Taishan Nuclear Plant Leaking Radiation

A Chinese nuclear power station is leaking radioactive gas and could become a major disaster, according to secret US intelligence reports.

Taishan Nuclear Power Plant, located in southern Guangdong province, is thought to have been leaking for at least two weeks after a French firm that co-owns the facility flagged the issue to Washington.

American agents have spent the last week monitoring the situation and have concluded it has the potential turn into a major disaster but that facility is not currently at 'crisis level'.  

That is in stark contrast to the message being put out by the power plant's Chinese state owners, who insisted in a report published Sunday that everything is 'normal'. 

Taishan Nuclear Power Plant, in southern China, has been leaking radioactive gas for two weeks and is at risk of becoming a disaster, US intelligence agencies have privately warned

Problems at the power plant first came to light in late May when French firm Framatome reached out to US intelligence agencies to alert them of it, according to documents sent to the Department of Energy and seen by CNN.

A follow-up memo sent on June 3 identified the issue as a 'fission gas leak' and asked for the DoE to share intelligence that might help solve the issue.

Fission gas is a radioactive biproduct of nuclear fission, where heavy atoms are split into lighter ones - a process which releases energy but also creates the waste gas.

Framatome apparently got no response and so sent another memo on June 8 asking for their message to be urgently reviewed.

U.S. assessing ‘leak’ at Chinese nuclear plant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_reUt8HZoA

In that note, they described the problem as 'an imminent radiological threat to the site' and warned that Chinese regulators had increased the 'safe' levels of radioactivity allowed around the plant.

Increasing the 'safe' limit means China has been able to keep the plant running instead of shutting it down to resolve the issue.

Framatome claimed China more-than doubled the limit, and that the new limit exceeds the current safety standards in France.

The French firm which co-owns the plant (file image) warned US officials of the threat two weeks ago while asking for help to fix it

The June 8 memo was picked up by the US State Department, setting off a flurry of activity over the last week that included meetings of senior figures on the National Security Council to assess the threat.

They concluded that while the plant could turn into a major disaster, they believe it is not in immediate danger of becoming one and it is more likely the issue will be resolved without seriously endangering the public.

It is not clear from CNN's report whether the intelligence agencies shared the information that Framatome were seeking.

The French firm openly acknowledged the problem on Monday, saying they are working to fix a 'performance issue' at the site.

Meanwhile French energy giant EDF also put out a statement on Monday, saying there has been an increase in noble gases detected in the plant's cooling system.

Noble gases are one of the biproducts of nuclear fission, and their presence in the cooling system may indicate a leak in the reactor.

EDF insisted the presence of noble gases in the cooling system 'is a known phenomenon, studied and provided for in the reactor operating procedures.'

The operator of the power station, state-owned China General Nuclear Power Group, said in a statement on Sunday evening that 'the environmental indicators of Taishan Nuclear Power Plant and its surroundings are normal'.

The Chinese state-run firm which owns the nuclear facility insisted in a report published on Sunday that everything is 'normal'

Powered up in 2018, the Taishan plant was the first worldwide to operate a next-generation EPR nuclear reactor, a pressurised water design that has been subject to years of delays in similar European projects in Britain, France and Finland.

EPR reactors have been touted as promising advances in safety and efficiency over conventional reactors while producing less waste.

The plant's state owners said one of the two reactors on site then completed an 'overhaul' and 'successfully connected to the grid on June 10, 2021.'

It did not say why the reactor was overhauled or what exactly had been done to it.

Nuclear plants supplied less than five percent of China's annual electricity needs in 2019, according to the National Energy Administration, but this share is expected to grow as Beijing attempts to become carbon neutral by 2060.

China has 47 nuclear plants with a total generation capacity of 48.75 million kilowatts -- the world's third highest after the United States and France -- and has invested billions of dollars to develop its nuclear energy sector.

Last month Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping hailed close ties between their countries as they launched work on Russian-built nuclear power plants in China.

[ART] What's Next Fukushima

Some nice looking art made by paintedtrains displaying tsunamis and the most recent nuclear disasters with the words "What's Next?".

Art by paintedtrains - For more go to Instagram @paintedtrains

paintedtrains on Instagram

☢ [PHOTOS] After Chernobyl Rural Life Vanished ☢

30 years after the Chernobyl disaster it's shadow still lies heavy over Belarus. No other country was hit so hard. 70 percent of the radioactive fallout landed there, and one in five residents suddenly found themselves on poisoned land. Entire villages were buried in the ground to prevent people from returning. The disaster destroyed an entire rural culture.

Chernobyl Radiation Warning Sign - Photo by Beatrice Lundborg

Text and Photo by Anna-Lena Laurén and Beatrice Lundborg

The following text originally written by Journalist Anna-Lena Laurén have been translated from Swedish to English.

It is important to look for the apple trees. Where there's apple trees, there have once been a home.

Buried under the soil, overgrown with hazel bushes and newly planted pines.

The only thing that stands upright in this former village is a silver statue of a Soviet soldier, he stands at attention at the entrance as a kind of absurd symbol of a past buried under last year's dry leaves and pine plantations.

Chernobyl Apple Trees - Photo by Beatrice Lundborg

Sometimes you find small hills in the countryside. There lies the demolished remains of a house. Or "chutar", as they say in these parts - a Belarus peasant cottage with spacious porch, worn stairs and ornate window frames.

I try to imagine how it once was out here. The cottages, barns, sheds. The sandy village road, which continues to the cemetery a short distance away. The graves are still there and every year villagers from Starinka gather there in early May to celebrate radunitsa, the Orthodox Church holiday when honoring their dead by eating and drinking on the grave yard. Sometimes even dance and sing to. Fistfights also occur. This is a region where the relationship with the ancestors and family's land is concrete and tangible, the ground and the trees are considered to be inspired, to leave them is like leaving a man. Not to speak of burying them.

"I'll tell you how our grandmother said goodbye to our house. She bowed to the barn. She went around and bowed to every apple tree. And when we left our home our grandfather took off his hat."
From: "Pray for Chernobyl" By Svetlana Aleksijevitj

In hundreds of Belarusian villages the farming community survived and remained well into the 1980s, despite the forced collectivization. Many had never left their home and among the elderly, it was still not unusual to not be able to read and write. April 26, 1986 catapulted this archaic society into the atomic age when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded two hundred kilometers to the south.

The wind was blowing to the north and 70 per cent of the radioactive fallout ended up in Belarus, a country with more than ten million inhabitants. Over two million people were exposed to radioactive fallout, over twenty percent of the country's territory were soiled. There was no other country than Belarus that was proportionally hit so hard by the Chernobyl disaster.

