Dumping tritium from Fukushima into sea is best option: ministry

AJW by Asahi Shimbun : 20 April 2016

The industry ministry concluded that releasing diluted radioactive tritium into the sea is the most feasible option in dealing with contaminated water accumulating at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The ministry’s working group said at a meeting on April 19 that separating tritium from the contaminated water is proving extremely difficult, ...and that four other options studied about disposal were either too time-consuming or expensive.
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Releasing the water into the sea would cost 3.4 billion yen ($31 million) and take seven years and four months to complete, according to the group. Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the embattled nuclear plant, will decide on a disposal method based on the group’s findings. The utility has said it will not release treated water that still contains radioactive substances into the sea without gaining the understanding of local fishermen.
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TEPCO has been struggling to ease the buildup of polluted water at the nuclear plant. Every day, tons of groundwater become contaminated with radioactive substances after entering damaged reactor buildings. About 800,000 tons of water containing tritium are stored at the nuclear complex. This water was mostly used to cool melted nuclear fuel in the affected reactors.
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TEPCO has been using a device called ALPS (advanced liquid processing system) to eliminate 62 kinds of radioactive substances, including cesium, from the water. But it cannot remove tritium. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry solicited ideas from the public on how to separate tritium from the polluted water. Six companies and one university submitted proposals.
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However, experts in and out of Japan who evaluated the proposed methods concluded that none of the plans could be put into practical use in the near future. The ministry’s working group narrowed its analysis to the five options that involved disposing of water containing tritium. One suggestion was to inject the polluted water into deep layers of the Earth. Another proposal was to electrolyze the tritium-contaminated water and release it into the atmosphere.
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The highest estimated cost in the proposals was 388.4 billion yen, with the longest period for completion reaching 13 years, according to the group’s study. Ministry officials concluded that releasing water containing tritium into the sea after diluting it would be most reasonable in terms of both cost and time.
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http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201604200041.html

Atomic Cover-Up: The Hidden Story Behind the U.S. Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Democracy Now : 9 August 2011

As radiation readings in Japan reach their highest levels since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdowns, we look at the beginning of the atomic age. Today is the 66th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki, which killed some 75,000 people and left another 75,000 seriously wounded. It came just three days after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing around 80,000 people and injuring some
70,000. By official Japanese estimates, nearly 300,000 people died from the bombings, including those who lost their lives in the ensuing months and years from related injuries and illnesses. Other researchers estimate a much higher death toll.

We play an account of the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki by the pilots who flew the B-29 bomber that dropped that bomb, and feature an interview with the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist George Weller, who was the first reporter to enter Nagasaki. He later summarized his experience with military censors who ordered his story killed, saying, "They won." Our guest is Greg Mitchell, co-author of "Hiroshima in America: A Half Century of Denial," with Robert Jay Lifton. His latest book is "Atomic Cover-Up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki and The Greatest Movie Never Made." [includes rush transcript]

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TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

 

AMY GOODMAN: "The worst nuclear disaster to strike Japan since a single bomb fell over Nagasaki in 1945 occurred in the spring of 2011 at the Fukushima nuclear power plant following the epic tsunami. Just last week, it was reported that radiation readings at the site had reached their highest points to date. The wide release of radiation, and fear of same, has forced the Japanese and others all over the world to reflect on what happened to the country in 1945, and the continuing (but usually submerged) threat of nuclear weapons and energy today."

Those are the words of Greg Mitchell, co-author of the book Hiroshima in America: A Half Century of Denial. Mitchell is our guest today. He has also written Atomic Cover-Up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made.

Yes, today is the 66th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki, which killed some 75,000 people and left another 75,000 seriously wounded. It came just three days after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing around 80,000 people, injuring some 70,000. By official Japanese estimates, nearly 300,000 people died from the bombings, including those who lost their lives in the ensuing months and years from related injuries and illnesses. Other researchers estimate a much higher death toll.

The atomic bombings of Japan remain the only time nuclear weapons have been used in war to date. At a ceremony over the weekend, the Japanese prime minister, Naoto Kan, honored the dead from the World War II bombing, adding he deeply regrets having believed the so-called "security myth," which suggested Japan could be safely powered by the same atomic forces that instantly killed so many Japanese people over six decades ago.

Well, today, we’ll look at the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and their legacy amidst Japan’s ongoing nuclear crisis. We turn first to Nagasaki through the story of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist George Weller. Weller was the first reporter to enter Nagasaki, defying a U.S. media ban in southern Japan. He worked for the Chicago Daily News, hired a rowboat to get himself to Nagasaki. He wrote a 25,000-word report on the horrors he encountered. When he submitted his story to the military censors, General Douglas MacArthur personally ordered the story killed, and the manuscript was never returned. George Weller later summarized his experience with the government censors, saying, "They won."

Well, six years ago, George Weller’s son Anthony discovered a copy of the suppressed dispatches among his late father’s papers. George Weller died in 2002. They’re now published as a book called First into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War. This is an excerpt of an interview that Juan Gonzalez and I did with Anthony Weller, George Weller’s son, shortly after he first discovered his late father’s papers.

ANTHONY WELLER: Well, I think the thing that astonished him the most—I mean, there were many things that he found astonishing. Remember, he went in there four weeks, almost to the minute, after the bomb was dropped, which was on the 6th of September in mid-morning, is when he arrived. And he was struck, obviously, by several things—by the physical appearance of the city, which was still smoldering here and there, by the surgical precision of the bomb itself. Later, he was to learn that, in fact, a great deal of damage had been done not just by the bomb, but by the fires that erupted, because people were cooking their midday meal when the bomb hit, and a number of wooden residences just caught fire, and the fire spread. So, in a way, it was kind of like a Dresden.

And as he went around the ruins of the city and rapidly began visiting all the hospital facilities that still existed, I know he was struck immediately, first by the absence of any American medical personnel there—four weeks later, there were still no doctors or nurses—and then, by the great precision and care with which the Japanese doctors had already catalogued the effects of the bomb on individual organs of the body.

And over the next few days, he was as astonished as the Japanese doctors were, of course, by what he referred to in his reports as "Disease X." It was perhaps not so astonishing to see some of the scorches and burns that people had suffered, but to see people apparently unblemished at all by the bomb, who had seemingly survived intact, suddenly finding themselves feeling unwell and going to hospital, sitting there on their cots surrounded by doctors and relatives who could do nothing, and finding when he would go back the next day that they had just died, or that, let’s say, a woman who had come through unscathed making dinner for her husband and having the misfortune to make a very small cut in her finger while peeling a lemon, would just keep bleeding, and bleed to death, because the platelets in her bloodstream had been so reduced that the blood couldn’t clot anymore.

So there were case after case like this, and, in a way, I think my father found them more poignant than the obvious destruction or the obvious burn victims, because here was a whole team of Japanese doctors, very able, very aware from long before the war had started about the potentials of radiation, absolutely baffled. And he had a wonderful phrase he used. He said the effects of the bomb uncured because—excuse me, the effects of "Disease X," which is what they were calling it, uncured because it is untreated, and untreated because it is undiagnosed.

AMY GOODMAN: Anthony Weller, the son of George Weller, whose story on the Nagasaki bombings was blocked by military censors. As we turn now to an account of the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki by the pilots who flew the B-29 bomber that dropped that bomb. This is an excerpt of the documentary Hiroshima Countdown, produced by Andrew Phillips.

