経済産業省の元官僚で、原発再稼働に反対する市民団体の代表の古賀茂明氏が８日、長岡市で講演した。東京電力柏崎刈羽原発６、７号機の審査で原子力規制委員会が事実上の「合格」を出したことを受け、衆院選について「安倍政権には再稼働の合格が出たので（新潟県民に）お伺いを立てる、という気持ちがある」と指摘し、自民党の候補が勝てば再稼働の動きが加速するとの考えを示した。
（略）
古賀氏は、安倍政権が再稼働を目指す柏崎刈羽原発の３０キロ圏にかかる５区などで、自民が勝利した場合を想定。「最も喜ぶのは安倍首相だ。原発に反対する新潟は、喉に刺さった骨のような存在だっただけに、原発（再稼働）にお墨付きが出たタイミングで勝利を授けてくれた、とお礼に来るかもしれない」と述べた。
（略）
自民では当選回数の多い議員でも脱原発を主張すれば干され、大臣ポストが回る際には「脱原発を封印しろと（圧力がかかる）。原発に批判的だったブログも閉鎖した」といった事例を紹介した。
関連記事：
South Carolina has been generally accommodating to the federal government’s nuclear waste disposal needs over the decades, based on the promise that the highly radioactive material would be eventually shipped out of Savannah River Site to a permanent storage facility. Unfortunately, the federal government hasn’t been willing to live up to its part of the bargain.
So the SRS Citizens Advisory Board recently said “enough is enough” in response to federal plans to ship a ton of uranium from Germany through the port of Charleston then by rail to the Aiken facility. While the board’s role is advisory, its decision can have a major impact on federal policy.
[…]
The uranium was originally sent to Germany for research purposes as part of the U.S. Atoms for Peace Program — and the U.S. government agreed to take it back when Germany was finished with it. No question, SRS has the experience and the capability to process the material so it can’t be used to produce a nuclear weapon, but CAB reasonably balked at the transfer.
“The proposal will unnecessarily add to an already large burden of … high-level radioactive waste storage at SRS with no established path for disposal,” the CAB stated in its response to the Department of Energy request. “DOE failures to faithfully keep pace with its SRS cleanup commitments impede the acceptability of this deficient proposal by the citizens of South Carolina.”
[…]
Meanwhile, the planned permanent storage site for high level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, was shut down in 2011 by the then-chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with the Obama administration’s approval. There are ongoing efforts to restart the project on which $15 billion has already been spent since the 1980s.
Meanwhile, South Carolina, Aiken County and Washington state have ongoing lawsuits against the DOE for failing to meet its promises on nuclear waste. The state also is attempting to get payment of $200 million in fines that the federal government agreed to remit if it failed to send a specified volume of nuclear waste out of the state by 2016. It reneged on that promise, too.
[…]
South Carolina should emphasize its opposition to becoming the dump site for federal nuclear waste at every possible turn — in the courts, in Congress and by state government. The state has assumed more than its share of responsibility for nuclear defense production and waste management since the early years of the Cold War. The federal government should have to live up to its promises to the state.
Read more at ‘Enough is enough’ nuclear waste
Energy Northwest has had its privileges to ship radioactive waste to a commercial disposal site on the Hanford nuclear reservation reinstated.
Twice over the past 12 months, it sent waste from the nuclear power plant near Richland to US Ecology with manifests that didn’t match the shipments.
Most recently, the wrong manifest accompanied a July 20 shipment.
[…]
However, the NRC issued a “white” violation finding against the plant for a more serious shipping incident in November 2016 that involved improperly packaged waste. A “white” designation in the NRC’s color-coded system indicates low to moderate safety significance.
A 7-foot-tall, 45,000-pound cask of waste was trucked to the US Ecology site. It was approved for transporting waste with about half of the radioactivity the cask actually contained.
US Ecology surveyed the cask for radiation and rejected it after determining radiation was seven times greater than the shipping manifest for the package declared, according to Energy Northwest.
Improvements made then included additional training and new procedures on how material is handled and inventoried. Two departments involved in the shipment were combined under one manager.
In addition, a supervisor from an Arizona nuclear plant was brought in to assess Columbia Generating Station’s shipping program.