In the buried village of Starenka where we now are the measuring instruments, known as a dosimeters, are showing that the dose is 3.2 microsieverts per hour. As a comparison, the Japanese authorities after the Fukushima accident evacuated residents from areas with a radiation higher than 3.8 microsieverts per hour. In Sweden it is considered 0.1 to 0.3 microsieverts per hour to be normal background radiation. In Belarus levels seen at 0.2-0.4 are now normal, according to our local guide.

Starenka located in the so-called "zone", 600-kilometer-wide area affected by radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl disaster. Here on the Belarusian side, where most of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is located a total of 70 villages have been buried.

The area is in turn subdivided into several zones. On the map it looks like a patchwork quilt. In the deep red zone, nothing appear at all, the radiation level is too high. In the red zone the levels are so high that no one is recommended stay there, but many have returned. In a third zone, the authorities have declared safe even when the radioactivity is elevated. The authorities say they monitor the situation. The fourth zone is located at the tip and have slightly elevated radioactivity.

South Belarus Towns Deserted - Photo by Beatrice Lundborg

"During the war, every fourth Belarusian died, today every fifth now live on contaminated land."
From: "Pray for Chernobyl" By Svetlana Aleksijevitj

Shortly after the disaster, thousands of evacuated people chose to move back to the zone. They simply could not stand to not live in their own homes and villages. One of those who from the beginning refused to move is 63-year-old Nina Perevalova that we found in the abandoned village of Dubna. Like many other older people who have chosen to stay in the empty villages, she believes that the evacuation was unnecessary.

Nina Perevalova - Photo by Beatrice Lundborg

Everyone that left these parts have died. They were promised compensation and went away. They saw it as an opportunity to make money. But they were not happy in their new home and now most of them are dead. We who stayed are still alive on the other hand.

Nina Perevalova goes back and forth between the cabin and the hen house, cattle shed and pigsty. She's practically wearing galoshes, woolen sweater and a green jacket. Red plaid skirt, purple scarf on the head. Actually, she has no time to talk to us, she has chores to attend to and sticks hear head into the cabin and commands her husband to come outside.

Nina Perevalova Photo by Beatrice Lundborg

Kolja! Come out, we've got guests!

Mykola Nikitenko, 58, an unemployed tractor driver. Sometimes he works as a day laborer on construction sites, otherwise he lives off the garden, his pets and his wife's pension. He does not regret the decision to stay, even though they have been left alone in the village.

Here lived some fifty families before the disaster. We had a private shop and nearby there was a collective farm where a large part of the inhabitants worked. Over there was a road... and that's where one of his neighbors had his garden, Nikitenko said, pointing to an overgrown field.

Mykola Nikitenko - Photo by Beatrice Lundborg

Of fifty households there remains only three. Four, five buildings remain, the rest ageing slowly but surely. Houses leaning and gray are the remains on both sides of the village road, they resemble old people who rely on a cane. The logs are gray with age, many houses have no roofs. Others have already fallen over and lies helpless on the ground, eventually becoming the piles of boards where people provide themselves with firewood.

The remaining houses have tin roofs that often goes almost to the ground. They look ancient, part of the landscape, brown and gray with beautiful, ornate window frames painted in bright green or sky blue. Nina Perevalovas and Mykola Nikitenkos house is simple, run-down and poor but impeccably well maintained - from the house to the roost to the pigsty and the sheep house is neat and tidy, everything has its place.

Birdsong sounds everywhere and hazel thicket have small green leaves. Up in a telephone pole there are birds. It is now spring, intense spring. Around one of the fallen houses small white and gray kids are leaping up and down of what is left of the timber wall. Nina Perevalova speak with them. She talks constantly with all their animals and calling them by name - pig named Vaska, the fearless gray hen Sivka and favorite price Gorka.

Fallen Houses - Photo by Beatrice Lundborg

This is my baby. Gorka, my little man .... Gorka my golden boy, says Nina Perevalova and scratches a kid area behind the ear.

Then she looks up.
 
I drink goat milk, gathering berries and mushrooms in the forest, growing in the kitchen garden. We have pigs and chickens. We are doing well. Only sore legs. Maybe it has to do with Chernobyl, what do I know? Everything was better and everyone was happier when we did not know anything about this radiation!

She invites us in the hall and pours fresh goat milk in a tin mug. I drink a sip, it tastes good. Then I set the cup back on the table. Our instruments have shown the normal radiation levels in this village, but I can not bring myself to drink up. After reading about how tired these villagers are and other precautions I feel ashamed before Nina Perevalova, but she says nothing. By all accounts, she is accustomed.

When they last came here and measured how much radiation we have in the body, I had exceeded the norm. My husband had however completely normal levels. He drinks horilka (moonshine). It is said to be good against radiation.

Natalia Krivosjejeva - Photo by Beatrice Lundborg

"I want us to move. But my husband a lumberjack refuses."

A dozen kilometers further away is Sytjyn, another village which was evacuated after the disaster. A few years later, people began to move back and for two years life started to return and the village was rebuilt. But then it was emptied for the second time when unemployment drove people to move away. Today, all the houses are deserted - all but one with intense cobalt blue paint and a handrail made of birch trunks. It houses the unemployed postman Krivosjejeva Natalya, 40 years.

I was ten years old when they evacuated us to a neighboring village, Maksimovskij. But it never felt like home there. The worst thing was not even the horrible, crude damp apartments, but we were shunned by locals. They called us "Chernobyltsi" and felt that we were a health risk. They did not talk to us. We had a serious food shortage in Belarus and they were furious at having to share the bread shipments with newcomers. Their disdain I will never forget, says Natalia Krivosjejeva and wipes away a tear.

Eight years after the evacuation, she returned as a newlywed to Sytjyn. The only thing which by then remained of the family's house was a bare stone base.

- The house had been newly built, it was valuable and was simply stolen, dismantled piece by piece. We moved into the empty library instead and I got a job as a postman in the neighboring village. But now my employment have been revoked and we are the last family who still live in this village. It's very sad to be a young person that does not have someone to talk to! I want us to move. But my husband is a lumberjack and refuses, Natalia regrets.

Natalia Krivosjejeva - Photo by Beatrice Lundborg

She is angry with herself because she and her husband have been waiting too long with the decision to leave.

All the other returnees have left our village. There are no buses here anymore, the line has been completely unprofitable. We can not afford a car, we can not even afford to have a pig for it needs food! We have no electricity or water, I wash clothes by hand. Look at my hands! says Natalia Krivosjejeva and holds out her rough hands.

Natalia does not think very much about the radiation. She and her husband live of their garden and self-catering, like most others in the zone. According to the dosimeters the radiation is at a normal level next to the house, but if you drive a few kilometers away then the radiation is significantly higher. Also, if you live in an area that is permitted in the zone, then some contaminated areas can lie next to you because the zones merge into one another.

