From 2002 until Sato's resignation as governor, the team received 21 anonymous tips. "It was mostly a cry for help," Sato said. Some whistle-blowers complained about a wrecked turbine that went unreported. Others warned of the lack of safety on-site measures.
"The tsunami danger was obviously an issue on the table," Sato said, stressing seismologists were pointing to past evidence of mega-earthquakes that could prove catastrophic. "But you have to ask how serious NISA was doing its job, considering the way that backup electricity was easily knocked out by the waves."
Following March 11, there is finally talk of separating NISA from METI to keep Tepco on a short leash. But Sato said an overhaul of the system and new safety measures will be required before evacuees can safely return home.
"There is a nightmare going on in the evacuation camps," Sato said. "Separating NISA and METI is just the first step — overhauling Tepco's operations and supervision is necessary."
Sato resigned in 2006 and was handed a suspended prison term in 2008 by the Tokyo District Court in connection with a bribery case involving a public works project. That verdict was upheld in 2009 and he has appealed with the Supreme Court.
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国の放射線被爆限度基準の引き上げに対する現場作業員を雇う企業側の反応
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Companies nix higher radiation dose limit
Kyodo News
Companies dispatching workers to the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant are refusing to enforce the government's raised limit on radiation exposure, saying it would not be accepted by their workers, it was learned Saturday.
The limit was increased from 100 millisieverts to 250 millisieverts in a March 15 announcement by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.
The increase was requested by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to enable workers to work longer hours and to secure more employees who meet the requirement.
The ministry's decision was made after consulting with the Radiation Council, a body under the science ministry.
But the companies say they are sticking to the previous, lower, limit.
According to Tokyo Electric Power Co., 21 workers had been exposed to a cumulative dose exceeding 100 millisieverts as of April 1. On March 24, three workers — two from Tepco affiliate Kandenko Co. and another from a subcontractor — were exposed to high doses of radiation while laying cables in the basement of reactor 3's turbine building.
"The workers on-site would not agree to accept the suddenly raised" limit, a public relations official at Kandenko said. "We have to be prudent. In view of the workers' safety, we will maintain the 100 millisievert limit."
An official at Tokyo Energy & Systems Inc., a Tepco subsidiary, said: "The target rate at the site is 100 millisieverts. But in practice, we have set a lower limit of 80 millisieverts to control radiation exposure."
Construction companies Kajima Corp. and Taisei Corp. have also adopted 100 millisieverts as their yardstick.
Hitachi Ltd., however, has adopted "200 millisieverts under an in-house regulation," a public relations official said.
Tepco has been complying with the higher limit, but in recent days it was disclosed that not all its workers were using radiation monitors due to a shortage of units equipped with alarms.
グリーンピース（非政府団体）の
放射線医学専門家グループが行った現地調査と
それに基づいたアドバイスに耳をかさない日本政府
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
High radiation well past no-go zone: Greenpeace
By JUN HONGO
Staff writer
Radiology experts from Greenpeace urged the government to revise their evacuation protocol Monday after they found high levels of radiation around the greater Fukushima area and in the region's fresh produce.
A team of radiologists and safety advisers of the nongovernmental organization said a survey conducted from April 4 through Sunday detected radiation levels of 4 microsieverts per hour at a playground in the city of Fukushima. That would translate into a potential annual exposure of 5 millisieverts, Greenpeace expert Rianne Teule said, explaining that the level was the threshold for evacuation at Chernobyl.
The group also said that all 11 samples of local vegetables from gardens and small farms within the prefecture contained radioactivity exceeding the legal limit of 2,000 becquerels per kilogram set by the farm ministry. For example, 152,340 becquerels were found in spinach from a small patch on the outskirts of the city of Fukushima, the group said.
"This is 75 times higher than the limit by the government," Teule told a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo.
Most leafy vegetables from Fukushima Prefecture have been banned from circulation since March 21, but some are being sold directly to consumers from local farmers. The government should provide more information to local residents, the NGO warned.
Radiologist Jan van de Putte told the same news conference that areas with high levels of radioactivity were concentrated in northwestern Fukushima Prefecture, especially in areas between the villages of Iitate and Tsushima, which registered 48 microsieverts per hour.
