Japan pushes to remove Fukushima references from UN exhibition via The Mainichi

Posted on 2020/03/03 by nfield

[…]

The Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations is slated to mount the exhibition during the review conference for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty from April 27 to May 22.

The ministry, which has supported the confederation’s three previous exhibitions, suggested it could withdraw its backing unless the requested changes are made, said Sueichi Kido, the group’s secretary general.

The exhibition in the lobby of the U.N. headquarters in New York will consist of around 50 panels mainly describing the horrors of nuclear weapons, including the aftermath of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Two of the panels will touch on the nuclear disasters at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in 2011 and Ukraine’s Chernobyl power plant in 1986.

According to Kido, the ministry argues the panels contradict the spirit of the nonproliferation treaty, which allows for the peaceful use of nuclear technology.

A ministry official said its support for the exhibition was under review and declined to confirm whether any pressure had been applied to change its content.

Kido said there had been a “breach of trust” and the confederation, which represents survivors of the atomic bombings, plans to hold the exhibition as planned with or without the ministry’s support.

“Atomic bombs and nuclear accidents are the same in the sense that they cause harm through radiation. As a victim of atomic bombing, Japan has a responsibility to work toward the elimination of nuclear weapons,” Kido added.

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Olympic torch relay faces cool welcome from nuclear evacuees via The Asahi Shimbun

Posted on 2020/03/02 by nfield

FUTABA, Fukushima Prefecture–Dressed in protective plastic coveralls and white booties, Yuji Onuma stood in front of the row of derelict buildings that included his house, and sighed as he surveyed his old neighborhood.

On the once-bustling main street, reddish weeds poked out of cracked pavements in front of abandoned shops with caved-in walls and crumbling roofs. Nearby, thousands of black plastic bags filled with irradiated soil were stacked in a former rice field.

“It’s like visiting a graveyard,” he said.

Onuma, 43, was back in his hometown of Futaba to check on his house, less than 4 kilometers from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which suffered a triple meltdown in 2011 following an earthquake and tsunami, leaking radiation across the region.

The authorities say it will be two more years before evacuees can live here again, an eternity for people who have been in temporary housing for nine years. But given the lingering radiation here, Onuma says he has decided not to move back with his wife and two young sons.

Most of his neighbors have moved on, abandoning their houses and renting smaller apartments in nearby cities or settling elsewhere in Japan.

Given the problems Futaba still faces, many evacuees are chafing over the government’s efforts to showcase the town as a shining example of Fukushima’s reconstruction for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The Olympic torch relay will take place in Fukushima in late March–although possibly in shortened form as a result of the coronavirus, Olympic organizers say–and will pass through Futaba. In preparation, construction crews have been hard at work repairing streets and decontaminating the center of town.

“I wish they wouldn’t hold the relay here,” said Onuma. He pointed to workers repaving the road outside the train station, where the torch runners are likely to pass. “Their number one aim is to show people how much we’ve recovered.”

He said he hoped that the torch relay would also pass through the overgrown and ghostly parts of the town, to convey everything that the 7,100 residents uprooted of Futaba lost as a result of the accident.

“I don’t think people will understand anything by just seeing cleaned-up tracts of land.”

[…]

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Faslane to dump up to 50 times more radioactive waste in the Clyde via The Ferret

Posted on 2020/03/02 by nfield

Rob Edwards on March 1, 2020

[…]

An application by the MoD to overhaul waste disposal from the Faslane and Coulport nuclear bases near Helensburgh suggests that radioactive discharges could rise sharply as more submarines are stationed there.

The liquid waste comes from the reactors that drive the Royal Navy’s submarines and from the processing of Trident nuclear warheads. It will be discharged from Faslane into the Gareloch nearby via a proposed new pipeline.

Increased pollution has been condemned by local authorities as “reckless and unacceptable” because it could contaminate wildlife and local communities with radioactivity. The MoD’s plan has also been criticised as “unwelcome” by a former environmental regulator.

According to the MoD, however, the proposed discharges were within permissible limits, and it was proposing to reduce those limits. “Nuclear safety is our top priority,” it said.

Faslane is currently the home port for four nuclear-powered Vanguard submarines armed with Trident missiles. It also hosts an ageing nuclear-powered Trafalgar submarine and three new nuclear-powered Astute submarines.

[…]

What Doull didn’t say, however, was that the amounts of radioactivity scheduled to be dumped into the Gareloch are due to rise – in some cases dramatically.

