIS FACT WAS DISCOVERED COMPLETELY BY ACCIDENT. 
HOW MANY MORE HIGHLY RADIOACTIVE AREAS ARE THERE YET UNDISCOVERED?




ABOVE MAP: The Japanese government has announced that it is lifting evacuation orders in the green and orange zones on March 31, 2017. This image is taken from the website of Fukushima Prefecture.

In April 2013, two years after the disaster, the Japanese government changed the limit of radioactive exposure dose from one milli-sievert per year (mSv/yr) or 0.23 micro-sievert per hour (μSv/h) to 20 mSv/yr or 3.8 μSv/h.
This standard was roughly 6 times higher than that for “Radiation Controlled Areas.”
The Labor standards act prohibits those under the age of 18 from working under these conditions.

This new standard has been used only in Fukushima for determining evacuation zones as well as school grounds, buildings, and residential areas. This irrational and hazardous 'zoning policy' left over 260 “spots” in areas such as Minamisōma city, Date city, and Kōzu village whose radiation levels EXCEEDED 20 mSv/yr.

The government initially announced that the new standard would be used as an emergency measure and would soon be lifted. Contrary to this announcement, however, 20 mSv/yr has virtually become the new standard for safety measure and return policies 7 years now after the disaster.

Anyone can see the Abe regime's plan is to keep this high level for the duration of this disaster, which is NOT over, which is ONGOING and likely will remain ongoing for at least 40 to 100 years.
By doing so, the government and TEPCO will not be responsible to any citizens within the high radiation villages for compensation of their loss of homes, livelihood or health and the government will from this period onward REFUSE to provide any assistance to those who REFUSE to voluntarily return to these radioactive villages, villages that cannot possibly be decontaminated due to constant runoff after rains from the highly radioactive mountains and forests behind or near their homes.

Abe also does not address or admit that the fallout continues from the still-leaking crippled Dai'ichi nuclear plant, and has spiked to phenomenal, historically high levels just this year (2018) and from his orders to continue open-air burning of radioactive debris from these hardest-hit areas and materials used by workers in useless decontamination efforts.

On December 28, 2014, just 3 years after the multiple explosions and initial fallout, the Japanese government removed 142 areas from the 'Radiation Controlled Areas' list, noting that annual radiation exposure had fallen below the 20 mSv/yr threshold.

On April 17, 2015, some 530 residents of Minamisōma filed a lawsuit demanding that the government revoke a decision to remove their districts from a list of radiation hot spots. This decision meant the ending of their entitlement to receive support in the form of subsidized medical treatment and “consolation” money.

The plaintiffs argued that by international standards, the upper limit for radiation exposure was 1 mSv/yr, and thus the government’s decision to de-list the hot spots based on a 20 mSv/yr standard betrayed its responsibility for protecting the safety of citizens.
The ICRP’s recommendations and laws such as Japan’s Nuclear Reactor Regulation Law stipulate a public radiation exposure limit of 1 mSv PER YEAR.

The calculation of how much radiation these residents will be exposed to is based on a government approved formula which assumes that people will be exposed to 3.8 μSv per hour only for 8 hours per day when they are outside the house. It is assumed that they will be indoors for 16 hours per day and the screening effect will reduce the exposure rate to 1.52 μSv per hour. On a yearly basis, this calculates to SLIGHTLY less than 20 mSv per year.

The government insisted that its decision was based on sound scientific findings.
The government is now carrying out the return policies based on the same faulty rationale.

Evacuees who have lived in areas that are barely under 20 mSv/yr and expressed concerns about safety are regarded as “voluntary evacuees” and thus will receive very little or no financial support and compensation.

With the lifting of evacuation orders in parts of Namie, Ōkuma, Iitate, and Tomioka at the end of March, 2017, evacuees will not be allowed to stay in temporary housing.
Even those who were originally ordered to evacuate will be considered “voluntary” after March 31, 2017, losing Fukushima prefecture’s financial aid for housing.

Many critics refer to the government’s return policy as “forced return policy” as well as “kimin seisaku” or the “policy of abandoning people.”

[See more details, Hino Kōsuke, Genpatsu Kimin (原発棄民), Tokyo: Mainichi News Press, 2016]

Below is a photo of some of the homes of Namie, showing the closeness of surrounding forests, hills and mountains, all of which cannot possibly be decontaminated.

After every rain the water runs off into the town, re-contaminating streets, homes, wells, everything, over and over again.

Not addressed by Japanese officials in the Abe regime is the fact that fallout still rises from the crippled plant just 7 miles away, that leaks in storage tanks, leaks from enormous piles of an estimated 7.5 million plastic bags with radioactive soil in them that are scattered all across the Fukushima prefecture, and leaks from the three destroyed reactors will not be stopped for decades, if ever.

HOW CAN ANYONE DECONTAMINATE SOMETHING THAT IS RECONTAMINATED EVERY DAY?

HOW DARE ANYONE SAY A HUMAN BEING IS SAFE IN SUCH CONSTANT RADIATION AND FORCE THEM TO LIVE THERE?


In the summer of 2016, a group of researchers from Niigata University measured the radiation level in some backyards and a forest area as ranging from 5~10 microsieverts PER HOUR.

Once radiation falls, it stays put, is taken up by soils and plants so that there is a long-term source and higher direct exposure to people.

Suzuki Yūichi (age 56 at time of interview) was born to a farming family in Namie, Fukushima in 1960.

Namie was one of the areas most devastated by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, as well as the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011.

At the time of the nuclear accident, Mr. Suzuki was working in the Citizens’ Affairs Division of Namie and was immediately assigned to the Disaster Management Division established to assist citizens in finding missing family members, locating temporary housing, and evacuating families.

Suzuki was subsequently responsible for decontamination efforts, return policies, and establishing clinics for prospective returnees.

In the summer and the winter of 2016, Katsuya Hirano, an Associate Professor of History, UCLA. visited Namie with colleagues Professor Yoshihiro Amaya of Niigata University and Yoh Kawano, a PhD candidate at UCLA, and interviewed Mr. Suzuki.
That interview was published in the Asia Pacific Journal <HERE>.
Hirano has done a remarkable job bringing the facts and the hard road that evacuees face into the public eye.
To say that the Tea Room salutes him is an understatement.

FROM THAT INTERVIEW:  
Mr. Suzuki contends that the majority of former residents of Namie are unlikely to return to the town even after the Japanese government lifts the restriction on residency in certain areas on March 31, 2017.

As a city official who led decontamination efforts and return policy, Suzuki remains skeptical of Japanese government programs for “reconstruction” or “revival” of the affected areas. He anticipates that the area will become a “no man’s land” after the elderly returnees pass away.

Namie’s population was 21,400 at the time of the nuclear accident. He estimates that 10 percent or less will return. The interview is an important testament to the ongoing rift and dissonance between Tokyo and Fukushima over the policies and slogans of “reconstruction” and “return”.

SUZUKI: Well, I have to say, we can’t decontaminate forest areas. That would require cutting down all the trees and then scraping up all the topsoil. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see any effect. But as far as areas around houses are concerned, all the soil has been stripped away, so the radiation level has dropped significantly. For example, my parents’ house is in a so-called “zone in preparation for lifting the evacuation order.” At first the radiation level was 3.0 microsieverts per hour, but after decontamination, it has dropped to less than 0.5.

HIRANO: I see. But the entire contaminated region in Fukushima is richly forested– it’s all surrounded by forest, not just Namie. If it is impossible to decontaminate forest areas, it means that radioactive material could easily blow in from the forest, causing radiation levels to increase in decontaminated areas. Some residents say that the radiation level has in fact RISEN since the decontamination. So does it mean that decontamination is effective only in urban areas where there are few forests? In other words, there is a gap between places where decontamination has been working well and places where it has not.

SUZUKI: It is okay in areas where the soil has been properly stripped away, but nobody has done anything in mountain areas behind homes（urayama, 裏山）. We town officials have been asking the Ministry of the Environment to decontaminate such areas properly as well, since they are not just nameless wooded hills. Rather, they are Satoyama (里山), wooded areas surrounding people’s homes that are a part of their everyday lives. We’ve said that if we don’t decontaminate those areas we wouldn’t be able to bring people back home.

