＜ひと物語＞日立駅前で「脱原発」署名を集める　角田　京子さん（７０）via 東京新聞

Posted on 2015/04/05 by yukimiyamotodepaul

　東京電力福島第一原発事故を契機に、作家の大江健三郎さんや落合恵子さんらが始めた「さようなら原発１０００万人アクション」に共鳴し、二〇一一 年七月から一人、ＪＲ日立駅前に立ち、脱原発に賛同する市民の署名集めを始めた。毎週土曜日の午後二時から三時半まで、雨の日も雪の日も街頭で呼び掛ける こと百五十二回、集まった署名は六千三百六十筆に達した。「私の目標は一万筆ですから、達成するまでは続けていきます」と力強く宣言する。

　原発は危険なものという認識は、ずっとあったが、何げなく日常を生きてきた。考えが一変したのは３・１１の原発事故。「自分の国であんな事故が起 こるなんて。でも起きてしまった以上、もう日本人は原発に依存することはやめなくては」。東日本大震災後、自分にできることを探し始めた時、大江さんらが 脱原発を目指し一千万人署名を集めていることを知り、協力しようと決意した。

　だが、日立市は原発メーカーでもある日立製作所のお膝元でもある。「家族が日立に勤めているので、知られたら困る」と署名を断られることもあっ た。時には、原発に関わっていると思われる人が一方的に激しい非難の言葉を浴びせてくることも。「それでも一筆も集まらない日はなかった。人の温かさを知 りました」と語る。

（略）

脱原発を目指す市民が次第に増えていき、昨年九月、「東海第二原発再稼働ストップ日立市民の会」を発足させ た。震災後、運転を停止している東海第二原発の再稼働に反対し、廃炉を求める活動にも熱心に取り組む。「退職後に体を壊したので日立市に引っ越して、のん びり暮らすつもりだったのに。毎日が本当に忙しくて…」。ぼやきながらも、表情は活気にあふれている。

　全国で集まった脱原発の署名は二月半ばで八百四十八万余りとなった。「最近は集まるペースが落ちていると聞きます。原発事故から四年がたち、人々 の関心が薄れてきているのを感じます」と危機感を募らせている。「福島の人たちが四年たっても故郷に帰れないのに、国は原発を積極的に再稼働させようとし ています。利益だけを追い求めて人の命や故郷を台無しにしてはいけないのです」。訴えるまなざしには、揺るぎない信念がみなぎっている。　（成田陽子）

全文は＜ひと物語＞日立駅前で「脱原発」署名を集める　角田　京子さん（７０）

Posted in *日本語 | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on ＜ひと物語＞日立駅前で「脱原発」署名を集める　角田　京子さん（７０）via 東京新聞

U.S. to digitize A-bomb archives via The Japan Times

Posted on 2015/04/05 by

Japanese and American experts are exploring ways to put the data archives of a study on A-bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki online.
[…]
The Japanese initiative focuses on the massive amount of documents generated by the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC), the U.S. body that carried out the radiation study.

According to project leader Masahito Ando, a professor of archival science at Gakushuin University’s Graduate School of Humanities, the team has so far acquired around 140,000 digital images of the commission’s entire collection at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.

Funded by the Japanese government, Ando’s group is now using the material to develop what it calls a “digital archive related to atomic bomb radiation effects on human body,” with assistance from the Texas Medical Center Library in Houston, which holds another key ABCC-linked archive.

[…]
The United States officially established the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in 1947 to carry out a long-term study of the medical impact of the A-bombings, which are estimated to have killed over 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the end of 1945 and left many survivors with long-term health problems.

The ABCC carried out genetic studies involving children born to the survivors, life span surveys and health studies involving adults. Its research has been taken over by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Japan, which was launched in 1975 and is funded by both the Japanese and U.S. governments.

[…]
The library is already providing public access to some of the items via its website, including the personal journal of William Moloney, a U.S. hematologist who worked with the ABCC from 1952 to 1954.

Philip Montgomery, the library’s archivist, said Moloney’s journal is interesting because it reveals the personal emotions of the doctor, which are not revealed in any of the official documents. In one entry, for example, Moloney expresses frustration with his inability to treat a 9-year-old Japanese boy who was suffering from leukemia and was the same age as his son.