A table on page 34 of the Clyde bases’ detailed 76-page application listed the radioactive wastes expected to be discharged every year from the new Faslane hub. “Activity levels in treated liquid effluent discharged to the Gareloch have been estimated based on the maximum anticipated radionuclide levels,” the application said.

Future annual discharges of cobalt-60 – one of the main radioactive wastes from submarine reactors – were given as 23.4 million units of radioactivity, known as becquerels. This is 52 times higher than the average annual discharges of cobalt-60 over the last six years – 0.45 million becquerels.

[…]

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武藤類子　「福島はオリンピックどごでねぇ」アクションviaひだんれん、脱原発福島ネットワーク

Posted on 2020/03/02 by nfield

「福島はオリンピックどごでねぇ！」

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　2020.2.29、3.1

コロナのリスクを考えて随分迷いましたが、この行動は外で行うこと、大人数ではないこと、マスクやアルコールの準備をすることなどで、何とか開催を決めました。

原発事故から9年、今、県内の報道や雰囲気は聖火リレーをはじめとして、オリンピック一色となっています。

　オリンピックのために日夜努力を重ねているアスリートがいます。

　聖火リレーに希望を託し、懸命に走ろうとしている中学生がいます。

　聖火リレーや野球の観戦を楽しみにしている人もいるでしょう。

でも、なぜ私たちがこのようなアクションをせざるを得ないのか。

それは「福島はオリンピックどころではない」と思うからです。

　原発事故は収束していますか？

　汚染水はコントロールされていますか？

　排気筒の解体に、いったい何回人が登ったのですか？

　被害者の賠償は、きちんとされましたか？

　被害者の生活は元に戻りましたか？

　福島の産業は元に戻りましたか？

　本当に復興に役立つオリンピックなのですか？

アスリートや住民を被ばくさせることは本当にないですか？

多くの問題が山積している中で、福島県民は在住者も避難者も必死で生きています。

皆が原発事故からの本当の復興を望んでいます。

今、この福島で最優先されるべきは何でしょうか。

莫大なお金がこのオリンピック、聖火リレーにつぎ込まれています。さまざまな問題がオリンピックの影に隠され、遠のいていきます。オリンピックが終わった後に、何が残るのかとても不安です。

私たちは、うわべだけの「復興した福島」を知って欲しいのではなく、たった9年では解決できない問題が山積した、とても苦しい、とても大変な原発事故の被害の実情こそを世界の皆さまに、知ってもらいたいです。

今日は「福島はオリンピックどごでねぇ！」と、皆さんで元気に訴えていきましょう。



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Comments on “Individual external dose monitoring of all citizens of Date City by passive dosimeter 5 to 51 months after the Fukushima NPP accident (series): 1. Comparison of individual dose with ambient dose rate monitored by aircraft surveys.” via arXiv

Posted on 2020/03/01 by nfield

Masaki Oshikawa, Yutaka Hamaoka, Kyo Kageura, Shin-ichi Kurokawa, Jun Makino, Yoh Tanimoto(Submitted on 31 Jan 2020)

[…]

(12) In the Conclusion section, the authors write “it is possible to predict the external exposure dose received by each individual based on the aircraft monitoring data”. As we pointed out above, individual fluctuations of the coefficient are not taken into account in drawing such a conclusion. The conclusion of this paper cannot be a basis of radiological protection.
To summarize all the issues (1)–(12) above, the treatment of data in the paper does not satisfy the minimum standard required for scientific papers. For instance, it is even unclear whether the main conclusion “c = 0.15” represents the average or the median of the actual data, and the number of samples excluded as outliers is not specified. Given that the exposure dose is known to follow the log-normal distribution, there should be no need
to exclude part of the samples as outliers if the logarithm is taken in the first place. As observed in Fig. 4, it is highly likely that c is underestimated because samples with high dose exposure are excluded. The authors of this paper analyzed the logarithm of exposure in other papers [8][4]. It is necessary to explain why this paper did not do so. For the purpose
of radiological protection, the large variation of the individual doses is important, and it is inappropriate just to use the median or the average. Furthermore, c should depend on the age and lifestyles of participants, but the authors did not take that into account. Moreover, although they state “[T]hese results show that coarse-grained airborne data can be a useful
estimator for predicting the individual doses of residents living in contaminated areas” in Section 4, they do not give any information that shows the goodness-of-fit. We note that, while one of us (S. K.) has written a comment [9] concerning the subsequent paper [10], this Letter addresses separate issues on a different paper [1].