HIRANO: What the media has been saying is that for Namie, in particular, after lifting its evacuation orders, full-scale reconstruction can begin. I feel that what the Japanese government is trying to do is to send the message that the nuclear crisis in Fukushima has been finally settled.
The government believes that it is necessary to do so in order to create an image of Japan rising like a phoenix from the ashes at the Tokyo Olympics of 2020. That’s what it hopes to achieve by putting aside the thorny predicament of more than 100,000 evacuees and the difficulty of rebuilding communities.

I don’t feel that the Japanese government is looking at reality from the standpoint of the locals. That’s why they simply can’t accept how much the pre-accident life in Namie has fundamentally been destroyed, as you described earlier, and that, even for residents wishing to return, the current situation here is far from ready for them to come back and that there is no way to fix the situation.
Mr. Suzuki, how do you feel about this sense that the government has conveyed that the situation in Fukushima is now under control, that reconstruction has been going well, and the return policy has been successful?

SUZUKI: Well, I don’t think it will be possible for the reconstruction to be completely finished even 100 years from now. We can say the reconstruction is 100% complete only when everything has been restored to the way it used to be before the evacuation.
But of course, there is no way to really restore the life we had before.

If it is really true that it is now safe to return and restart life, as the central government has said, the Japanese government should build national facilities in the evacuation areas, in Namie and elsewhere. Then former residents will be assured that the government decision to build indicates the safety of the area. But in reality there no government facilities have been built in this town. Since the accident, not a single facility has been built here. That leads residents to think that it is still not safe to live here, especially with Fukushima Daiichi not yet decommissioned. They feel that the absence of government facilities confirms this.

HIRANO: It makes sense. If the central government insists that it is safe to return, if Prime Minister Abe’s pledge that Fukushima is under control is true, they need to take the initiative to show people that in fact it is now a safe place to live. Otherwise residents won’t be convinced.

SUZUKI: Exactly. They should buy land from the town and actively start building government facilities to conduct research or to work on developmental plans. They should build housing for national government employees. Residents would then be reassured.

Their attitude is “we’ve heard you enough, and we’ve dealt with you enough during the concentrated reconstruction period. (2011~2015) What else do you want? More money?”
You might remember a cabinet member (Ishihara Nobuteru) saying, “the bottom line is they want money.”

Also I feel that people who haven’t been the victim of a disaster, including politicians and bureaucrats, won’t be able to understand the predicament of the evacuees who were forced to flee. Here we thought that victims of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995 must have resumed normal lives after a few years of living in temporary housing.7 To me that was just something that happened far away in the Kansai area. Unless you experience it yourself, it’s difficult to understand what it’s really like."

HIRANO, IN HIS NOTES:
The so-called “damages created by rumors” have become a major point of political contention since the nuclear disaster. Many farmers and businesses, not only in relatively unaffected areas of Fukushima but in other prefectures in northeastern Japan, have suffered substantial financial loss due to widespread concerns about being exposed to radiation. On the other hand, Liberal Democratic Party politicians and conservative media outlets have used the “rumor-caused damage” charge to silence criticism, warning against discussion of the real danger of external and internal radioactive exposure. Residents of Fukushima continue to live under the pressure of being accused of encouraging rumor-caused damage even though their concerns are legitimate and their efforts to raise awareness about radiation should be taken very seriously. Some right-wing internet bloggers call those who raise concerns about radiation “unpatriotic” or “anti-Japanese.
In 2016, the Abe administration has decided to use taxpayer money for decontaminating affected areas in Fukushima. The decision marks a fundamental shift from the current policy that obliges TEPCO to pay for the decontamination work. The 2017 decontamination work is estimated to cost 30 billion yen. Behind the adminstration’s decision for the use of taxpayer money is the rapidly expanding expense of decontamination, with the latest estimate rising from the original 2.5 trillion yen to 4 trillion. This estimate does not include the no-return zones. The government expects the planned work in those areas to cost roughly 300 billion yen over five years. The Abe administration’s decision not only increase people’s financial burden but also blur TEPCO’s responsibility for the irretrievable damages it caused."
IN JAPAN, AS IN ALL NATIONS WITH NUCLEAR FACILITIES, YOU WON'T FIND NATIONAL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS LIVING ANYWHERE NEAR NUCLEAR REACTORS, NOR WILL YOU FIND THE RICH LIVING IN THOSE AREAS. THEIR CHILDREN WILL NOT ATTEND SCHOOLS IN THOSE AREAS NOR WILL THEY WORK NEAR THEM.
THOSE WHO OWN SUCH FACILITIES ALSO LIVE FAR AWAY AND DON'T EVEN DIGNIFY THE SITUATION BY ISSUING "VENTING" SCHEDULES SO LOCAL RESIDENTS CAN AT LEAST STAY INSIDE WHILE EACH PLANT EMITS RADIOACTIVE STEAM OR COOLING WATER.
WHY DON'T THESE FACTS ALONE DEMONSTRATE TO THE WORLD THAT NUCLEAR ENERGY IS NOT AT ALL SAFE?

THE FUTURE OF THE CHILDREN IS GRIM.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) study, girls exposed as infants to radioactivity in the most contaminated regions of Fukushima Prefecture, where estimated doses ranged from 12 to 25 millisieverts for the first year, faced a 70% higher risk of developing thyroid cancer than what would normally be expected.

Well, children born there today, next year, a decade from now will still face radiation doses of barely under 20 millisieverts per year in zones where the forests and mountains remain.

No one can decontaminate a rock, the trees, the rain.


NO ONE CAN STOP RADIATION, PERIOD.
ONCE RELEASED,IT IS WITH US FOR UP TO BILLIONS OF YEARS AND CIRCULATES ACROSS THE GLOBE, OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

SHINZO ABE AND ALL INVOLVED IN THIS MAN-MADE DISASTER CAN NOW SAY WITH OPPENHEIMER,

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."




____________________________

FURTHER READING, SOURCES:

~ SEE the JAPAN TIMES brave article from 2011 about the deception the Abe regime has been guilty of,


"This tradition of lying has a long history. Government omerta and omission kept the nation ignorant about the most basic facts — including reactor meltdowns — for months!
Post-Fukushima Japan must realize that public acceptance of lying got us into this radioactive mess in the first place.

For radiation has no media cycle. It lingers and poisons the land and food chain. Statistics may be obfuscated or suppressed as usual. But radiation’s half-life is longer than the typical attention span or sustainable degree of public outrage.

As the public — possibly worldwide — sickens over time, the truth will leak out."


~ SEE 'THE ECOLOGIST' article,
"Japan and IAEA risk Fukushima victims' lives with forced return"


~ SEE ALSO NUCLEAR NEWS' TAKE ON THIS ALONG WITH SEVERAL OTHER RELATED ARTICLES <HERE>.  

~ An interesting PDF titled “No Return to Normal”, 2017

~ The Guardian, UK, article "
Thousands who fled 2011 disaster must choose between financial hardship or return to homes they believe are unsafe

~ SEE "Japanese journalists are revolting."
"Japanese journalists did what Yasuhiko Tajima, a professor of media studies at Tokyo's Sophia University, calls "announcement journalism" in reporting on the crisis. He says they were reporting the press releases of big companies and the people in power. And he's not the only one who thinks so.

Former NHK anchor Jun Hori speaks at a TEDx event in Kyoto, Japan, about opening Japanese journalism to non-traditional sources.






//WW

UNSTOPPABLE RADIATION IN AMERICA. COVER-UPS AND LIES.

These two drawings were done by survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan that closed World War Two.
They are from a book of similar drawings titled "UNFORGETTABLE FIRE".

Above, caption from the book: "As I fearfully crossed the railroad bridge, I saw red, blue, green, and purple corpses swollen three or four times floating under it".
--Toshiko Kihara, Age 17 at time of bombing, 47 at time of drawing.     

"THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SAFE DOSE OF RADIATION."
-- BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS [BAS]
"Worldwide, an unknowing and unsuspecting public is being randomly exposed to radiation without any opportunity for informed consent. People can choose whether or not to have x-rays, to reduce the radon exposure in their homes, or to fly. However, the public has no choice, and certainly inadequate knowledge, about radiation exposure from nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
The trend throughout the nuclear age has been a growing recognition that there is no “safe” or “harmless” dose of radiation."

