After more than eight years as nuclear exiles, some have chosen to return to the small town of Okuma in Fukushima, Japan.
[…]
Around 40% of the town’s land area has been cleaned up and the radiation levels lowered enough for people to return. So, are they coming home?
Read more and watch the video at Growing crops in the shadow of Fukushima
2011年3月11日の東日本大震災から8年以上が経ち、福島第一原子力発電所のある大熊町にも住民が戻り始めている。
(略）
その後、町の約4割で除染や復旧作業が進み、放射線レベルも下がったため、一部の地区では住民が帰還できる状態になった。
BBCのルーパート・ウィングフィールド＝ヘイズ東京特派員が、戻った住民を取材した。
全文とビデオは原発の町で野菜作り、震災から8年 福島
May 26, 2019
This month in India marked 21 years of the 1998 Pokharan nuclear tests, amid an acerbic and jingoist election campaign, resulting in the Hindu nationalist BJP’s return to power with Mr. Narendra Modi at the helm. Now that the cacophony of the election season is over, and the PM has extended greetings to his Pakistani counterpart, it is time we think more seriously about the impacts of intensifying militarization in a nuclear South Asia. We interviewed Prof. Robert Jacobs of the Hiroshima Peace Institute on the various human, climatic and political implications of nuclear tests.
) The general perception in India is that underground nuclear tests did/do not have much health impacts. What is your experience as part of the Global Hibakusha project?
Underground nuclear weapon tests absolutely have health effects. These effects are simply distributed and experienced differently than atmospheric nuclear weapon test effects. In any nuclear weapon detonation fission products are created: we think of this as radioactive fallout. It is important to separate our understanding of the chemical and radiological toxicity of this fallout from how it is distributed and encountered.
When a nuclear weapon is detonated in the atmosphere, the mushroom cloud fills with these fallout particles, and as the cloud drifts the particles “fall-out” of the cloud and deposit along the ground below. Much of this fallout deposits immediately downwind from the test site. If the weapon is big enough, the cloud can reach into the upper levels of the atmosphere, and a significant portion of the fallout can then be transported around the world, and may come down to Earth at any location.
This fallout will remain dangerous for various amounts of time, depending on the particle. Iodine-131 is not dangerous for long, but it is very dangerous, especially for children, who encounter it in the short-term. Cesium-137, which is such a problem from the fallout at Chernobyl and Fukushima, will remain dangerous for about 300 years. Plutonium will remain dangerous for 240,000 years.
The danger comes primarily from internalizing the particle inside of the body by swallowing or inhaling it. During the time that the particle is dangerous it will continue to transport through the ecosystem, taken up by one creature or plant, transferred to another when the first decays after death or is eaten—then concentrating the particles up the food chain.
This is fairly well understood. When a nuclear weapon is tested underground the same materials are created, they are simply not distributed downwind by a cloud: they are concentrated in the soil and water table close to the test site. For short lived particles, this may remove them from being a significant threat. But for particles that have long half-lives, like plutonium, they are all still present, and they will begin to transport through the ecosystem: nothing changes the nature of these particles. The only difference with an underground test is their distribution. Populations can be kept back from the areas immediately around the test site, but for the longer-lived particles, it is only a matter of time before they migrate from that site into the surrounding ecosystem.
[…]
3) What are the ways in which the Anthropocene concept has brought more attention to the plight of affected communities, as nuclear tests are now considered signatures of irreversible climate change?
[…]
The connection to irreversible climate change is not a causal one: nuclear tests have not contributed in a significant way to global heating. However, the Anthropocene frame helps us to see how global heating from the burning of fossil fuels, and the spread of transuranic elements and widespread distribution of radionuclides are both signatures of modern human activities.
The primary nuclear issue relating to the Anthropocene is the dilemma of what to do with the spent nuclear fuel from the nuclear power plants that we have operated both to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons and to produce electricity. These hundreds of thousands of tons of spent fuel rods will remain dangerous for over 100,000 years and we are currently in the process of pretending that we can adequately and successfully isolate and contain this waste so it does not harm living creatures in the future.
4) Most popular discourses and imaginations around the nuclear age remain confined to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leaving out the fallout from nuclear tests over decades. Why? What are the implications?
Here in Hiroshima when I present lectures to visiting students about the history of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I always include a section at the end of the lecture about how nuclear weapons have changed since 1945. There is a tendency for people who visit here and see the horrifying destruction that those weapons wrought, or how have learned about Hiroshima and Nagasaki at school, that this is what a nuclear weapon does. I tell these students that looking at Hiroshima is like looking at a gunshot victim in 1600, it doesn’t tell you very much about gun violence today.
