FUKUSHIMA CLEANUP HAS NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS SAYS JAPANESE MINISTER

Tamayo Marukawa, the Japanese Minister of Environment, was in the spotlight last week after claiming that the government’s long-term goal for reducing radioactive contamination of areas affected by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster was decided “without any scientific grounds”.
She was quoted after a speech in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture by the Nagano-based Shinano Mainichi Shimbun news.

BUT THEN, SHE DENIED MAKING THAT STATEMENT TO THE PRESS....OOOPS!

She said she felt “misquoted” by the newspaper, though she added: “I would like to apologize for not expressing my views clearly enough.” 

AS BLOOMBERG REPORTED 2 DAYS AGO:
According to a report from the Shinano Mainichi, a regional newspaper, Marukawa questioned the basis of the government’s long-term goal for reducing additional radiation levels near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant to an annual dose of 1 millisievert or less. Some areas near the Fukushima plant exceed an annual dose of 20 millisieverts, according to the latest data compiled by the Environment Ministry.
Despite apologizing and withdrawing the comments, Abe’s opponents in parliament this week demanded that Marukawa, 45, a former television news anchor turned upper house lawmaker, resign from cabinet.

ABE CLAIMS TO HAVE DONE WHAT RUSSIA'S GREATEST MINDS COULD NOT EVEN IMAGINE DOING.
ABE OBVIOUSLY DECIDED TO CONTAMINATE AN ENTIRE PLANET RATHER THAN DO THE RIGHT THING.

Within months of the accident, Tokyo was already drawing up plans to clean up an entire countryside polluted by invisible contaminants, something even the central planners of the former Soviet Union could not accomplish around Chernobyl, after the disaster there in 1986.

CHERNOBYL WAS BURIED, FUKUSHIMA'S DAIICHI PLANT IS WIDE OPEN AND LEAKING RADIATION ANEW EVERY SINGLE DAY, ALL DAY.

Historically speaking, Japan's ruling party and the Abe government in particular, always underestimate the harm of radiation contamination in order to defend profit for the nuclear industry.

[THEN THEY GET BUSTED FOR LYING AND HAVE TO TELL NEW LIES TO COVER UP THE OLD ONE.]

"Last week the Asahi Shimbun reported on the relationship between Japan’s larger corporations and the Liberal Democratic Party. Since regaining power in 2012, the LDP announced it would cut corporate taxes at rates that are twice those proposed by the previous Democratic Party of Japan government, and in 2014 the LDP received ¥1.4 billion in corporate donations — or double the amount the DPJ received during the last year of its brief tenure as ruling party."

AFTER ALL, THE GOVERNMENT OWNS JUST OVER HALF OF TEPCO, THE DO-NOTHING BUMBLER THAT HAS ALLOWED RADIOACTIVE FALLOUT AND CONTAMINATION OF GROUND AND OCEAN WATER FOR FIVE LONG YEARS NOW.

HERE'S HOW THAT HAPPENED:

 July 4, 2011:
– The Mainichi Daily reports a secret government bailout plan would nationalize TEPCO’s nuclear operations.
The plan would require TEPCO to sell off its power distribution assets and turn over its nuclear operations to the government.  The utility would be allowed to keep its thermal generation business.

August 29, 2011 – Japan elects Yoshihiko Noda as Prime Minister. 
Noda, formerly Japan’s Minister of Finance replaces Naoto Kan who has been critical of TEPCO and has been criticized for his handling of the crises at Fukushima following the tsunami and nuclear accident. 

January 25 – Reuters reports that TEPCO will agree to a government takeover as part of a $13 billion bailout plan.  Although TEPCO has tried to resist a government takeover, it is inevitable given the government’s two-thirds stake as a result of the massive financial infusion.  TEPCO is reported to be drafting a corporate restructuring plan that includes requesting additional funding through creditor financing.

April 27 – Dow Jones reports that TEPCO filed a plan in which it would sell controlling shares of the utility to the government in exchange for ¥1 trillion ($12.5 billion) in capital.  The plan includes resignation of TEPCO’s CEO Tsunehisa Katsumata and President Toshio Nishizawa.