Dead towns - Photo by Beatrice Lundborg

"They told us that we could drink the milk of our cows and eat vegetables that we grew. We did this for three years. Then they announced suddenly that we could not eat or drink anything."

Some seventy kilometers further away is a small community with the optimistic name Majsk. The houses there do not resemble the old Belarusian peasant cottages. They are white, modern two-story-straight rows, surrounded by square, fence enclosed gardens. Majsk is one of the villages that was rebuilt on a so-called safe area, which residents themselves scoff at.

Look how it's burning over there on the other side of the field. That area is radioactive, there we can not go. But every spring and summer fires occurs and the radioactivity spread. We must not go into the woods and pick berries and mushrooms. Everything is dangerous. We are completely surrounded by radioactive areas, we are like on an island. What life is that? exclaimed Olga, a thirty year old art teacher who is about to rake the yard.

Her mother glares angrily at us.

We have received orders not to speak to journalists! We are just to keep our mouths shut. I worked at the collective farm in the four years after the disaster. I stood in the field and sowed and breathed in the dust, breathing in all that came out of the earth. Then it turned out that the area was one of the worst polluted by radiation and we moved here. Have we received any compensation? No. Because now we all live in a safe area!

She stops to rake and goes off furiously toward the potato patch behind the house.

All residents of Majsk originally came from a village named Tjudjany, an area the Soviet authorities first considered as safe. Therefore, the inhabitants were sent back home after the first evacuation, just four years later they were evacuated again to the newly built city Majsk - which turned out to be completely surrounded by radioactive soil.

They told us that we could drink the milk of our cows and eat vegetables that we grew. We did this for three years. But then they announced suddenly that we can't eat or drink anything. Clearly many are furious, but what good did it do? Now we live in an ill-chosen location, but what should we do? Where are we moving? Chernobyl has destroyed our lives, says Olga in the same tone as stated by many others I encounter.

People here often don't even regret it happened. They simply state it.

Olga say they have health problems, particularly pain in the joints. It's one symptom that is common among people who live in or near the radioactive zone.

But you can not prove that it has to do with Chernobyl. My children go to school here, they get iodine tablets, and free trips to a sanatorium twice a year. It's the only compensation we get to live next door to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, says Olga, who do not want to be photographed or say his real name.

On the other side of the field is a memorial with a small plaque:

"Here stood the village Tjudjany, with 137 families and 323 inhabitants. Buried in 1999. "

Pavel Moisejev - Photo by Beatrice Lundborg

Our institute has absolutely no interest in concealing the presence of cancer, the opposite. We need all the resources we can get.

Thyroid cancer has soared in Belarus since the Chernobyl disaster. According to Pavel Moisejev leading the State Institute for Cancer Control in Belarus, the figures are quite clear. In 1990, the number of thyroid cancer cases in Belarus was 1.2 per 100 000 inhabitants, in 2014 it was 18.3. It is mainly children who are affected - and especially girls.

Large amounts of radioactive iodine was released into the atmosphere after the disaster. It affects the thyroid. For some reason, girls and women are more susceptible to radioactive contamination. We have not found an explanation for this. Luckily thyroid cancer is usually curable if detected in time, says Pavel Moisejev.

He receives us at the State Belarusian Center for Cancer Research located in Lesnoj, a leafy suburb of Minsk. Here is the country's largest cancer hospital with 832 hospital beds, all of which are occupied when we visit the center. It is not only thyroid cancer that is increasing in Belarus - all forms of cancer has become more common. But according to Pavel Moisejev there is no scientific evidence of a Chernobyl connection, except in the specific case of thyroid cancer.

Moisejev is aware that many belarusians have stopped believing the authorities regarding Chernobyl. He raises his hands.

Guess if I constantly hear that ... I'm just saying what we on a scientific basis can establish! Our institute has absolutely no interest in concealing the presence of cancer, the opposite. We need all the resources we can get. Belarus is undergoing an economic crisis, but we have just built two new research centers and is building a new clinic. The construction will be completed, despite the fact that the state has much less money now. Today we have the resources in a completely different way than before. Our research is the best among all former Soviet countries.

While Moisejev notes that all diseases from Chernobyl's wake are still not known. As for metals like cesium and strontium with thirty years half life.

Radioactive iodine, cesium and strontium were released in large quantities. We do not yet know what consequences it can have - perhaps we'll know in 20, 30 or 50 years.

Only time will tell.

A person who has devoted his life to researching the consequences of the Chernobyl are Juryj Bandazjeŭski. He founded the country's first Chernobyl Institute in Gomel in 1989, one of the largest cities next to the so-called zone. Bandazeŭvski criticized the authorities for not taking the implications seriously and was jailed in 2001, accused of taking bribes from students. Amnesty International considered that the charges were fabricated and appointed Bandazjeŭski a prisoner of conscience.

Four years later he was released and Bandazjeŭski received temporary asylum in France. Today he is researching in Ukraine and I interview him on skype.

Since 2014, we examine children in two regions outside Kiev where there was radioactive fallout, Ivanovskij and Poleskij. Every year we have investigated 4000 children aged between 3 and 17 years. Their general health is poor, 80 percent have various types of heart problems. The mortality in both heart disease and cancer is very high in this area, especially among young working-age people, says Bandazjeŭvski.

He would not comment on the situation in Belarus, because he can no longer work there. What he does want to make clear is that the EU - which admittedly is funding his research - have not taken the consequences of the Chernobyl seriously. Ukraine does not have the resources to invest in research and Belarus is a dictatorship, critical researchers run into major problems.

Research funding should be earmarked for each region and are not be given as lump sums to various authorities. Actually, there should in general not live any children in these areas. We can only imagine the long term effects on their health, and we need much more research. This requires, in turn, more resources to investigate each child individually and accurately determine which factors are interrelated, says Juryj Bandazjeŭski.

Accurate knowledge of how things fit together is something that Chernobyl disaster victims have pondered much over the past thirty years. At first they believed the authorities - which then turned out to lie systematically. Then they started to draw their own conclusions, which in turn led to hysterical rumors.

Today many victims fell a strong sense of still being deceived. They still do not know exactly how polluted the land is, or how sick they are. One only guess and wonder.

Mykola Rasiuk and wife Valentina - Photo by Beatrice Lundborg

Mykola Rasiuk was thirty years old when he drove along the road that is still called "Road of Death" - the road that led out from Pripyat, a model Soviet town next to Chernobyl in the current Ukraine. He drove past the nuclear power plant that was in flames. Above it hovered raspberry-colored clouds. People opened the windows, watched and admired.


When we arrived at the ferry a lot of fish had lost their ability to swim and floated up on the beach. People were fishing with their bare hands... no one understood how dangerous it was. We drove on to dacha and suddenly I was hit by a terrible headache. I stepped out of the car and vomited, and when we arrived, I drank a liter of vodka. Since then I have been living. But many of my friends and relatives are sick or dead, says Mykola Rasiuk.