"This is really dangerous and a very high level," van de Putte said.
Considering the 4 microsieverts detected at a playground in the heart of the city of Fukushima — which has a population of 300,000 — van de Putte and Greenpeace urged the government postpone the start of the school year until decontamination is complete and safety is confirmed.
Greenpeace began surveying areas affected by the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant crisis and revealed late last month that a sample taken on a road between the villages of Iitate and Tsushima had a radiation level of 100 microsieverts per hour, despite being outside the evacuation area.
That survey, however, was downplayed last month by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which claimed the results "could not be considered reliable." Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said separately he will ask Greenpeace to provide more details.
"We've been very cooperative (with the government) and have been providing all the data that we gathered," Junichi Sato, executive director of Greenpeace Japan, said Monday.
"But although we have been handing everything to the prime minister's office, they are not giving us any response."
アメリカ医療専門家の非営利団体（ＰＳＲ）が日本政府を非難。
Monday, May 2, 2011
U.S. doctors hit Tokyo radiation limit for kids
Kyodo
Physicians for Social Responsibility, a U.S. nonprofit organization of medical experts, has condemned as "unconscionable" the Japanese government's safety standards on radiation levels at elementary and junior high schools in nuclear disaster-stricken Fukushima Prefecture.
The PSR statement directly challenges Tokyo's stance that it is safe for schoolchildren to use school playgrounds in the prefecture as long as the dose they are exposed to does not exceed 20 millisieverts over a year.
The PSR view is also in line with that voiced by Toshiso Kosako, who said Friday he would step down as an adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan on the Fukushima nuclear crisis in protest. The University of Tokyo professor urged the government to toughen guidelines on upper limits on radiation levels the education ministry recently announced for elementary school playgrounds in Fukushima.
The U.S. group said in a statement released Friday, "Any exposure, including exposure to naturally occurring background radiation, creates an increased risk of cancer.
"Children are much more vulnerable than adults to the effects of radiation, and fetuses are even more vulnerable," it said.
The medical experts group is part of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.
"(Twenty millisieverts) for children exposes them to a 1 in 200 risk of getting cancer. And if they are exposed to this dose for two years, the risk is 1 in 100. There is no way that this level of exposure can be considered 'safe' for children," the statement said.
他の産業から比べても東電社員はひとも羨む高給取りという事実を知れば、
その翼下で働く人間には、その恩恵はちっとも無いのかな。
*****
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Tepco says no signs of harmful radiation levels
Worker at Fukushima nuclear plant dies
Kyodo
A worker at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant died Saturday after collapsing while carrying equipment at a waste disposal building, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.
Water work: Cooling system gear is unloaded at the Fukushima No. 1 plant Friday. TEPCO / KYODO PHOTO
The cause of death wasn't immediately known, but Tepco said no radioactive substances were detected on his body.
The worker, whose name was not released, was in his 60s and did not appear to be injured, the utility said.
The death is the third at the plant since the crisis began. The bodies of two workers who disappeared March 11 were found floating in the basement of reactor 4 later that month, having died from injuries sustained on the day of the disaster.
The man had started working at the plant Friday and was wearing protective gear, including a full face mask, at the time of his collapse, Tepco said.
He was exposed to radiation totaling 0.17 millisievert — a level considered to have little effect on health — while no radioactive substances were detected on his body, the utility said.
The man, who was working for a subcontractor, collapsed about one hour after he began working at 6 a.m. with another worker at the waste disposal processing facility. He fell unconscious when he was taken to a medical room inside the plant after 7 a.m., Tepco said.
The other worker has not complained of any health problems.
Apart from radiation, workers at the plant are facing serious health threats ranging from poor meals to mental stress.
It took until May 4 for Tepco to say it would improve the workers' meals by replacing precooked, packaged food with "bento" boxes.
In addition, workers on the frontline have no doctors to provide emergency care. Medical staffers are on standby at the J-Village training center in the town of Naraha, some 20 km from the plant.
Tepco has said it will improve the work environment.
It has already been criticized for its poor treatment of nuclear workers, most of whom are employees of subcontractors.
After the plant was hit by the March disaster, workers were initially given no radiation meters on the grounds they were washed away by the tsunami.