May 8 – Government appoints new CEO and president to lead TEPCO.  Naomi Hirose, who was serving as managing director of the Fukushima disaster compensation fund is named president of TEPCO.  Kazuhiko Shimokobe, an experienced turn-around lawyer, was named CEO.

FIRMLY IN CONTROL, THE ABE REGIME THEN ESTABLISHED "LIMITED LIABILITY" OF TEPCO FOR DAMAGES, DEATH, ETC, FOR FUTURE CLAIMS BY JAPANESE CITIZENS ADVERSELY AFFECTED BY THE FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR SNAFU.

IT'S GOOD TO BE THE KING, RIGHT?

SO, THE ABE GOVERNMENT MUST HAVE HATED IT WHEN ONE OF ITS MINISTERS SPILLED THE BEANS ABOUT THE LUNACY OF THE CLEANUP IDEAS.

IT CAN'T BE CLEANED UP AS LONG AS IT'S STILL LEAKING LIKE A SIEVE INTO OUR ATMOSPHERE AND OCEAN!

The Abe government has strongly suppressed the sane and rational remarks by some of its most respected scientists and physicians regarding the seriousness of the Fukushima crisis and the ongoing pollution of the local residents, the environment, and the rest of the world.

He has even rejected offers from other nations to help stop the leaking.

" Japan under increasing pressure to accept outside nuclear help"
"Russia repeated an offer first made two years ago to help Japan clean up."
THE JAPANESE PEOPLE DON'T TRUST ABE OR TEPCO.
The New York Times reported on the unwillingness of Japanese people to go back to what they know are radioactive homes, resisting the "Abe Plan" to send all evacuees home by 2017. "Thousands from Iitate and elsewhere have joined lawsuits or organized groups to oppose the plan by the government, which they say is trying to force residents to go back despite radiation levels that are still far above normal. 

They accuse Tokyo of repeating a pattern from the early days of the disaster of putting residents at risk by trying to understate the danger from the accident. 

They say the central government is trying to achieve its own narrow political interests, such as restarting the nation’s powerful nuclear industry, or assuring the world that Tokyo is safe enough to host the Summer Olympics in 2020.

“If the national officials think it is so safe, then THEY should come and live here,” said Kenichi Hasegawa, a former dairy farmer in Iitate who has organized more than 3,000 fellow evacuees — almost half the village’s pre-disaster population — to oppose the return plan.

“The government just wants to proclaim that the nuclear accident is over, and shift attention to the Olympics.”

This grass-roots rebellion of sorts underscores a deep disconnect between victims in Fukushima and the government in Tokyo, a schism that has plagued Japan’s response to one of history’s worst nuclear disasters.

Polls show a majority do not even want to go back.
In a telling move in a country where litigation is relatively rare, more than 10,000 have joined some 20 class-action lawsuits to demand more compensation...

A survey last month by the pro-nuclear newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun showed that eight of the mayors of the 11 evacuated towns dislike the 2017 return date, though some said they had no choice but to accept it."

Abe just doesn't want ANYONE to talk about it...MIGHT HURT THE OLYMPICS TURNOUT IN JAPAN....MIGHT SCARE PEOPLE AWAY.

It was his party, his choice, that made it a crime for anyone to speak out against the government and/or to say that deaths and illnesses were and will be caused by Fukushima radiation.

Remember, in 2013, the Abe regime ruled that Fukushima radiation was a "state secret", not to be mentioned, period, the end.

The Guardian UK did a nice article on that <HERE>.


Japanese Nobel Prize for Literature nominee Haruki Murakami risked going to jail when he spoke out against the government's denial of its failure at Fukushima.
In an interview published in the Mainichi Shimbun, the 65-year-old author said: “No one has taken real responsibility for the 1945 war end or the 2011 Fukushima No. 1 nuclear accident. I feel so.

Sugenoya Akira, a physician who treated Chernobyl victims offered to give refuge to children exposed to radiation in Fukushima to protect them from the potential health risks.