Read more at Richland nuclear plant OK’d to ship radioactive waste
＜アベ政治ＹＥＳ？ＮＯ？ 激戦！！２０１７秋の陣＞
新党「立憲民主党」を立ち上げた枝野幸男代表（５３）は、１１年３月１１日の東京電力福島第１原発事故後、菅政権の官房長官としてテレビに出続けた。当時の官房副長官が福山哲郎幹事長だ。
東電の事故について、枝野氏は「政治家を続けている限りはこの問題に真摯（しんし）に取り組む責任があると思っている」とした。福島の小選挙区には候補を擁立できていないが「事故について国会で関わったバックボーンを持つ方に比例で出てもらう最後の詰めをしている」
小泉純一郎元首相が７日、熊本市で開かれた県立大の創立７０周年記念式典でスピーチし、日本の原発政策に関し、「日本は変化に強い国だ。原発ゼロでも経済発展できる」と持論を展開した。
小泉氏は、原発推進の立場だった首相時代を振り返り、（略）「勉強が足りなかった。反省している」と述べた。
その上で、２０１１年の東京電力福島第１原発事故後、原発が稼働停止する中でも「日本の電力は賄えていた」と指摘。「政府が本気で進めれば、１０年で原発を自然エネルギーに置き換えることができる」と原発ゼロ社会の実現を訴えた。
Logging and pipeline companies are using a new legal tactic to seek damages from Greenpeace and other groups. The long-shot cases are having a chilling effect.
[…]
Then, on the last day of that month, Greenpeace and Stand were hit with an unusual lawsuit brought by Resolute Forest Products, one of Canada’s largest logging and paper companies, that could cost the groups hundreds of millions of dollars if Resolute wins.
The timber company said the organizations, which for years had campaigned against Resolute’s logging in Canada’s boreal forest, were conspiring illegally to extort the company’s customers and defraud their own donors.
Invoking the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, a federal conspiracy law devised to ensnare mobsters, the suit accuses the organizations, as well as several green campaigners individually and numerous unidentified “co-conspirators,” of running what amounts to a giant racket.
“Maximizing donations, not saving the environment, is Greenpeace’s true objective,” the complaint says. “Its campaigns are consistently based on sensational misinformation untethered to facts or science, but crafted instead to induce strong emotions and, thereby, donations.” Dozens of the group’s campaign emails and tweets, it said, constituted wire fraud.
“As an NGO, that is a deeply chilling argument,” said Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), which joined eight other groups to file an amici curiaebrief supporting a move to dismiss Resolute’s case.
The far-reaching lawsuit has seized attention across the environmental advocacy and legal communities. Arguments are to be heard in court next week.
The Resolute lawsuit was unprecedented. Then several months ago, former employees of Greenpeace and the environmental advocacy group 350.org were similarly visited by investigators. In August, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline filed a separate RICO suit against Greenpeace and two smaller groups, Banktrack and Earth First!. The complaint echoes Resolute’s claims: a broad conspiracy against a major company, advocacy groups running an illegal “enterprise” to further their own interests while damaging the company, Energy Transfer Partners. It even alleges support for eco-terrorism, a violation of the Patriot Act, and drug trafficking.
It was filed by the same lawyer who represents Resolute—Michael J. Bowe, of the firm Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, who is also a member of President Donald Trump’s personal legal team.
“The Energy Transfer Partners lawsuit against Greenpeace is perhaps the most aggressive SLAPP-type suit that I’ve ever seen,” said Michael Gerrard, faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, using the acronym for a lawsuit that aims to silence political advocacy. “The paper practically bursts into flames in your hands.”
[…]
Read more.