In 2006 the National Academies’ National Research Council published a comprehensive report, “Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII – Phase 2)” stating that radiation exposure has a linear relationship to the development of cancer. The report concluded that even low doses of ionizing radiation are likely to pose some health risks; there is no threshold of exposure below which the risk drops to zero."
Radioactive contamination can enter the body through ingestion, inhalation, absorption, or injection. This will result in a committed dose of radiation.

The ICRP [International Commission on Radiological Protection] states "Radionuclides incorporated in the human body irradiate the tissues over time periods determined by their physical half-life and their biological retention within the body.
Thus they may give rise to doses to body tissues for many months or years AFTER the intake.
Intake of radioactive materials into the body tends to increase the risk of cancer, and possibly other stochastic effects."

A Google search of the phrase "no safe dose of radiation" in ONLY 'scholarly journals' returned "About 494,000 results (0.09 sec)".

"The real issue is that the use of nuclear power and nuclear weapons is forcing humankind, and indeed the whole ecosystem, to participate in a particularly cruel and totally uncontrolled experiment.

Given the scientific evidence that there is no safe dose of radiation, this is an experiment that has already gone awry. Indeed, if this were a true scientific experiment, it would have been halted a long time ago.

The real question is whether we, as a human race, can afford in good conscience to risk annihilation with our continued reliance on nuclear technology. Can we continue to despoil our environment with long-lived radioactive materials that are scattered to the wind and embedded in our precious soil, randomly exposing large populations, and foisting health impacts on unsuspecting future generations who have no choice in this matter?

We must choose to halt this process. To do this we need to quickly abolish all nuclear weapons, and make a dramatic and rapid retreat from the use of nuclear power to generate electricity. Only then will we demonstrate that we recognize and appreciate the true meaning of Einstein’s prophetic words: “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our mode of thinking. Thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”    

WHO ARE 'THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS'?
THEY WERE MEN WHO ONCE WORKED WITHOUT THOUGHT OF WHAT RADIATION FROM NUCLEAR TESTING FALLOUT OR FROM PLUTONIUM AND ENRICHED URANIUM WOULD DO TO ALL HUMANITY, MEN WHO BUILT THE BOMB,  WHO THEN DECIDED TO SPEAK OUT ABOUT THE 'BROKEN', OFTEN CORRUPT 'NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION' (NRC), THE REAL DANGERS OF  ALL/ANY RADIATION AND THE LONG, ONGOING COVER-UPS BY THE U.S., INTERNATIONAL AND EUROPEAN ATOMIC ENERGY ORGANIZATIONS, AND BY THE CIA.

THEIR 'BULLETIN' IS AN AWARD-WINNING, INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED, DEDICATED PIECE OF WORK, AND WITH THEIR CONTACTS AND CREDENTIALS, THEY CERTAINLY KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT.
THERE IS NOTHING SAFE ABOUT RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS OR NUCLEAR FISSION.

"A recent report of a task force formed by the NRC to examine its OWN safety regulations, however, reached the troubling conclusion that the existing system of public regulation is, as a PDF article shows us, a “patchwork” with serious “gaps” that needed an overarching framework."

What the NRC mainly "regulates" is the TRUTH, which they often bend over backward to conceal from the public.
Rather than shine a spotlight on the failures and intentional disregard of 'regulations' by the nuclear energy giants and our federal government, the NRC merely imposes a fine here and there, often not even collecting payment of those fines from Big Nuke, and turns its back on violations, known corruption within the industry and bribes and pay-offs to many elected and non-elected 'officials'.

"The nuclear power industry exists only because governments agreed to take on the risk of accidents. One legitimate reaction to this uneconomic state of affairs would be to shut the industry down, or dramatically scale back reliance on nuclear power. In theory, reducing the number of reactors lowers the risk of accidents, and reducing the number to zero eliminates the risk.
Any firm attempting to build a new nuclear plant would then be forced to confront the real risk of nuclear accidents, which means it would be forced to spend enough on safety to reduce the risk to the level that made the reactors insurable — if such a risk level is achievable."

NRC 'inspections' are a joke.
Ask a nuclear power plant employee.
They don't get much 'protection' from the NRC, either.

Another source of facts and databases of problems with, failures and hazards of nuclear power plants can be found at "Nuclear Power Plant Database FAQ: Background information on the most common safety-related issues at U.S. nuclear power plants."

That website is maintained by 'The Union of Concerned Scientists'.

One article there tells the story of an intruder who drove into the Three Mile Island nuclear facility at 6:53 am on February 7, 1993. Workers responded to the unauthorized entry by locking the doors to the control room and declaring a Site Area Emergency—the second most serious emergency of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) four classifications. The intruder was found more than four hours later hiding in the turbine building.

IN AN ARTICLE A FEW DAYS AGO, THE BULLETIN AND OTHERS TRIED TO CALL ATTENTION TO THE WIPP FACILITY FAILURES IN NEW MEXICO AND TO LOS ALAMOS' PART IN IT.

"Waste makes haste: How a campaign to speed up nuclear waste shipments shut down the WIPP long-term repository."
June 28, 2018

"Just before midnight on Valentine’s Day 2014, a nuclear waste canister burst open deep in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) underground repository in Carlsbad, New Mexico – the final resting place for the United States’ transuranic military wastes.

The drum had been shipped to WIPP from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the US Energy Department lab famous for building the Manhattan Project’s first atomic bombs.
WIPP was contaminated and closed for nearly 35 months.
Waste shipments to the repository from across the country were backed up.

The Energy Department’s accident investigators concluded that the scientific cause of the “drum breach” at WIPP was something called thermal runaway: the buildup of heat and pressure in waste drum #68,660 due to exothermic reactions between its nitrate salt waste contents and the wheat-based kitty litter, Swheat Scoop, not the inorganic zeolite clay kitty litter recommended to them, that had been added to it at Los Alamos’ Waste Characterization, Reduction, and Repackaging Facility (WCRRF) in 2013.

Nine days earlier, a truck used for hauling salt caught on fire underground at WIPP.

It was the Los Conchas wildfires in 2000 that came within three-and-a-half miles of Area G, where Los Alamos lab stored transuranic radioactive waste – in some cases, in above-ground tents -- had taken the homes of hundreds of local families and damaged laboratory buildings.
The fires had prompted the lab to develop “Quick to WIPP,” a project for accelerating the shipment of transuranic waste to the Carlsbad repository.
In short, a perfect storm was brewing."

THEY PUSHED THINGS TOO QUICKLY, BUT AS THE ARTICLE STATES, NO MATTER WHAT, "The show must go on."

MEN LIKE OPPENHEIMER CAME TO VIEW WHAT THEY HAD DONE AS MORALLY WRONG, BUT THEY WERE ALSO THE VERY ONES WHO HAD CONDUCTED SECRET EXPERIMENTS USING OUR MILITARY AND AMERICAN CITIZENS LIKE LAB RATS.

WHO BETTER TO KNOW WHERE TO LOOK FOR COVER-UPS, FOR LOOPHOLES TO EXPOSE WHAT GOES ON BEHIND CLOSED DOORS?

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jan. 1958, page 22:
Geneticists are convinced there is NO dose too low to produce mutations in human cells...i.e., ALL radiation will cause genetic/DNA damage, which will appear within the first generation after exposure, or can appear all the way up to hundreds of generations later on.

REALIZATION, TOO LATE ...
Many of those atomic scientists, who were the very ones who worked so hard to give us the atomic bomb, realized their mistake and began to publish their "Bulletin" to enlighten the American public.
Early on, in 1958, they noted that 'natural radiation' is NOT the cause of the vast number of mutations seen today, NOT the cause of so many radiation-induced cancers, disorders, etc, worldwide, but that MANKIND's use of radioactive materials, in bombs or otherwise, has been THE cause of this rise.

They note that NUCLEAR FALLOUT, no matter the source, is, in fact, damaging and life-threatening to present and future generations.

In the Bulletin from 1958 cited above, they stated,
"We can be SURE that a large number of persons yet to be born WILL DIE, or be deformed, or diseased, or otherwise impaired by bomb-testing.
If ALL the victims could be identified and assembled in one place at the same time, we would all regard it as a horrible tragedy."

They spoke from experience when they stated...
"THE MORE IMPORTANT THE ISSUE, THE GREATER THE SECRECY."

"NUCLEAR SAFEGUARDS PROGRAMS PROVIDE NEITHER TIMELY WARNINGS NOR SANCTIONS."  