His wife Valentina Rasiuk worked in a factory that made radios in Pripyat, Mykola worked as an electrician. Pripyat was founded next to the brand new Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It had been built in 1977 and was considered to be the safest in the world. When the accident occurred, very few understood that the whole area had become dangerous to live in.

I was worried for my relatives and friends who worked at the nuclear plant, that they had been injured during the accident. Not for one second I thought of the radiation. It was only when we came to the relatives of Kiev we understood what it was about. They said we would take iodine - something that we had not even heard of. The authorities did not even tell us that the children should not play outside! said Valentina Rasiuk.

Mykola Rasiuk - Photo by Beatrice Lundborg

From Ukraine the Rasiku family decided to move back to their home country Belarus.

When we got to Mogiljev people said to us that we had five years to live. How would you take it? I thought mostly about the children, I wished that the kids could grow up and become adults, says Valentina Rasiuk.

The children survived. By now the couple have lived in Mogiljev for over twenty years. Both their parents were however left in the so-called zone and died early.

Each anniversary of Chernobyl the city authorities make a speech. It's always about the same thing - the heroes who saved us from danger. Never about how many people got sick and died or had their lives ruined. I have requested the floor several times, I have tried to share Svetlana Aleksijevitjs "Prayer for Chernobyl" - but they throw me out by force and now they won't even let me in at the memorial, said Mykola Rasiuk.

The State Institute for Cancer Research in Minsk says that it is not possible to establish any link between the Chernobyl disaster and any other cancer than thyroid cancer. Rasiuk just scoff when I say it.

We who have our roots in the zone have our own statistics. Every spring we go back to our home village to honor our dead on radunitsa. We meet, eat, drink and remember. We count how many are there and how many people have died. We look for ourselves what's really is going on.

Before the interview ends Rasiku pours Belarus balm, traditional herb liqueur in small crystal glasses. He raises his glass.

Cheers we are alive anyway.

Photo by Beatrice Lundborg

Chernobyl radiation map 1996

Please note that the towns named in this story can no longer be found on google maps due to the areas being too radioactive for humans.

CIA Briefing for Reagan on the Chernobyl Disaster

This is supposedly a declassified CIA video briefing made for President Reagan on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, dated late April or early May 1986.

Declassified CIA Historical Chernobyl Briefing

Somehow all this sounds strangely familiar, it's almost a mirror of a current ongoing disaster...

However the actual cause and events described in this briefing was far from the truth at the time to what was really going on at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant.

The video was declassified and released 2 Nov 2011 at the "Ronald Reagan, Intelligence, and the End of the Cold War" symposium at the Reagan Presidential Library.


From symposium notes: "This was the first time the Agency used videos on a regular basis to deliver intelligence to the policymaker, and this collection marks the first substantial release of such material in one of the CIA's historical collections."

Youtube Link: CIA video briefing for Reagan: Chernobyl Disaster

☢ [Video] Fukushima 2020 Olympics ☢

Japan's minister in charge of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Toshiaki Endo wants qualifiers to be held in Fukushima Japan. 

Japans 2020 Olympic Minister Toshiaki Endo

The proposal is for Fukushima to host 5 new Olympic sports including Baseball and Softball.

Toshiaki Endo says "I think disaster hit regions can host a number of qalifiers, these could be based in Fukushima."

"If qualifiers can be held in other regional areas as well, the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics will be an event for all of Japan."

Also in the video

I'm going to bring to light the Monju Fast Breeder Reactor Troubles before I give you the normal Fukushima update tonight. Today's Headline News from NHK .

Fukushima Radioactive Headines Sep 30th 2015 Dana Durnford Radioactive Heartless Monster I mean IAEA hates Japanese.

Up To 100% of No. 2 Reactor Fuel May Have Melted A group of researchers says it is highly likely that 70 to 100 percent of fuel has melted at one of the Fukushima Nuclear Reactors.

☢ Fukushima No Place for Man or Robot ☢

The robots sent into the nuclear power plants to find highly radioactive fuel at Fukushima's nuclear reactors have all “died”. The subterranean "ice wall" around the crippled plant meant to stop groundwater from becoming contaminated has yet to be finished with some experts saying they have little hope in it ever being finished.

And authorities still don’t even know how to dispose of the highly radioactive water stored in an ever mounting number of tanks around the site that are now starting to leak more and more. The authorities ongoing solution to the radioactive water problem to try and cool the reactors have so far been to dump it all into the Pacific Ocean.

Fukushima No Place for Man or Robot

Five years ago, one of the worst earthquakes in history triggered a 10-metre high tsunami that crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station causing multiple meltdowns. Nearly 19,000 people were killed or left missing and 160,000 lost their homes and livelihoods.

Today, the radiation at the Fukushima plant is still so powerful it has proven impossible to get into its bowels to find and remove the extremely dangerous blobs of melted fuel rods. The radiation is so powerful that experts can only guess at what depth the melted corium fuel now is located.

So far the official reports are that the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), has made some progress, such as removing hundreds of spent fuel roads in one damaged building. But the technology needed to establish the location of the melted fuel rods in the other three reactors at the plant has not been developed.

“It is extremely difficult to access the inside of the nuclear plant," Naohero Masuda, Tepco's head of decommissioning said in one interview. "The biggest obstacle is the radiation.”

The fuel rods melted through their containment vessels in the reactors, and no one knows exactly where they are now. This part of the plant is so dangerous to humans, Tepco has been developing robots, which can swim under water and negotiate obstacles in damaged tunnels and piping to search for the melted fuel rods.

But as soon as they get close to the reactors, the radiation destroys their wiring and renders them useless, causing long delays, Masuda said. 

Each robot has to be custom-built for each building.“It takes two years to develop a single-function robot,” Masuda said.

Irradiated Water

Tepco, which was fiercely criticized and still is for its handling of the disaster, says conditions at the Fukushima power station have improved dramatically. Radiation levels in many places at the site are now as low as those in Tokyo. But words like those do not speak much comfort for a disaster site know as being one of the worst nuclear disasters since Chernobyl in Ukraine 30 years ago,

More than 8,000 workers are at the plant at any one time, according to officials on a recent tour. Traffic is constant as they spread across the site, removing debris, building storage tanks, laying piping and preparing to dismantle parts of the plant.

Much of the work involves pumping a steady torrent of water into the wrecked and highly radiated reactors to cool them down. Afterward, some of the radiated water is then pumped out of the plant and stored in tanks that are proliferating around the site while the rest of the radioactive water is flushed out into the Pacific Ocean.

What to do with the nearly million tonnes of radioactive water is one of the biggest challenges, said Akiro Ono, the site manager. Ono said he is “deeply worried” the storage tanks will leak even more radioactive water into the sea - as they have done several times before - prompting strong criticism for the government.

The utility has so far failed to get the backing of local fishermen to release water it has treated into the ocean.

Ono estimates that Tepco has completed around 10 percent of the work to clear the site up - the decommissioning process could take 30 to 40 years. But until the company locates the fuel, it won’t be able to assess progress and final costs, experts say.

The much touted use of X-ray like muon rays has yielded little information about the location of the melted fuel and the last robot inserted into one of the reactors sent only grainy images before breaking down.

The Great Ice Wall

Tepco is building the world’s biggest ice wall to keep groundwater from flowing into the basements of the damaged reactors and getting contaminated.

First suggested in 2013 and strongly backed by the government, the wall was completed in February, after months of delays and questions surrounding its effectiveness. Later this year, Tepco plans to pump water into the wall - which looks a bit like the piping behind a refrigerator - to start the freezing process.

Stopping the ground water intrusion into the plant is critical, said Artie Gunderson, a former nuclear engineer.

“The reactors continue to bleed radiation into the ground water and thence into the Pacific Ocean,” Gunderson said. "When Tepco finally stops the groundwater, that will be the end of the beginning.”

While he would not rule out the possibility that small amounts of radiation are reaching the ocean, Masuda, the head of decommissioning, said the leaks have ended after the company built a wall along the shoreline near the reactors whose depth goes to below the seabed.

“I am not about to say that it is absolutely zero, but because of this wall the amount of release has dramatically dropped,” he said.

Japan faces 200-year wait for Fukushima clean-up

The Times of London, Mar. 27, 2015

The chief of the Fukushima nuclear power station has admitted that the technology needed to decommission three melted-down reactors does not exist, and he has no idea how it will be developed. 

In a stark reminder of the challenge facing the Japanese authorities, Akira Ono conceded that the stated goal of decommissioning the plant by 2051 may be impossible without a giant technological leap. 

“There are so many uncertainties involved. We need to develop many, many technologies,” Mr Ono said. 

“Forremoval of the debris, we don’t have accurate information (about the state of the reactors) or any viable methodology…

Japan may be obsessed with robots

The Telegraph (UK), Mar 26, 2015

But it is a British company that has solved the “impossible” problem of visualising the radiation leaks inside the crippled reactor buildings at Fukushima.

State-of-the-art British imaging technology has been deployed at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to overcome problems that Japanese engineers declared to be insurmountable… 

The system is able to create a real-time, three-dimensional image of the area being surveyed and identify “hot-spots” of radioactivity. More than four years after… radiation levels within the structures remain too high for humans to enter. 

That has severely hampered efforts to clean up the site. Experts have already estimated that process will take three decades but progress to date has been slow. TEPCO was only able to confirm on Thursday (Mar 2015) previous suspicions that nearly all the fuel from the No. 1 reactor at the plant has melted and fallen into the containment vessel. 

[Video] Fukushima Residents Worry About Future of Affected Areas ☢

Bags full of radioactive dirt and debris are still visible 5 years after the earthquake and tsunami that triggered the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster.

Ahead of the anniversary on March 11th reporters visited a town 20 kilometers away. The first in the area to fully re-open.

Bags full of Radioactive Dirt and Debris - Fukushima 2016

But for some of the few residence who have returned to Nahara there's little hope for the future of the town. This Buddhist priest says after coming back I knew I would see the end of this region, this town. It became an environment where people could not live safely and comfortably ever again he says.

Buddhist priest Tokuo Hayakawa living in Nahara, Futaba District, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan

It's reported less than six percent of residents have returned. Locals say the future will depend on young people returning and so far there is only a handful amid lingering fares about radioactivity. However authorities maintain the presence of radiation has now dropped to levels below what's considered safe.

Watch the video on Youtube

Watch video on Liveleak https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d70_1456932602

☢ When Sea Monsters Wash Ashore ☢

The beast likely weighed 150 - 200 pounds and around 24 feet long when it was alive, said Annie MacAulay, a marine biologist and president of Mountain and Sea Educational Adventures, who dissected it Monday.

The one found Monday had an empty pocket in its stomach, which MacAulay said could mean it recently stopped eating, a potential sign of distress or sickness.

Stunned Scientific Guesswork.. Sick, Disoriented, Distress, underwater seismic activity.. Let me guess..

Scientists have guessed that a handful of oarfish that have washed up on California’s coasts in recent years were sick, disoriented because of a storm or even responding to underwater seismic activity.

Below is a few headlines found at enenews covering the scientific mystery for marine biologist
Post can be found here https://enenews.com/unbelievable-scientists-stunned-3-rare-giant-oarfish-found-dead-recent-weeks-california-flesh-falling-apart-body-parts-missing-biologist-course-im-very-concerned-reason-theyre-dying-being-tes

Please note that bluetick on enenews also commented on the mystery having 30 years of experience:

August 21, 2015 at 9:37 am

i find it interesting after being on the water fishing for 30+ years that nothing in a starving ocean ate so much as even a nibble off of the huge fish…in most cases i can toss a bait fish over board and its gone in a couple mins at most. maybe just a fluke or maybe a dieing ocean….maybe they dont taste good…
Los Angeles Times, Aug 17, 2015 (emphasis added): Biggest oarfish seen at Catalina Island in years washes ashore… marking a rare sighting of the deep-sea creature… [It] was 24 feet long when it was alive, said Annie MacAulay, a marine biologist… its tail [was] severed off — which oarfish have been known to do to shed weight and save energy, she said… The one found Monday had an empty pocket in its stomach, which MacAulay said could mean it recently stopped eating, a potential sign of distress or sickness… a handful of oarfish [have] washed up on California’s coasts in recent years.

New York Daily News, Aug 17, 2015: Stunned scientists fished for clues Monday to explain the origin of the giant oarfish that washed up on the shores of Catalina — the third massive marine oarfish found on the island in two years’ time [see articles below for additional finds]… The sleek silver fish was missing its pectoral fins and tail… perplexed researchers are looking for a reason why. Dr. Misty Paig-Tran from California State University Fullerton collected tissue samples… to determine whether it had any toxins in its system. But questions still remain as to why these fish are dying… The conservationist also speculated that water pollution could be to blame.

OC Register, Aug 19, 2015: This is the third oarfish to be documented on the island [since] 2013… MacAulay said the animal didn’t come to shore because of an illness or shark attack. When she dissected the fish, she discovered a belly full of krill… “It’s very strange, and the other one in June was the same,” she said.

Gazettes (Long Beach), Aug 19, 2015: MacAulay said this is the third such creature to wash up on the island in the past two years…. Before then, MacAulay said she isn’t aware of any others… … Sightings are extremely rare. Those that come near the shore are usually distressed.

AP, Aug 19, 2015: Residents of Santa Catalina Island have found a second sea monster on their shores in just three months… {MacAulay] says to see two in a three-month period after never seeing one her entire career is incredibly exciting.

Mountain and Sea Educational Adventures, Aug 17, 2015: Unbelievable! The second oarfish that we found washed up on the shores of Catalina Island.
MacAulay: “You’re lucky to see one oarfish in your lifetime, so to see 2 within 3 months… I’ve been working on this island for 17 years and I had never seen any until June.”
MacAulay: “I’ve been working here for more than 20 years out on the water and I’ve never seen one… three have been found so recently… it is sad.”
MacAulay: “It’s so unusual that all these years I don’t see any oarfish, and then have seen two in the last few months.”
MacAulay: “To see two of them in a three-month period when I’ve been working on the island for 20 years and in marine biology for almost 30 years… of course (I’m) very concerned because… for some reason they’re dying.”

San Diego Reader, Jun 30, 2015: First-ever oarfish caught on rod… That it was in shallow water for an oarfish gives the implication that it was unhealthy… crew tried to gaff and raise the 20-foot fish to the boat. The soft flesh only tore, and they had to give up…

Pete Thomas Outdoors, Jul 8, 2015: The bizarre catch… was snagged and barely alive… a crewman attempted to collect it with a gaff, but the flesh was too soft for the gaff to hold… for some reason Catalina has become a hot spot for sightings.

Bruce Smith, captain of sport fishing boat, Jun 29, 2015: “We caught an oarfish… at Catalina… in shallow water like 5 fathoms [30 feet]… It was pretty much dead… I know they washed up on the beach here a couple times… It was very surprising, it’s a once in lifetime thing.”

Los Angeles Times, Jun 3, 2015: Rare oarfish found dead on Catalina… The first sighting of a live oarfish was only recorded 2001, when one was caught on film by the U.S. Navy…

Los Angeles Times, Oct 10, 2013: 2 giant oarfish wash onto California coast, making scientists curious — It’s been the week of the oarfish along the Southern California coast. A 14-foot oarfish carcass was discovered Friday by a snorkeler off the beach in Oceanside. Earlier in the week, an 18-foot oarfish was found dead off Catalina Island.

☢ [Video] Fukushima Simplified ☢

Hello everyone,

This is a good hour and a half long youtube video called "Fukushima Simplified 2015" that is well worth the watch. 

From video at 4min picture showing cutaway of Fukushima reactor damages

Make sure to check out the Youtube channel for more Fukushima videos too.

FUKUSHIMA 2015

 

FUKUSHIMA SIMPLIFIED ((Warning: GRAPHIC)) 2015 HD

[Video] New Chernobyl Shelter Into Final Construction

It has now been 4 years since the Fukushima disaster and now finally after 29 years the biggest engineering project in history, is entering it's final construction phase. The giant steel arch of Ukraine have been built to seal off nuclear fuel buried inside reactor four which blew up in 1986. It has taken 29 years and 40 countries to acquire the money to make such a engineering project.

Big enough to house the Statue of Liberty

The huge steel arch will entomb Chernobyl's reactor four, and slash the risk of another radioactive disaster. Standing 360 feet (100 meters) tall, and 843 feet (260 meters) wide, the arch is held together by 680,000 bolts. Built by 500.000 workers the giant radioactive arch of Ukraine is big enough to house the Statue of Liberty.

The shelter, will house the nuclear reactor damaged in the 1986 disaster, and the old concrete structure built to cover it which is approaching the end of its life.

The safe confinement is expected to reduce radioactive emissions drastically.

But the 30-kilometre exclusion zone will remain contaminated.

“The area of exclusion zone will not be free of nuclear waste because there is the intention to have the nuclear waste storages in the exclusion zone, so there will be a permanent waste management operation,” said Vince Novak, Director of Nuclear Safety at the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD).

Once ready, the shelter will be pushed onto rails to cover the reactor. It is hoped to become operational by the second half of 2017.

Experts say it will be another 300 years before it’s safe to live in the area.

“The ark is protecting the sarcophagus where there’s a lot of nuclear and toxic waste. It will be safe to live here after at least 10 radioactive half-lives have passed. An average radioactive half-life lasts 30 years,” said Volodymyr Verbytskyi, an engineer controlling the exclusion zone.

So the immediate area will remain a ghost town.

The cost of the shelter is 2.15 billion euros.

The EU, members of the G7, Russia, Switzerland and other countries are all donors with the EBRD contributing 675 million euros.

Watch the video

Euronews correspondent Sergio Cantone reports from Chernobyl:

“So the construction of the sheltering structure continues according to schedule. The biggest problem will come afterwards and it’s about removing all the radioactive elements in reactor number 4. At the moment a technical solution seems still to be a long way off.

So just like Fukushima there is no technical solution to the continuing contamination of the environment by "super safe" nuclear power.

Video of Melted Core at Fukushima Reactor 2 ☢

Fukushima Reactor 2 Melted Nuclear Core China Syndrome

This is a video showing the boiling / melting reactor core from Fukushima reactor 2. The corium is seen as a orange and sometimes light pink blob in the video taken.

I would like to thank FC in the chat for bringing this video to my attention and Nowi See on youtube who found it in the TEPCO archives and uploaded it to youtube.

Published on 27 Jan 2015 by Nowi See on youtube. You can also find the video in the TEPCO website archives if you like.

"This is the radioactive sludge and toxic water that they pretend they're doing something about. 40 minutes in underwater hell."

The Daiichi complex in Fukushima, Japan had a total of 1760 metric tons of fresh and spent nuclear fuel on site last year, according to a presentation by its owners, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco).

The most damaged Daiichi reactor, number 3, contained about 90 tons of fuel, and the storage pool above reactor 4, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Gregory Jaczko reported had lost its cooling water, contains 135 tons of spent fuel.

1. The amount of fuel lost in the core melt at Three Mile Island in 1979 was about 30 tons.
2. The Chernobyl reactors had about 180 tons when the accident occurred in 1986.

Going by the reported amount Fukushima has nearly 10 times more nuclear fuel than Chernobyl.

It also means that a single spent fuel pool at reactor 4 has 75% as much nuclear fuel as at all of Chernobyl.

But in reality it gets much worse than that..

Tepco very recently before the disaster transferred many more radioactive spent fuel rods into the storage pools. According to Associated Press, there was at the time of the earthquake and tsunami some 3,400 tons of fuel in seven spent fuel pools plus 877 tons of active fuel in the cores of the reactors.

This all totals up to 4,277 tons of nuclear fuel at Fukushima at the point of the disaster.

Which would mean that there was almost 24 times more nuclear fuel at Fukushima than Chernobyl at the time when it went full meltdown only hours after the earthquake struck the plant..

When Young People Die In Fukushima ☢

Morcheeba - Blood Like Lemonade (official) 

The Music Video above might not have anything to do with the following post. But I feel a lot of people, especially in Japan have been made reluctant renegades!


 

Democracy Now a daily independent global news hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González

Video Transcript from 15:15 minutes in to 17:30 min

Evacuated from Futaba, Japan. Can never return home.

YUKIKO KAMEYA, Former Resident of Futaba, Japan (Evacuated From Town Near Fukushima): [Translated] When I fled from Futaba I could not even talk. I could not even have friends over or anything, but my people encouraged me to be standing here right now. Without any peoples help I could not be here. That's why I appreciate them and want to join them in their cause.

Reporter: What is your message to the Japanese government and the world about nuclear power?


YUKIKO KAMEYA, Former Resident of Futaba, Japan: I don't want anyone in the world to experiece what we have experienced, we have housing in Futaba but there is nothing there. Everything was robbed. All the furniture was brokened, I cant really go back there, we know it. We don't want anyone in the world to be in the situation that we are in. There are 59 children with thyroid problem, and there are hundreds more on the way. The real problem in Fukushima is children can not go out and play. They have to stay inside and this is not the way children should grow up. I don't want anyone in the world or Japan to experience this type of situation for children. So I want to stop Nuclear Facilities right now and I don't want them to be continued.


Reporter: Do you think you will ever be able to return to your home?

YUKIKO KAMEYA, Former Resident of Futaba, Japan: The Futaba where I live is not livable and the government say so. So I know we are never going back in my entire life. But for the Fukushima Prefecture it is still not safe, the radiation level is still very high. So I don't think it is safe and I don't think we will go back there.

Reporter: And what is your assessment of how the government has handled the crisis?

YUKIKO KAMEYA, Former Resident of Futaba, Japan: We expected our government to do a better job when this accident happened. But they don't really do what you want. They ignore all the problems we’re having. There are many young people between 15 and 19 in Fukushima who are in high school who have died suddenly. For example, this morning I saw an online story that a 17-year-old died from Leukemia. In the morning when his mother came to wake him up, he was found dead in bed. Everyone says this was caused by the radiation levels from the nuclear accident. But our government never recognized it, and there are 59 children with thyroid cancer, they’ll never recognize it as being caused by the radiation.

Video Transcript from 21:45 minutes

The following video transcript and article can be found at 
www.democracynow.org/2014/1/17/mayor_of_town_that_hosted_fukushima
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Music from the film Nuclear Nation: The Fukushima Refugees Story. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. This is the third day of our broadcast from Tokyo, Japan, and the final day. We are talking about moving in on the third anniversary of the Fukushima disaster. Nineteen thousand people died or went missing on that day, March 11th, 2011, and the days afterwards, when the earthquake triggered a tsunami, and three of the reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant melted down.

We’re joined right now by Futaba’s former mayor, Katsutaka Idogawa. For years, he embraced nuclear power. Now he has become a vocal critic. He is featured in the film Nuclear Nation.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! And thank you for traveling two hours to join us here at the studios of NHK International for this conversation. Mayor, explain what happened on that day, special thanks to Mary Joyce, who is translating for you today, on that day, March 11, 2011, and the days afterwards, when you decided it was time for the thousands of people who lived in your town, Futaba, to leave.

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] On that day, there was an earthquake of the scale of something we’d never experienced before. It was a huge surprise. And at the time, I was just hoping that nothing had happened to the nuclear power plant. However, unfortunately, there was in fact an accident there. And then I worked with the many residents, and thinking about how I could fully evacuate them from the radiation.

AMY GOODMAN: You made a decision to evacuate your town before the Japanese government told the people in the area to do this, but not before the U.S. government told Americans to leave the area and other governments said the same.

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Yes, the Japanese government’s information to evacuate became much later than that, and my mistake at the time was initially waiting to hear that. If I had made the decision even three hours earlier, I would have been able to prevent so many people from being so heavily exposed to radiation; however, as a result of that, unfortunately, several hundreds of people were directly affected by this radiation.

AMY GOODMAN: Where did you decide to move the whole town?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] I was originally thinking about this at the time of the earthquake on March 11 first. However, at first, I was waiting to rely on the government information to decide the timing for this.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, you moved the town to a school in the outskirts of Tokyo, is that right? The entire town to an abandoned school? Explain how you set up your government, your whole community, in this one building.

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Right at the start, we were unfortunately not able to evacuate all of the residents, and some actually did remain within parts of Fukushima prefecture. And as a result of this, there was actually a gap created between those who were still remaining within the greater Fukushima prefecture area and those who evacuated to Saitama, outside of Tokyo. And the reason for this is we had no access to communication, to information, to mobile phones.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, how long did people stay? How many people were in this school? And what role did the government play? How has the government helped the refugees?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] We were able to evacuate around 1,400 of the residents to Saitama prefecture, outside of Tokyo. So they were saved from the initial first exposure, the most serious exposure to radiation at the time. But many of them, unable to deal with the situation, gradually started to return to different parts of Fukushima prefecture.

AMY GOODMAN: You have not returned back to your town?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Yes, I am still living in evacuation away from the heavily radiated areas.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the meetings that you have had with the government? You have had a remarkable association of nuclear mayors in Japan, the mayors who live—who preside over towns that have nuclear power plants in them.

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] From before the accident, we had always been strongly calling upon the government, and also TEPCO, to make sure that no accident was ever allowed to happen. And they were always telling us, "Don’t worry, Mayor. No accident could ever happen." However, because this promise was betrayed, this is why I became anti-nuclear.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a clip from Atsushi Funahashi’s new documentary film about the former residents of Futaba, where the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant is partly located. The film is called Nuclear Nation: The Fukushima Refugees Story. And we’re going to go to a part of the film that shows a part of this remarkable meeting of government officials with the atomic mayors, the nuclear mayors of Japan.


BANRI KAIEDA: [translated] The future of energy production and Japanese energy policy is currently being debated, and this is something we’ve communicated to you. Regarding the details of this review, I believe it’s important to clearly define the terms as soon as possible. Thank you very much.


MARC CARPENTIER, Narrator: The industry minister leaves his seat in the first five minutes.


GOSHI HOSONO: [translated] The central and prefectural governments are working on the annual health check guidelines. Based on what we’ve researched until now, the impact of radiation on children appears negligible. However, we will endeavor to keep you apprised of any developments.


MARC CARPENTIER: The nuclear crisis minister follows suit, citing official duties.


CHAIRPERSON: [translated] And now, we’d like to open the floor for comments. Please raise your hands. OK, go ahead.


