菅直人元首相（６８）が３日、東京・映画館「ポレポレ東中野」で行われた映画「無知の知」（石田朝也監督）の公開記念トークイベントに出席した。
同映画は福島第１原発を巡るドキュメンタリーで、事故当時、首相だった菅氏は、当時官房長官の枝野幸男氏、内閣府原子力安全委員会委員長だった班目春樹氏らとともに、石田監督の直撃インタビューに答える形で出演している。
事故当時、現場で陣頭指揮した故・吉田昌郎福島第１原発所長の「吉田調書」で、菅氏は「あのおっさん」呼ばわりされ、政府事故調査・検証委員会は 最終報告書で、当時の官邸の介入は「弊害の方が大きい」と断じている。菅氏はこの日、「吉田調書」について「吉田さんは『東日本が壊滅する』寸前だったと 言っている。まさに紙一重だった。そこのところが注目されていないのでないか」と話した。
関連記事：
Japan Atomic Power Co., struggling financially while its nuclear reactors remain offline, still donated 1.54 billion yen ($13.7 million) to a city government and asked that the funds be kept secret, officials said Nov. 1.
The money used for the donations came from fees paid by other power companies, who are under contract to buy electricity from Japan Atomic Power.
Japan Atomic Power has not produced any electricity from its three nuclear reactors since they were shut down following the March 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. The company’s requests for secrecy came after criticism arose over why it was still receiving money from the industry for nonexistent electricity.
The city government of Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, which hosts Japan Atomic Power’s two-reactor Tsuruga nuclear plant, started receiving donations from the company in 2009, mainly for use in road construction. The city had listed the donations, totaling 440 million yen, on official documents and shown them to the city assembly until March 2012.
At the end of March 2013, Japan Atomic Power donated 850 million yen to Tsuruga city. On May 31 that year, it asked the city not to list the donation on official documents.
The Tokyo-based company also donated 670 million yen in December 2013 and 19 million yen in March 2014. Again, Japan Atomic Power requested secrecy from the city government.
The city complied with the requests.
“We judged that it is not necessary (for the city government) to describe our donations on the official documents,” said an official at Japan Atomic Power.
[…]
Harumi Kondaiji, a Tsuruga city assemblywoman, said such nondisclosure was unacceptable.“It is unforgivable for the city government not to show its citizens where the financial sources of its public works projects come from,” she said.
Read more.
Earlier this year, a violent chemical reaction at a New Mexico facility that stores waste from the making of plutonium bombs broke open a storage drum and sprayed the waste into the air, leading to the closure of the repository.
[…]
But the reaction, which forced the closure of the site, came as a blow to the country’s efforts to clean up old nuclear weapons manufacturing sites and has forced the government to take extraordinary measures to prevent a repetition. The reopening of the waste repository will stretch into next year and cost at least $551 million, according to the Energy Department.The price could jump even higher. The State of New Mexico is nearing a decision on fining the Energy Department for its safety lapses at the repository — the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad, N.M. — and at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the plutonium waste was packaged in a way that ultimately led to the accident. The storage drum was one of many filled there as part of a cleanup campaign.
[…]
“I don’t know how you can look at the facts themselves or any of the subsequent investigations and not have serious questions about the effectiveness of management and oversight at Los Alamos National Laboratory and WIPP,” said Ryan C. Flynn, the secretary of the Environment Department in New Mexico. His staff is in the unusual position of drafting a proposal to fine the federal government because the Energy Department violated its state environmental permit.Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act suggest that the Energy Department does not know what is in many of the waste containers it has filled over the years.
[…]
The February leak has also cast doubt on the Energy Department’s safety calculations. Robert Alvarez, a nuclear waste expert and a former special assistant to the energy secretary, said that a safety analysis conducted before the repository opened predicted one such incident every 200,000 years; the mine has been open for 15 years.“What makes this event so disturbing is that radiation went half a mile up the shaft into the open environment,” he said. Twenty-two workers were exposed to small amounts of radiation.
Read more.
Whistle-blower’s photos lay bare risk of disaster as expert warns it’s another Fukushima waiting to happen
These photos of highly radioactive waste in crumbling ponds proves Sellafield is a Fukushima-like nuclear disaster waiting to happen on our doorstep.
These alarming images show nuclear waste abandoned 40 years ago lying in rotting containers in decaying tanks which are open to the elements.
While Sellafield portrays itself as a modern facility using latest technology the photos paint a picture of wanton neglect and reckless management of the most toxic substance ever created.
The images were leaked by a concerned worker who wanted the world to know parts of the plant – which is nearly 70 years old – are falling apart.
[…]
Nuclear exert John Large fears a massive radioactive leak.
He told The Ecologist website: “Looking at the photos I’m very disturbed at the degraded and rundown condition of the structures and support services. In my opinion there is a significant risk the system could fail.