Many of the A-bomb survivors have criticized the commission’s doctors for treating them like”guinea pigs” rather than helping them.

Read more.

Posted in *English | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on U.S. to digitize A-bomb archives via The Japan Times

Gov’t reluctant to charge TEPCO over rent money for voluntary Fukushima evacuees via The Mainichi

Posted on 2015/04/04 by

The government has been covering the rent for apartments provided for evacuees from Fukushima Prefecture, while not demanding payment for this purpose from Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) — the operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant — it has been learned.

While TEPCO is ready to pay the rent costs for those who have been forced to evacuate from their hometowns due to government evacuation orders, the utility is reluctant to do the same for evacuees who left their homes voluntarily. The Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry has fallen in line with TEPCO on the matter, while the decision on which party is to charge TEPCO — the national government or Fukushima Prefecture — is still also up in the air.

Since the Disaster Relief Act has applied to the entirety of Fukushima Prefecture following the 2011 nuclear crisis, local residents — whether forced or voluntary evacuees — have all been provided rent-free apartments as temporary shelters. Prefectural governments that have taken in Fukushima evacuees initially submit the housing charges to the Fukushima Prefectural Government, which compiles data — but the central government has effectively been covering the entire cost.

According to the Cabinet Office, which holds jurisdiction over the Disaster Relief Act, the aid money spent on disaster relief measures in Fukushima Prefecture totaled 31.7 billion yen in fiscal 2013 and 28.7 billion yen in 2014, based on the fiscal budget. Much of the aid money is believed to have gone to cover apartment rental costs, meaning that taxpayers’ money is going into something that should be covered by TEPCO.
[…]
Furthermore, the central and Fukushima prefectural governments have failed to settle which party is to charge TEPCO for the rent money. Since the Ibaraki Prefectural Government demanded that private businesses pay rescue costs for a 1999 accident at the JCO nuclear material processing plant in the prefectural town of Tokai, the health ministry sought to establish measures that enabled the Fukushima Prefectural Government and municipal governments in the prefecture to charge TEPCO over the rent money. However, the Fukushima government has claimed that the central government should take responsibility for demanding that TEPCO pay the housing fees, since the latter has been shouldering the cost.

A Cabinet Office representative told the Mainichi Shimbun that the government cannot demand that TEPCO pay for something the utility refuses to pay — suggesting the government’s plan to exempt TEPCO from covering rent payment compensation for voluntary evacuees.

Masafumi Yokemoto, a professor of environmental policy at Osaka City University, points out that a reason why the central government and other related parties haven’t charged TEPCO over the rent money for voluntary evacuees is because they don’t want to admit that those people are victims of the nuclear meltdown.

“The issue clearly shows how the government and TEPCO try to avoid responsibility for clarifying accountability for the disaster,” Yokemoto added.

Read more.

Posted in *English | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Gov’t reluctant to charge TEPCO over rent money for voluntary Fukushima evacuees via The Mainichi

100 people worked near Fukushima nuclear plant without radiation knowledge via Mainichi

Posted on 2015/04/04 by yukimiyamotodepaul

Roughly 100 people worked in a former no-go zone near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant between December 2012 and March 2013 without knowledge that their work was subject to a special radiation dose limit, it has been learned.

The workers were employed by a contractor that secured jobs for them under a deal with the central government’s Cabinet Office to monitor passing vehicles. Labor standards authorities ordered the contractor to correct its practices after the problem came to light.

The contractor says it had only about two weeks to begin work after winning the government contract, and did not have much time to check pertinent laws. The case highlights the central government’s hasty approach in requesting such work — without a sufficient preparatory period or explanation.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has asked both contractors and outsourcers to comply with legal requirements.

[…]

However, the Tomioka Labor Standards Inspection Office was alerted by third parties about a possible violation of regulations for jobs other than decontamination work that are subject to special radiation limits. It launched an investigation and ordered the contractor in August last year to rectify the situation, pointing out that the job fell under the category of work in which people would be exposed to an air dose of over 2.5 microsieverts per hour.

