Nuclear power and Japan.

[John Dolva]

Brlusconi says nuclear energy 'probably' out

By COLLEEN BARRY

Associated Press

2011-06-13 08:57 PM

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Premier Silvio Berlusconi conceded Monday that Italy will "probably" have to give up plans to revive nuclear energy in a tacit acknowledgment that referendums challenging government policies have succeeded.

If confirmed, the outcome would be a serious political defeat for Berlusconi, just two weeks after his candidates in local elections lost key votes in his political stronghold of Milan and in trash-choked Naples.

"Italy, following the decision that the Italian people are taking in these hours, probably will have to bid farewell to the question of nuclear power plants," Berlusconi said at a news conference with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

[John Dolva]

Referendum results kill Italy's nuclear plans as Berlusconi's ...

1 hour ago

The rejection of Italy's nuclear revival marks a big victory for the anti-nuclear lobby. In a referendum in 1987, Italians voted to close the country's ...

Globe and Mail

74% of Japanese now support phasing out nuclear energy (Japanese) 朝日新聞世論調査 t.co/e50ijva

OK! now that's 4 or so, out of ...er ... quite a few, to go.

[John Dolva]

Japan's Richest Man Challenges Nuclear Future With Nationwide Solar Plans

By Mariko Yasu - Jun 14, 2011 11:01 PM GMT+0800 Tue Jun 14 15:01:00 GMT 2011

Masayoshi Son, president and chief executive officer of Softbank Corp. Photographer: Toshiyuki Aizawa/Bloomberg

Solar panels manufactured by Sharp Corp. at a mega solar power station in Sakai City, Osaka, Japan. "I have a very high expectations, especially for our thin-film solar cells which had been limited to overseas sales," said Mikio Katayama , president of Sharp, Japan's biggest maker of solar cells. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Billionaire Masayoshi Son aims to shake up Japan's power utilities after the worst nuclear crisis in 25 years. He has a track record in taking on monopolies after building a business that opened up the nation's telecommunications industry.

Son, the 53-year-old chief executive officer of Softbank Corp. (9984), plans to build solar farms to generate electricity with support from at least 33 of Japan's 47 prefectures. In return, he's asking for access to transmission networks owned by the 10 regional utilities and an agreement they buy his electricity.

Radiation continues to spew across at least 600 square kilometers (230 square miles) in northeastern Japan after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant. Prime Minister Naoto Kan said in May he will rethink a goal to increase atomic power to 50 percent of the nation's total from 30 percent. Renewable energy accounts for 10 percent, according to Japan's Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, and Son wants that ratio to be tripled by 2020.

"The question is how this nation is going to survive after cutting nuclear power," Son said at a government panel meeting June 12. "A framework should be designed in a way to make the power business open for anyone who has the will to start it."

Son, who was born in Japan to Korean parents, became an advocate of renewable energy after the disaster forced the evacuation of more than 50,000 households and contaminated drinking water and food. Tokyo Electric Power Co., the nation's largest power company, has been struggling to contain the crisis at its Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, now in its fourth month.

Kan Meeting

After meeting with Kan and attending government panels, he announced the plan on May 25. Son also asked for land regulations to be modified to make 540,000 hectares of unused agricultural land available for solar power stations.

Son's entrepreneurial streak emerged at the University of California, Berkeley, where he invented a voice-operated multilingual translator that he sold to Sharp Corp. for 100 million yen ($1.2 million) in 1979. He also capitalized on a burgeoning appetite for video games, importing bestselling Space Invaders machines from Japan and leasing them to cafeterias.

In the late 1980s, he offered a system enabling fixed-line phone users to choose operators with the cheapest charge, threatening the dominance of Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (9432), which was privatized in 1985. When Son introduced Softbank's broadband Internet service in 2001, he grabbed customers from NTT with free modems and prices that undercut NTT's by as much as half.

By 2006, Son transformed his Internet venture capital company into a full-fledged phone service firm similar to NTT via 2 trillion yen acquisitions of Japan Telecom Co. and the Japanese unit of Vodafone Group Plc. (VOD)

'Broke Through'

"Son broke through the telecom industry and has the financial power and connections to make things happen," said Satoshi Nagata, a former president of Mitsui High-Tec Inc. (6966) who now runs VPEC Inc., a power solutions venture. "Opportunities in the solar industry will likely boom if Son succeeds."

Tokyo-based Softbank plans to set up an affiliate that will use some of the company's 3 trillion yen annual revenue to build solar power stations, Son said at a May 26 conference. One option would be to raise funds to invest about 80 billion yen into building 10 solar farms, each with about 20 megawatts of capacity, said Softbank spokeswoman Makiko Ariyama.

The combined 200 megawatts of power capacity will provide more than 10 times the 19 megawatts in total produced at eight photovoltaic power stations run in Japan by the regional utilities as of June 9. Japan produced 988 terrawatt hours of electricity in the year ended March 31.

Prime Minister Kan pledged to generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity through renewable sources by the 2020s as the nation rewrites its energy blueprint.

Solar Power Costs

"We will do everything we can to make renewable energy our base form of power, overcoming hurdles of technology and cost," Kan said in a speech in Paris before the Group of Eight summit last month. Japan aims to cut the cost of solar power generation to one-third current levels by 2020 and one-sixth in 2030 and will install roof-top solar panels at 10 million homes, Kan said.

A revision of the energy plan means Japan will probably step up a campaign to encourage the use of solar cells at the expense of atomic power, Takashi Watanabe, a Tokyo-based analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., wrote in an report in April.

'Mega-Solar Plants'

"I have a very high expectations, especially for our thin- film solar cells which had been limited to overseas sales," said Mikio Katayama, president of Sharp, Japan's biggest maker of solar cells. "Mega-solar plants have been nonexistent here and it could expand business opportunities."

Solar plants using 20 percent of unused agricultural land in Japan can have the generation capacity of about 50 gigawatts, almost matching that of Tokyo Electric, Son said.

"We can probably invite more companies to invest in our solar projects once a business model is set up," said Yukiko Kada, governor of Shiga prefecture, who is one of Son's partners.

The Japanese government may break up utilities' regional monopolies and separate their power-generation businesses from distribution operations, Kyodo News reported May 31, without saying where it obtained the information. A panel will begin discussing the issue from June as the government seeks to reform the power industry by 2020, Kyodo said.

Salary Pledge

The 10 regional utilities handle generation, transmission and retail of electricity, maintaining virtual monopoly over the nation's power market. The power business was partially liberalized in the late 1990s but few new companies entered the market partly because difficulties in competing against the utilities, VPEC's Nagata said.

In April, Son pledged to donate 10 billion yen and his salary until retirement to help support disaster victims. Son earned 108 million yen and 1.3 billion yen in dividends in the fiscal year ended March 2010, Softbank said in June.

His 21 percent stake in the company is valued at more than 740 billion yen, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Forbes magazine ranks him as Japan's richest man.

"Mr. Son has made quite a stir," Shiga Governor Kada said. "We expect the government to make a change."

To contact the reporter on this story: Mariko Yasu in Tokyo at myasu@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Amit Prakash at aprakash1@bloomberg.net; Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net

[John Dolva]

Whales caught off the coast of Japan have traces of radiation, presumably from a damaged nuclear plant:...

National › Panel to urge Fukushima to stop relying on nuclear power plants: An advisory panel set up by..

IAEA urged to create "level 8" in INES scale ... Fukushima...

Japan to expand evacuation areas around nuclear plant...

Lawyers to form anti-nuclear...

[John Dolva]

Japan's nuclear waste advisor reports that an area of 966 sq km near #Fukushima is now likely uninhabitable. Fukushima: It's much worse than you think - Features - Al Jazeera ...‎ - aljazeera.netTwitter - 130521 minutes ago

[John Dolva]

Many Japanese citizens are now permanently displaced from their homes due to the Fukushima nuclear disaster [GALLO/GETTY]

Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

Scientific experts believe Japan's nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public.

Dahr Jamail Last Modified: 16 Jun 2011 12:50

"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.

Japan's 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant.

Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.

"Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," he said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively."

TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of.

"The problem is how to keep it cool," says Gundersen. "They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?"

Even though the plant is now shut down, fission products such as uranium continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling.

"The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor," Gundersen added. "TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water."

Independent scientists have been monitoring the locations of radioactive "hot spots" around Japan, and their findings are disconcerting.

"We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl," said Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl."

Radiation monitors for children

Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters finally admitted earlier this month that reactors 1, 2, and 3 at the Fukushima plant experienced full meltdowns.

TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record.

Meanwhile, a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that about 966 square kilometres near the power station - an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan - is now likely uninhabitable.

In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.

The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster.

"There is and should be concern about younger people being exposed, and the Japanese government will be giving out radiation monitors to children," Dr MV Ramana, a physicist with the Programme on Science and Global Security at Princeton University who specialises in issues of nuclear safety, told Al Jazeera.

Dr Ramana explained that he believes the primary radiation threat continues to be mostly for residents living within 50km of the plant, but added: "There are going to be areas outside of the Japanese government's 20km mandatory evacuation zone where radiation is higher. So that could mean evacuation zones in those areas as well."

Gundersen points out that far more radiation has been released than has been reported.

"They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days."

According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are referred to as "hot particles".

"We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters."

Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air filters in the greater Seattle area of the US as well.

The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer.

"These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant irritant," he explained, "One cigarette doesn't get you, but over time they do. These [hot particles] can cause cancer, but you can't measure them with a Geiger counter. Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April."

Blame the US?

In reaction to the Fukushima catastrophe, Germany is phasing out all of its nuclear reactors over the next decade. In a referendum vote this Monday, 95 per cent of Italians voted in favour of blocking a nuclear power revival in their country. A recent newspaper poll in Japan shows nearly three-quarters of respondents favour a phase-out of nuclear power in Japan.

Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US?

Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his political campaigns, thus far. Obama also appointed Exelon CEO John Rowe to his Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future.

Dr Shoji Sawada is a theoretical particle physicist and Professor Emeritus at Nagoya University in Japan.

He is concerned about the types of nuclear plants in his country, and the fact that most of them are of US design.

"Most of the reactors in Japan were designed by US companies who did not care for the effects of earthquakes," Dr Sawada told Al Jazeera. "I think this problem applies to all nuclear power stations across Japan."

Using nuclear power to produce electricity in Japan is a product of the nuclear policy of the US, something Dr Sawada feels is also a large component of the problem.

"Most of the Japanese scientists at that time, the mid-1950s, considered that the technology of nuclear energy was under development or not established enough, and that it was too early to be put to practical use," he explained. "The Japan Scientists Council recommended the Japanese government not use this technology yet, but the government accepted to use enriched uranium to fuel nuclear power stations, and was thus subjected to US government policy."

As a 13-year-old, Dr Sawada experienced the US nuclear attack against Japan from his home, situated just 1400 metres from the hypocentre of the Hiroshima bomb.

"I think the Fukushima accident has caused the Japanese people to abandon the myth that nuclear power stations are safe," he said. "Now the opinions of the Japanese people have rapidly changed. Well beyond half the population believes Japan should move towards natural electricity."

A problem of infinite proportions

Dr Ramana expects the plant reactors and fuel cores to be cooled enough for a shutdown within two years.

"But it is going to take a very long time before the fuel can be removed from the reactor," he added. "Dealing with the cracking and compromised structure and dealing with radiation in the area will take several years, there's no question about that."

Dr Sawada is not as clear about how long a cold shutdown could take, and said the problem will be "the effects from caesium-137 that remains in the soil and the polluted water around the power station and underground. It will take a year, or more time, to deal with this".

Gundersen pointed out that the units are still leaking radiation.

"They are still emitting radioactive gases and an enormous amount of radioactive liquid," he said. "It will be at least a year before it stops boiling, and until it stops boiling, it's going to be cranking out radioactive steam and liquids."

Gundersen worries about more earthquake aftershocks, as well as how to cool two of the units.

"Unit four is the most dangerous, it could topple," he said. "After the earthquake in Sumatra there was an 8.6 [aftershock] about 90 days later, so we are not out of the woods yet. And you're at a point where, if that happens, there is no science for this, no one has ever imagined having hot nuclear fuel lying outside the fuel pool. They've not figured out how to cool units three and four."

Gundersen's assessment of solving this crisis is grim.

"Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years," he said. "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor."

Dr Sawada says that the creation of nuclear fission generates radioactive materials for which there is simply no knowledge informing us how to dispose of the radioactive waste safely.

"Until we know how to safely dispose of the radioactive materials generated by nuclear plants, we should postpone these activities so as not to cause further harm to future generations," he explained. "To do otherwise is simply an immoral act, and that is my belief, both as a scientist and as a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing."

Gundersen believes it will take experts at least ten years to design and implement the plan.

"So ten to 15 years from now maybe we can say the reactors have been dismantled, and in the meantime you wind up contaminating the water," Gundersen said. "We are already seeing Strontium [at] 250 times the allowable limits in the water table at Fukushima. Contaminated water tables are incredibly difficult to clean. So I think we will have a contaminated aquifer in the area of the Fukushima site for a long, long time to come."

Unfortunately, the history of nuclear disasters appears to back Gundersen's assessment.

"With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started," he said, "But they never end."

Follow Dahr Jamail on Twitter: @DahrJamail

[John Dolva]

http://news.lucaswhitefieldhixson.com/2011/06/over-80-of-japanese-nation-want-all-54.html

No wonder the media isn't covering this. Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and soon Japan?

From Kyodo News -

4 out of 5 want nuclear reactors scrapped in Japan

TOKYO, June 19, Kyodo

More than four out of five Japanese want the nation's 54 nuclear reactors to be decommissioned either immediately or gradually in the wake of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, a poll reported by the Tokyo Shimbun daily showed Sunday.

Only 14 percent said the reactors should continue operations while 82 percent backed their decommissioning, showing a marked lack of confidence in the nation's atomic energy policy, according to the June 11-12 poll.

In a breakdown, a total of 54 percent of respondents said the reactors should be decommissioned ''while taking into account the power supply-and-demand situation,'' followed by 19 percent who want decommissioning to ''start with ones undergoing periodic checks'' and 9 percent who called for immediate scrapping of nuclear plants.

----------------

http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/06/19/studio-ghiblis-anti-nuclear-message/

Studio Ghibli, the animation studio of world-renown director Hayao Miyazaki, has placed an anti-nuclear banner on top of its main office building:

The banner declares that Studio Ghibli wants to make movies without relying on energy generated by nuclear power plants.

The staff drew the message and illustration on the banner after Miyazaki proposed that they should “express a candid feeling,” according to the animation studio.

According to Google.co.jp trend data for June 17th, Miyazaki’s anti-nuclear views were a very hot topic. “Studio Ghibli” (スタジオジブリ) was the 10th most popular search term, while “Prometheus’ fire” (プロメテウスの火) was #1. The latter term comes from some anti-nuclear remarks Miyazaki made in March.

[John Dolva]

http://news.smh.com.au/drive/motor-news/radioactivity-test-for-cars-from-japan-20110621-1gchn.html

Radioactivity test for cars from Japan

June 21, 2011 - 9:43AM AAP

The maritime union has welcomed an announcement by the nuclear safety agency that a selection of cars arriving from Japan will be checked for radiation.

Workers and the public have a right to know if cars from Japan pose a radiation threat, the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) says.

Japan has been struggling with a nuclear disaster since the March earthquake and tsunami.

Advertisement: Story continues below A selection of the 800 cars on board the Trans Future 7, which will arrive in NSW this week, will be screened by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA).

"This is a win for workers, and also a win for the Australian public," MUA spokesman Warren Smith said.

"The Australian public has a right to know if there is a radiation threat."

In early May, cars arriving in Chile from Japan were found to be contaminated with radiation

"We know from the tragedy in Japan that people are feeling the effects of radiation hundreds of kilometres away from the destroyed nuclear plant," he said in a statement on Tuesday.

"All we have been asking is for cargo to be tested before being offloaded in Australia. The fact remains that we actually have no idea whether goods are contaminated or not."

Officials from ARPANSA will check a selection of the 700 Toyotas and 100 other vehicles from the Japanese port of Yokohama when the ship docks in Port Kembla on Thursday.

Thirty of the vehicles are used cars, which might have been in areas affected by the March earthquake and tsunami that damaged nuclear reactors on Japan's coast.

But ARPANSA's acting head of Radiation Health, Peter Johnston, said the agency did not expect to find anything.

"We're not expecting to find anything but what we're discussing at the moment is to go on to the ship and monitor a few vehicles before they unload, really to provide reassurance to dock workers," Mr Johnston told the Daily Telegraph.

© 2011 AAP

[John Dolva]

http://www.theepocht...lure-57876.html

Japan's Nuclear Plant Plays Down Decontamination Failure

By Helena Zhu

Epoch Times Staff Created: Jun 19, 2011 Last Updated: Jun 20, 2011

The destroyed area is seen within the exclusion zone, about 6km away from Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, on April 12, in Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. (Athit Perawongmetha/Getty Images)

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), operator of Japan's earthquake and tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, suspended its work over the weekend on a self-contained cooling system after a filter, which was expected to remove the radioactive cesium for several weeks, exceeded its capacity in just five hours.

Junichi Matsumoto, a spokesman for the company, said that oil and sludge in the water contained much more radiation than expected, according to The Japan Times.

The filter, used to purify contaminated waters in Fukushima's No. 1 reactor, should be replaced when the radiation level reaches 4 millisieverts. Yet, the filter in question had reached 4.7 millisieverts.

The company has yet to find a solution for the filter and halted its efforts to decontaminate about 28 million gallons of water in the basements and trenches at the reactor.

Nevertheless, Matsumoto said that the company is confident that the setback will not delay its original plan to achieve a stable cool status by mid-July.

edit format

Edited June 22, 2011 by John Dolva

[John Dolva]

http://fukushimanewsresearch.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/japan-municipal-heads-go-anti-nuclear/

JAPAN | Municipal heads go anti-nuclear

Posted on June 22, 2011 by fukushimanewsresearch

0

JAPAN | NHK | Wednesday, June 22, 2011 06:10 +0900 (JST)

Municipal heads and reconstruction experts are discussing ways to reduce the use of nuclear power after the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Japan has 54 reactors, which accounted for 29 percent of the country’s electricity generation in 2009. Thirty-five, or about two-thirds of them, have suspended operations because of the March 11th disaster, regular inspections or government requests.

On June 15th, a panel of experts in Fukushima Prefecture agreed on a draft of basic concepts for reconstruction that includes the idea of abandoning nuclear power and promoting renewable energy.

The head of a town in Yamaguchi Prefecture, where the Chugoku Electric Power Company aims to operate a nuclear plant in 7 years, indicated the possibility of reviewing the town’s nuclear-tolerant stance.

Kaminoseki Mayor Shigemi Kashiwabara told the municipal assembly on Tuesday that the town needs to consider breaking free from nuclear power.

The mayor of Osaka City, Kunio Hiramatsu, has suggested that Kansai Electric Power Company should pursue new energy sources to replace nuclear power.

Goshi Hosono, the prime minister’s advisor for the Fukushima accident, said it is natural for municipal heads and others to voice their objections to nuclear power amid the disaster at the Fukushima plant. He added that to protect people’s lives, the government will operate functional nuclear reactors while ensuring the maximum level of safety.*

*yeah right

[John Dolva]

http://www.guardian....-nuclear-policy

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Murakami laments Japan's nuclear policy

The novelist has declared that his country should have said 'no' to nuclear in 1945

• 
  Haruki Murakami. Photograph: Jordi Bedmar /EPA
  

Haruki Murakami has slammed Japan's nuclear policy following the emergency at Fukushima, declaring that his country should have said "no" to nuclear after learning in 1945 "just how badly radiation leaves scars on the world and human wellbeing".
Accepting the 2011 International Catalunya prize, the Japanese novelist said in his speech that the situation at the Fukushima plant was "the second major nuclear detriment that the Japanese people have experienced", the Japan Times reported. "However, this time it was not a bomb being dropped upon us, but a mistake committed by our very own hands."
The Japanese people should have rejected nuclear power, he said, after having "learned through the sacrifice of the hibakusha [survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the second world war] just how badly radiation leaves scars on the world and human wellbeing".
But instead, "those who questioned (the safety of) nuclear power were marginalised as being 'unrealistic dreamers,'" said Murakami, with priority put on "efficiency" and "convenience" by the government and utility companies. Instead, the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle suggested, the country should have worked to develop alternatives to nuclear power as a way to take collective responsibility for the victims of the atomic bombs.
Murakami is donating his €80,000 winnings from the award to the victims of the 11 March earthquake and tsunami, and to those affected by the nuclear crisis. The novelist said he was confident his country would "rise again to rebuild after realigning its mind and spirit, just as it has survived on many occasions throughout its history", according to the Mainichi Daily News.
"We must not be afraid to dream," he said. "Do not be caught up by the evil dogs that carry the names of 'efficiency' and 'convenience'. Instead, we must be 'unrealistic dreamers' who charge forward taking bold steps."

Edited June 22, 2011 by John Dolva

[John Dolva]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/22/fukushima-nuclear-plant-ticking-time-bomb-japan-disaster-michio-kaku-_n_882166.html?ir=Green&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008

Fukushima Nuclear Plant Remains 'Ticking Time Bomb' After Japan Disaster: Michio Kaku, Theoretical Physicist

Though global fears about radiation emissions from the heavily damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility have calmed in the weeks since Japan's devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami, famed physicist Michio Kaku insists the situation remains a "ticking time bomb."

A professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York and the City College of New York, Kaku discussed some recent revelations about the disaster's impact, and noted that Japanese officials still don't yet have control at the site. "In the last two weeks, everything we knew about that accident has been turned upside down," Kaku says. "Now we know it was 100 percent core melt in all three reactors...now we know it was comparable to the radiation at Chernobyl."

Among Kaku's other distressing notes: Fukushima workers are exposed to a year's dose of radiation within minutes of entering the site, and cleanup will take between 50 to 100 years. "It's like hanging by your fingernails," he says. "It's stable, but you're hanging by your fingernails."

Watch Kaku's interview with CNN here: >

[John Dolva]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/virginia-lawmakers-flying-to-france-as-part-of-lobbying-push-for-uranium-mining/2011/06/15/AG0BDxXH_story.html

Virginia lawmakers flying to France as part of lobbying push for uranium mining

By Anita Kumar, Published: June 17

RICHMOND — More than a dozen Virginia legislators are flying to France this month on all-expenses paid trips as part of an aggressive lobbying effort by a company pushing lawmakers to lift a ban on uranium mining in the state.

Virginia Uranium invited nearly all 140 state lawmakers to France as it looks to mine what is thought to be the largest deposit of uranium in the United States, in south central Virginia, despite concerns about unearthed radioactive material that could contaminate the area’s land, air and drinking water. ...

[John Dolva]

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/47951

Britain: Blockade of nuclear plant planned

Sunday, June 19, 2011 By Derek WallWith Italy being the latest European country to reject nuclear power in a June 12-13 referendum, a coalition of anti-nuclear groups in Britain has announced plans to hold a mass non-violent blockade of Hinkley Point nuclear power station on October 3.

[John Dolva]

http://www.democracy..._nukes_thinking

Japan's Meltdowns Demand New No-Nukes Thinking

New details are emerging that indicate the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan is far worse than previously known, with three of the four affected reactors experiencing full meltdowns. Meanwhile, in the U.S., massive flooding along the Missouri River has put Nebraska's two nuclear plants, both near Omaha, on alert. The Cooper Nuclear Station declared a low-level emergency and will have to close down if the river rises another 3 inches. The Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant has been shut down since April 9, in part due to flooding. At Prairie Island, Minn., extreme heat caused the nuclear plant's two emergency diesel generators to fail. Emergency-generator failure was one of the key problems that led to the meltdowns at Fukushima.