REPORTER: This is one of a series of interviews conducted by the Air Force historical division. Today, we are interviewing Brigadier General Paul W. Tibbets, Jr.

PAUL TIBBETS, JR.: They were definitely military targets. There was no question about that. And they offered such a—well, you could almost say a classroom experiment, as far as being able to determine later the bomb damage. These were good virgin targets, and they were ideal for the purpose that we wanted to use them for.

The consideration of targets would be Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Niigata, Kokura, and there’s one more that I don’t remember. The 20th Air Force had been told they would not attack those targets under any circumstances. In other words, the ground was laid.

NARRATOR: As well as these targets, Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital, was strongly recommended by the man with overall control of the bomb project, General Leslie Groves. But Secretary of War Henry Stimson, approaching 80 years of age, would not have it. He had visited Kyoto with his wife in the '20s and had enjoyed the city's cultural riches. It was a city of great religious significance to the Japanese, and Stimson felt Kyoto’s destruction would damage America’s post-war stature.

UNIDENTIFIED: The selection of the targets in the month of May 1945 was actually done by the intelligence community in headquarters, U.S. Air Force. The requirements given to them was: You will select cities that have military targets in them. And they also selected the type of terrain that they wanted. They also were interested in the type of construction that they could expect to run into, because in reality not only was this a military mission, but it was also of extreme scientific importance, because they wanted to know what a weapon of this type could do against reinforced concrete, what it could do against steel, what it would do against anything that was in the building materials line. It had to be something that had not been attacked by the 20th Air Force up to that time, call it virgin targets, undamaged, unhurt by any other type of an explosive or munition.

CHARLES SWEENEY: I know the type of bomb we were working on…

NARRATOR: Charles Sweeney flew with Tibbets in an observer aircraft to witness the bombing of Hiroshima. Three days later he lead his crew first to Kokura, the primary target for the second bomb, and then to Nagasaki. Kokura was clouded in that day.

CHARLES SWEENEY: As he was talking, he picked up a handful of earth. He said, "Basically what we’re working on is a single bomb that will turn a whole city into this." And he just tossed a handful of sand into air.

AMY GOODMAN: The voices of the men who loaded and flew the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, August 9, 1945, from the documentary Hiroshima Countdown, produced by Andrew Phillips. We’ll link to the whole documentary at democracynow.org. When we come back from break, we’ll speak with a man who has followed this story for decades, the author of Atomic Cover-Up, Greg Mitchell. Stay with us.
[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Greg Mitchell. He writes the "Media Fix" blog for TheNation.com. He is the author of numerous books. His latest is Atomic Cover-Up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made.
Welcome. You have been covering this for decades. The significance, Greg, of this day, August 9th, 66 years ago, and what it means today in a nuclear-ravaged Japan.

GREG MITCHELL: Right. Well, of course, it’s particularly poignant, given the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the—similarly to after Hiroshima-Nagasaki, the fears of so many people that they’ve been tainted by released radiation. And so, the psychological effects of the nuclear disaster are severe. And the other—in fact, survivors of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been campaigning this year against nuclear power, which is something they haven’t particularly done in the past, linking nuclear weapons and nuclear power, the fear of radiation, the chance of catastrophe, the chance of disaster. So it’s a special day for that.

And, of course, the other reason is because, as I’ve pointed out for many years, the U.S. is the only country that has used the bomb twice in war, as you mentioned. And, you know, it may surprise many people to know we still have a first-use policy in the United States. And the lesson that has been handed down to us for decades now is that, yes, never again, we should never use nuclear weapons again; however, we continue—most Americans, certainly American leaders, American policymakers, American media—all defend the use of the bomb, or the double use of the bomb, back in 1945. So the message is, these weapons are too dangerous to use, but we used them before, we continue to defend it, we continue to have a first-strike policy. So, to me, that’s a very dangerous lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the color videotape of the atomic bombing that has rarely been shown.

GREG MITCHELL: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, it’s been around, well, since after, right after, the bombing

GREG MITCHELL: Right. Well, that’s basically what my new book is about. It’s about the suppression of this footage, both the American footage, which is in color and was shot by the U.S. military, and the Japanese footage, which was shot by the Japanese newsreel team and is in black and white. In fact, in your first part of this program, almost all the images that people saw on the screen was black-and-white footage. Even to this day, not many people have seen much of the color footage, and that’s because the U.S. suppressed that color footage, shot by our own military, for decades. And it really wasn’t until the 1980s that any of it came out. Snippets have been used in film, you know, so we see a little bit more of it now. But in this key moment in our nuclear history, as nuclear power was becoming entrenched, as a nuclear arms race continued for decades, Americans were not exposed to the full truth of the bomb.

AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, the scientists at Los Alamos who made the bomb, most of them thinking that it would be used, if need be, on Germany

GREG MITCHELL: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: —actually were privately shown this video, weren’t they?

GREG MITCHELL: Yeah. And so, the video was taken by the Pentagon, and parts of it were made into training films to show—you know, show our policymakers and our military what the bomb could do. What my book focuses on is two U.S. military officers who shot the footage, and then, for decades after, tried to get it released, tried to get it shown on TV, tried to get it made into a movie—

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us their names.

GREG MITCHELL: —to be shown in theaters. Daniel McGovern and Herbert Sussan. And they tried for decades to get it released and shown to a wider public, and it really didn’t happen until, you know, just a few years ago.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the YouTube video that you just didn’t think was particularly controversial. It was a kind of promo for your book—

GREG MITCHELL: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: —illustrating your point.

GREG MITCHELL: Yeah. Well, it’s—if people search for it on YouTube under "Atomic Cover-Up," they’ll find it. It’s just a two-minute video. And it includes some of the suppressed footage. And I think that’s why, after I loaded it on YouTube, I got a notice from Google that they were not going to allow any ads for it, because it showed—because of the "promoted violence," as they said, which was of course 180 degrees from what it really did. It’s sort of against violence and against war. And, of course, the real irony was that it was an act of suppression about a book and a video that is about suppression. So, there were—a lot of people protested, and that sort of ended it after a few days.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, speaking of the stories that were told about what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I wanted to go to Wilfred Burchett, the first journalist to make it into Hiroshima—

GREG MITCHELL: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: —which was bombed three days before Nagasaki—it was bombed August 6, 1945—an Australian reporter who defied the U.S. military ban, who took a train for 30 hours. The whole area of southern Japan was off-limits. He took this train to Hiroshima. In this recording, an excerpt from the documentary of Andrew Phillips called Hiroshima Countdown, Burchett describes what he saw.

WILFRED BURCHETT: I went to a hospital, which had survived in the outskirts of the city. These people were all in various states of physical disintegration. They would all die, but they were giving them whatever comfort could be given until they died. And the doctor explained that he didn’t know why they were dying. The only symptoms they could isolate from a medical point of view was that of acute vitamin deficiency. So they started giving vitamin injections. Then he explains where they put the needle in, then the flesh started to rot. And then, gradually, the thing would develop this bleeding which they couldn’t stop, and then the hair falling out. And the hair falling out was more or less the last stage. And the number of the women who were lying there with sort of halos of their black hair which had already fallen out. I felt staggered, really staggered by what I’d seen. And just where I sat down, I found some lump of concrete, I remember, that had not been pulverized. I sat on that with my little Hermes typewriter, and my first words, I remember now, were, "I write this as a warning to the world."

AMY GOODMAN: "I write this as a warning to the world," Wilfred Burchett wrote, his reporting exposing the horrors of the bombings and particularly talking about—well, he didn’t have the words for radiation. He talked about an "atomic plague."