Acknowledgements
We thank Ms. Akemi Shima for providing us with the public documents obtained through her Freedom of Information requests.
Some of the issues pointed out in this Letter were discussed in Refs. [11, 12, 13], in the Japanese magazine KAGAKU. This Letter is composed as an original article in English, with a permission of the publisher of KAGAKU (Iwanami Shoten, Publishers). We also thank the KAGAKU Editorial Office for opportunities to discuss this work.

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実測数より多いデータ解析〜宮崎早野論文に新疑惑 via OurPlanet-TV

Posted on 2020/03/01 by nfield

住民６万人の被曝データが、研究者に不正提供された疑いがあるとして、福島県伊達市が調査を行なっている問題で、研究者が解析した論文上のデータが、実測された住民人数のより多い期間が存在することがOurPlanetTVの取材で分かった。伊達市では１６０３７人にしかガラスバッチを配布していなかったにも関わらず、論文の解析データは２万人を超えていた。

問題となっているのは、福島県立医科大学の宮崎真講師と東京大学の早野龍名誉教授が、２０１６年から２０１７年にかけて国際的な科学誌に投稿した２つの論文データ。[…]

２万１,０８０人という人数は、２０１３年７月から２０１４年６月までの１年間に、年間を通してガラスバッチを計測した人口と一致するため、前年のデータを流用した可能性がある。

４箇所の使用〜論文の結論に影響

[…]

伊達市では年間５ミリシーベルト以上のＢエリアについて、２０１４年６月までは全住民を対象に計測をしていたが、２０１４年７月からサンプリング調査に転換したため、計測者人数が大幅に減っていた。

宮崎氏が医大の調査に虚偽の供述か
同論文は、同意を得ないデータが使われているなどとして、伊達市の住民が一昨年、東京大学と福島医大に研究不正を申し立てたが、いずれの大学も昨年７月、「不正はなかった」とする結論を公表していた。しかし、OurPlanetTVの取材によると、福島医大の研究不正の調査で、宮崎氏が２０１５年８月に伊達市職員から受け取ったとされるCDには、２０１４年７月以降のデータが含まれていないことが判明。宮崎氏が不正調査の過程で、虚偽の証言をした疑いもある。

調査を行なった福島医大と宮崎氏は、OurPlanetTVに対し、伊達市の調査委員会で現在調査中のため、回答は控えたいとしたが、事実関係について否定しなかった。また早野氏に対しては、２月半ばから事実関係に関する答えを求めてきたが、２８日までに回答がなかった。

伊達市の検証委員会の報告書は見送り
ガラスバッチ データ提供の経緯を調査している伊達市の検証委員会は２月１０日、とりまとめる予定だった報告書の提出を見送り、３月以降に延期した。

全文とビデオ

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An Opportunity for Japan to Change People’s Perception　via APA-JapanFocus

Posted on 2020/03/01 by nfield

By Alexis Dudden

[…]

The upcoming 2020 “Recovery Olympics” is not about rebranding Japan. Instead, it is about rebranding unstable radioactive elements from everyone’s enemy into something Japanese authorities hope that a “smile” makes less treacherous. These upcoming Olympics distract from the consequences of the three nuclear reactor meltdowns in Fukushima that began nine years ago.

[…]

The low-level ionizing radiation that permeates areas of Fukushima will not kill Olympic athletes or their supporters who visit the torch relay, baseball, and softball games. It is highly unlikely that any will suffer after-effects from such minimal exposure. That said, using Olympic athletes—people with extraordinary physicality—to make unseen radionuclide enemies appear inconsequential compounds and denies the ongoing challenges faced by the people, animals, land, and water that live in these areas by choice or having no economic option.

[…]

Yet, the Japanese government’s manipulation of athleticism and consumerism to make Fukushima’s radiation problems appear irrelevant takes the Olympic program—and, again, the athletes—into newly dangerous levels of state-led coercion.

Defining “terrorism” is notoriously slippery: one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. That said, for the sake of grasping the dangers that Fukushima’s residents live with on a daily basis—not to mention the land, river, and sea creatures—what happens if we were to humanize radionuclides and make them visible? Different from the difficulties involved in naming someone a “terrorist,” cesium, for example, knows no political, economic, or religious impulse. Tritium is not a Japanese word. No matter how much the Japanese government massages meaning otherwise these and other radionuclides affecting areas of Fukushima will continue to threaten and harm the people, the land, and the Pacific Ocean for at least the rest of this century—if not longer.