In less than 10 years after the nuclear attacks here humans had developed thermonuclear weapons, or h-bombs. These weapons are not simply thousands of times more powerful than a-bombs, they are far more dire. When we think of thermonuclear weapons as being larger than a-bombs, we are thinking in terms of force, of blast. What h-bomb tests like the Bravo test on March 1, 1954 showed us was that you could be 100km away from the detonation point of such a weapon and be killed by it. While the blast and heat of a thermonuclear weapon is vastly larger, it is the capacity of these weapons to kill tens of millions of people with radioactive fallout that is what makes them revolutionary.
[…]
I would specifically encourage those suffering from Indian nuclear weapon tests to make community with those suffering from Pakistani nuclear tests. It was animosity between these two governments that caused the harm to both communities. Bonding together can be a step towards healing that hatred, and to building the kind of links that can help us avoid additional damage to the citizens of both nations.
Such an organization was formed at the end of the Cold War between the communities living near the Polygon nuclear test site of the Soviet Union in Kazakhstan and the Nevada Test Site in the United States. This was the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Movement. They understood that the other community was not their enemies, but their allies. This would be a powerful step by the test site communities near Pokhran. It is a way to transition from imagining yourself as “victims” to living as peacemakers.
Read more.
東京電力福島第1原発事故の被災者ら約3650人が国と東電に損害賠償などを求めた訴訟の控訴審で、仙台高裁の裁判官3人が27日、避難指示が出た福島県浪江町と富岡町を訪れ、被害の実態を調べた。
（略）
上田哲裁判長らは、浪江町の旧避難区域にある自動車整備業紺野重秋さん（81）の自宅を訪問。2017年春に避難指示が解除された後も福島市で生活する紺野さんは、町には事故前約2万人が住んでいたが「約千人しか帰っておらず、営業が成り立たない」と裁判長らに説明した。
上田裁判長らはその後、南に約20キロ離れた富岡町に移動。避難区域の中でも、放射線量が高く帰還の見通しが立たない帰還困難区域に防護服を着て入り、美容室を営んでいた深谷敬子さん（74）の自宅兼店舗を視察した。人間の背丈ほどまで雑草が伸びた庭を進み、つる植物に覆われた玄関から家に入った。
深谷さんは取材に「老後を楽しみにしていたのに、何もかもが駄目になった。裁判官には現実をよく見て、被害を受けた人たちの希望を聞いてほしい」と語った。
原発事故を巡る同種の訴訟で高裁裁判官が現地を視察するのは初めて。（共同）
This model Soviet city, or atomograd, was purpose-built in the 1970s to entice skilled workers to work in the nuclear power plant. Decades on, what does daily life look like?
By Daryl Mersom
Metsamor has been described as one of the world’s most dangerous nuclear power plants because of its location in an earthquake zone.
It sits just 35km (22 miles) from Armenia’s bustling capital, Yerevan, with distant views of snowy Mount Ararat across the border in Turkey.
The plant was constructed around the same time as Chernobyl in the 1970s. At the time the Metsamor reactor provided energy for the growing needs of a vast Soviet Union, which once had ambitious plans to generate 60% of its electricity from nuclear power by 2000.
But in 1988 everything changed; the 6.8 magnitude Spitak earthquake devastated Armenia, killing around 25,000 people. The nuclear power plant was swiftly closed down because of safety concerns over an unreliable electricity supply to power the plant’s systems. Many of the plant’s workers returned home to Poland, Ukraine and Russia.
Thirty years on, Metsamor plant and its future remain a divisive topic in Armenia. One of its reactors was restarted in 1995 and now generates 40% of Armenia’s energy needs. Its critics argue the site remains extremely vulnerable to earthquakes due to its location in an area of seismic activity. Its supporters, however, including government officials, argue it was deliberately originally built on a stable basalt block and insist further modifications, such as improved fire doors, have been made to make it even safer.
[…]
This model Soviet city, or atomograd, was purpose-built to entice skilled workers from across the USSR, from the Baltics to Kazakhstan. It was planned for 36,000 residents with an artificial lake, sports facilities, and a cultural centre. In its heyday the shops were well-stocked and rumours about the high quality of the butter reached Yerevan.
[…]
But the population didn’t remain static. The same year as the earthquake locals were joined by refugees fleeing Azerbaijan due to conflict in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory. In the first year of the conflict over 450 people were housed in Metsamor’s vacant dormitories. Those people settled down and now live in homes they have built themselves, on the site where the proposed third housing district of the atomograd would have been located.
[…]
Today Metsamor has a population of over 10,000 people with lots of children. In the apartment blocks 5km from the cooling towers, the people balance their worries over energy scarcity against the potential threat posed by the plant. “The black years of electricity shortages are so strong in people’s minds,” says Katharina Roters, a photographer who has documented the city, “that they cannot consider life without the plant.” From 1991-1994 the country suffered an energy crisis where at times the population was left with no electricity at all.