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May, 1995, page 34:
"It would take $230 Billion just to stabilize, [NOT clean up], the nuclear weapons testing complex sites."

At the time that was written, 3/4ths of those sites had not even been evaluated for cleanup yet!
It was estimated then, in 1995, that it would take at least 70 years to assess the leaks and bio-hazards from all those testing sites.

NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS WERE NOT PART OF THE ESTIMATED COST, EITHER.
ONE CAN'T STABILIZE SOMETHING THAT LEAKS AND THAT MUST RELEASE SOME RADIATION EVERY SINGLE DAY.

"THERE IS NO KNOWN REMEDY OR TECHNIQUE FOR DECONTAMINATING GROUNDWATER."
In 1995, just from test sites alone, we were trying to come up with ways to dispose of over 106 million gallons of HIGH-level radioactive waste, 260 metric tons of spent fuel, 107,000 cubic meters of transuranic waste, 1,800,000 cubic meters of "low-level" nuclear waste, and 780,000 cubic meters of "mixed" (chemicals plus radioactive) waste.

OMITTED FROM THE BUDGET, OMITTED FROM PROPOSED STABILIZATION AND/OR CLEANUP COSTS WERE THE COLUMBIA RIVER SYSTEM'S HANFORD NUCLEAR FACILITY IN WASHINGTON STATE, THE CLINCH RIVER (OAK RIDGE) SITE IN TENNESSEE, AND SAVANNAH RIVER SITE IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

[SEE: Radioactivity lingers at Oak Ridge]

[SEE "Deadly legacy: Savannah River site"]

WHY WERE THESE 3 'MEGA-SITES' IGNORED?

SIMPLE...THEY ARE JUDGED IMPOSSIBLE TO 'REMEDIATE', THERE IS NO 'FIX' , THERE IS NO WAY TO DESTROY RADIONUCLIDES IN THE ENVIRONMENT, SO THE EXTENT OF POLLUTION AND CONTINUAL LEAKING IS JUST TOO GREAT TO IMAGINE THEM EVER BEING STABILIZED OR CLEANED UP.

THOSE RIVER SYSTEMS, THOSE AREAS OF THE COUNTRY ARE SIMPLY DOOMED TO REMAIN AS UNENDING RADIOACTIVE NIGHTMARES.

SO SAY THE VERY SCIENTISTS WHO GAVE US NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

Every stage of removal technology produces ADDITIONAL waste and contamination.
EACH gram of plutonium, each container of enriched uranium produced at any point in time will remain with us forever.
They must be completely and safely isolated for hundreds of centuries.
NO way currently exists to accomplish that.

"Stored" wastes still produce more waste, still remain radioactive, are still considered toxic contaminants.

The last significant assessment of the potential cost of major accidents in the United States was made soon after Three Mile Island.
NOTHING is said about the cost in human lives.

BETWEEN 1943 AND 1970, NUCLEAR WASTE WAS HANDLED LIKE ANY OTHER WASTE, MUCH WAS SIMPLY DUMPED INTO THE EARTH OR RIVERS OR HOLDING PONDS, PUMPED INTO FLIMSY UNLABELED CONTAINERS THAT WERE NEVER DESIGNED TO CONTAIN THE RADIATION. WE DON'T HAVE ANY IDEA WHERE ALL THE WASTE FROM THOSE 27 YEARS IS.
[SEE PGS 35-41]     

ALL NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS LEAK OR 'VENT' RADIATION EVERY SINGLE DAY...
FROM THE NRC, THE ADMISSION..
"Nuclear power plants release varying amounts of tritium, depending on the amount of liquid waste discharged via normal and abnormal release discharge paths and the type of reactor.
At individual U.S. nuclear power plants, the amount of Sr-90 released is low... usually at or below the minimum detectable activity of sensitive detection equipment.
As with any industrial facility, a nuclear power plant may deviate from normal operation with a spill or leak of liquid material.

In the U.S., nuclear reactor operators have the AUTHORITY, given by the NRC, to vent radioactive steam or hydrogen gas as conditions warrant.

HOW SAFE ARE OUR AGING REACTORS?
The "safety disadvantages" of the Mark I boiling water reactors, the same type that exploded in Japan's Fukushima meltdowns, were highlighted in an internal memo at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission —the precursor to the NRC—as far back as 1972. The NRC nonetheless permits their use and has not forced compliance of the rule to "harden" those vents.

WHAT ABOUT SPENT FUEL CELLS?
In the U.S., because of a lack of a long-term plan for dealing with such nuclear waste, spent-fuel pools are even more densely packed than those at Fukushima's plant, making it easier for a meltdown to occur in the event of a loss of water.

IN 2011:
Radioactive leaks found at 75% of US nuke sites - CBS News

THEY WERE LOOKING FOR TRITIUM AND DID NOT ANALYZE DAILY "ALLOWABLE VENTINGS" INTO THE ATMOSPHERE AT THE NUKE SITES.
THERE ARE OVER 100 RADIOACTIVE GASES/CHEMICALS EMITTED BY NUCLEAR REACTORS.
TRITIUM WAS FOUND IN LOCAL DRINKING WATER SOURCES AT 75% OF PLANTS.

Since the 2011 investigation, other leaks have been discovered at nuke plants and medical and/or storage facilities in Illinois, New York, Florida, California, New Mexico, Alabama, Texas, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Tennessee.

U.S. NEWS, March 15, 2016,
"Nuclear Plants Leak Radiation, and Regulator Faces Scrutiny"

At the same time, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has repeatedly weakened federal regulations to allow plants to keep operating, despite THOUSANDS of problems ranging from corroded pipes to cracked concrete and radioactive leaks.

Late last month, seven NRC engineers went public with a petition urging the agency to fix a critical design flaw in the electrical systems of all but one of the nation's nuclear plants – a highly unusual move for federal employees.

Since finalizing new standards, the NRC has reportedly inspected and approved just two of the country's 61 plants for compliance: one in Tennessee, the other in Virginia, Bloomberg BNA found.

It's also unclear whether new equipment for maintaining power at the plant during a prolonged outage will even work, experts say

Types of nuclear waste generated from nuclear power station:

"When the radioactivity of the waste [at nuclear power plants] has diminished to a very low level, it would be released to the environment on condition that it would not exceed the permissible limit.
The gaseous waste is released to the environment after treatment via the stack.
The liquid waste is mixed and diluted with the effluent from the plant after treatment before discharging into the sea." 

WHO MONITORS AND REPORTS RESULTS OF THESE 'PERMISSIBLE RELEASES'?
THE OWNERS OF THE POWER PLANTS, THEIR EMPLOYEES.

DO YOU SEE THE POSSIBILITY FOR FALSE REPORTS?
I DO.
LOCAL CITIZENS DON'T EVEN HAVE TO BE INFORMED THAT THE VENTINGS TOOK PLACE. 
THEY MAY FIND OUT IN OTHER WAYS, AS SHOWN BELOW...

"In California, the average Strontium-90 level found in baby teeth has risen with time, increasing 50.2 percent for children born in 1994-97 from the levels found in children born in 1986-89.
After the halt of above-ground atom bomb testing in 1963, the average Strontium-90 levels fell, but they began to rise again in the 1980s and ’90s.

And, according to the Academy study, there is only one source of this isotope not found in nature: the federally-permitted radioactive emissions from all operating US reactors.
“This should be a concern for any nuclear reactor and its health risks, whether it’s been operating for a day or 30 or 40 years because these reactors create over 100 cancer-causing chemicals; much of it is stored as waste at the plant, but a portion of it is released into the environment and gets into human bodies through the food chain," said the study's author.

The Academy study cites previous research conducted from 1996 to 2006 by RPHP, which remains the only analysis of radioactivity levels within the bodies of Americans who live close to nuclear reactors.

RPHP tested about 5,000 baby teeth and found consistent elevation levels of Strontium-90 in the teeth of children born in counties closest to nuclear reactors and a consistent rise in these levels over time."

NRC ADMITS 'SERIOUS GAPS'...
A recent report of a task force formed by the NRC to examine its safety regulations, however, reached the troubling conclusion that the existing system of public regulation is a “patchwork” with serious “gaps” that needed an overarching framework.