“I’d say there’s many hundreds of tonnes in there. It could give rise to a very big radioactive release.
“It’s not for me to make comparisons with Chernobyl or Fukushima, but it could certainly cause serious contamination over a wide area and for a very long time.”
The alarming photos show cracked concrete tanks half-full of water contaminated with high levels of radiation.
Read more at Sellafield Safety Shocker: Nuclear waste abandoned 40 years ago lies in rotting containers open to the elements
As Canadian officials inch closer to a decision on an underground nuclear waste facility near Lake Huron, opposition in the Mitten is gaining strength.
At least 76 communities in Michigan have formally opposed the proposed facility for low- and intermediate-level waste. The Ontario Power Generation facility would house about 7 million cubic feet of waste and be located about 2,200 feet below ground — about 0.6 miles from the shore of Lake Huron in Kincardine, Ontario.
More than 30 of the communities opposed to the waste facility are in St. Clair and Sanilac counties.
In September, the Canadian Joint Review Panel — a group established by the federal Ministry of Environment and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission — had a nine-day public hearing to discuss OPG’s plans for the deep geologic repository.
It was the second round of hearings on the subject. The first 25-day hearing was in fall 2013.
[…]
The resolutions would create a Great Lakes Protection Radioactive Waste Advisory Board, and ask for an investigation into the plans by the International Joint Commission and the Great Lakes Commission.
The state legislators have asked U.S. leaders to engage the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty, which would require the U.S. and Canada to study OPG’s proposal and issue a binding decision.
Pavlov also testified during the Joint Review Panel hearings in September.
In a statement, Pavlov said he was encouraged to see the different communities that had adopted resolutions to oppose OPG’s plans.
“Local communities are overwhelmingly opposed to this proposed facility, and for good reason,” Pavlov said. “Ontario Power Generation’s plan to permanently bury radioactive waste less than a mile from Lake Huron presents a critical threat to the health of the entire Great Lakes region.”
Read more at Blue Water communities oppose nuclear waste site
Nearly 70 years ago, the first atomic bomb detonated in southern New Mexico at what’s now known as the Trinity Site.
Read more: http://www.koat.com/news/group-nuclear-bomb-test-affected-nm-residents/29450018#ixzz3HrwM8mCC
Watch 3-minute video.
TOKYO — Like other Japanese who were banking on this country’s sweeping move toward clean energy, Junichi Oba is angry.
Oba, a consultant, had hoped to supplement his future retirement income in a guilt-free way and invested $200,000 in a 50 kilowatt solar-panel facility, set up earlier this year in a former rice paddy near his home in southwestern Japan.
But Kyushu Electric Power Co., the utility to which he must sell his electricity, has recently placed on hold all new applications for getting on its grid. Four other utilities have made the same announcement and two more announced partial restrictions.
The utilities say they can’t accommodate the flood of newcomers to the green energy business, throwing in doubt the future of Japan’s up-to-now aggressive strategy on renewable energy. Another challenge is that supplies of power from sources such as solar are not reliable enough or easily stored.
“Kyushu electric shock is spreading in a domino effect,” said Oba. “It’s like fraud on the national level, with utility companies and the government in cahoots with each other.”
Traumatized by the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl and encouraged by the highest rates for renewable energy in the world, Japan has been undergoing a green boom. It’s now rapidly turning into a fiasco as the cost proves prohibitive and utilities anticipate putting some nuclear reactors, shuttered since the March 2011 Fukushima disaster, back online. The unfolding green glut in Japan echoes similar experiences in Germany and Spain.
The number of applications for solar facilities with Kyushu Electric jumped to 72,000 in March, about the same for the entire previous year. People were trying to beat the April 1 lowering of the government-set tariff that utilities pay renewable energy producers to 32 yen (30 cents) a kilowatt hour from 36 yen (34 cents). The regular cost of electricity in Japan is about 23 yen per kilowatt hour.
If all the planned solar panels in Japan were installed, their capacity would equal 8 percent of overall energy demand. At the 32 yen tariff, a whopping 3 trillion yen ($30 billion) would be added to electricity bills.
Experts debating policy at a government committee are pushing for an immediate end to the guaranteed rates for solar power.
[…]
Before Fukushima, renewable energy in Japan had been virtually zero.Abe still professes a commitment to green energy but the recent developments raise doubts that also affect foreign investors and local corporations.
U.S. solar companies have aggressively and nimbly set up shop in Japan, including First Solar Inc. and SunPower, in a reversal of the usual history of Japan Inc. being relatively closed to foreign businesses.
Softbank Corp., a Japanese telecommunications and Internet company, which has bought Sprint Corp. of the U.S., also moved into the solar business after Fukushima.