JUST ASK THE PEOPLE THERE

"In Iitate, a small farming community once proclaimed one of the most beautiful villages in Japan before the accident, the narrow valleys are filled with workers scraping off the top two inches of soil, which is then put into black bags that are stacked into man-made hills.

[SPECIAL NOTE: TWO INCHES FALLS SHORT OF HOW FAR DOWN IT IS ADVISABLE TO DIG UP AND REMOVE SOIL...BUT WITH DAIICHI CONTINUALLY PUMPING OUT RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION, THEY'D HAVE TO DIG AND REMOVE SOIL FOR AS LONG AS THE PLANT SENDS OUT RADIATION.]  
And are trained workers doing the cleanup? 

NO...japan recruited its homeless population to dig soil]

Across the entire evacuation zone, workers, in 2015, had already filled 2.9 million bags, which will be stored for at least the next 30 years at toxic waste sites that the government is building inside the zone.

Even with the massive cleanup, only about one-fifth of the 6,200 displaced residents of Iitate are willing to return, according to a recent head count by village officials.

Most of the families with young children, who are at most risk from the radiation, have already restarted lives elsewhere, and express no intention of going back.

One of the village’s most vocal opponents of the return plan is Mr. Hasegawa, 62, whose distrust of the central government remains so deep that he visits his former dairy farm once a month to conduct his own measurements of radiation levels using a Geiger counter.

He says his results are consistently higher than those from government monitoring posts, and are not falling anywhere near quickly enough, despite the decontamination efforts, to allow him to restart his dairy farm within two years.

“Sending us back is just another ploy by officials to avoid taking responsibility for what happened,” said Mr. Hasegawa.

BINGO!
THE TRUTH!
GEIGER COUNTERS DON'T LIE LIKE GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS DO.

The mayor of Iitate, Norio Kanno, one of the return plan’s most fervent supporters,DISAGREES. He is the leading voice of the minority of villagers who feel the fears of radiation are overblown, and who want to return to their ancestral homes as soon as possible.

While Mr. Kanno ADMITS that farmers will probably NOT be allowed to grow food in Iitate for MANY years to come, he said the village was drawing up plans to help them switch to flowers and other crops not for human consumption.


[CROPS WOULD NOT BE FIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION BECAUSE OF ONGOING RADIATION EMANATING FROM THE NUKE PLANT AND BECAUSE RADIATION LEVELS IN THAT SOIL WILL BE TOO HIGH TO BE SAFE TO WALK ON, MUCH LESS GROW FOOD IN, FOR PERHAPS HUNDREDS OF YEARS. CLEARING JUST TWO INCHES OFF THE TOP OBVIOUSLY DID NOT HELP IITATE!]

He said he wanted to lead about 1,000 of the villagers most determined to go back. Once they show that the radiation levels are not SO harmful, he said, other residents will follow.

He said a quick return was the only way to save the village, more and more of whose residents EITHER DIE or move away with each year that passes."

WHAT ARE THEY DYING FROM?

What You Need to Know About Fukushima | BillMoyers.com

November 18, 2013
Many say Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), the Japanese utility company that operates the plant, has been grossly incompetent, deceptive and guilty of downplaying the health impacts resulting from the meltdown.

"From what we’ve seen, it’s more of what I’d call incompetence instead of any cover-up,” said Dale Klein, a former chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission who Tepco hired as an adviser.

AN AUTO MECHANIC IS WORKING ON THE PROBLEM!

The Associated Press and Japan Today reported this week that tanks containing radioactive water were leaking or otherwise failing because they were hurriedly erected by inexperienced workers — including one auto mechanic who expressed his concern about the quality of his own work.

“We should assume any tank could leak sooner or later,” said Toyoshi Fuketa, a Nuclear Regulation Authority commissioner and nuclear fuel expert."

Nuclear facilities in Japan lie near 14 active fault lines; Tepco’s Fukushima facilities are along five.

The Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) says the utilities are capable of withstanding another earthquake.
But last month, Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki expressed his fears that further damage to the Fukushima facility could prove catastrophic.

 “Three out of the four plants were destroyed in the earthquake and in the tsunami.
The fourth one has been so badly damaged that the fear is, if there’s another earthquake of a seven or above, that building will go and then all hell breaks loose.”

