Fukushima Never again by No Nukes Action Committee and the Labor Video Project
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Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Monday, July 9, 2012
Vietnam’s Nuclear Dreams Blossom Despite Doubts
HANOI, Vietnam — Inside an unheated classroom at the Institute for Nuclear Science and Technology here about 20 young government technicians from Vietnam’s incipient nuclear power industry kept on their winter jackets on the first morning of a 10-day workshop on radiation.
Chau Doan for The New York Times
A Japanese nuclear expert, far left, supervised a training course for students in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Related
Times Topic: Nuclear Energy
The New York Times
Villagers in Tai An worry about a planned nuclear plant.
The workshop, sponsored by the semigovernmental Japan Atomic Energy Agency, started with Radiation Physics 101. The students then collected radiation samples with the help of Japanese specialists and analyzed them in a lab built by Japan.
“Nuclear power is important for Vietnam’s energy security, but, like fire, it has two sides,” said one of the students, Nguyen Xuan Thuy, 27. “We have to learn how to take advantage of its good side.”
As Vietnam prepares to begin one of the world’s most ambitious nuclear power programs, it is scrambling to raise from scratch a field of experts needed to operate and regulate nuclear power plants. The government, which is beefing up nuclear engineering programs at its universities and sending increasing numbers of young technicians abroad, says Vietnam will have enough qualified experts to safely manage an industry that is scheduled to grow from one nuclear reactor in 2020 to 10 reactors by 2030.
But some Vietnamese and foreign experts said that was too little time to establish a credible regulatory body, especially in a country with widespread corruption, poor safety standards and a lack of transparency. They said the overly ambitious timetable could lead to the kind of weak regulation, as well as collusive ties between regulators and operators, that contributed to the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan last year.
Hien Pham Duy, one of Vietnam’s most senior nuclear scientists and an adviser to government agencies overseeing nuclear power, said it had been his “dream for many years” to bring nuclear power to Vietnam. But he said the government’s plans were based on a “lack of vigorous assessment of the inherent problems of nuclear power, especially those arising in less developed countries.”
Like many Vietnamese, Mr. Hien, a former director of the Dalat Nuclear Research Institute, which houses Vietnam’s nuclear research reactor, pointed to the high rates of accidents on Vietnam’s roads as the most visible example of a “bad safety culture” that pervaded “every field of activity in the country.”
Tran Dai Phuc, a Vietnamese-French nuclear engineer who worked in the French nuclear industry for four decades and is now an adviser to Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Technology, the ministry in charge of nuclear power, said potential problems were not related to the reactors’ technology but to the lack of “democracy as well as the responsibility of personnel, a culture of quality assurance and general safety regarding installation and impact on the environment.”
The Vietnamese government fears that the country’s strong economic growth will be jeopardized without the energy provided by nuclear plants. Vietnam, which relies mostly on hydroelectricity, is expected to become a net importer of energy in 2015. “One of the reasons for the introduction of nuclear power in Vietnam is the shortage of conventional fuel supply sources, including imported,” Le Doan Phac, deputy director general of the Vietnam Atomic Energy Agency, the government’s main nuclear research and development body, said in an e-mail message.
Russia and Japan have won bids to build Vietnam’s first two plants; South Korea is expected to be selected for the third.
For Japan, the contract was the fruit of years of high-level lobbying by its government and nuclear industry, which is threatened at home by a strong public reaction against nuclear power after the crisis last year. About 500 Vietnamese have gone through workshops by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency since 2001. Toshiba, a plant manufacturer, has also offered one-month courses since 2006 to win the construction contract.
Like Russia, which has pledged Vietnam loans of $8 billion to $9 billion to finance the first plant’s construction, Japan is expected to offer a package of low-interest loans through the Japan Bank of International Cooperation. Japan is expected to use its overseas development assistance to Vietnam to build roads, ports and other infrastructure to support the nuclear plant.
With the memories of the Fukushima disaster still raw in Japan, the Japanese government’s active role in selling nuclear plants to developing nations like Vietnam has drawn sharp criticism. Critics say that the government and nuclear industry’s joint efforts are reminiscent of the kind of collusive ties that led to the Fukushima disaster. The government’s low-interest loans — taxpayers’ money — will benefit only politically connected plant manufacturers, they say.