The New York Times correspondent told a very different story. The reporter, William Laurence, was not just working for the Times, though. He was also on the payroll of the U.S. War Department. That’s what the Pentagon was called at the time. Laurence wrote military press releases and statements for President Harry Truman and Secretary of War Stimson, all the while faithfully parroting the line of the U.S. government in the pages of the New York Times. He was awarded the 1946 Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Nagasaki, as well as on the U.S. government’s development of the atomic bomb. His work was crucial in launching a half-century of silence about the deadly lingering effects of the bomb.

In 2005, I joined my brother, the journalist David Goodman, to call on the Pulitzer board to strip Laurence and the New York Times of the Pulitzer for their atomic bomb reporting. Juan Gonzalez and I talked to David on Democracy Now! about the William Laurence’s deception.

DAVID GOODMAN: William Laurence was—had immigrated to the United States from Lithuania in the 1930s, at a time when actually the New York Times was laying off reporters, due to the Great Depression. They asked Laurence to become both the newspaper’s and the nation’s first dedicated science reporter. Laurence was—became fascinated with atomic power and atomic weapons and was an ardent supporter of atomic power in the articles that he wrote throughout the 1930s and into the early 1940s. This is probably what caught the attention of the War Department.

In the spring of 1945, a remarkable meeting took place, secretly, at the headquarters of the New York Times in Times Square in New York City. General Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, which was the name of the program that was developing atomic bombs for the U.S. military, came to Times Square to the New York Times and met secretly with Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times, the editor-in-chief of the New York Times, and William Laurence. At that meeting, he asked Laurence if he would become a paid publicist, essentially, for the Manhattan Project. So, while simultaneously working as a newspaper reporter for the New York Times, he would also be writing essentially propaganda for the War Department. Officially he was asked to put in layman’s terms the benefits of atomic weapons and the development of atomic power. Other New York Times reporters were unaware of this arrangement, this dual arrangement where he was being paid by both the government and the newspaper, and in fact were somewhat mystified when Laurence began taking long leaves of absence.

Well, the government’s investment in Laurence paid off in spades, because he was rewarded for his loyalty. He was also writing—ended up writing statements for Secretary of War Stimson and for President Truman himself. He was rewarded by being given a seat in the squadron of planes that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. I’ll read to you a little excerpt of Laurence’s dispatch. In general, his writing—well, these days journalists would call it "purple prose," but it was often imbued with these messianic themes about the potential and power of atomic weapons.

Here’s what he had to say in describing the bombing of Nagasaki. This bombing is thought to have taken about 70,000 to 100,000 lives. Laurence recounted, quote, "Being close to it and watching it as it was being fashioned" —he’s speaking here of the atomic bomb— "into a living thing so exquisitely shaped that any sculptor would be proud to have created it, one felt oneself in the presence of the supernatural."

Now, Laurence went on to write a series of 10 articles about the development of the atomic bomb. This is—this and his reporting about the Nagasaki bombing won him the 1946 Pulitzer Prize in reporting. He seems to have been completely unashamed and unrepentant of what was clearly an egregious conflict of interest by any of the most basic canons of journalism ethics. Laurence later wrote in his memoirs about his experience as a paid publicist for the War Department. He wrote, quote, "Mine has been the honor, unique in the history of journalism, of preparing the War Department’s official press release for worldwide distribution. No greater honor could have come to any newspaperman, or anyone else for that matter."

AMY GOODMAN: David, I think it’s instructive, the effects of this reporting. I mean, on the one hand, you had someone like Wilfred Burchett on the ground, talking about—he didn’t even have the words to describe. He talked about "bomb sickness." He talked about "atomic plague." And then you have Laurence’s front-page story, September 12th, 1945, "U.S. Atom Bomb Site Belies Tokyo Tales: Tests on New Mexico Range Confirm that Blast and Not Radiation Took Toll." This, after William Laurence, while he didn’t go to Hiroshima, was taken by Leslie Groves, the general in charge of the Manhattan Project, that was responsible for the bomb, took Laurence and other reporters to New Mexico to counter what the War Department, what Groves was calling Japanese propaganda of the effects, the deadly effects of radiation.

DAVID GOODMAN: And, in fact, Laurence knew better, because having observed the Trinity test, the first explosion of the atomic bomb in the deserts of New Mexico, he knew that Geiger counters had spiked around the area of the bombing long after the actual bomb itself. In fact, an interesting footnote to this whole encounter is that when Laurence was brought by Groves in this effort, as Amy describes...

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to pull out of that clip of David Goodman describing William Laurence. William Laurence, Greg Mitchell, the original embedded reporter, won a Pulitzer Prize for his reports, was also on the payroll of the War Department, writing the Stimson press releases and statements.

GREG MITCHELL: Right, right. Well, it was—I mean, he’s a symbol, I guess, but really it was—we’ve had decades of the suppression. You know, my book talks about the film footage, which was extremely significant, but, of course, in the media and in the official statements by the government, there was basically a Hiroshima narrative. And it was important that it get established early, and then it be maintained, because of the arms race. We wanted to build the hydrogen bomb, which we did a few years later. And so, it’s been important to the development both of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy in the U.S. that this Hiroshima narrative be disseminated. And, you know, really, from the first words of the nuclear age, it was lie when Truman said that they bombed Hiroshima, which was merely a military base. And so, it’s been 66 years of that kind of misstatements and misleading arguments.

AMY GOODMAN: The words "nuclear power," "nuclear weapons" and "suppression of information" follow through right to today.

GREG MITCHELL: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is where we’re going to end, as the Japanese people deal with their government in the last few days, hearing that the radiation levels are highest than they’ve ever been since the nuclear meltdowns.

GREG MITCHELL: Right, right, yeah, that’s—it’s continuing today, certainly, in Japan. And one fears it would happen in the U.S., as well, if we had a nuclear crisis here. So, it seems like anything that nuclear weapons or the nuclear energy touches leads to suppression and leads to danger for the public.

AMY GOODMAN: Greg Mitchell, his latest book is Atomic Cover-Up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made. A contributor at TheNation.com, he was the editor of Nuclear Times in the 1980s, has written widely about Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We’ll link to his articles at democracynow.org.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/9/atomic_cover_up_the_hidden_story

 

Kyushu QUAKES

17 April 2016 : SNS by Nelson Surjon

Kyushu is experiencing extremely powerful quakes. Thursday was a M-6.5, followed by strong after shocks with some measuring up to M6. Then a M-6.4 tremor on Friday. Saturday, another quake M-7.3 (officially now raised to a M-7.4) rocked the area (felt all the way to Tokyo). Strong tremors are still expected.

More than 100 000 people displaced, 180 000 have no electricity and 80 000 without water. Over 2000 people injured and 41 people confirmed dead (as of 18h00 on Saturday 16th). Many are trapped under collapsed houses. People and children sleeping outside for the third straight night and food is becoming scarce.

The Castle of Kumamoto has had serious damage. Landslides, fires and floods are reported across. The volcano Mt Aso had a small eruption, the Aso bridge totally collapsed and a shinkansen derailed. The nearby Sendai Nuclear Power Plant is holding up (per the government's say) and scumbag Minister of Environment Tamayo Murakawa has stated there is no need to interrupt the newly restarted reactors.