Both Tepco and the Japanese government have come under criticism for how they handled the disaster. “You have a government that is in total collusion with Tepco, the energy company. They’re lying through their teeth,” said Suzuki.
Of the attempts to stop the water from leaking, Suzuki said, “They don’t know what to do. And the thing we need is to get an international group of experts to go in with complete freedom to do what they suggest. And right now the Japanese government has too much pride to admit that.”

Fact checking Suzuki for Vice, David P. Ball contacted University of British Columbia physicist Marcello Pavan.

Asked whether Tepco was indeed “lying through their teeth,” Pavan said, “That is absolutely correct, at least from what I see. Tepco has been minimizing the effects of what is happening. But here we have a large industrial concern lying to the government about an accident related to its business — is that news?”

Former nuclear engineer Michael Friedlander says Tepco may be playing down the dangers of the operation. “The thing that keeps me up late at night is that they’re getting ready to unload the spent fuel in unit four,” said Friedlander, who spent 13 years operating US nuclear plants.
 “It has the potential if it doesn’t go well to create a very, very serious accident,” he told Bloomberg News.

"What is clear by now and can hardly be ignored is that Tepco is overwhelmed by the containmentwork in Fukushima," said Martin Schulz, a senior research fellow at Fujitsu Research Institute.

A CALL TO END NUCLEAR ENERGY IN JAPAN

Earlier this week, former Japanese Liberal Democratic Party Premier Junichiro Koizumi spoke out against plans to restart plants that had been declared safe. “I think we should go to zero now,” Koizumi said. “If we restart the reactors, all that will result is more nuclear waste.”
 
FORMER PRIME MINISTER NAOTO KAN HAS ALSO BEEN ADAMANT THAT JAPAN NEEDS TO CLOSE ALL ITS NUCLEAR FACILITIES.

 Kan made his case in January during a presentation at the UK's House of Commons.
Kan compared the potential worst-case devastation that could be caused by a nuclear power plant meltdown as tantamount only to "a great world war. Nothing else has the same impact."
Japan escaped such a dire fate during the Fukushima disaster, said Kan only "due to luck". But he is clearly haunted by the map his advisors showed him in the early days of the still unfolding triple meltdowns, one he screened for his London audience:


"I was shown this map with a 250km radius around Fukushima. An area home to 50 million people. One quarter of the country's population would have had to flee if all the fuel had escaped at Fukushima. We came that close. If 50 million people had had to evacuate Japan, as a state our very survival would have been questioned."

"Fukushima is a problem that must be separately resolved. So rather than leaving this solely to Tepco's responsibility, the government will take the initiative and get involved in dealing with the contaminated water and decommissioning to a significant extent," LDP Deputy Secretary General Koichi Haguida, a close aide to Abe, told Reuters in an interview.


[ONCE ABE DID "STEP IN" THINGS JUST WENT FROM BAD TO WORSE, AS WE HAVE SURELY SEEN THESE PAST 2 YEARS.]

Meanwhile, many of the 50,000 workers employed by subcontractors in the cleanup effort are being exposed to dangerous radiation levels while facing low wages and wage theft, reports Reuters.
For some, the cost of speaking up was getting fired.

FOR OTHERS, THE COST OF NOT SPEAKING UP HAS COST COUNTLESS LIVES AND LIVES WILL BE LOST IN THE FUTURE.

WHEN THE FULL EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE DONE BY THE ABE GOVERNMENT DRAGGING ITS FEET AND PRETENDING, EVEN DEMANDING ALL IS WELL, THEN IT WILL SIMPLY BE TOO LATE.

THE PEOPLE OF JAPAN DESERVE BETTER.
ALL OF US AFFECTED BY THIS CONTINUING DISASTER DESERVE BETTER.

NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO DIE JUST SO JAPAN CAN HOST THE OLYMPICS.





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~A VERY GOOD WEBSITE FOR KEEPING UP ON THIS UNENDING NIGHTMARE:

https://japansafety.wordpress.com/tag/nuclear-damage-compensation-and-decommissioning-facilitation-corp/