“When it comes to selling nuclear plants, it’s not a commercially viable business, so you invariably need the injection of public funds,” said Kanna Mitsuta, a researcher for bothFriends of the Earth Japan and Mekong Watch, a Japanese private organization.
Critics said that Japan and other nuclear powers were desperate to sell plants to developing nations as dreams of a nuclear renaissance in advanced economies have dried up since the Fukushima disaster.
After the Fukushima disaster, Tokyo abandoned plans to build 14 more reactors in Japan by 2030. Japan had 54 reactors before the disaster, but growing public opposition has now idled all but two.
“I don’t understand why Japan is striving to export to less developed countries something it’s rejected at home,” Mr. Hien, the nuclear scientist, said.
Japanese supporters of exports say that developing nations like Vietnam have the right to choose nuclear power to expand their economies, just as Japan did decades ago.
“They’ll just buy from another country” if Japan decides not to sell them nuclear plants, said Tadashi Maeda, an official at the Japan Bank of International Cooperation and a special adviser to the prime minister’s cabinet.
Human error contributed to the Fukushima disaster, Mr. Maeda said. But he added that unlike Japan, which was operating aging reactors at Fukushima, Vietnam will be receiving “state-of-the art reactors whose technological and safety level was completely different.”
But Mr. Tran, the Vietnamese-French adviser, said he harbored no doubts about Japanese technology. “That isn’t why we’re worried,” he said, pointing instead to Vietnam’s capacity to manage and regulate one of the world’s most complex industries. “It’s the politics of management. When a nuclear reactor is running, the regulators must be independent and firm and vigilant.”
Vietnam will need hundreds of experts with years of experience to regulate its nuclear industry, Mr. Tran said. In the Vietnam Agency for Radiation and Nuclear Safety, the main regulatory authority, “There are currently only 30 people qualified to analyze safety reports with some assistance of experts,” he said.
In Tai An, the village in central Vietnam selected as the site for the Japanese nuclear plant, about half a dozen randomly interviewed residents said they were anxious about plans to relocate the village’s 700 households to a spot a couple of miles north. The villagers, most of whom are fishermen or grape growers, said earnings from farming had sharply increased in recent years since Tai An was connected to running water from a new reservoir nearby.
They said they feared that the new location’s proximity to a nuclear plant would jeopardize their grape farming and fishing.
“I don’t know anything about nuclear plants,” said Pham Phong, 43, a grape farmer who, in one of the most telling examples of rising incomes in Southeast Asia, upgraded from a cheap Chinese-made motorcycle to a shiny new Japanese Yamaha late last year. “But I saw Fukushima on television, and I’m worried.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/world/asia/vietnams-nuclear-dreams-blossom-despite-doubts.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Troubles at a 1960s-Era Nuclear Plant in California May Hint at the Future
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/
SAN ONOFRE STATE BEACH, Calif. — More than seven million people live within 50 miles of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which is about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. But for decades, residents here largely accepted, if not exactly embraced, the hulking nuclear plant perched on the cliffs above this popular surfing beach as a necessary part of keeping the lights on in a state that uses more electricity than all of Argentina.
“I don’t think about it too much,” said David Vichules, 55, who has been surfing here since before the plant opened in 1968. “I guess it’s risk and benefit.”
All that changed, however, after the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown in Japan last year, followed in January by a small leak of radioactive steam here caused by the deterioration of steam tubes that had been damaged by vibration and friction. The twin generators at the San Onofre plant have been off-line for five months, and the plant has subsequently become a point of contention in the fight over nuclear power in the United States.
The leak has galvanized opposition to the nuclear plant among local residents, who are calling for San Onofre to remain shuttered for good.
Antinuclear activists from across the country have seized on problems at San Onofre as an opportunity to push California toward a future without nuclear power.
“A lot of people have gotten involved since Fukushima, and now especially since San Onofre has been closed,” said Gary Headrick, the founder of San Clemente Green, a local environmental organization. “It’s really not worth living with this risk. We should shut it down.”
The plant will remain shut through at least the end of the summer while the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Southern California Edison, the utility company that operates it, investigate the cause of the leak from the steam tubes.
Officials have said repeatedly that the generators will restart only if they are deemed safe.