Softbank’s founder and CEO Masayoshi Son turned against nuclear power and became an advocate of renewables after his mobile networking went dead in the absence of electric power from the nuclear accident.
The company has built or is planning 20 solar and wind-power facilities in Japan, and is even working on wind generation in the Gobi desert, confident that electricity will become deregulated and decentralized.
Hiroaki Fujii, who heads Softbank’s renewable business, SB Energy Corp., said Japan needs to define the overall master-plan of what it sees as the “best mix” for energy including wind, solar and others, instead of blindly heading into a renewable push.
In the future, he believes communities will form around decentralized energy sources, instead of going to a giant utility.
He lamented the mishandling by the Japanese government on the initiatives, and demanded a more open debate.
“We did not learn from the mistakes of Germany,” he said.
In Germany, as a result of green policies that began about 2010, and its decision to scale back its dependence on nuclear power after Fukushima in 2011, electricity bills skyrocketed and some people had their power turned off because they couldn’t afford to pay.
Yasuhiro Goto, deputy director at the government’s New and Renewable Energy Division, acknowledged that some serious sorting out was needed on solar applicants and the tariff system, and that would mean some people interested in the solar business would have to be turned away.
A limited approach had been considered from the start, he said, but the government opted for no limits because it wanted to encourage widespread participation in the green initiative.
Goto urged those who were exasperated, like Oba, to calm down, although he said a solution such as expanding grid access would take time.
“Wait and be patient,” he said. “Our plan is going very well. It just went too fast.”
Read more.
Japan’s nuclear watchdog disputed the farm ministry’s assertion that radioactive substances churned up by debris removal work at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant contaminated distant rice paddies last year.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority announced at a commissioners’ meeting Oct. 31 its estimate that 110 billion becquerels of radioactive materials spread as a result of cleanup at the No. 3 reactor building on Aug. 19, 2013.
This figure is lower than the 130 billion to 260 billion becquerels estimated by the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., in August.
Radiation readings rose significantly during debris removal that day, with radioactive substances found to have contaminated plant workers about 500 meters from the reactor building.
However, NRA Commissioner Toyoshi Fuketa emphasized, “The affected area of the fallout was within the nuclear plant compound.”
[…]
Earlier, the farm ministry pointed to the possibility that radiation from the plant had spread to rice paddies in Minami-Soma more than 20 kilometers away, and called on TEPCO to take preventive measures in its debris removal work.
During the NRA meeting, some experts noted that despite the NRA’s estimate, it is unlikely that factors other than debris cleanup at the plant could have caused such high levels of radioactive fallout at the rice farms.
“From a broader perspective, the Fukushima No. 1 plant is responsible for the contamination,” one participant said.
Read more at NRA rebuts claim that Fukushima cleanup affected faraway rice paddies
（抜粋）
初期投資だけでもムチャクチャ、コストがかかるそうです。あ、それに原発を作る地元にもカネをばらまかなきゃいけない。もちろん、核のゴミの問題もありますよね。
核のゴミ、放射能レベルが十分低くなるまでには10万年、っていわれてますけど、そんなもんじゃありませんよ。100万年ですよ。
僕、2013年の春にドイツへ行ってきました。2022年末までに17基ある全ての原発の稼働を止めると決めた国です。そこでは核のゴミの議論が 始まっていて、廃炉などを担当する省庁の役人に「核のゴミの管理にはどれぐらいの期間が必要か」と聞いたら、100万年、安全管理が必要だと。ありえない でしょ。
原発問題を入り口に、TPPや貧困の問題などに関わることが多くなりました。別々の事柄に見えて、根っこは繋がってますから。
山本太郎が国会議員になったことの意義
メディアが僕のことを「反原発の」という風に取り上げるというのもあって、「原発・被曝のことやってないじゃないか」っていう批判もあります。
（略）
政治への不信感があふれていますよね、今。もういいや、って諦めたらその結果どうなるかと言ったら、組織票が強くなる。投票率が下がれば、企業から資金提供受けている人たちが強くなっていく。利害関係者の代表が議席を取りやすくなる。
そういう人たちに「誰のために国会議員やっているんだ」と聞いてみたら、「大企業のお陰でございます」と心の中で答えますよ。恩返しする先は、お世話になった大企業、大資本って話。シンプルですね。
来年の春からは統一地方選が始まります。いつ衆議院の解散があるかもわからない。そういうものに対して、まったく政治に興味がなかった人も今から動き出さなきゃ、この先もっと首が締まる様なルール変更が行われます、大企業の為に。
皆で動いて、ひっくり返してやりましょうよ。
全文は山本太郎が提言「原発、貧困、TPP…すべては繋がっている」
当サイト既出関連記事：
A nuclear power plant in Byron, Illinois. Taken by photographer Joseph Pobereskin (http://pobereskin.com).