Although the contractor independently monitored the traffic patrol workers’ radiation exposure through their dosimeters, it did not check their respective radiation exposure records, conduct an 150-minute course on radiation effects on the human body and measurement methods, carry out advance research on air doses or issue dose records.

The contractor sent workers their radiation dose records after receiving the improvement order from the labor standards inspection office, but some of the records returned unopened because the workers had changed their addresses.

Read more at 100 people worked near Fukushima nuclear plant without radiation knowledge 

Posted in *English | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on 100 people worked near Fukushima nuclear plant without radiation knowledge via Mainichi

Living and working in Chernobyl: Fascinating insight into the lives of those who work and live in the exclusion zone around the nuclear plant nearly 30 years after disaster that shook the world via Daily Mail

Posted on 2015/04/04 by yukimiyamotodepaul
  • Almost 30 years on from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, almost 7,000 people are still working at the power plant
  • Some live inside the exclusion zone for up to 14 days at a time, while others commute in from nearby towns
  • Despite being outside the exclusion zone, levels of radiation in these towns is still up to 30 times higher than usual
  • Another 400 elderly people, mostly poor farmers and former plant workers, have resettled inside the exclusion zone 
[…]

Despite living outside the exclusion zone, these workers are still exposed to radiation levels 30 to 40 times higher than the typical background radiation. No studies have ever been conducted into the effects of long term radiation exposure, so nobody knows quite what this is doing to them. Higher instances of cancer and other diseases have been reported, but the villagers themselves get by on hearsay, rumour, and speculation.

While the exclusion zone itself is largely deserted, there are thought to be around 400 mostly elderly farmers who resettled in their old homes following the disaster, reluctant to leave after so many years spent in familiar surroundings. They scrape out desperate lives, subsisting off of the meagre pensions the government provides for being Chernobyl survivors.

Cancer rates are high, and alcoholism is rife. Viktor Gaidak, who worked at the Chernobyl plant for 28 years, was forced to sell virtually everything he owned in order to pay for treatment for colon cancer. Now his wife Lydia has also developed a tumour, but the couple have nothing left to sell to pay for her treatment.

[…]

But while most people fled the zone following the disaster, it has drawn in a morbidly-curious crowd of tourists, who come equipped with face masks and long-lens cameras to take pictures of the desolate and abandoned landscape.

As with so many things at Chernobyl, nobody quite knows how long it will be until the area is safe, however because of a particularly long-lived radioactive element that was used here, some scientists estimate that it could be 20,000 years before the area becomes habitable again.

Posted in *English | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Living and working in Chernobyl: Fascinating insight into the lives of those who work and live in the exclusion zone around the nuclear plant nearly 30 years after disaster that shook the world via Daily Mail

チェルノブイリ立入禁止区域　30年後の今も放射能が残る via ChinaNet

Posted on 2015/04/04 by yukimiyamotodepaul

イギリスの『デイリー・メール』の3月31日の 報道によると、チェルノブイリ原発の1986年の事故発生後、今も7000人がここで働いている。立入禁止区域に14日間いる人や、近くの町とを往復して 通勤する人もおり、彼らは事故で残った廃墟の処理を行なっている。そのほかに400人の高齢者もいる。彼らの多くは生活が苦しい農民や、原発の元従業員な ど再びこの禁止区域に戻された人たちである。

禁止区域のがん発症率は高い。高齢者のヴィクトル・ガイダクさんは結腸がんを患い、妻もがんを患っているが、治療する金銭的余裕がない。禁止区域の外でも放射線量は通常の30倍に達する。

ここは重大被災地だが、マスクをつけ、一眼レフカメラを持った観光客も多く訪れている。科学者は、ここで人が生活するまでに2万年かかると予測している。

続きと写真はチェルノブイリ立入禁止区域　30年後の今も放射能が残る

Posted in *日本語 | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on チェルノブイリ立入禁止区域　30年後の今も放射能が残る via ChinaNet

PUC president opposes reconsidering San Onofre cost agreement via Los Angels Times

Posted on 2015/04/04 by yukimiyamotodepaul

The president of the scandal-rocked Public Utilities Commission has rejected a call from a powerful lawmaker to reopen a financial settlement that apportioned nearly $5 billion in costs for the June 2013 permanent closure of the damaged San Onofre nuclear power plant.