Still, any efforts to permanently close the nuclear plant face the ever-growing appetite for electricity in Southern California. San Onofre, the largest power plant in the region, produced 2,200 megawatts, enough to power 1.4 million homes, and also helps import power to the region.
The absence of these reactors is being felt now as Southern California moves into the hot summer months. Two retired generators from a natural gas plant have been temporarily fired up, and state energy officials have encouraged the public to conserve energy during peak hours.
Without any power from San Onofre, a severe heat wave could bring rolling blackouts, but state energy officials said they expected to get through the summer without problems.
“If we have a high-heat wave, and we don’t get cooperation from the public, we could have issues,” said Stephen Berberich, president of the California Independent System Operator, a nonprofit agency that manages the flow of electricity in the state.
In 2009 and 2010, Southern California Edison spent nearly $700 million — financed by ratepayers — to install two new steam generators, which were supposed to keep San Onofre’s aging reactors running well into the future.
But in June, federal regulatory officials announced that faulty computer modeling caused the generators’ steam tubes to deteriorate much more quickly than expected, which led to the leak in January.
Lara Uselding, a spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, called the leaks “unprecedented,” and said there was no plan for when the plant might be allowed to restart or what fixes would have to be made before then. Southern California Edison declined to make a spokesman available and responded to questions with a short written statement. “There is no timeline on safety,” it said.
Local and national antinuclear activists say they will be satisfied only when the nuclear plant is shut down for good.
Maria Mattioli, 44, is one of the area residents who have spoken to government officials in municipalities around the plant in recent months, urging them to lobby federal regulators to keep the plant closed.
“I think it’s very important that we take a very close look at San Onofre and possibly shut it down,” Ms. Mattioli said. “My heart says shut it down. I don’t want to uproot myself and move to Arizona or somewhere else.”
Damon Moglen, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth, notes that California already has a law that prevents the construction of nuclear reactors, and said the shutdown at San Onofre gives the state an opportunity to prepare for the day when both its nuclear plants are shut down.
“You cannot run San Onofre and Diablo Canyon forever,” Mr. Moglen said, referring to the state’s only other nuclear plant, in San Luis Obispo County. “California could be the first really big state to come to grips with a post-nuclear energy program.”
For the moment, though, California energy officials may have few options aside from nuclear power — which remains relatively inexpensive to produce and does not add to greenhouse gases — especially if they hope to meet aggressive goals for reducing the state’s carbon emissions by 2020.
“We are really faced with a choice, at least in the next decade,” said Per Peterson, a professor of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. “Do we turn off nuclear plants first, or do we turn off coal plants first? You have to do one or the other.”
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Ainu to launch new political party
Good news for the minority rights movement in Japan. Some members of the Ainu community have decided to form their own political party. The party will become active in January. Check out this article for more details:
http://tenthousandthingsfromkyoto.blogspot.com/2011/11/ainu-political-party.html
http://tenthousandthingsfromkyoto.blogspot.com/2011/11/ainu-political-party.html
Friday, May 20, 2011
50 farmers defendinding their land against construction of Narita Airport arrested
A request for solidarity messages on behalf of the 50 farmers arrested for protesting the seizure of their land:
May 20, in the Tokyo High Court, 50 people, including the Secretary General
of the Farmers・League against Narita Airport Construction, KITAHARA Koji
and almost all of the farmers who attended the court this day, the president
of Zengakuren (All-Japan Federation of Student Autonomous Bodies), ODA
Yosuke and other students and workers (were arrested).
After less than one minute "explanation of the reasons・ Judge INOUE
Shigeki issued a provisional execution order to forcibly expropriate a building of
the Farmers・League. The farmers and their supporters protested the ruling
and demanded to meet the judge. Instead of responding their demand, the
court called the police and made them arrest 50 people.
The Farmers League is the most experienced fighting organization of
Japanese farmers and other resident movement with its 45 years of
unflinching struggle to defend their livelihood in defiance of a
strategic state policy and in strong solidarity with Doro-Chiba.
After 3.11, innumerable workers, farmers, fishers, self-employed have
not only suffered from the quake and nuclear disaster but also from
violent attack by the government and big business?forced exposure to
radiation (hiding of radiation data, rasing of "permissible doses etc.),
mass layoff, extreme wage cut, forcibly expropriation, gentrification
and so on. Therefore, they are starting now to fight like Narita farmers
and with Narita farmers. The repression on the Narita farmers are the
repression on all the people who fight to defend their livelihood and
healthy environment.