ALSO, the US Energy Department’s Accident Investigation Board accident report of the WIPP accident in 2014 criticized how Los Alamos’ execution of the 3706 Campaign was marked by “high workload and time stress” and “focused on budget, financial and schedule performance versus operational oversight”
(SEE: Energy Department 2015 Energy Department. 2015. “Accident Investigation Report, Phase 2: Radiological Release Event at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, February 14, 2014.” Office of Environmental Management, April. http://www.wipp.energy.gov/Special/AIB_WIPP%20Rad_Event%20Report_Phase%20II.pdf [Google Scholar]).

It noted how a June 2013 Energy Department assessment concluded that “in relation to the 3706 campaign [at Los Alamos], the team’s observation of work at times appeared harried.” But the DOE's coverage of 3706 was extremely limited. The campaign was mentioned zero times in the AIB’s 18-page Executive Summary. In the 394-page pdf document, the number 3706 appeared only ten times.
The campaign was left out of its “Conclusions and Judgments of Need” table. It was first broached in a short paragraph under “Relevant LANL and WIPP History” on Page 19 – the pdf’s 55th page. Casting the 3706 Campaign as an infrequently mentioned sideline item, the AIB failed to identify it as a “local root,” “systemic root,” or “contributing” cause of the accident.

Had the Energy Department requested an independent investigation – one that included political analysts, behavioral economists, anthropologists, or sociologists – the 3706 Campaign’s crucial social, political and financial details would not have been treated as [mere] noise in the system, but rather as central to its analysis. This could have taught important lessons.

What is certain, though, is that in failing to grasp how the 3706 Campaign’s self-described “regulatory partnership” became a self-defeating regulatory breakdown, the Energy Department may not have learned difficult lessons that could, someday, help prevent similar accidents. It may pay the price for this in the future."

IT WON'T BE THE ENERGY DEPARTMENT'S PEOPLE IN HARM'S WAY NEXT TIME, NEXT DISASTER, NEXT 'ACCIDENT'.

THERE WILL BE A NEXT TIME...FOREVER.

THERE WILL ALWAYS BE COVER-UPS.

In 1951, when the general manager of the Eastman Kodak Company called the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to complain about high levels of radiation detected at the Kodak plant in Rochester, New York, during a snowstorm. Kodak executives were concerned that radiation could damage their film. The AEC confirmed that a nuclear test had taken place two days earlier in Nevada, and offered to send Kodak warnings before future tests, including maps predicting where the heaviest fallout would occur.

Meanwhile, the AEC failed to give any warning to farmers, families with children who would drink contaminated milk, or pregnant mothers — and instead released a statement to the Associated Press that “there is no possibility of harm to humans or animals.”

Other gross examples include the cover-up of the Kyshtym disaster by the US and the Soviet Union, and the failure to inform the general public of the Chernobyl crisis during the first three days that it was happening.

IN "SECRECY AND NUCLEAR POWER " WE  READ...
November, 1968, the Liberian freighter 'Scheersburg', was allegedly hijacked at sea and its cargo of 200 tons of uranium 'disappeared'.

EURATOM (the European community's 'nuclear agency') DID NOT REPORT THIS TO ANYONE FOR ALMOST A YEAR!
The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission was the last informed, December, 1969.
Mossad was named suspect in the hijack, but why would Israel hijack a shipment of ore that they could have easily purchased from France?

Why didn't the U.S.or other nations make a media circus of it at the time?
Complicity?  
Also in that issue of the Bulletin (pg. 38), read about the finding of a U.S. Senator in 1977 that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) covered up for at least a decade how impossible they found it to trace diversions of nuclear material from bulk handling facilities. That investigation also uncovered evidence of how American and European governments assisted Pakistan in obtaining nuclear capability.  
In 1977, the New York Times offered its guess as to what happened regarding the Scheersburg.   
    
In yet another 'mystery of missing nuclear material', there is NUMEC.

From the website 'Foreign Policy', March, 2015: 
The Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC), located in Apollo, Pennsyvania, just 33 miles down the road from Pittsburgh, was the site at which the Westinghouse Corporation had helped construct the world’s first nuclear submarine, and in Apollo, NUMEC consequently manufactured the requisite nuclear fuel.
NUMEC closed its doors in 1983, and in the mid-1990s, the federal government swooped in and declared several city blocks contaminated.
Various agencies rolled in with bulldozers, razed the plant, and carted off the radioactive pieces, barrel by barrel, for disposal.
Ever since, Apollo’s residents have been grappling with fears that NUMEC poisoned their town. 

Beginning in the early 1960s, investigators from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the agency that regulated U.S. nuclear facilities at the time, began to question how large amounts of highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium had gone missing from NUMEC in Apollo.
Between 1952 and 1968, lax standards at 20 of the country’s commercial nuclear sites resulted in an apparent loss of 995 kilograms (2,194 pounds) of uranium-235.

But investigators found that at NUMEC, hundreds of pounds went missing, more than at any other plant.

Fifty years after investigations began—they have involved, at various times, the AEC and its successors, Congress, the FBI, the CIA, and other government agencies—NUMEC remains one of the most confounding puzzles of the nuclear era.

The residents of Apollo have suffered from various cancers: lung, thyroid, prostate, brain. They have argued that years of radiation soaking into their soil, air, water, clothes, and homes had led to their afflictions. To date, owners of the NUMEC property have shelled out tens of millions of dollars in compensation to locals who’ve filed suit.  

After all those years, suddenly one day in September 2011, several SUVs, with blue U.S. Homeland Security decals emblazoned on their sides stationed armed men on the road just five miles north, in Parks Township.
In Parks, PA, a second NUMEC facility had produced plutonium starting in 1960, but it also had served another purpose: nuclear disposal.
From 1961 to 1970, the corporation dug at least 10 shallow trenches, spread across about 44 acres, into which it dumped radioactive waste; some locals speculate that other companies around the country shipped their waste to Parks to be buried too.

Although the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) had been put in charge of cleaning up the site in 2002, under congressional authorization, the process didn’t begin until almost a decade later—right before the madness on the road into Parks.

The following year, the USACE uncovered an unexpected variety of “complex” radioactive contaminants in the ground, but it didn’t say what all it had found or how much of it.
In a December 2014 report, the USACE noted that among the contaminants it expects to find are several “radionuclides of concern,” including americium-241, radium-228, uranium-235, and various types of plutonium, which, under the right conditions, could be used as ingredients for a dirty bomb.
It seems the material buried at Parks is more dangerous than anyone had previously imagined. 
The USACE immediately ceased the excavation and established a 24-hour patrolled security perimeter that’s still in effect today."

Just 6 years ago headlines blared the reality of lax security again at Oak Ridge...

"Nuclear site ends security contract following nun's break-in | Reuters"

"The government’s “Fort Knox” of weapons-grade uranium storage has ended a contract with a unit of an international security firm two months after an 82-year-old nun and other nuclear activists broke into the site." 

THERE ARE NO REAL 'SAFEGUARDS' FOR NUCLEAR ENERGY OR WEAPONS...THAT IS A LIE, A MYTH USED TO PERSUADE A GULLIBLE PUBLIC THAT EVERYTHING NUCLEAR IS 'SAFE'.

THE CIA's PART IN ONGOING AND PAST COVER-UPS REGARDING NUCLEAR WEAPONS CAPABILITY OF SEVERAL OTHER NATIONS WAS ALSO REVEALED IN 1978 BY A CIA CLERICAL ERROR.

THE DIRECTOR OF THE DIVISION OF SAFEGUARDS WAS BUSTED IN A BLATANT LIE, THAT ALL U.S. 15 WEAPONS FACILITIES HANDLING NUCLEAR MATERIAL WERE SAFE.

THE TRUTH WAS THAT NINE OF THE 15 HAD BEEN CLEARLY FOUND TO BE NOT SECURE AND COULD EASILY BE BREACHED BY MEN ARMED WITH MERE HANDGUNS.

THIS DID NOT STOP CONGRESS FROM THEN RULING THAT 'IMPROVEMENTS TO SECURITY HAVE BEEN MADE AT ALL SITES AND SO EMERGENCY SAFEGUARDS ARE UNWARRANTED".

As the authors stated, all that it reported in that entire issue on SECRECY within the nuclear industry merely scratched the tip of the iceberg of coverups and deceptions.

HOW BIG IS THAT ICEBERG?
WE MAY NEVER KNOW.






_______________________________

FURTHER READING: 

-- Unheeded cybersecurity threat leaves nuclear power stations open to attack...

There has been a rising number of security breaches at nuclear power plants over the past few years, according to a new Chatham House report which highlights how important systems at plants were not properly secured or isolated from the internet.


-- US Nuclear Weapons Site in Europe Breached


-- Report finds many nuclear power plant systems “insecure by design


-- Nuclear Plant Leak Threatens Drinking Water Wells in Florida


//WW

FUKUSHIMA MAYOR DEAD FROM CANCER. MOST POWERFUL INTERVIEW OF THE DECADE.

This map, above, made in 2015, shows the number of radioactive mushrooms detected. Namie has the highest number, and Nihonmatsu has the second. Evacuation to Nihonmatsu didn’t necessarily guarantee evacuees safety.   See here. 



Tamotsu Baba, mayor of Namie in Fukushima Prefecture, at a 2014 keynote address in Fukushima, Japan.  



A photo from an interview that appeared in print July 4, 2017.

A notable difference in appearance from 2014, especially in his skin.
He had been evacuated from Namie in 2011 but had returned in April, 2017.

THIS INTERVIEW IS OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE FOR ALL TO READ WHO THINK EVERYTHING IS 'JUST FINE' IN FUKUSHIMA.
IT IS NOT 'FINE', IT IS HOPELESS AND THE RADIATION IS UNENDING.
THIS MAN DIED HOPING TO SAVE A TOWN, BUT HE KNEW THAT ANY WHO RETURNED WOULD LIKELY DIE FROM IT, AS HE DID.

In that article, it was noted that "Namie is located just 11.2 km (almost 7 miles) from the nuclear power plants, and that it took four days from the explosion of the power plants before Tokyo issued an evacuation order.
FOR FOUR DAYS, RESIDENTS WERE EXPOSED TO VERY HIGH LEVELS OF RADIATION.
The government’s belated order was consonant with its decision to withhold information on radiation levels provided by SPEEDI (System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information) in order to avoid “public panic.”

Consequently, many residents of Namie as well as other neighboring villages and towns were exposed to high radiation.

[H]is [Baba] slogan, “Save the Town,” has invited criticism as it seems oblivious to the fact that most residents have no intention to return and, moreover, encouraging people to do so is likely to risk their health and livelihood.
The interview suggests an insoluble tension between Mr. Baba’s urge to save his beloved hometown and his awareness of the risks entailed – the “save the town” policy’s potential danger of prioritizing the welfare of the community over individuals’ health and lives.

From that interview:
Hirano: How many people or households have actually returned since then?

Baba: As of May 31st, 2017 165 households–234 people–have come back.2 This is only 1% of the former residents, which is very disappointing. But I have a feeling that as time passes, more people will return, since I’ve started seeing some residents beginning to repair their homes or beginning to build new ones here and there.

Hirano: I heard that evacuees from Fukushima Prefecture, particularly young married couples or families with children, tend not to return because of the risks associated with radiation exposure. Do you see the same tendency in Namie?

Baba: I think so. In fact, most of the returnees are elderly people.

Hirano: As mayor, do you have any concerns that bringing people back might increase the risk of internal radiation exposure, especially among children and young people? For example, in Chernobyl, the 30 km exclusion zone is still in place to this day, but in Fukushima, residents’ return is being promoted even in areas within 20 km of the nuclear plant. Since there is a limit to what can be achieved through decontamination, I would be concerned that the increased possibility of internal exposure poses a serious problem to residents.

Baba: I cannot say there is no risk, but a personal dosimeter has been distributed to everyone, and we closely monitor the residents’ health. The town officials also have been taking responsibility for measuring the radiation in food.

Hirano: I’d like to ask about the risks and concerns about contaminated soil and radioactive waste disposal. The government has been taking the lead in decontamination efforts. However, there are still areas where the air dose rate has not gone down to previous levels or where we still detect radioactive hot spots.4 How have you been communicating with the central government about these problems? For example, asking to speed up the decontamination operations, or to work more efficiently?

Baba: First of all, at the time the government let this accident happen, they declared that the radiation dose in the air would be reduced to under 1mSv annually, so we have been asking them to continue with decontamination work until it goes down to that number. So there is continuing decontamination work in areas with higher doses, and we have been strongly urging the government to make every effort to lower the dose below 1mSv.

Amaya: So you have been asking the government to do their job, but do you think the decontamination efforts have actually been making adequate progress in Namie?

Baba: Well, we have to realize there are many acres of land to cover, so although it has not progressed as we hoped, no matter how long it takes, there will be no change of plan. I will continue to urge the government to keep decontaminating until the radiation level goes down to 1mSv or less, as they promised.

...In order to make it happen, however, it is necessary to reduce the radiation level through decontamination work. The central government has set 3.8 microSv/h as the standard.

Hirano: Actually that standard is 20 times higher than what was originally determined by law, isn’t it? In fact, it is a standard that is applied only to Fukushima in entire Japan. Some experts claim that there is no such thing as an absolutely safe standard - that the best thing is to avoid radiation exposure as much as possible, especially internal exposure. What do you think about those views? 

Baba: It would be a lie if I said that I am not concerned about it. But as long as the central government responsibly asserts that it is safe, we have no choice but to believe what they say and proceed with reconstruction.

Hirano: I’d like you to tell us about the reactor decommissioning. It is said that it would probably take at least 30 to 40 years to complete the decommissioning. First, what are your thoughts on that?

And second, there is a potential risk that a nuclear accident could occur during the decommissioning work. I expect it would cause tremendous anxiety to the residents of the town if that should happen. Also, this potential risk might affect the decision of some former residents to return. Do you have any specific plans or measures to handle the situation in the event of an accident?  

Baba: Alright. Well, to put it simply, they have set a goal to complete the decommissioning work in 30 or 40 years. However, judging from the current situation, I have to say it is an open question whether that goal can be met. I believe that TEPCO and the central government should set forth a policy that puts safety and security first.

It’s already been six years since the accident, but they haven’t figured out how to remove the debris. Not only that, also they haven’t decided on where to store the debris and what to do with it afterwards. So there is a serious question about bringing residents back to town.

On the other hand, is it all right to just leave things as they are? That’s related to the question of whether people can come back to such a dangerous place. Decommissioning has to be done right so that we can provide residents with a safe place to live in the future. Simply put, we want the central government and TEPCO to restore our land to its original condition. That is the direction I am pursuing.

Actually I sometimes have a nightmare that during the decommissioning work, something accidentally collides with the debris and radiation gets released outside again.
When I think about how to evacuate the residents, I am terrified.

Therefore, we really need to review the nuclear disaster readiness plans to make sure that residents who already came back and those who will return, will be able to evacuate safely in the event of an accident. We need to plan ahead about how to proceed with the evacuation and how to provide adequate care at evacuation sites, things like supplies of food and clothing, including how and where to get these items. In addition, in order to protect ourselves in the event of an unexpected radiation accident, we need to have a shelter made of concrete in Namie, so I would like to prepare that as well.

Amaya: Speaking of dealing with radioactive waste, Chernobyl built a concrete shield, the so-called sarcophagus, to cover the destroyed reactor, which locks in radioactive material safely for a relatively long period of time. If it is determined that the removal of waste is too risky and that shielding is the only way to handle the situation, would you as mayor accept the decision? 

Baba: Well, constructing a sarcophagus means locking the radioactive material inside, but I am not sure if that’s actually possible. That would turn this town into a final disposal site. In that case, I wonder if people would actually be able to live here, to lead a normal, human life in such an environment. So I think we have to get the dangerous material removed, that this is necessary for humans to go about the business of being human.

If I were to accept the construction of sarcophagi, I would have to ask the central government to relocate our entire town just as occurred in Chernobyl. It means that no one would be allowed to live within 30 kilometers anymore and that were told to live somewhere else.

If that had been the plan from the beginning, I think it might have worked out, but I’d have to say, don’t come to me now with such a request.

Amaya: After six years have passed.

Baba: That’s right. It’s too late now.

Amaya: It would be hard to have people coming back and then say, sorry, it’s not going to work.

Baba: Exactly. I have a hard time accepting it. But in fact, however, I know some people who want to return are still questioning whether it’s possible to come back to such a dangerous place, so in that sense I might be contradicting myself a little.

The bottom line is that I want to borrow wisdom and skill from around the world and have the danger removed. But the technology is just not advanced enough for that job, so I know it won’t be easy. All I can do is trust what they’re doing. The decontamination workers here have been working so hard for us.

Hirano: A TEPCO top executive said he felt extremely sorry about the communities being completely destroyed by the nuclear disaster. He said TEPCO also admits its responsibilities. On the other hand, however, he said he is not convinced that we should stop the operation of nuclear power plants right now when it comes to future energy needs in Japan. He believes people still need nuclear energy. I think this is still the dominant opinion within TEPCO. What are your thoughts on this?

Baba: I don’t believe we need nuclear power plants any more. We learned the lesson from this disaster that what matters most is the safety and security of our people, not things like energy policy.

The people of Fukushima also agree that nuclear reactors must be shut down, that the No. 2 Nuclear Power Plant should be decommissioned. The Fukushima Prefectural Government and all municipal assemblies have submitted a request to decommission all reactors in the prefecture.

I believe we will be fine without nuclear power. I can say that because if you followed the energy situation in March of 2011 right after the accident when all the reactors were shut down, it even looked like we had an energy surplus. It’s not all about nuclear. I believe we’ll be fine using renewables.  

Hirano: Even among people who promote renewable energy, some argue that local governments, nuclear power plants and electric companies can coexist as long as they can prevent that mistake from ever happening again.
What do you think about this assumption?

Baba: That is based on the principle of expecting the unexpected. We just had the first trial of the Criminal Prosecution of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster.6 We just had the opening session of the criminal proceedings on the Fukushima Nucelar Disaster. We know, from the materials filed for the complaint, that it was possible for TEPCO to anticipate a giant tsunami. Seismologists brought in by TEPCO had already warned them of such a possibility in 2008 or 2009.

Did they or did they not know this sort of thing? It’s their criminal liability that will be examined in this trial. I’m not sure if they simply ignored the warning or how they dealt with it, but I think more internal documents will be revealed in the course of the trial.

So, they obviously didn’t do anything about it, even though such predictions had been made. You can’t call this an example of expecting the unexpected, since a giant tsunami had in fact been anticipated. I believe there were various methods they could have taken to prevent the disaster. For instance, they could have made a backup system to avoid a tsunami-induced station blackout; they could have moved the power facility to a higher location; or they could have raised the height of the seawall a bit.

They did none of that, then later they claimed that it was simply a natural disaster and that it was not their fault. This is unacceptable. There are people among the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) who say it was a human-made disaster. I also believe that it was a human-made disaster.

In fact, I can say human error was clearly involved. One reason is that there were other places where these human errors didn’t occur. The Fukushima No. 2 nuclear plant managed to escape the disaster through manual venting, despite the fact that the plant suffered severe damage. But the thing is that the No. 2 Plant is located at a higher elevation than the No. 1 Plant, which sits almost at sea level. Therefore, TEPCO should have moved the power supply of the No. 1 Plant to somewhere higher to avoid damage from a tsunami.
Or they should have thought of ways to protect the backup power supply and the reactors’ cooling systems in case of tsunami-induced flooding.

Another reason why I believe it was human error is that we learned from a NAIIC report that the piping of the cooling system had already been cracked and damaged by the earthquake before the tsunami hit. If so, the reactors would have been heating up even before the tsunami arrived, because cooling water had not been getting to the reactor core through the damaged pipes. And this situation eventually led to the hydrogen explosion.
This was definitely human error, there is no doubt about it.

Kawano: Did you have any opportunities to learn about or discuss the risks that nuclear power plants might pose at the local level before 3.11? In other words, were Namie residents, including town officials, informed about what kind of impact a nuclear accident could bring before the accident?

Baba: No. Unfortunately, I used to be an advocate of nuclear power.
I regret it deeply.
I used to believe that it made sense to generate electricity by nuclear power.
The reason is that all explanations I received from the central government and TEPCO were biased by the safety myth that Japan’s nuclear power plants were absolutely safe. The core of the safety myth is its redundant fail-safe system.
We were told how their dual system would work to prevent a serious accident. For example, if X occurs, then Y will work, and if Y doesn’t work, then Z will kick in. They explained it to us very believably, and I took their words on trust. In fact, that is what the central government and TEPCO have been doing in order to build nuclear power plants.

I was completely immersed in the safety myth. So I remember my mind going completely blank when the accident occurred. I was facing something that I had never imagined. What?! Nuclear power lets this kind of thing happen? I thought.
It had never occurred to me that such an accident could occur.

Hirano: They can interpret “individual circumstance” anyway they want, can’t they? That is the same idea as “voluntary evacuation.” For example, residents outside the evacuation zone of 20 km radius of the nuclear plant are all regarded as “voluntary” rather than as “mandatory” evacuees. As a result, they were not eligible for compensation even though some of the residents’ houses were located in so-called hot spots (where the radiation exceeds even the exceptional reference value of 20 μSv, the standard that applied only to Fukushima after 3.11.) That created a lot of problems and I think this “individual circumstance” talk might be the same.

Baba: Exactly. They can interpret it anyway they want.

Hirano: You have been in touch with the victims and former residents. Is there something concrete you would single out for compensation or assistance from your observation of their lives?

Baba: Well, I’d have to say first, all their livelihoods are gone. Also, their neighbors are gone. It’s now been three months since I came back to Namie, after six years of evacuation, but I don’t have any neighbors, so I have no one to talk to. So that kind of communication has been lost. I can’t assign monetary value to what we’ve lost, but I never thought that I would end up having such a miserable life.

When it comes to expressing it in monetary terms, I definitely think that compensation should match our mental anguish. That is what the people in Namie think these days.

People in Namie often tell officials from TEPCO and the central government at residents’ briefing sessions, “You people are from the outside. Why don’t you try living in evacuation shelters! You might live in Tokyo now, but how would you feel if you were forced to live in, say, Nihonmatsu where Namie residents were forced to relocate. And for six years.”

We have our ancestors’ graves here in town, and everyone visits their family graves. If the town is gone, they cannot even pay their ancestors a visit. Even though they might live somewhere else, I would like to restore the town to an environment where they can pay their ancestors a visit.

Let me tell you, there was in fact an unofficial government plan at the time of the accident to relocate the entire town to another place. This town isn’t habitable any more. Please look for another place and move the town. There was that kind of thinking. However, after considering various factors, the government changed their policy from relocation to reconstruction.  

Hirano: Did the central government ever explain why it gave up the idea of relocating the entire town of Namie?

Baba: No, because it was not an official plan, there was no explanation given to us.

[END INTERVIEW]


While one of the original articles announcing his resignation due to cancer treatment, published just 16 days ago, has been deleted, thanks to the Internet's 'Wayback Machine', we can read it in the original Japanese <HERE>.

The first paragraph translates to
"Mayor Baba in Namie Town is currently hospitalized in a hospital in Fukushima City for the treatment of cancer and submitted a request for resignation to the town council on the 13th."

The last paragraph also saddened me:
"A 60-year-old woman [I talked with] who lives in the town also said, "In the past seven years, I have repeatedly hospitalized and discharged, but I work hard for Namie Town, and I got my eyes on the appearance that I worked hard and now I want you to take care of my body."

I learned yesterday that Tamotsu Baba, mayor of the town of Namie in Fukushima Prefecture since 2007, had died in hospital, succumbing to gastric cancer, which he was diagnosed with and extensively treated for last year.
He was only 69 years old.
He had resigned his office on June 13 and passed away on June 28.

He was a staunch supporter of Shinzo Abe's determination to force evacuees back to the Fukushima Prefecture before the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, BUT he also recognized the real danger of returning residents to these areas that can NEVER be properly decontaminated, areas that are RE-contaminated every single day.

His specific illness and the cause of his demise has hardly been reported in Japanese mainstream media.
NOTHING was mentioned of a link to radiation from the nearby highly radioactive Dai'ichi Nuclear Facility to his specific cancer, but he surely had thought of that when diagnosed?

Though he had advocated, actually pushed, for a return of evacuees to the still-radioactive towns in that prefecture, he readily admitted the many hazards to those who did so.

Some will say it isn't provable that this cancer was indeed the result of long-term exposure to the Fukushima meltdowns and continuing very high levels of radiation emanating from that source.

We don't know how much radiation he was initially exposed to,or for how long, if he was consuming food from that prefecture, if he drank from local wells, etc.
We don't know much about anything over there because mainstream media is, perhaps reasonably so, still afraid to publish anything that links deaths and upsurge of cancers in Japan to Fukushima.