[…]
コンビニの商品をドローンで配送する全国で初めてのサービスが行われる福島県南相馬市の小高区は原発事故に伴う避難指示が去年解除されたばかりで、暮らしの不便さをいかに解消するかが課題になっています。
このサービスでは、買い物客はコンビニの移動販売車が来るタイミングに合わせて地区の集会所を訪れます。
移動販売車のスタッフに商品を注文すれば、およそ３キロ離れたコンビニの店舗からドローンで商品が１０分ほどで配達され、その場で受け取ることができます。
移動販売車が来るペースは週に２回で、１回の注文で２キロの重さまで運べるということです。
ドローンが飛行するルートは、安全性を確保するため住宅などが少ないエリアの上空に設定し、自動で飛ぶようになっています。
南相馬市の小高区では営業を再開した店はまだ少ないため、今回のサービスは地域に戻った住民にとって買い物の不便の解消につながることが期待されます。
サービスが始まる地区に住む高野次夫さん（７０）は「空から荷物を運んでくるなんて驚きました。高齢者も多いので、このサービスで買い物が便利になるといいと思います」と話していました。
東京電力福島第１原発事故を巡り、福島県内外の３８２４人が国と東電に空間放射線量の原状回復や慰謝料計約１６０億円などを求めた訴訟の判決が１０日、福島地裁で言い渡される。原発事故被災者集団訴訟の判決は今年３月の前橋、９月の千葉の各地裁に続き３例目。これまで２例ともに認めた巨大津波の予見可能性、一方が認めた国の責任が、それぞれどう判断されるかが最大の焦点となる。
原告は全国で約３０件に上る同種の集団訴訟で最も多い。事故当時の居住地は福島県内全５９市町村や隣接する宮城県などで、避難区域外が９割近く、大半が地元にとどまった。
（略）
長期評価について、国と東電は「科学的知見として未熟だった」などとし、実際に発生した規模の津波の予見可能性を否定。仮に対策を取っても間に合わなかったと主張している。
国の責任に関して、原告側は東電に対策を命じる規制権限があったとし、「当時は権限がなかった」とする国と対立してきた。
前橋、千葉両地裁はともに、長期評価の合理性を認めて予見可能性と国の規制権限を認定。ただ国の賠償責任は、千葉地裁が「対策を取っても事故を回避できなかった可能性がある」と原告の主張を退けた。
国の「中間指針」に基づく東電の賠償の妥当性も争われており、原告側は「（指針は）最低限の賠償にとどまる」とし、対象地域と期間を含む賠償の拡大を求めた。
福島地裁は昨年３月以降、現地検証を実施。放射線量が比較的高い帰還困難区域の福島県双葉町や風評被害を受けた福島市の果樹園を裁判官が訪れ、原告の被災者から話を聞いた。
Friday’s announcement that the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize went to The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) represents just the latest step in the long relationship between the Oslo-based Norwegian Nobel Committee and nuclear technology.
ICAN, which played a key role in the negotiations that led to the recent signing of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations, scored the prize in honor of “its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.” It’s the latest group of people involved in world nuclear-disarmament efforts to be recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize, an award that’s also been presented to such advocates in 1959, 1962, 1974, 1982, 1985, 1990, 1995 and 2005.
But disarmament and non-proliferation are not the only parts of the nuclear past that have been recognized by the Nobel Committee.
In the first decades of the prize’s existence, for obvious reasons, it was much more likely to see nuclear technology recognized in science categories, as awards went to those whose work would make nuclear weapons possible. A prominent example is the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded to Enrico Fermi for work that led to the discovery of nuclear fission. He was a leader of the Manhattan Project, the American lab that produced nuclear weapons, and TIME called him “the world’s foremost nuclear physicist” in 1945, while his New York Times obituary described him as “an architect of the atomic age.” The Nobel Committee has given out more than 30 prizes honoring various research that enhances the study of nuclear activity, dating all the way back to 1903. (A list of such prizes up until 2000 can be found here.)
[…]
In fact, in 1946, one year after the first wartime use of nuclear weapons, TIME noticed nuclear scientists were “conspicuously absent” from the list of lineup of honorees that year.
As the magazine pointed out, there was deep history behind that decision: Alfred Nobel is said to have endowed the Peace Prize specifically as “penance” for having introduced dynamite into the world; it would thus be “embarrassing” for the prize committee to honor the inventors of something being hailed as “super-dynamite.”
[…]
The Peace Prize has also gone to people who have tried to keep the peace as world leaders and diplomats. For example, Eisaku Sato, former prime minister of Japan, won in 1974 for maintaining that his country shouldn’t have nukes and for having signed, on behalf of the nation, the nuclear arms Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). That treaty, which went into effect in 1970, has been described by the United Nations as “the only binding commitment in a multilateral treaty to the goal of disarmament by the nuclear-weapon States.” And in 1990, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev got the prize for his role in landmark treaties designed to reduce arms supplies instead of just capping them.
And yet, the work of activists did not stop the spread of nuclear weapons. As TIME noted in a feature on the diplomats who shared the 1982 prize for their work on disarmament, it was awarded at a time when the world had amassed nearly 5,000 intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, up from 500 in 1962.
Read more at The Long Nuclear History Behind the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize
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【台北共同】台湾が東京電力福島第１原発事故以降続けている福島県など５県の日本産食品の輸入規制について、台湾政府が緩和へ向け日本側と協議を進めていることが７日、分かった。台湾政府筋は「問題の解決は近い」と語った。
食品規制を巡っては、台湾政府は昨年１１月、立法院（議会）にリスクの低い食品から段階的に規制を解除していくことを提案したが、野党などの強い反発で白紙に戻された経緯がある。
A nuclear power plant in Byron, Illinois. Taken by photographer Joseph Pobereskin (http://pobereskin.com).