Please forward this e-mail as widely as possible and send protest messages to: https://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/forms/comment_ssl.html
Saturday, January 15, 2011
The Other Hafu of Japan- A review of Hafu Film by Brett Fujioka
An excellent review of Hafu Film appeared in the Rafu Shinpo this week:
Is a ship the same if you take it apart piece by piece and replace its frame? No simple answer exists, as anyone who has tackled this philosophical Rubik’s cube knows.
The ethno-national equivalent to this riddle grows exceedingly more complicated with the swelling number of international unions each year. Statistics in 2004 chart that 1 in 15 marriages in Japan were international and that 1 in 30 children born there possesses a parent of non-Japanese descent. Japan’s ethnic constituency is rapidly changing and its people may need to rethink what it means to be Japanese in a country where blood and national identity are considered one and the same.
The same applies for the hafu (mixed Japanese) community. The lives for each individual half-Japanese vary from person to person and the filmmakers for the upcoming documentary, “Hafu,” and their subjects best represent this.
David Yano, who is of Japanese-Ghanaian descent, is among those profiled in the film.
“Hafu” is the tentative title for an upcoming documentary in Japan following the lives of several half-Japanese individuals as they explore their identities.
Both Megumi Nishikura and Lara Perez Takagi spent most of their lives away from Japan. Takagi is half Spanish and stayed in Madrid, Sydney, Washington D.C., and Ottowa due to her diplomat father’s itinerant career. She eventually completed her higher education at the Francisco de Vitoria, Complutense and Waseda Universities before finally returning to Japan.
Nishikura, likewise, lived her childhood spread throughout the world. She stayed in Beijing, Manila, Honolulu, DC, Berlin, London, and Los Angeles and graduated from New York University.
“Lara and I have unusual stories and come from international backgrounds,” said Nishikura in an interview with the Rafu. “I don’t know if that’s representative of a lot of the mixed Japanese community.”
There’s a reason why they’re so hesitant to pinpoint a grand narrative for the hafu experience. There is no all-encompassing hafu story and the eclectic subjects of the documentary are indicative of this.
David Yano, “the poster child” of the documentary is of Japanese-Ghanaian descent. Other individuals include the Mexican-Japanese Oi family, Venezualan Japanese “Mixed Roots” founder Edward Sumoto, and an unannounced Japanese American girl visiting Japan for the first time. The distinction they each share is that they bear one, sole Japanese parent.
They took into account during the recruitment process that there’s something of a “Hafu Wave” in the Japanese entertainment industry. Musicians, models, sports stars, actors, and even adult film stars of half-Japanese descent maintain a distinguishable mark on television. This may have made Japanese audiences more acquainted with biracial children in the modern world, but also introduced a set of stereotypes both filmmakers aspire to break.
“It’s on a superficial side,” Nishikura said on their presence in the media. “It’s like: ‘Oh they’re so cute. Wow, they’re so talented.’ It’s a motivation on our part to break the stereotype that there might be that all hafu are mixed with a Caucasian, bilingual, or model perfect beautiful,” said Nishikura.
“It’s impossible to make the perfect combination and address all the possible factors [in being hafu],” she continued. She listed several possibilities to prove this point. “Is your mother or father Japanese? What other nationality are you mixed with? Did you grow up in Japan? Did you grow up abroad? Did you go through the Japanese school system? Did you go through the international school system?” asked Nishikura.
The “ hafu experience” is extensive to the point that they acknowledge that they’re overlooking recurrent tales from this demographic like the children of American servicemen or military brats. “People want this seminal piece on the hafu experience,” said Nishikura. “And we have to address every single question and every single type of hafu. That isn’t very realistic.”
In fact, the same could also be said for Japan as a nation. The predominant philosophy in the country is that it’s a nation under one—not just one ideology and rule, but one race and creed functioning in perfect harmony within society. Former Prime Minister Taro Aso echoed such sentiments on Oct. 15, 2005 at the opening ceremony for the Kyushu National Museum. “[We are] one culture, one civilization, one language, and one ethnic group,” Aso said. He further opined that it was the only country to do so. This failed to bear in mind that hafu, indigenous Ainu, Okinawans, and other multigenerational non-Japanese immigrants are residents of the country.