MAYOR KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] I’m representing Futaba. I want to know why we’re being made to feel this way. It’s frustrating. What does the nuclear power committee think? When you came and explained it to us, you lied, saying it was safe and secure. But we, who trusted and believed you, can no longer live in our own town.

AMY GOODMAN: That last voice was the mayor at the time of Futaba, Katsutaka Idogawa, who is with us today in our Tokyo studio. Futaba is where part of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is located. He was speaking, addressing this meeting of government officials and nuclear mayors from around Japan in August of 2011. You just heard, oh, the voices of Goshi Hosono, who was the nuclear crisis minister of Japan, and Banri Kaieda, a minister of the economy, trade and industry. And after each of them spoke, they politely took their leave of the room before the mayors could address them, so they did not hear the Futaba mayor’s statement about the lies from the government. Talk about that particular meeting.

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] At the time, we were calling for a strong response and attention from the government since the disaster. However, they didn’t even try to listen to what we were calling for. And they continued to not even try to make efforts to fulfill their responsibilities or promise to us. And so, they continued to appear before us, those who were suffering directly from the disaster, but instead of listening to something which would maybe be difficult for their ears to hear, they would just leave the room, not even listen to us at all. And within those who were left in the room were some government officials, including some who were directly the ones who told me that no accident would ever happen. However, no matter what I would try to appeal and say to them, it would not have any effect, so instead I turned around and appealed and spoke to my colleagues, my fellow residents, and I tried to tell them what was really happening, the situation.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Mayor Katsutaka Idogawa, you were a fierce proponent of nuclear power. You were pushing for two more reactors to be built even closer to Futaba than the others. You were proud of getting tens of millions of dollars for your town for hosting these reactors. How did you make your transition to being one of the most vocal government officials against all nuclear power?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] I had been supporting the nuclear power plants in our town on the condition that no accident, no disaster, would be allowed to occur. It was not necessarily that I was actually totally in favor of the nuclear power plants; however, the situation that was in places without the nuclear power plants there, our city would be losing the financial benefits and perhaps unable to go forward economically. The city was actually on the brink of bankruptcy beforehand. And so, in order to try and prevent the city from going into this kind of economic breakdown, I saw that building the new two reactors was perhaps the only way.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a clip, another clip of Nuclear Nation, that gives us a little background on the town of Futaba.


MARC CARPENTIER: Futaba’s farming history goes back over a thousand years. In winter months, people had to leave town for work in the city. Reactors 5 and 6 came online in 1978 and ’79. Money flowed in from the government, and the townspeople found themselves with lots of extra cash. They built roads, a library, a sprawling sports center, and made major upgrades to the infrastructure.

AMY GOODMAN: Nuclear Nation, talking about nuclear refugees, the nuclear refugees of Futaba. And we’re joined by the former mayor, who made the decision, on his own, right after the earthquake, to move his entire town, to evacuate it to Tokyo, being deeply concerned about the levels of radiation and feeling that the government was lying to them about the dangers in the area. This was a mayor, Katsutaka Idogawa, who was fiercely for nuclear power, was proud to be able to get two more reactors in his town to build the economy, to get tens of millions of dollars, and then turned around after the meltdown, after the earthquake, the tsunami and the ultimate meltdown of three of the six existing reactors.

Mayor, right now, you are not the only one who turned around in office. Naoto Kan, the prime minister, also a fierce proponent, is now speaking out all over the world against nuclear power. But just this week, as we flew in to Japan, the government of Prime Minister Abe, the most conservative government since World War II, announced that it wants to build more reactors in Japan. How are you organizing? What are you doing now?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Without being able to even deal with the consequences of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the position to promote nuclear power still is something which is just unthinkable to me. And I believe it’s really important for the prime minister to look at what he’s actually been responsible for and have regret and really deal with what they have done, before they can actually go forward and do anything. And the disaster now is bigger than anything we can cope with. It’s a disaster on an international level, and huge consequences, so he needs to really recognize this.

AMY GOODMAN: So who’s driving the push for more nuclear power? The country, already 30 percent dependent for its energy on nuclear power, had plans to make the country more than 50 percent by 2030. But after this catastrophe, who is pushing for these nuclear power plants?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] The nuclear power system is constructed to use huge amounts of public tax. And this is a very tasty, shall we say, position or situation for the large corporations. They were really behind this push. However, much public taxpayers’ money is being used behind this. And I believe it’s so important to prevent our taxes from being used for any of this kind.

AMY GOODMAN: What has happened to the Fukushima refugees today?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] There are so many people who want to evacuate but don’t have the means to be able to actually do that and are still living in this situation, who want to do something, but they have no support. And another huge issue is those who are still forced to be living within the greater Fukushima prefecture area do not have access to full health measurements, health treatments, and the kind of support that they need. And they’re also told that any diseases or sickness that they have is not caused by radiation.

AMY GOODMAN: You are traveling the world. Can you tell us the countries you’ve been to and why you’re speaking there?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] I’m working with people all around the world, speaking with people who are working against nuclear power in their own areas.

AMY GOODMAN: You went to Finland?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] I went to Finland to speak with people who are working against the construction of nuclear power plants in their areas, because they knew our situation and what happened to us, and we’re trying to work together to prevent this from ever happening to them.

AMY GOODMAN: In the United States, a nuclear power plant has not been built in close to 40 years, very much because of the anti-nuclear movement and the cost of what it means to build a nuclear power plant and what to do with the waste. But President Obama has talked about a nuclear renaissance and is pushing for the building of several new plants for the first time in decades. What message would you share with him?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] The nuclear power disaster is not just of Fukushima. This is a disaster of all humanity, of the entire world. There is a Japanese saying, and its meaning is that, well, any kind of disaster, three times is the limit. And we have had the three large disasters: one in the United States, one at Chernobyl, and now Fukushima. The Earth will not be able to cope with any further nuclear disasters. For the children of the future, the future generations, I hope that we can stop this now.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the alternative?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Well, I’ve heard in U.S. there is shale gas, for example. But as well as other forms of energy, I believe it’s also very important now to look at how we can have lifestyles that rely less on energy, that use less energy more efficient in our homes and in our offices. And Prime Minister Koizumi is also suggesting this.

AMY GOODMAN: Prime Minister Koizumi, very significant that a conservative former prime minister also came out against nuclear power.

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Even he looked at the actual situation. And I believe that Prime Minister Koizumi really visited places affected by nuclear power to really see what is happening, and he’s really speaking sincerely now.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for joining us on Democracy Now!, Katsutaka Idogawa, former mayor of the town of Futaba, where part of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is located. The entire town was rendered uninhabitable by the nuclear meltdown. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Stay with us. After break, crowdsourcing radiation monitoring. We’ll look at how a group called Safecast has helped Japanese civilians turn their smartphones into Geiger counters. Stay with us.

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