The Japanese state apparatus and its backers—not in the least the International Olympic Committee—would have the world believe otherwise, relying on radiation’s invisibility to buttress the untrue yet pervasive notion that long-term exposure to low levels of radiation is not worrisome. But it is, as studies from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Marshall Islands, Hanford, and Chernobyl show.

[…]

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「復興五輪」の開催是非問う集会

Posted on 2020/03/01 by nfield

聖火リレーのJヴィレッジで

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiW7FK1wE-c&feature=youtu.be
Posted in *日本語 | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Plans to retire coal plants in Minnesota could rely on extending nuclear power via StarTribune

Posted on 2020/03/01 by yukimiyamotodepaul

Nobody knows the future of wind and solar power, but experts agree the technology isn’t there yet to rely on those resources alone. 

By  Greg Stanley

Xcel Energy’s race to retire coal plants and remove carbon emissions from the state’s power grid may rely on plans to keep Minnesota’s three aging nuclear reactors operating for decades.

That prospect has a number of environmental groups, some of which have protested the state’s nuclear policies in the past, wrestling with how to respond. In an era when greenhouse gases and climate change have become a more pressing environmental threat than nuclear waste, several groups want to take a closer look at the potential benefits of Minnesota’s nuclear reactors.

Some places such as Germany are actively trying to shutter their nuclear plants, and several states across the country are retiring them early in a search for cheaper energy. But here in Minnesota, nuclear power may be a linchpin in Xcel’s efforts to meet its promise to customers to make energy production carbon-free by 2050, said Chris Clark, Xcel’s president for Minnesota and the Dakotas.

[…]

Upgrades needed
Minnesota’s three reactors, one in Monticello and two in Prairie Island, have been providing about a fifth of the state’s power, or even more, for decades. They need extensive upgrades — in the range of $1.4 billion — to continue operating to the end of their permits in the early 2030s. With that kind of investment, Xcel plans to ask nuclear regulators to extend the life of at least one of the reactors until 2040.

[…]

Since 2013, nine nuclear reactors have been shut down years before their permits were set to expire, including in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Several more would have been retired in Illinois and New York had state lawmakers not stepped in to subsidize their reactors to keep them open as carbon-free options.

Losing nuclear power is shortsighted, especially when that power is replaced by natural gas, Clark said.

[…]

If the proposal to extend the life of the Monticello plant moves forward, Clemmer said, regulators will need to watch out for that.

“It’s really important that we take a close look at exactly what is needed, what it will cost and make sure this would be able to operate safely for another 20 years,” Clemmer said.

By keeping the reactors around, the state has an option if technological advances don’t come as quickly as many hope, Clark said.

Xcel’s highly touted plan to be carbon-free by 2050 calls for cutting carbon emissions by 80% in just 10 years. But the utility said it would need another 20 years after that to cut the rest — and nobody is quite sure how to do that yet.

Read more at Plans to retire coal plants in Minnesota could rely on extending nuclear power

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原発を運転する資質を疑う via 日本経済新聞

Posted on 2020/03/01 by yukimiyamotodepaul

日本原子力発電が敦賀原発2号機の地質データを再稼働に有利な方向に勝手に書き換えていたことが発覚した。原子力規制委員会が規制基準に適合するかどうかを判断するのに重要なデータで、言語道断の行為だ。原発事業者としての資質を疑う。

敦賀2号機は原子炉の真下に活断層がある可能性が高く、このままだと廃炉に追い込まれる。原電は規制委の審査会合で、活断層でないと繰り返し反論してきた。

そして2月7日、提出した資料のなかの地質データが過去に示したものと10カ所以上も書き換わっていることが、わかった。

事態を重くみた規制委が審査を中断し、解析に使った元データの提出を求めたのは当然の対応だ。なぜこうした書き換えが起きたのか。徹底的に追究し、明らかにしてもらいたい。責任の所在も明確にすべきだ。

意図的ではなかったと原電は釈明するが、それで許される次元の話ではない。新たな解析で結果が変わったのなら、併記するなどして修正がわかるようにするのが、データを扱う際の初歩だ。それを知らない会社に原発を動かす資格があるのか。

（略）

昨年秋には関西電力で金品受領問題が表沙汰になった。時代錯誤というべき地元との癒着を、東京電力福島第1原発事故後も断ち切れていなかった。四国電力の伊方3号機でも今年1月、信頼を損なう深刻なトラブルが続いた。

東日本大震災からもうすぐ9年。電力会社の安全・安心への姿勢は何も変わっていないのではないか。原発の安全性に加え各社の資質も規制委は問うべきである。

全文は原発を運転する資質を疑う

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