With the railways and highways obviously not operational, these promised evacuation routes in case of a nuclear and other disasters are clearly not options. In truth, the Japanese government has no valid evacuation plan in place. The Japanese government are thugs. Murakawa is gambling with people's lives.

Scumbag Shinzo Abe won't come to Kumamoto.



 
 

Nuclear security summit 2016 (articles from Al Jazeera and The Intercept)

Nuclear security summit to focus on dirty bomb scenario
Al Jazeera : 31 March 2016

When it comes to nuclear attacks, there is no shortage of nightmare scenarios. Saboteurs could breach a nuclear power station and start a reactor meltdown. A renegade Pakistani general could seize tactical nuclear weapons and blow up a city. Radioactive materials, which are found in many hospitals, could cause dirty bomb mayhem at an airport.

Against this backdrop, US President Barack Obama will host world leaders for a Nuclear Security Summit on Thursday, in an international effort to stop possible assailants from using radioactive material to outdo the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The leaders may not be doing enough. Analysts point to big gaps in the global security architecture, dozens of atomic power plants coming online in developing regions and new threats, such as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL also know as ISIS), on the scene.

"The world has drastically improved nuclear security these past 25 years but significant gaps remain and the government structure for nuclear security is a patchwork," former White House science adviser Matthew Bunn told Al Jazeera.

"The key question for this summit is: will leaders take enough action to put the world on a path of continuous improvement and steadily reducing the risk of nuclear terrorism, or will attention turn elsewhere, progress stall, and complacency return?"

A psychological weapon

 

Fears of attacks with nuclear materials resurfaced after the March 22 bomb attacks at a Brussels airport and on a packed metro, which killed 35 people and injured more than 300, and indications that the ISIL-linked attackers had nuclear ambitions. The suicide bombers may have originally planned to hit a nuclear site, according to reports. Last year, it emerged that those behind ISIL's November 13 attack on Paris, which killed 130 people, had been video-recording a high-ranking Belgian nuclear official. These revelations stoked fears that ISIL sought radiological material to wrap around explosives and yield a dirty bomb that, if detonated, would cause alarm, even if the radioactivity itself was not life-threatening.

"It's a psychological weapon that causes economic damage," Kenneth Luongo, president of the Partnership for Global Security, a think-tank, told Al Jazeera. "If those two bombs in the Brussels airport had any radioactive material in them, you would not be cleaning that airport so it reopens within in a week, you would be building a new airport." The problem for summit envoys is that a dirty bomb's radiological ingredients are found in many hospitals and industrial sites around the world. Despite efforts to secure them, they go missing at a worrying rate.

"This is not science-fiction. Creating a dirty bomb is not difficult. Every piece of food sold in a supermarket has a barcode on it, but these radioactive sources don't. We don't have a good tracking system," added Luongo. "All we have is a completely voluntary international system and national regulations. We must improve the way we secure, track and dispose of high-intensity radiological sources."

'An apocalyptic ideology'

 

Most "insurgents" are content with AK-47s, Semtex and other conventional arms, said Victor Asal of New York State University. In recent years, only about two dozen groups have upped the ante with chemical, biological and other mass-casualty weapons. According to Bunn, a Harvard University scholar, ISIL's known efforts in the nuclear field fall short of its forebear, al-Qaeda, which sought highly enriched uranium (HEU) and hatched plans for a crude nuclear device akin to those dropped on Japan in 1945.

"There's no public evidence of a focused ISIL nuclear programme, as al-Qaeda had back in the day. But ISIL has an apocalyptic ideology that envisions a total war with crusader forces, including the US, a nuclear-armed superpower," Bunn said. "If ISIL does turn to nuclear pursuits, they have more money, people, territory and a greater ability to recruit experts globally than al-Qaeda at its strongest ever had. And they've shown an ability to manage and implement long-term projects."

Other dangers are growing too, analysts say. Pakistan has embraced smaller, tactical nuclear weapons that can be deployed on the battlefield. Islamabad insists they are secure; the US and others worry they could fall into the wrong hands. An uptake in atomic power has seen Northeast Asia become a "thicket of nuclear facilities" in the neighbourhood of North Korea's volatile regime, and where the security of fissile material is imperfect, said Luongo. Plans for new plutonium-yielding plants in China, India and Japan will increase the global stockpiles of bomb-making fuel, which currently amounts to about 2,000 metric tonnes.

A serious threat

 

US officials point to improvements since Obama launched the first nuclear security confab in 2010. Stockpiles of HEU and plutonium have been removed or downblended from more than 50 facilities in 30 countries. Japan and Ukraine are ditching much of their fissile material. Hospitals and industrial plants have stricter rules on radioisotopes nowadays. Borders are better guarded. Nuclear workers are more vetted and better trained, US officials said.

Delegates have made more than 260 pledges over the course of three summits. More are expected at the fourth meeting, which begins in Washington on March 31 - the last in the series, before the UN, Interpol and other multination organs assume the watchdog role. Some 50 countries will take part, but Russia - a key nuclear power - will stay away. Governments have shown willingness to act, but not enough for more sweeping controls, said Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser.
"In an ideal world, a treaty, for instance, related to fissile material is something that we have expressed support for in the past, but there is not sufficient international buy-in to advance at this time," Rhodes told Al Jazeera.

Over two days, Obama will meet the leaders of South Korea and Japan to discuss Pyongyang's recent atomic tests, and privately with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Separate sit-downs will cover ISIL and a nuclear deal with Iran. Carl Robichaud, of the Carnegie Corporation think-tank, warned that leaders may still be complacent. Governments have resisted tough curbs on plutonium activity, which has commercial uses, and fissile material for weapons, submarine engines and other military uses - which account for 85 percent of global stockpiles, he said. "It's hard to muster the political will to take steps," Robichaud told Al Jazeera. "It's either going to be a serious incident or a very close call that drives people to take this threat seriously."

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/03/nuclear-security-summit-focuses-dirty-bomb-scenarios-160331075557558.html

Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit Neglects 98 Percent of the World’s Bomb-Ready Uranium
The Intercept : 1 April 2016

AT PRESIDENT OBAMA’S fourth and final nuclear security summit taking place this week, world leaders are confronting the danger posed by nuclear terrorism — specifically, by reducing the ways that terrorists could get their hands on the uranium they would need to build a nuclear bomb.
But critics have pointed out that the summits have only focused on highly enriched uranium in civilian possession, which, according to the Department of Energy, only accounts for 2 to 3 percent of the world’s supply. That small percentage is used mostly by academics for research and medical isotope production.

The remaining 97 to 98 percent is held in military stockpiles, which the security summits have largely ignored. Countries keep the safeguards on these stockpiles secret, and military material falls outside the scope of international security agreements. One fact sheet from the 2014 summit acknowledges that military stockpiles receive far less attention, and explains: “Nuclear materials in weapons are not excluded from the [nuclear security summit] discussions as such, but the emphasis is on nuclear materials in industry. … Military stocks are a sensitive issue, and discussing them could be an obstacle to achieving results in dealing with civil nuclear materials.”

Bruce Blair, co-founder of the Global Zero campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons, complains that “the summit virtually ignores the rest of the materials and the ways they can cause a catastrophe.”
Blair tells The Intercept that “terrorist capture and detonation of nuclear materials under military control” is a real threat. That’s particularly the case because, ever since the end of the Cold War, countries have increasingly neglected the security of their military stockpiles. For instance, in 1994, German police recovered nearly 400 grams of plutonium-uranium oxide, believed to be of military origin, from smugglers in the Munich Airport. In 2012, three American activists, including an 82-year-old nun, broke into the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and were not arrested until half an hour later.

An even greater threat comes from military insiders, who can slip material to terrorists. WikiLeaks cables have revealed concerns among top U.S. and U.K. diplomats about jihadi sympathizers in the Pakistani military. One 2010 cable from Anne Patterson, then-U.S. ambassador to Islamabad, said, “Our major concern is not having an Islamic militant steal an entire weapon but rather the chance someone working in government of Pakistan facilities could gradually smuggle enough material out to eventually make a weapon.” Experts have proposed ways for countries to reduce their military stockpiles. For instance, out of the 600 tons of highly enriched uranium in the U.S. military stockpile, around 150 tons is set aside to fuel the Navy’s nuclear-powered ships. According to a 2016 report by the International Panel on Fissile Materials, the U.S. could power its Navy using lower enriched uranium, prompting other countries dependent on the U.S. for enriched uranium to follow suit.
Kelsey Davenport, director of nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, called the insecure military stockpiles “the elephant in the room.”

Last week’s terror attacks in Brussels have heightened concerns about nuclear terrorism. Belgian investigators discovered in November that the Paris attackers had spied on a senior Belgian nuclear official, prompting concerns that the attackers were trying to obtain radioactive material. Some commentators suspected the attackers were attempting to create a “dirty bomb” — a combination of radioactive material and conventional explosives that causes contamination, rather than massive destruction.

But a Harvard study released this month argued that if ISIS could obtain fissile materials, it could construct an improvised nuclear device. In a 2009 address in Prague, President Obama called the threat of nuclear terrorism “the most immediate and extreme threat to global security.”

Since the first nuclear security summit in 2010, world leaders have made modest advances in nuclear security. Twenty participating countries have committed to increased efforts to combat nuclear smuggling, and at least 14 countries have eliminated their entire stockpiles of highly enriched uranium.

https://theintercept.com/2016/04/01/obamas-nuclear-security-summit-overlooks-98-percent-of-the-worlds-bomb-ready-uranium/

 

「On the Effects of Ballistic Missile Attack Against Nuclear Plants」

Taro Yamamoto vs. Prime Minister Abe 
2015.7.29  On the Effects of Ballistic Missile Attack Against Nuclear Plants
Diet Session Record : 15 August 2015

It seems that the terrorists who attacked Belgium had initially targeted nuclear power plants. Last year, in the midst of the diet debate on new security bill, Taro Yamamoto, the member of upper house, asked the question to the ministers what if nuclear power plant gets attacked by North Korea. As the attached dialogue shows, the government had not prepared for this risk (while making so much noise about the threat of North Korea/China). The military expert said “considering the current military capability of North Korea, it is rare chance their missile can hit the target, but terrorist attack (by anybody) could be possible.” To prevent terrorist invasion, tightening immigration check at air/sea ports is not enough. Mumbai attackers of 8 years ago had landed seashore by boat. Megumi Yokota, the girl kidnapped by North Korea, was abducted by ship. Japanese government focuses its energy and funds on Okinawa to fortify these islands, but how to guard such a long coastline of mainland, where some dozens of nuclear power plants would be activated one after another?
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Taro Yamamoto:  This is Taro Yamamoto representing The People’s Life Party & Taro Yamamoto and Friends.  The party name is long but the time is limited so please keep your answers short. Thank you. Before I start, I would like to mention that there are six visitors from Okinawa who came to hear this deliberation today.  They are from Henoko.

For the forth time, the latest vote decisively expressed the voice of Okinawans.  There won’t be any US military base in Henoko, that’s the popular sentiment, that’s what they’ve decided. However, the Abe administration is determined to build it.  I would like to ask what Mr. Abe’s thoughts are along with presenting what democracy and constitutionalism mean to us and visitors from Henoko.  Thank you.

I would like to start with an overview.  We the members of The People’s Life Party & Taro Yamamoto and Friends see the so-called Peace and Security Act, although for us it is clearly a war act, to be clearly unconstitutional, and, in addition, it puts the Self-Defense Force, along with the whole Japanese population, at risk. For these reasons, we oppose the act with all our might. As we have an opportunity to address at this special committee, we would like to proceed with our inquiries with four basic view points.

First, most importantly, the submitted act is a violation of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution and it is unconstitutional.  There is no mention of self-defense in Article 9.  It clearly states that it prohibits the use of force. But the government has been relying on an interpretation that in the case of military attacks from abroad or an invasion, without any alternatives, it is allowed to resist with the least amount of necessary force, that is the basis of having the Self-Defense Force.  It is completely unacceptable that the Self-Defense Force would exert its military might in oversea operations without a military attack against Japan.

Second, kouhoushien (logistics support) is nothing less than actual military action.  The government calls this military participation logistics, however, international law stipulates logistics as general service support and supply, which of course will be a military target of the US enemy or the enemy organizations.  In short, the enemy of the US will be the enemy of Japan, and the enemy of the US allies will be Japan’s enemy.

Third, there is a legitimacy issue in terms of the international law.  The military actions by the US and its allies against civilians including children and women in Afghanistan, the Middle East, are clearly war crimes.  There is no legitimacy according to international law, not at all.  There must not be any occasion where the Japanese defense force participates or supports such actions by the US and others.  It is certainly a grave matter to put the Japanese defense force at risk but there must not be any chance of the Japanese defense force opening fire by mistake against any unarmed civilians, women or children, and becoming the perpetrators of war crime.  The situation in a war zone is very unpredictable.  Every war journalist I’ve spoken with tells me that they are put in a situation in which, in order to protect themselves, they must shoot anything that moves.  A place that is considered to be safe quickly becomes dangerous.

Our nation must follow the principle of collective security and emphasize United Nations mandates, and we should avoid sending the Self-Defense Force overseas, and participate and support humanitarian missions by the United Nations. We often hear the governmental party demanding the alternative to the war act.  But that is a pure sophistry.  It merely displaces the topic of discussion.  As the Vice President of the Democratic party of Japan, Mr. Kitazawa, has stated at the Plenary Session of the House of Councillors, the alternative to the proposed act is the rejection of the act.  Period.
As a fourth point, I would like to discuss our security policy.

First of all, in terms of the illegal breach of Japanese sea territory, as it has been, the right of individual self-defense and the Japan-US security treaty would be sufficient.  As to dealing with the Chinese fishing boats and etc. around Senkaku, Ogasawara and the Eastern Chinese sea areas, we should increase the capability of the Japanese Coast Guard with the help of the Japanese Self-Defense Force.  For the South China Sea, Japan should exert its diplomatic power instead of the military power.  In order to ensure the safety of the sea lane in the area, we should cooperate with ASEAN nations within the framework of the APEC.  If China violates international law in the area, an economic sanction against it under the guidance of APEC and G7 should be a deterrence.  For the Middle East, we will not send the Self-Defense Force.  We will concentrate our efforts in participation and support of the United Nations’ humanitarian activities.  Islam is not Japan’s enemy.  Period. That is our policy, an alternative to the war act.

So I would like to conduct our inquiries with those four points in mind, and since this is our first day, I would like to start with the questions of the grave threat of the impending catastrophe of Japan.  We’ve heard that there have been over 100 hours of the session on the matter at the House of Representatives, however, no one really seems to understand what it really is.  Even the prime minister himself doesn’t have much understanding, which was the honest reaction of many, as we observed his “easy to understand” explanation on the TV show the other day.  We’ve felt his passion to break it down and try to make us swallow it but it only confused us.  The content that’s getting notice in terms of making us understand is “Oshiete! Higenotaichou” (“Tell Me Mustache Captain”), you’ve all heard it, I suppose.  The original is getting the notice but the parody version is even more popular now.  I think it’s really interesting to see both.  So the first question derives from a scene of the clip.  I would like to ask a question with it. (showing the material) The minority party does everything ourselves… OK, let’s go.

In the clip, Mustache Captain asks Akari, “Did you know that there are countries that aim missiles at Japan?”.  Prime Minister Abe, please tell us, are there actually countries that are aiming missiles at Japan?

Ministry of Defense (Gen Nakatani):  China, North Korea and Russia have numerous ballistic missiles capable of reaching our nation.  However, we do not take that fact alone as an evaluation of the threat. We also take the global situation, statements by the aforementioned countries and their actions into the systematic analysis and evaluation.  Having said that, we have recognized North Korea’s ballistic missile capability enhancement as a grave and urgent threat to the security of our nation, and this evaluation is based on the fact that North Korea has kept its development of its nuclear ballistic missiles despite the demand by the international community of self-restraint, moreover, with our knowledge of their three nuclear detonation experiments, we can’t disregard the possibility that they have developed small nuclear weapons and nuclear war heads, and, they have deployed several hundreds ballistic missiles mostly within the range of Japan, and regularly performing firing practices with the ballistic missiles, while indicating that major cities in our nation are being within the range.  Those actions and their agitating statements by North Korea have contributed to our conclusion that the North Korean military has been a grave destabilizing factor to the security of the international community.

Taro Yamamoto:  Thank you.  We have a procedure before the session to announce the content of the questions and exchange brief dialogues on them.  During the preparation this part was going to be a very brief chat but thank you for the detailed explanation.  Next, Mustache Captain asks Akari “What if they shoot the missile at us?” He’s not telling us what he would do, he is asking her.  Prime minister Abe, why don’t you let us hear your voice now?  What will we do if they really shoot the missile at us?

Prime Minister (Shinzo Abe):  When we are subject to a ballistic missile attack, the Self-Defense Force will cooperate with the US military and ballistic missile defense system will counterattack it.  More specifically we intend to respond in two stages with our Aegis ship and PAC 3. In that case, even if we recognize the incoming missile, if the missile is not recognized as a military attack against our nation, according to part 3 of Article 82 of the Self-Defense Force Law–the destruction of the incoming ballistic missile–it will be treated accordingly.  On the other hand, if it is recognized as a military action against our nation and if it is determined that there is a need to defend our nation, the Self-Defense Force will be on a defense operation mode according to Article 76 of the Self-Defense Force Law.  And if we encounter a military attack, depending on the status, the law to protect the people and its related regulations and their plans will guide the use of the warning sirens and evacuation of the population, promptly and accurately.

Taro Yamamoto:  Thank you.  That was a detailed explanation.  For the next one please answer with one word, as we are pressed with the time.  Prime Minister Abe, this issue about the ballistic missiles, the issue about the military attack, we hear about them very often, not just in “Tell Me Mustache Captain”, but in the diet deliberations.  Do we recognize it as a grave and an urgent threat to our nation?  Yes or no, please.

Prime Minister (Shinzo Abe):  Yes, obviously, they have several hundred missiles, and they are developing the nuclear capability and improving its functionality, and we consider these facts to consist a threat.

Taro Yamamoto:  Thank you.
We have received the same answer to our Parliamentary Question. Indeed it is a threat, it is a grave and urgent threat that was what you said. Now, let me explain a little, just in case, if the audience who are watching TV don’t know about the Parliamentary Question.  If we, the elected officials, have questions, we can submit the questions to the government and the answers come back as the cabinet’s official answers. It is a great system.  Last December, I used this system to ask a question. What was it?  I submitted a question regarding the plan for protecting the people in the case of a military attack with a ballistic missile against Kyushu Electric Power Co., INC. Sendai Nuclear Power Plant.  The material you have with you is  part 2 of the provided reference.  I bet it’s too long and too hard to understand with lots of Chinese characters. Basically, we asked in the Parliamentary Question what they will do if the Sendai Nuclear Plant gets a ballistic missile attack or equivalent.
I proceed.

 In it, regarding the nuclear accident due to a military attack including a ballistic missile attack and etc., although the government has stated that Kagoshima prefecture and Satsumasendai City both have the plans in their protection of the population protocols, does the government itself expect a ballistic missile attack against Kyushu Electric Power Co., INC. Sendai Nuclear Power Plant by other nations and etc.?  The answer came from Prime Minister Abe, the answer does come with his name on it. He said, regarding the simulations of ballistic missile attacks by other nations and etc., we refrain from naming certain facilities, however, the problem arising from the movement, proliferation and development of the ballistic missiles has been a significant threat to our nation as well as to the international community, especially, North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile development along with their agitating rhetorics of the missile attack toward us have been a significant and urgent threat to the security of our nation.  It went on to say that in order to protect the lives of the population and their properties, the government has been regularly conducting many simulations, including the ballistic missile attacks, and trainings, with the cooperation of the related agencies.  Prime Minister, is it correct that the government has been conducting various simulations and trainings regularly regarding various situations involving the ballistic missile attacks with the cooperation of the appropriate agencies?

Prime Minister (Shintaro Abe):   In order to protect the lives of the population and their properties, our government has been regularly engaging in various simulations to improve our counter capabilities with the related agencies and regional public organizations and we also conduct counter trainings in conjunction with the governmental agencies and regional public organizations in protecting the public.  Among them, the joint trainings on protecting the public mainly specialize in urgent situations in countering terrorism, armed groups and military attacks.  The systematic trainings are conducted with the police, fire departments, Self-Defense Force and related agencies, we also conduct trainings against terrorism on nuclear plants.

Taro Yamamoto:  Thank you.  As we expect, there are trainings and simulations against the urgent situations, your answer sheds a light on an aspect of your job.  So, let me ask you.  Prime Minister, I see that there are many simulations on many situations, how much will the radio active materials be released into the environment in the case of a direct attack on the active Sendai nuclear plant reactor by a ballistic missile of a sort, Prime Minister?

Chairman of Nuclear Regulation Authority (Shunichi Tanaka):  Regarding the question, including an airliner collision, we are requiring an operational facility for the major destruction of the nuclear plant, however, we do not require any counter measure against a direct ballistic missile attack.  We do not consider such an event as a direct ballistic missile attack to be a sort of event to be countered by a regulation for an installer of a nuclear facility.  The release of the nuclear materials therefore, by the ballistic missile attack, is not assumed, however, during the safety assessment of Sendai No.1 and No.2, the prevention of the nuclear reactor container destruction and requirement for a counter measure against the release of the abnormal amount of the nuclear materials outside of the nuclear facility site are required along with a confirmation of their effectiveness against the possibility of severe accidents.  According to the test result, release of the Cesium 137, in the case of Sendai No.1 and No.2, would be 5.6 TBq, which is lower than 1/1000 of the release by the Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant accident.

Taro Yamamoto:  Well so he says, but that answer was just too long, I bet many of the TV audience had no clue what he just said.  In short, you are saying that there is no simulation, you won’t be doing it, that is what you said, Chairman? There are no calculations regarding an event of ballistic missile attack on the nuclear reactor, around the area, or in the case of destruction of the reactor and its results, what would happen to the leaking materials and so on?  But what do you all think?  Let’s say a ballistic missile hits the facility, and some other missiles, what we are saying here is  “would that only result in 1/1000 release of Fukushima?”  That wouldn’t be it, would it? So why won’t they calculate the various possibilities thoroughly is what I am saying here, it’s just hideous, isn’t it?  And I’ve already asked about this in the Parliamentary Question. And they say that it can’t be answered since it’s a hypothetical question.  So when it’s hypothetical, it’s hard to answer, Prime Minister, though I haven’t told you about this.  Is it hard to say when you don’t know what would be flying around in the hypothetical story?

Prime Minister (Shinzo Abe):  What I would like to say is that the matter of military attacks varies in the method, size, and pattern therefore the resulting damages in reality can vary so it is hard to answer in a simple manner.

Taro Yamamoto:  Hard to answer in a simple manner, can’t answer about a hypothetical question.  My Parliamentary Question was hypothetical, and the answer I have received with Prime Minister Abe’s signature also said he would like to refrain from answering the question. But let’s think about this. Isn’t the content of the proposed act based on hypothesis or assumption? Country A attacks Country B, the allied country B asks us for help, if the three conditions are met, we can attack country A.  Isn’t that a hypothesis?  It is a hypothesis.  You whine about the hypothesis, but you push forward making stuff up.  It is reasonable to hypothesize, assume and go on to a simulation to build something.

 How convenient it is to keep repeating hypothesises and assumptions, and turn around and say that you can’t hypothesize about the nuclear facility that can be a military target, this, I just can’t help wonder what sort of opportunism this is.  The security environment around our nation is changing very fast, you say.  The missile might be flying in?  China, North Korea, you keep talking about stuff.  It reaches us in 10 minutes but there is nothing we can do?  That doesn’t sound good, does it?  You really want to defend?  If one wants to defend the lives of the people, property and their right to pursue happiness, the way to protect the weakest facility, the nuclear facility, must be determined, however, the evacuation plan only considers 1/1000, or 1/100 radiation of Fukushima, what is this?, I can not comprehend this at all.

 I proceed.  In the aforementioned Parliamentary Question, I’ve asked how many kilo meter range the evacuation plan and accident prevention plan should cover.  But, the question was not answered.  Isn’t that odd? When something happens, we must know how far we should evacuate and what method we should choose.  Aren’t you going to protect the lives of the population, property and right to pursue happiness?  Why wasn’t it answered?  Prime Minister, please tell us, if a ballistic missile destroys a plant, how many kilo meter range plan should there be?

Government witness (Oba Seiji): The matter of military attacks varies in the method, size and pattern, therefore the basic policy of protection of the population, which was officially determined by the cabinet, on landing invasion, attacks by a guerrilla force or a special force, ballistic missile attack or bombing by the air, in all four assumed cases, we do not specify the amount of the damages. And, in case of military attack, such as a ballistic missile attack, we do not decide an evacuation plan with specific areas in mind, instead, we grasp the changing situation accurately and the evacuation range and etc. will be determined accordingly.

Taro Yamamoto:  I would like to confirm what the cabinet secretary has said, I could hear the later part, but you are saying that there are many patterns so it’s hard to know how the situation turns, so, once we have the situation, we observe the damage and radiation level in order to determine the evacuation zone, is that right?  Please answer yes or no.

Government witness (Oba Seiji): As we determine the changing state of the crisis accurately, we decide the range of evacuation, for example, the state of the radiation release or the progress of the ongoing military attack,  those things will be considered as accurately as possible in deciding the evacuation area and its range.

Taro Yamamoto:  Do you TV viewers all get that?  In short, the so-called evacuation plans only exist as a faint sketch.  The described narrative, do you understand the meaning of it?  If there is a nuclear accident, the one like Fukushima, even if we have another Fukushima, or, the most dangerous, Prime Minister Abe, the missile attack by China or North Korea, as the Abe administration screams about, hits a nuclear facility, and we have a damage, according to the narrative, in short, we’ll have to be radiated first. And then they take the measurement.  What kind of nonsense is this? Whose tax money, whose money pumps into this Parliament, Kasumizaseki and Nagata City?  Whose lives are we protecting? Why won’t they be serious?  A session in this Parliament costs 300 million yen a day and they’ve extended it for 95 days, and they don’t even have any clue about the alleged missile attack’s worst case scenario?  I’m just speechless.  There is no way that I can believe that the lives of the population, property and right to pursue happiness can be protected.  It’s the same as doing nothing.

I’d like to go forward. Provided material three.  It was published last year, May twenty eighth.  With the leadership of Chairman Tanaka, it was compiled by the Nuclear regulatory commission to provide the basic data regarding the regional disaster prevention plan and disaster prevention preparation.  In short, there had been no standard.  Well, if we don’t have any standard, it’ll be hard to make the evacuation plan and so on, so in order to be useful for those instances, the regulatory commission has decided to provide it. Chairman Tanaka, the expert, he has put some efforts.  So what sort of number are we looking at here?  It’s 1/100 of the Fukushima radiation release.  We’ve seen 1/1000 just a while ago, but this one is 1/100, is that right?  There is a warning in a caption.  It’s a piece of paper called “calculation of radiation measurement during emergency and protection measure effectiveness”. And, under that, there is a warning.  What do you think it says?  It says, “However, this calculation does not mean that there will not be bigger accidents”.  If we calculate with 1/100, we’ll be in a disaster.  What was the biggest number among the accidents that have happened in our country?  Why would they make it 1/100?  So we’ve made the new safety standard, and it means that even if we have an accident, that’ll be 1/100 of Fukushima, it is that optimistic.  And if we have a real accident, they’ll just say “beyond imagination”. End of the story.

The ongoing accident, Fukushima, it’s a set of three level 7 accidents with three melted down nuclear reactors.  They don’t even know how to end it.  And despite the graveness of the event, no one gets arrested, and there is no criminal investigation.  You understand what it means?  Who will be responsible?  Do they know what it means?  Will they force it?  They say it’s the security issue, energy issue, but what is the truth?  If something goes wrong, they won’t do anything just like Fukushima.  It is beyond absurd.  The number like 1/100 can’t lead to any meaningful assessment.  The people’s lives can’t be protected.  Prime Minister, please answer, would 1/100 be enough?  We didn’t discuss this but I want you to answer this.

Prime Minister (Shinzo Abe):  The basic response to a nuclear disaster caused by a military attack, according to the basic policy of the protection of the population, consists of an immediate evacuation of the residents within 5 kilo meters of the nuclear plant and for the residents within thirty kilo meter, indoor evacuation will be instructed.

On the other hand, when military attack causes a large scale radiation release over a five kilo meter range or thirty kilo meter range, obviously, it is imperative that we act according to the situation. Our policy stipulates that when it’s necessary, beyond thirty kilo meter will be treated with the same evacuation measures. Accordingly, the government will specify the evacuation area and evacuation destiny depending on the radiation level, military attack status and so on, and we will instruct the regional government on the evacuation operation. Moreover, the government, through the evacuation efforts of the Self-Defense Force and coast guard, along with the regional government, will do its best in the rescue efforts of the residents.

Taro Yamamoto:  Prime Minister Abe, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not deal with the ballistic missile attack.  I have also asked the cabinet committee, which I belong to, about this.  That was what they said.  They have not evaluated. Evaluation means determining what must be done in a case of such an accident, right?  And they do not intend to do it in the future as well.  There are many kinds of missiles and we have no idea which ones are coming so we can’t assume anything and we won’t be doing it. Isn’t this troublesome? This bill, the one that should have been ten bills but pushed into one, and while we talk about encouraging the morning work hours, it’s stealing everyone’s summer break, what are we going to do about it?  Let’s face it, we must do the proper evaluation. Who was the director-general of the nuclear emergency response headquarter, nuclear emergency response headquarter?  It’s the Prime Minister, isn’t it? That means that the chairman can’t just do it. He might want to do it. Well, maybe not.  That means that the Prime Minister must be decisive. Please let them do the simulation.  What would you say, Prime Minister?  I would like to ask the Prime Minister.

Prime Minister (Shinzo Abe):  Regarding this simulation, we have been conducting systematic trainings involving police force, fire department, Self-Defense Force as well as the related agencies focusing on various terrorism, attacks by various terrorist groups as a matter of urgent importance.  We are also conducting trainings for the terrorist attacks against nuclear plants, however, regarding the ballistic missile attack against nuclear plants, the matter of military attacks varies in the method, size and pattern therefore the basic policy of protection of the population, which was officially determined by the cabinet, on landing invasion, attacks by a guerrilla force or a special force, ballistic missile attack or bombing by the air, in all four assumed cases, we do not specify amount of the damages.  And, if a nuclear disaster develops due to a ballistic missile attack and so on, as it was described already, we will determine the range of evacuation and etc. accordingly.

Taro Yamamoto:  Thank you.  You just can’t give us the answer.  That makes sense.  What is the very basic of the crisis management?  We must prepare for the worst.  But we are not prepared for the worst case.  Rather, we try not to see what we don’t want to see and we close our ears, and somehow we keep doing what we want to do.  We do it even though that would endanger the population.  It’s clear if we look at the nuclear plants.  Who’s security issue is it?  Not so sure at all.  If it’s really for protecting the lives of the population, and their property, we must have counter measures against the flying missiles and the attack against the nuclear facilities.

But we certainly do not have anything like that.  Indoor evacuation?  You’ll measure the actual radiation?  I see, very well.  OK, then, I would like to ask the Chairman Tanaka.  No one tells me about this.  In the case of Sendai nuclear plant, if all the nuclear materials of the 157 fuel rods are released, and, 64 rods in the storage, 1128 rods in the spent fuel pool, all of them, are released into the atmosphere, how many Bqs are we talking about in Cesium 137 standard, that was what I asked both the Nuclear Regulatory Agency and ‎Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, but no one could answer my question.

 I would like to ask the expert, Chairman Tanaka, please make it short.  How much bq of Ceceum 137 can one rod in the Sendai nuclear plant release?  If you know or not.  Please continue if you do but if not please stop there.  Thank you.

Chairman of Nuclear Regulation Authority (Shunichi Tanaka):  The nuclear materials in a collection of rods change according to the burnup ratio and cooling duration.  Obviously, we do have the number for the exact content, however, we do not expect all of the materials will be released into the atmosphere.  As I have already stated.

Taro Yamamoto:  Thank you.  Can’t be calculated…  But it seems possible, if you really do calculate it.  So, I would like to ask.  It is so clear that restarting of the Sendai nuclear plant is completely impossible.  The government fears ballistic missile attacks against the plant.  If it hits the plant, there is nothing we can do.  You are restarting the plant, even with the half-hearted, messed-up evacuation plan?  Not just that, we now know that the risk of the earthquake in the area is increasing and the fault line is spreading as well.  The volcanological society is pointing out odd activities of the volcanoes as well.  There is no way we can restart the plant.  How do you prevent the missile attack?  Are you restarting it anyway?  It can’t be done.  Period.  Please answer, Prime Minister.

Prime Minister (Shinzo Abe):  As we have explained, our governmental position, our policy is that, if the plants meet the safety standard of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is exceptionally strict even among the world standards, the ones that passed the assessment will be restarted.

Taro Yamamoto:  I would like to end this deliberation with Prime Minister Abe passing the buck to the Regulatory Commission.  Thank you.

https://www.taro-yamamoto.jp/english/5023

 
 

Prosecutors drop TEPCO case over radioactive water leakage

AJW by Asahi Shimbun : 30 March 2016

FUKUSHIMA--The Fukushima District Public Prosecutor’s Office announced on March 29 that it will not prosecute Tokyo Electric Power Co. or its executives for violating an environmental pollution law.

The decision came two and a half years after a group of plaintiffs, including residents of Fukushima Prefecture, filed a criminal complaint against TEPCO, operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, and its 32 current and former executives.

The group sought to bring charges against the utility and its executives for allowing radioactive contaminated water to be discharged into the sea.

In its decision, the prosecutors said there was “insufficient” evidence to press charges against TEPCO and some of its executives, including Naomi Hirose, company president. The remaining executives, the prosecutors said, “had no authority or responsibility to set measures to avoid the leakage in the first place,” therefore, the accusation has “no grounds.”

“The Fukushima police investigated the case for almost two years. It is extremely disappointing,” said Ruiko Muto, 62, the head of the plaintiff's group, at a news conference in Tokyo on March 29. “We wanted them to look into the case further. We can’t accept this decision.”

The group is planning to appeal to the Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution. The group will meet with its lawyers on March 30 and decide on whether it will pursue further action.

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201603300068

Senior U.S. official criticizes East Asia for nuclear reprocessing plans

The Japan Times :  18 March 2016

A senior U.S. official has come out strongly against major powers in East Asia pursuing nuclear reprocessing that nonproliferation experts warn could lead to spiraling quantities of weapons-usable material in a tense region....
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Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Countryman told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Thursday that the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel “has little if any economic justification” and raises concerns about nuclear security and nonproliferation.
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Republican committee Chairman Sen. Bob Corker, however, accused the Obama administration of encouraging the production of plutonium, after it eased restrictions on civilian nuclear cooperation with China to allow the reprocessing of fuel from U.S.-designed reactors for nonmilitary purposes.
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The U.S. has a similar arrangement with its close ally Japan. It has deferred a decision on giving similar consent to South Korea.
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Japan to send weapons grade plutonium back to U.S. this weekend, Greenpeace says

Reuters : 18 March 2016

Japan will load weapons-grade plutonium onto a ship as early as this weekend to send to the United States, in what will be largest such shipment of the highly dangerous material since 1992, Greenpeace said on Friday.

The shipment of 331 kilograms of plutonium, enough to make about 50 nuclear weapons, will be loaded in Tokai Mura northeast of Tokyo onto the Pacific Egret, an armed British ship, and transported to the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the environmental group said.

Shipments of plutonium are highly sensitive because the material can be used in advanced nuclear weapons or as a so-called dirty bomb. In Japan, public sensitivity is also high because the country is the only nation to be bombed with nuclear weapons.
The U.S. embassy in Tokyo declined to comment.

The shipment is a tiny portion of the nearly 50 tonnes of plutonium Japan holds. Most of Japan's plutonium comes reprocessing spent nuclear fuel burned in the country's reactors. All but two of Japan's reactors have been shut down since the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011.

The plutonium being shipped this weekend was supplied by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France for the Japan Atomic Energy Agency's Fast Critical Assembly project in Tokai Mura, according to the International Panel on Fissile Materials.

The agreement to transfer the material to the United States was reached in March 2014, according to the panel's website.

A spokesman at the Japanese atomic agency declined to comment, citing security reasons.