We must remember Abe's gag order back in 2013, not only on the press, but applied to physicians, hospital staff, public officials, private citizens, scientists and college professors.
"Public officials and private citizens who leak "special state secrets" face prison terms of up to 10 years, while journalists who seek to obtain the classified information could get up to five years."
To imagine that order has been fully rescinded, IN TOTO or in FACT, is to assume too much.
The Olympics in Tokyo must go on!
The gag order marked a return to the days of prewar and wartime Japanese militarism, when the state used the Peace Preservation Act to arrest and imprison political opponents, many said.

"It is a threat to democracy," said Keiichi Kiriyama, an editorial writer for the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper, adding that the legislation would "have a chilling effect on public servants, who could become wary about giving the information" to journalists.

The secrecy bill's hasty passage through the lower house [was] marked by noisy public demonstrations and opposition from journalists, lawyers, politicians, academics and scientists, as well as film directors and manga artists concerned about freedom of expression.

They say the prospect of prison terms will deter whistleblowers from leaking sensitive or embarrassing information in the public interest, and journalists from trying to obtain it."


FUKUSHIMA IS NOT OVER!

THIS MAN, BABA'S LIFE IS OVER, AND PERHAPS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF JAPANESE PEOPLE WILL DIE JUST AS HE DID, WITH THE FACTS BEHIND THEIR DEMISE JUST AS SECRETIVE AND HIDDEN BY THE PRESS AS HIS WAS.
TEPCO IS ONCE AGAIN STALLING AS TO THE REMOTE POSSIBILITY OF ANY REAL "CLEAN-UP" OF THE DAI'ICHI PLANT.

NO ONE IN THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY OR IN OTHER NATIONS' GOVERNMENTS ARE PUSHING THEM FOR INTERVENTION, TO TAKE AWAY FROM THEM THIS NEEDFUL PROCESS TO STOP THE RADIATION, TO SAVE AS MANY AS WE CAN.
NO ONE IS LOOKING OUT FOR THE MILLIONS WHO MIGHT ATTEND THE OLYMPICS THERE, WHO WILL OR HAVE VISITED JAPAN SINCE THE RADIATION WAS INITIALLY RELEASED.

IT'S STILL PROFIT$ OVER THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIVES.
SOMEONE, SOMEHOW, MUST TEACH ABE AND THE HEARTLESS NUCLEAR ENERGY INDUSTRY TO VALUE HUMAN LIVES ABOVE ALL ELSE!

WE MAY NEVER KNOW HOW MANY HAVE DIED, ARE DYING TODAY, WILL DIE IN THE FUTURE BECAUSE OF THIS PREVENTABLE DISASTER, BUT, BY ALL THE GODS, WE SHOULD DEMAND THEIR ACCOUNTABILITY!

IF ALL WHO WORK FOR THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY HAD TO LIVE RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO THESE NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS, WE'D SEE CHANGES AND SAFETY POLICIES REVISED SO FAST IT WOULD BLOW OUR MINDS.





___________________________________________

FROM THE INTERVIEW WITH BABA, THE AUTHORS' NOTES, ETC.


Namie Mayor Baba Tamotsu interviewed by Katsuya Hirano with Yoshihiro Amaya and Yoh Kawano at Namie town hall, July 4th, 2017. Introduction by Katsuya Hirano, Transcription and translation by Akiko Anson


Related articles:
Arai Takako, Disaster Poetry from Ōfunato, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 15, Issue 2 No 5, Jan 15, 2017


Robert Stolz, A Much Greater Event Has Already Taken Place, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 14 Issue 6 No 1, Mar 15, 2016


David McNeill and Paul Jobin, Japan’s 3.11 Triple Disaster: Introduction to a Special Issue 特集　3.11 The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 12, Issue 7 No 1 Feb 16, 2014


Oguma Eiji, Nobody Dies in a Ghost Town: Path Dependence in Japan's 3.11 Disaster and Reconstruction, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 11, Issue 44, No 1 Nov 3, 2013

Other interviews on the Fukushima nuclear disaster by Hirano can be found here.


Notes:
 
The tsunami caused by a magnitude 9 earthquake killed almost 19,000 people along the northeast coast of Japan, and triggered meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plants. The accident forced more than 150,000 people living near the plant to evacuate in order to avoid radiation exposure. On April 1 2017, the government of Prime Minster Abe Shinzo lifted the evacuation order, enacting the “return policy” based on the claim that decontamination had successfully removed radioactive contaminants from major areas that had been designated as evacuation zones. The measure used to make this claim is 3.8 microSv/h or 20 microSv/y, which is 20 times higher than the international standard, which still applies to the rest of Japan. Despite the government’s push for its “return policy,” the majority of former residents of the affected areas have no intention to return. For details see my interview with Suzuki Yūichi.
 
According to the homepage of Namie township website, as of August 2017, 254 households – 362 people – have returned. Two gas stations, two convenience stores, and two local banks have (re)-opened. How such a small population could sustain them is unclear. Suzuki Yūichi in the aforementioned interview expresses his skepticism.
 
Minami Soma City and its neighboring towns including Namie have been working with universities and companies that manufacture robotics as part of their plans to revitalize Fukushima’s industries. The area was known as a hub for innovation in robotics prior to the disaster, and now they are trying to restore its central role in robotics initiatives.


See my interview with Yūichi Suzuki.
 
See Hiroaki Koide’s point in my interview with him. Koide makes it clear that there is no absolute standard that guarantees “safe” exposure to radiation. Any radioactive exposure, especially internal exposure, poses some risk. It is best to minimize exposure. It is also clear that infants, young people, and pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to radioactive exposure.
The Japanese government’s evacuation plans never took this factor into consideration. It is worth noting that in Chernobyl 20mSv would still constitute a “no-go zone. ” The Japanese government has never rescinded the Declaration of a Nuclear Emergency Situation （原子力緊急事態宣言）, part of a law enacted in 1999. This law reflected ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection) "post-accident" period standards and took the upper end of that and seemingly made it applicable indefinitely.
I thank Norma Field for providing this important perspective on ICRP.

Apparently, Mr. Baba was confusing the Inquest with the actual criminal trial: only the opening session of the trial had taken place (June 30) at the time of the interview (July 4).
 
The first session of the trial of ex-Tepco chairman Katsumata Tsunehisa, 77, and former Vice Presidents Muto Sakae, 67, and Takekuro Ichiro, 71, who are charged with professional negligence resulting in death and injury, was held in June 2017.

The prosecutors charged that the TEPCO executives had been cognizant of the data and reports that a tsunami more than 10 meters high could cause a power outage and other serious consequences, yet they took no actions to remedy the situation.
For example, the prosecutors argued, the 2002 estimate by the government’s Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion indicated that there was a 20 percent chance of a magnitude 8 earthquake striking off Fukushima within 30 years.
The Complainants for the Criminal Prosecution of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, the citizen’s group consisting mainly of victims of the triple meltdown in 2011, had been working hard to have prosecutors accept their criminal complaints sine June 2012, but it was not until July 2015 that indictment of the three former executives was filed.

Residents of Fukushima and people of other prefectures have filed criminal complains against more than 50 policymakers and TEPCO officials since 2012. See more details in my interview with Mutō Ruiko, Norma Field’s essay, the website of the Complainants, and Tomomi Yamaguchi and Mutō Ruiko.


Joel Rheuben and Luke Nottage write: “As early as April 2011 TEPCO began to make provisional compensation payments of up to JPY 1 million (just over USD 10,000) to evacuees, to be supplemented by full payments once the company’s compensation scheme was in place.
At the same time, the national government began making provisional payments to affected small and medium-sized businesses in the region, particularly in the tourism sector. In accordance with the Nuclear Damage Compensation Law, the government also established an expert “Dispute Reconciliation Committee for Nuclear Damage Compensation” (the “Dispute Reconciliation Committee”) under MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology) to create a set of non-binding guidelines to inform payment amounts.
The Dispute Reconciliation Committee issued interim guidelines in August 2011.” For more information about the Dispute Reconciliation Committee and its subsidiary the Dispute Resolution Center, see here.
 
For the economic impact that TEPCO brought to Namie through the nuclear plants and how that was linked to the creation of nuclear “safety myth,” see my interview with Suzuki.




//WW