This viewpoint carries its own set of ignored consequences including the bullying epidemic in Japanese schools. The Japanese Ministry of Education reported over 125,000 cases of bullying in the 2006-2007 school year.
Alex Oi, one of the children documented, is of Japanese/Mexican descent and got bullied at school due to his grammatical struggles in juggling a multilingual repertoire of Spanish, Japanese, and English. Nishikura and Takagi told similar stories of getting teased in school for their alien appearance, but were reluctant to describe it as a general occurrence for hafu.
They did, however, invoke the suicide of a half-Filipino girl as an example to how far it can go. On Oct. 23, 2010, 12-year-old Akiko Uemura hung herself at her family’s home. Her father, Ryota Uemura, reported that her Filipino mother sat in on an observation day. That’s when the bullying began.
“Like Alex was being bullied, it’ll show that it’s happening and its part of his story,” said Nishikura. “I think it’s good to show that it’s not the first time that it’s happened where kids are being bullied for not looking entirely Japanese.”
Perhaps with Japan’s evolving social constituency, these isolated stories may someday become a thing of the past. Each filmmaker denies that being hafu is the remedy to current prejudices or Japan’s economic woes as Masaru Tamamoto implied in an Op-Ed for the New York Times, “Japan’s Crisis of the Mind,” on March 1, 2009.
“We’re not trying to make a specific comment about this being the future and if everybody mixes Japan will be saved,” said Nishikura. “I think that’s stretching it too far.”
Despite the reality of hafu diversity, they still strive to discover a consistent thread in these stories to develop common themes in their lives and garner support from their viewership. At the same time, they dream of a place where children are free of the schoolyard taunts of yesteryear. Where multiculturalism is more commonplace to the extent that it’s readily accepted.
“I think that’s a Japan I would like to live in,” Nishikura said. “Where it’s assumed that you’re Japanese first before something else.”
“Hafu Film” is planned for completion later in 2011. For more information visit hafufilm.com.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Walking Along the Sea in Okinawa- Photo Exhibition @Osaka, January 27-30
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| Photo by Makishi Osamu |
A Walk along the Sea in Okinawa- Henoko and Oura Bay
Photo exhibition of the work of Makishi Osamu
January 27-30- 12pm-7pm
*Talk session on the potential extinction of the dugong on the 30th from 2pm-4pm (Free entry with drink order)
Cafe/Gallary Cassiopeia
(Map here: http://cassiopeia.moo.jp/)
Located along the tracks between Hankyu Kandaimae or Senri Stations (Five minute walk from either direction)
Information in Japanese:
http://www.sdcc.jp/pdffiles/umisanpo110127-30.pdf
http://www.sdcc.jp/plan/2011.1-postcard.pdf
Freelance photographer Makishi Osamu was born in Kose, Okinawa in 1950. After living on the mainland and working in the magazine industry as an editor and copy writer, he returned to Okinawa. He currently serves as a semi-retired scuba instructor and scuba guide in Henoko and Oura Bay.
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| Photo by Makishi Osamu |
U.S. and Japan governmental officials claim that U.S. bases offer hope for a struggling Okinawan economy. However, scholars, citizens, and economists alike contend that the tourism industry is by far the largest contributors to the Okinawan economy. U.S. military bases only threaten the vitality of this industry by destroying the environment and taking up potential land for the tourism industry. Valiantly, Okinawan people and their supporters have not wavered in their movement to prevent the construction of the base by holding daily sit-in demonstrations at the relocation site and other events and rallies throughout Japan, and world-wide.
The Save the Dugong Campaign is one many organizations that has been contributing to the opposition movement for the sake of wildlife in the bay and the Henoko Bay-area residents who will be adversely affected by noise, air, and water pollution and the atmosphere of violence and anxiety that goes hand in hand with the presence of U.S. military base.
For more information about the Osaka and Tokyo-based Save the Dugong Campaign Center, visit their homepage.
Below is an informative video report (in English) on SDCC resolutions proposed to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature World Congress 2008 in Barcelona.
IUCN Congress report from the Save the Dugong Campaign Center from Mio Yamane on Vimeo.