[…]
So why do they stay? Roters found mixed attitudes towards the nuclear power plant. “The families that no longer work at the plant tended to be frustrated about the economic situation in Armenia, whereas those who still worked at the plant were much more positive.”
Read more at The City in the Shadow of an Aging Nuclear Reactor
鳩山由紀夫元首相が１２日、ツイッターに、欧米で東京五輪に対する懸念が広がっているとする投稿を行った。
（略）
「例えばノーベル平和賞を受賞した核戦争防止国際医師会議は、放射能オリンピックと命名して放射能汚染リスクの残る東京でのオリンピック開催を疑問視している」と記した。
鳩山氏は「日本では報道されないが、欧米でこのような動きが広まってきていることは理解すべきだ」としている。
In an effort to increase the number of students visiting for school trips, Fukushima Prefecture has created a series of travel routes it will propose this fiscal year to schools outside the prefecture to provide them with an opportunity to learn about the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and the subsequent nuclear meltdowns.
In the past, educational tours that focused on the 2011 disasters — promoted by the prefecture as “Hope Tourism” — were offered mostly to high school students, while plans focused on history and nature were tailored to children in elementary and junior high schools.
By combining the two, the prefecture hopes to provide students with a more comprehensive experience and hopefully dispel any prejudice they may have about Fukushima. The plan also involves having officials visit high schools in other areas to talk about the importance of visiting Fukushima Prefecture.For example, the prefecture proposed to a high school a three-day trip: On the first day, students will visit the Hamadori coastal region damaged by the 2011 tsunami, experience nature and wildlife in the Urabandai region on the second and study history in the city of Aizuwakamatsu on the third.
Sites like J-Village, which fully reopened on April 20, along with the Tepco Decommissioning Archive Center in the city of Tomioka and the prefecture-run archive facility on the March 2011 disasters — which is set to open in July 2020 — will serve as central locations for the tours.
The prefecture is looking to use such locations to highlight travel routes that will bring visitors to the region and promote them by collaborating with organizations like Fukushima Prefecture Tourism and Local Products Association.[…]
Hope Tourism, which began around 2016, involves having visitors to the Hamadori coastal region learn about the earthquake-triggered tsunami and nuclear disasters and meet people actively involved in helping the area recover. The number of junior and high school students who have taken part has increased from 35 students in fiscal 2016 and about 230 in fiscal 2017 to roughly 600 students in fiscal 2018.Read more.
This section features topics and issues from Fukushima covered by the Fukushima Minpo, the largest newspaper in Fukushima Prefecture. The original article was published on April 25.
Read more at school-trip visitors with new plan focused on teaching about 3/11 disaster
東京電力福島第１原発事故後、福島県が全ての県産米の放射性物質を調べている「全量全袋検査」について、サンプルだけを調べる「抽出検査」への緩和を認める地域を拡大することが２６日、分かった。従来は避難区域にならなかった市町村に限り早ければ２０２０年産米から切り替える方針だったが、かつて一部地区が避難区域に指定された市町村も加える。
（略）
検査の実務を担う市町村の負担が減り、正常化に向けた動きと歓迎する向きがある一方で、全量全袋という厳しい検査を緩めることによる風評被害を懸念する声もある。（共同通信）
A US government laboratory says the country held a subcritical nuclear test in the state of Nevada on February 13.
The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory made the announcement on Friday.
The test was the first of its kind since December 2017, and the second under the administration of President Donald Trump. It was the 29th in the United States.
The laboratory says the experiment, dubbed “Ediza,” used high explosives to implode plutonium and captured “numerous, detailed scientific measurements.”
[…]The government is modernizing the country’s nuclear arsenal through nuclear tests, and introducing low-yield nuclear weapons.
The latest test was conducted just before the second US-North Korea summit in February, meaning the Trump administration was demanding Pyongyang abolish its nuclear weapons while it was trying to enhance its own.
The revelation is expected to prompt criticism from anti-nuclear groups.
Read more at
米核研究機関が西部ネバダ州の地下施設で２月に実施した臨界前核実験後、実験に用いた核物質封じ込め用容器の付近で少量のプルトニウムによる汚染が確認されたことが２５日、米大統領とエネルギー長官への助言機関「防衛核施設安全委員会」の報告書やエネルギー省の核安全保障局（ＮＮＳＡ）への取材で分かった。外部への影響はないとしている。
（略）
容器の接続部品のワッシャーに亀裂が見つかっており、微量の放射性物質漏れが起きた可能性もある。ＮＮＳＡは共同通信の取材に、汚染の「原因は調査中」とした上で、「被ばくした作業員はいない」と説明した。
A nuclear power plant in Byron, Illinois. Taken by photographer Joseph Pobereskin (http://pobereskin.com).