In letter to the PUC last month, Lakewood Democratic Assemblyman Anthony Rendon, the chairman of the Utilities and Commerce Committee, said “it is imperative to investigate and scrutinize the entire settlement process” to assure it was “legitimate and uncorrupted.”

On Thursday in a six-page response, PUC President Michael Picker called the settlement “appropriate under the commission’s rules” and “supported by the record developed in the proceeding.”

What’s more, he added, the settlement avoided years of prolonged legal battles while providing some financial relief to ratepayers.

[…]

The agreement, which was unanimously approved by the five-member commission in November, assigns approximately $3.3 billion of the shut-down costs to ratepayers in Southern and Central California and $1.4 billion to the two utilities.

The agreement almost immediately encountered fierce criticism from San Diego County consumer advocates and nuclear power opponents around the state. But the debate got even hotter in February when Edison publicly notified the PUC of a possibly improper discussion between then-PUC President Michael Peevey and an Edison vice president.

Read more at PUC president opposes reconsidering San Onofre cost agreement

Posted in *English | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on PUC president opposes reconsidering San Onofre cost agreement via Los Angels Times

岸田外相、世界の指導者に被爆地訪問呼びかけへ via yomiuri online

Posted on 2015/04/04 by yukimiyamotodepaul

岸田外相は４日、広島市内で開かれた日米露の高校生が核軍縮問題を話し合う国際会議であいさつし、２７日から米ニューヨークで始まる核拡散防止条約（ＮＰＴ）再検討会議で、世界の政治指導者に被爆地の広島と長崎への訪問を呼びかける考えを示した。

続きは岸田外相、世界の指導者に被爆地訪問呼びかけへ

Posted in *日本語 | Tagged , , | Comments Off on 岸田外相、世界の指導者に被爆地訪問呼びかけへ via yomiuri online

英原発補助金めぐり提訴へ　オーストリア、ＥＵに via 中日新聞

Posted on 2015/04/04 by yukimiyamotodepaul

【ウィーン共同】英政府の原発補助金支出を欧州連合（ＥＵ）が認めた決定に対し、憲法で原発建設を禁じるオーストリアが「市場競争をゆがめる」と反 発、５月にもＥＵ司法裁判所に無効確認の訴訟を起こす。英政府は「内政干渉」（キャメロン首相）と主張、対抗措置を警告したとも報じられ、両国の外交戦に 発展しそうな気配だ。

「われわれは誰の脅しにも屈しない。持続可能でも、再生可能でもない原発への補助金には明確に反対する」。

続きは英原発補助金めぐり提訴へ　オーストリア、ＥＵに 

当サイト既出関連記事：

Posted in *日本語 | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on 英原発補助金めぐり提訴へ　オーストリア、ＥＵに via 中日新聞

嫌疑不十分？いや、捜査不十分だ！　東京地検が不起訴の処分via 福島原発告訴団

Posted on 2015/04/04 by

本日夕方、東京地検より、１月13日に福島原発告訴団が、旧保安院や東電の津波対策担当者らを告訴・告発した件（2015年告訴）について、全員を不起訴処分とすることを通知されました。
告訴してからわずか２か月半の決定であり、まともな捜査が行われたとは到底考えられません。不起訴理由についても、告訴団が以前に指摘した地検の事実誤認や新証拠について触れず、以前の理由書の焼き直しに過ぎません。
現在、2015年告訴について第二次告訴の告訴人を募集していますが、対応について弁護団と協議中です。決まり次第発表いたします。新たな告訴人の募集については、対応が決定するまで一時中断致します。少々お待ちください。

不起訴処分に対する団長声明
　今年の１月に新たな証拠を添えて行った告訴が、このように早々に不起訴という処分とされたことに驚き、憤りを感じています。十分な捜査が尽くされたとは到底思えません。５月には、全国よりたくさんの告訴人が２次告訴を行う予定であり、早々に幕引きを図ったのではと疑念を持たざるを得ません。
　検察は被害者の側にあるのでなければ、いったい何の側にあるのでしょうか。まったく納得がいきません。検察が自らその職責を放棄することに抗議いたします。

2015年告訴　不起訴理由を読む

Posted in *日本語 | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment