Governor Of Kyoto Makes Final Secret Arrangements For Radioactive Waste Incineration

Asahi Shimbun Japanese version reported that Yamada, the governor of Kyoto prefecture paid a secret visit to the small town of Kyotamba on March 28, in order to ask its mayor to accept incinerated radioactive waste and dispose of it, on the basis that the incinerator output would be better monitored there and that Kyotamba has 9 hectares of land as well as a river where to dump radioactive ashes. The mayor replied that he would think about the proposal positively, which is a way to acknowledge agreement provided that the brown envelope is fat enough.

Actual incineration would take place in undisclosed facilities in Kyoto prefecture, such as in Maizuru, Kyoto and Kameoka. Governor Yamada makes no secret about his plan to accept radioactive waste for incineration, but every move he makes towards its implementation is undemocratic and behind the scenes, a strategy also used by Goshi Hosono, the Minister of Environment who is pushing for nationwide spread of radioactive contamination.  (Updated on 2012/04/10)

Osaka Rejects Petition For Referendum On Nuclear Power

Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto formally rejected the 55,000 signed petition for a referendum on nuclear power yesterday as reported by Asahi Shimbun, on the grounds that he already asked KEPCO to study ways to phase out nuclear power in Kansai and because organising a referendum would be too costly – however, the same newspaper reported a month ago that Hashimoto “would rather live somewhere else than in this country [Japan]” than not setting up a referendum for what could arguably be a less urgent and life threatening topic, i.e. the pacifist constitution or the right to go to war.

Osaka is technically bankrupt and it could be heard that the city wants to save taxpayers’ money on a referendum, but this loses credibility when the same money is freely spent on another one, which is moreover just bound to make life more dangerous than it is already.

The reason behind this apparent lack of logic is simply that if Japan is allowed to change its pacifist constitution, then it will legally be able to manufacture a whole new range of weapons including mass destruction ones, without having to resort to complicated and less profitable arrangements such as the new joint weapon development agreement with the US. Osaka is on the verge of economic collapse and Hashimoto is promoting the views of companies such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which used to manufacture zero fighter planes during WW2, and is a major supplier in the Japanese nuclear, space and defense industries. It used to also be a worldwide leader in shipbuilding with shipyards in the city of Kobe for instance but Japan also lost that market to South Korea and China years ago.

As for Hashimoto’s real intentions (in Japanese, his “honne”), Survival Japan consulted a Japanese major newspaper reporter for insider analysis. It would be that Hashimoto and other politicians are sounding their electors’ reactions with such proposals in order to prepare their final proposal for the major elections this summer, as Hashimoto will very likely drop Osaka and apply for the position of Prime Minister. It is also for this reason that the radioactive waste incineration is not in the news of late: Hashimoto knows that this sensitive topic would affect adversely the election outcome, so they will probably not move forward with incineration in Osaka until after the summer. Autumn 2012 will probably see a renewed nuclear industry thrust as well as nationwide radioactive waste incineration – unless a revolution takes place or the whole Fukushima nuclear plant explodes (as everyone who has been following the status of the ongoing disaster knows, this is a serious threat with a pool full of nuclear fuel on the brink of collapsing at reactor no. 4 and the defective cooling of fuel in reactor no. 2 – every morning I wonder if it is still there and so is Tokyo).

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Kansai Denuclearization: For Real?

On 2012 March 19, The Asahi Shimbun reported that the “city of Osaka, the largest shareholder of Kansai Electric Power Co., will call on the utility to abolish all of its reactors “at the earliest possible time” and today, Mainichi Daily News commented that Osaka had “stirred ripples”. Articles are reproduced below. Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto’s suggestion to phase out of nuclear power, surely surprised KEPCO investors but also citizens for its unusual thoughtfulness.

Kansai is the western region of Japan where Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, Nara cities lie and, depending on definition, the nuclear power plant shore-lined prefecture of Fukui, where a 7.3 magnitude earthquake killed 1% of population and completely damaged 79% of buildings in 1948. Besides, prevalent winds blow from Fukui towards the huge drinking water Biwako reservoir and aforementioned Kansai cities. Under the radioactive fallout in case of such an earthquake would also be prefectures of Gifu and Aichi, an industrial heartland centered on Nagoya city, where Toyota, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Toray Industries (worldwide leader in the carbon fiber industry that should make Boeing Dreamliner fly someday) are based. A new powerful earthquake in Fukui would probably relegate Japan a few ladders down the economic rankings. Kansai is already under severe economic stress – it always was but for a brief decade of national euphoria called the “bubble”.

Since about 30 years ago, poor Japanese regions exchanged time and again their votes and security against subventions and nuclear power plants. Whenever subventions would dry up, they would agree for a new reactor building. Nowadays that these are idled and that subventions have run out, poor regions cannot start a new cycle and are pushing and being pulled to ramp up their radioactive waste “management” business. In the same vote buyout scheme as for nuclear power plants, over-sized incinerator plants have been built and left unused due to their capacity threshold being over the actual amount of waste. Poor prefectures now plan to upgrade these little used, dioxin-spitting facilities so that they could operate at a wider range of waste quantities and include some kind of filtering for radiation. This scheme represents a large economic boost promise in terms of construction work, which is the main employment outside large cities – and under the control of yakuza gangs, who request some sustained business to replace the drop in their recruiting services for nuclear plant workers.

Radioactive waste are largely above what is considered as “low-level waste” worldwide and its incineration in current facilities turn their prefecture into secondary radioactive sources, the primary being Fukushima, still emitting as of 2012 March 22, a year after. Current secondary radioactive sources include 23 wards in Tokyo, Tomakomai (Hokkaido) and Shimada (Shizuoka, where Japanese green tea comes from).

Many prefectures have requested to become secondary radioactive sources, including places where the transportation hazard, time and cost had prevented the Japanese government to push for it such as Okinawa. However, Okinawa is surviving only by the presence of the US army and its underlying economy is threatened by a possible redeployment in Japan, in Guam or elsewhere. Tourism has been declining since about 5 years ago in Okinawa and will not pick up when it will effectively become a secondary radioactive source. Food in supermarkets in Okinawa come from all over Japan as it does not produce much besides beef which become labeled “Kobe” beef after spending 1 year in that heavily industrialized city. Okinawa cows are rather skinny so it must be quite a terrible feeding process that turn them into extra-fatty meat one year later in Kobe warehouses. There have been some scandals of radioactive wood used to bake pizzas in Okinawa, schools have been forced by parents to cancel radioactive snowball gifts, some vegetation like mosses from irradiated areas have been planted in Okinawa, etc. Okinawa is not a nuclear-free land anymore: this concept does not apply to any Japanese territory anymore one year after the disaster. As an advice to nuclear refugees from the no man’s land, if you cannot leave Japan, it is safer to settle down in cities where you can work to sustain a healthier lifestyle, not necessarily to the far end of the archipelago where they have no job; no sense about radio-protection; no clean food choice – and where you will be stuck when they start incinerating radioactive waste.

How does the new denuclearization scheme fit in with the irradiated waste incineration plan and is it for real? Kansai is searching for ways to revitalize its broken economy and incineration is one leg. The other leg is nuclear decommissioning, a potentially profitable business. It takes 5 years for nuclear combustible to cool down, under active controlled systems (or not so controlled systems). Then the proper decommissioning operations begin (and probably never really end). As an actual example, if we look at Sellafield in the UK, a mere 2 square mile facility, the official planning states that decommissioning and closure of the site is planned for 2120 (right: 108 years from now). After this stage, management of radioactive materials is forever. Therefore, decommissioning of the 3 reactors in Mihama, 4 in Oi and 4 in Takahama – and maybe Monju / Tsuruga – all in Fukui prefecture and globally called the Nuclear Ginza, could create a 300 years business, not including the storage and monitoring of million-year long radioactive waste. It could easily give a job to anyone and sustain the local economy. Additional benefits would come from the development of health care – did we mention that Osaka was a biotech center ?

Japanese pharmaceutical companies had trouble to compete globally because their drugs are not properly tested and have resulted in accidents and because they lack innovation. However, in the grand Osaka renewal scheme of joint radioactive waste incineration and nuclear decommissioning, there would be plenty of test subjects and Japan would have an incomparable lead in radiation-induced diseases, even though they would not be marketed as such: auto-immune diseases such as the Kawasaki syndrome, pneumonia, heart attacks, leukemia and all sorts of cancers, or any other kinds of affections described by Pr. Bandazhevsky, even in children (sic).

How is it that decommissioning would make the population sick? Nuclear reactor decommissioning is a task forecast to take over 1 century in the case of Sellafield but nuclear projects always get behind schedule (Areva EPR project in Finland as a relevant example). As a rule of thumb, you can at least double the time (in the case for Olkiluoto, Finland, Areva started in 2005, due to be completed in 4 years – now maybe in 9 years, probably 12) and since it is impossible to rule out wars, economic depressions, natural disasters and social unrest over the period of a century, it could take 4 to 500 years to carry out. The probability of the job being properly done to the end is marginal and our grandchildren, if they ever live, will most likely have to deal with no man’s lands in every place there used to be a nuclear power plant in the 20th century. Working in a nuclear power plant make people sick, they have in Japan, as well documented, not only in Fukushima. Work ethics are shoddy here and tasks are carried out by the 6th level of untrained sub-contractors aka yakuza firms. Nuclear Ginza and other locations in Japan like Tokaimura and Genkai accumulate accidents and are regularly leaking radioactive material, not surprisingly. Now let us project this over the next 500 years for a large segment of society busy cleaning a mess and adding to it at the same time: everyone would get sick, even if Hosono, Noda and Edano, the devilish Trinity as it were, were not working so hard to distribute contaminated food over all the territory – which they are. Mutations get transmitted to people who are not involved in the multi-generational task, weakening the whole society. As a side-note, it is of course impossible to decommission Fukushima nuclear plant within 40 years: it will never be really clean, no matter the official whitewash.

Recently 2 Japanese researchers apologized because they had taken some bone-marrow samples from cancer patients during surgical operations without anybody knowing: with radiation-induced diseases, all Japanese medical researchers would be able to experiment, publish their results and test new drugs on unsuspecting patients. When the Japanese war criminal in charge for human live dissection and experimentation during the war became the head of the top medical institute in Tokyo and was never bothered except for a moment by the Chinese woman who recognized him, anything can happen. Unit 731, Masaji Kitano and Green Cross all over again. Kansai, with Nuclear Ginza, you invested in a future treasure trove for your biotech and pharmaceutical industry (sic) ! Just as some people do not get black humor, let us note here that we are being sarcastic and we do not wish this nightmarish scenario to happen, quite the contrary but we are at a loss as to how prevent it. Japan has yet to come to term with its dark past and its present shows that it is never far behind – humor is a way to get some relief in the terrible situation we are now, and black humor can be offensive. Current Japanese politics are just as offensive.

So it could be for real and it would be the least damaging, as the alternative would be to wait until the next great Fukui earthquake and a fireworks over Nuclear Ginza.

Another possibility is that Hashimoto does not really intend to denuclearize Kansai, but is only trying to gain more KEPCO shares, some financial compensation or a special investor status from KEPCO for Osaka city in exchange for a time extension, a percentage increase in nuclear-produced electricity or such compromise.

Whichever, the pain only begins.

Kansai Activists Tap Court To Block Japan Reactor Restart

This article published an hour ago is actually about Kansai and Fukui areas, even though AFP mentions Tokyo and shows a picture of the Diet.

My Own Private 3/11 Anniversary

Yesterday, I was in Osaka to commemorate Japan Meltdown Day, March 11. My plan was to join one of the protest events organized that day and which none of the English language newspapers mentioned. If you looked up Osaka in the news, you would probably hit some story about sumo. Some Japanese newspapers started to report more accurately the disastrous situation in which Japan is getting deeper everyday. However, their focus remains the No Man’s Land, i.e. Tokyo and North-East Japan, which incidentally is the raison d’etre of SurvivalJapan. Besides, this defiant attitude costs them to lose access to the government press club and a Japanese journalist friend of mine told me that this particular newspaper was on the verge of bankruptcy. This is Japan, not Singapore, but the press is not free to speak. It is a concern if the only newspaper that tries to speak out is about to shut down.

So I arrived late for events in Osaka yesterday and missed them. Ten thousands people were to gather in the morning at the large hall of the City Hall on Nakanoshima isle. In the afternoon, protesters marched along one of three different paths converging towards KEPCO headquarters, Midosuji and Nishi-Umeda. A foreign friend of mine who attended told me that the crowd was lively and angry at the government and utilities yet very friendly and enjoying themselves. Japanese information on this “Bye Bye Gempatsu (Nuclear Power) 3/11 Kansai 10,000 Protesters Event” is available on this website. I walked alone from Umeda to Nakanoshima Park and all trace of the meeting of 10,000 had disappeared.

I was hoping to catch up with the “humanError national 100,000 participants parade” after the incredibly spot-on recording by the Frying Dutchman near Kamogawa river and Sanjo St. in Kyoto, a group of Japanese artists. They show that not every Japanese youth is self-centered and disconnected from reality, they are the future of Japan if this country solidifies again – and if yakuza don’t kill them. Frying Dutchman sees right through the enemies of Japan and their non-violent message is ultimately about love. They were touring in Okinawa yesterday but were followed all over the country. Their website is available in English here and you can watch their video with English subtitles. Frying Dutchman’s message resonates so strongly in our hearts that it is impossible to watch without tears in our eyes, for us who live through this never-ending disaster. The video has been seen by more than 150,000 viewers on YouTube alone as of writing and is fast becoming viral. I am sad because I know that most people who have not experienced living in melted down Japan will not understand. Actually most of the foreigners still living in Japan chose to close their eyes and ears to their environment: it is so easy to ignore the evil spirit which now inhabits every bit of Japan. It will take the same human error again and again, in each country, like blind earthworms hit the electric wire time and again without understanding, until we are all burnt and eventually get a hint.

Bye Bye Nuclear Power March In Kyoto

A march of citizens against nuclear power and incineration of radioactive waste takes place today, 2012 March 10, in Kyoto. Japanese and foreign residents remain highly motivated as the Japanese government is renewing their efforts to promote the widespread burning and dumping of hazardous debris which contains, besides radioactive elements from the fallout, chemicals such asbestos from buildings swept away by the tsunami. It was revealed last week that plutonium was among the radionuclides found at mid-distance between Fukushima melted reactors and Tokyo.

Bye Bye "Gembatsu" (Nuclear Power) Kyoto - 2012 March 10

Renowned Professor Hiroaki Koide (小出裕章) gave a kick-off speech at 14 h. For those who, like me, missed it, or who read his name for the first time, please check him out on the Internet. On YouTube, for instance, we can see him testifying in the Diet, with this introduction :

“Koide Hiroaki:
[An assistant professor of “Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute”, a famous scholar of nuclear engineering. Graduated from Tohoku University, school of engineering in 1972 ]

Mr. Koide Hiroaki is a “Samurai” in the nuclear world. He has been struggling with gigantic nuclear conglomerate, for 40 years. Because of his anti nuclear activities, he has been ignored by government, scholars of nuclear, and industries. But after Fukushima, he became a symbol of Japanese conscience.
This video is an official document of his testimony at the Diet, concerning nuclear policies of Japan. He criticized national policies from the viewpoint of scientist. I attached English subtitles for announcing this to whole world.
Miki Shunji / Chief executive of MCRC “

In the following Asahi TV interview aired two days ago in “Morning Bird” programme, he explains with scientific authority to reporter Toru Tamakawa nothing less but the end of Tokyo in case a slight tremor shakes again reactor 4 in Fukushima nuclear plant, one time too many.

Protesters gathered in Maruyama park are good-natured citizens who dress up for the occasion. A majority of union members are there, together with professors, artists, concerned parents with their children and some odd Raelians cultists dressed in cosplay. It is not clear why the latter are against nuclear power, but there is a lot of human misery and anxiety in Japan in the wake of the political crisis of the government bent on mass murder with nuclear waste and 1933 Germany reminiscent tactics, and dangerous cults prey on lost souls.

Friendly dressed up protesters in Maruyama Koen

Stop Nuclear Power ("Genpatsu") in Maruyama Park

Civic Group Files Petition With Osaka City Over Nuclear Power

Japan has a history of pretending to be a democratic country and has regularly disregarded petitions by its citizens even when numbered by the hundreds of thousands. Tokyo governor Ishihara recently announced that the city would go on burning radioactive waste and line the concentrated radioactive ashes in bags on landfills in Tokyo Bay, ready to be swept away by the next typhoon, and he stated that the more than 250,000 signatures presented to have a referendum to decide together about the future of nuclear power amounted to nothing to him. He calls anti-nuclear activists “monkeys”, is famous for his racial slurs in speeches and is a disgrace to the Akutagawa literary prize that was awarded to him years ago. He actually deemed the latest nominees to be “a parade of rubbish” as reported by Mainichi Daily News and we can at least thank him for resigning from the panel of judges. Ishihara also declared in the press that the earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 20,000 of his compatriots was a form of “divine punishment” : “The identity of the Japanese people is selfishness. The Japanese people must take advantage of this tsunami as means of washing away their selfish greed. I really do think this is divine punishment.” Yet he is very popular and that tells us something about the real, “modern” Japan. Ishihara personnally reminds me of Asahara, the founder of the terrorist Aum cult who had recruited among the Japanese elite – maybe he is a member of the cult which survives under the name Aleph? Tokyo is a large shareholder in TEPCO.

Hopefully, Osaka Mayor Hashimoto, also a populist albeit younger, will show more concern for his people and more cleverness when he will receive petitions today. Japan has slipped behind China and in some respect North Korea as well thanks to elders like Ishihara who make sure that retired bureaucrats end up in indecent overpaid sinecures and that the construction sector blanket Japan in concrete: these elder men are directly responsible for the 200% of GDP national debt which went into absurd concrete projects and of the fall of Japan on all fronts: environmental, economic, social, cultural etc. If the younger generation impersonated by Hashimoto just follows in their corrupted schemes, in spite of populist claims for a change, Japan is finished as a developed country. Osaka is a major shareholder in KEPCO and a bankrupt city.

Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO) To Restart Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui

In All 3 Nuclear Reactors In Shikoku Suspended post, I warned about excessive optimism regarding the non-restart of idled nuclear power plants that we may feel when we consider that most are off-line and so will shortly be the remaining few. The post also digresses on the will of corporations such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Toshiba and Hitachi (actually joint ventures with American General Electric, Westinghouse where the Japanese counterpart are often on the subcontractor / order receiving side) to wait out the fickle public opposition.

Currently, Japanese citizen groups remain strong, well-informed and connected so there is little that any foreigner can do to help out except to show their sympathy and support. If about 0.05% of the Japanese population actively opposes nuclear power while the rest sleeps or support passively, it represents a 60 thousands people crowd – the same that protested in Tokyo. Yet, 0.05% of foreign English readers who resides in the Monitored Land amounts to a handful of individuals, most of whom I am acquainted with.

In a stressful situation, it is helpful to try and take control over one’s environment and act in favor of improving the situation, no matter the real leverage one might have. So it useful, if only for our own psychological balance, to keep on being active together with Japanese citizens – but it is also a self-deluding strategy. Arguably, every voice should count and participate in making a difference, yet the reality is that foreigners are not empowered – we cannot vote, except with our feet. This, many have done already and many more are getting prepared to do.

Time will only tell if Japanese citizens sustain their stand against nuclear power and if democracy may be briefly expressed by recognizing their voices and acting accordingly. It would be a big first in Japan and would imply that the country grew a spine against the US domination. Germany is another country with two cumbersome and belligerent neighbors; like Japan, it had to put up with a foreign army occupation and made it without developing weapons of mass destructions: Japan can go on surviving without nuclear technology and join the path of Germany, a much more successful exporting country and financially sound. Another prerequisite for ending nuclear power in Japan is kicking the yakuza out of this lucrative business and reducing the level of corruption – a tall order.

Black Rain Over Japan

Last night, I listened to the soothing sound of rain on the roofs in my futon – but I couldn’t get off my mind the thought that winds have been blowing from north-east of Japan all day and would be until Saturday and the night rain was ladden with radioactivity from Fukushima to a certain extent: black rain indeed.

Black rain was the expression used to describe the radioactive fallout after American nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, before they forced Japan to accept nuclear power. It was later on used as a title for a silly and inaccurate gangster American movie by Ridley Scott. Black refers to the harmful particles in rain drops and is doubly chilling by night time.

Anyway, I slept well but I would like to warn everyone not to stand in the rain until the week-end and especially keep your children dry. Watch out for leaky rubber boots where feet soak for hours, have them wash their hands when coming back home as usual, etc. especially if you are in Aichi (Nagoya) and Kansai (Osaka, Kyoto) areas. Of course, the whole Kanto region (Tokyo, Chiba, Yokohama) is directly under, but nobody should live there anymore.

Contrarily to my post on Shikoku, Fukushima winds avoid it this time, as well as Wakayama according to the Meteocentrale simulation. However, it is only a simulation and daily updates change significantly (usually the last of the 3 days forecast is wrong), so the real situation might change on an hourly basis. Even if this was not the case, there would still be a gap between the simulation and reality. A slight difference means that Shikoku could be swept instead of Osaka since it is after all a small territory. The wind direction has been consistently reported and the higher probability is that the whole Honshu region from Fukushima down to Kansai will get a share of it.