Tepco improved the situation only after the government nuclear watchdog agency urged the utility to take steps.
But later in March, three workers were irradiated in a contaminated puddle of water while working in the underground level of the reactor 3 building.
Then came a recent revelation that a daily laborer in Osaka who applied to a job as a driver in Miyagi Prefecture ended up as a nuclear worker at the Fukushima plant.
The worker's death came as the utility continued Saturday work to install a new cooling system at the No. 1 plant, where much of the fuel in the core has melted after being fully exposed.
福島原発事故が世界の原発政策を変える。
Germany decides to shut down all nuclear power plants by 2022 in the wake of Fukushima
Juergen Baetz, Associated Press, May 30, 2011, 3:15 pm EDT
BERLIN (AP) -- Europe's economic powerhouse, Germany, announced plans Monday to abandon nuclear energy over the next 11 years, outlining an ambitious strategy in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster to replace atomic power with renewable energy sources.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said she hopes the transformation to more solar, wind and hydroelectric power serves as a roadmap for other countries.
"We believe that we can show those countries who decide to abandon nuclear power -- or not to start using it -- how it is possible to achieve growth, creating jobs and economic prosperity while shifting the energy supply toward renewable energies," Merkel said.
Merkel's government said it will shut down all 17 nuclear power plants in Germany -- the world's fourth-largest economy and Europe's biggest -- by 2022. The government had no immediate estimate of the transition's overall cost.
The plan sets Germany apart from most of the other major industrialized nations. Among the other Group of Eight countries, only Italy has abandoned nuclear power, which was voted down in a referendum after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
The decision represents a remarkable about-face for Merkel's center-right government, which only late last year pushed through a plan to extend the life span of the country's reactors, with the last scheduled to go offline around 2036. But Merkel, who holds a Ph.D. in physics, said industrialized, technologically advanced Japan's "helplessness" in the face of the Fukushima disaster made her rethink the technology's risks.
Phasing out nuclear power within a decade will be a challenge, but it will be feasible and ultimately give Germany a competitive advantage in the renewable energy era, Merkel said.
"As the first big industrialized nation, we can achieve such a transformation toward efficient and renewable energies, with all the opportunities that brings for exports, developing new technologies and jobs," Merkel told reporters.
The government said the renewable energy sector already employs about 370,000 people.
Germany's seven oldest reactors, already taken off the grid pending safety inspections following the March catastrophe at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, will remain offline permanently, Merkel said. The plants accounted for about 40 percent of the country's nuclear power capacity.
At the time of the Japanese disaster, Germany got just under a quarter of its electricity from nuclear power, about the same share as in the U.S.
While Germany already was set to abandon nuclear energy eventually, the decision -- which still requires parliamentary approval -- dramatically speeds up that process. Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said there are no provisions that would allow a later policy reverse.
"We don't only want to renounce nuclear energy by 2022, we also want to reduce our CO2 emissions by 40 percent and double our share of renewable energies, from about 17 percent today to then 35 percent," the chancellor said.
Merkel said the cornerstones of Germany's energy policy will also include a safe and steady power supply that doesn't rely on imports, and affordable prices for industry and consumers. The plan calls for more investment in natural gas plants as a backup to prevent blackouts, the chancellor said.
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Germany's initiative received a skeptical reception abroad.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, whose country relies on nuclear power to produce 80 percent of its electricity supply, insisted "there's no way" for the European Union to meet its emission-cutting targets without at least some nuclear power.
"We respect this decision, but it doesn't cause us to change our policy," Fillon said. France operates more than one-third of the nuclear reactors in the EU.
Sweden's Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren also criticized the German decision, telling The Associated Press that the focus on an end date was unfortunate and could drive up electricity prices across Europe.
Germany, usually a net energy exporter, has at times had to import energy since March, with the seven old reactors shut and others temporarily off the grid for regular maintenance. Still, the agency overseeing its electricity grid, DENA, said Friday that the country remains self-sufficient and that its renewable energy production capacity this spring peaked at 28 gigawatts -- or about the equivalent of 28 nuclear reactors.
Many Germans have vehemently opposed nuclear power since Chernobyl sent radioactivity over the country. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets after Fukushima to urge the government to shut all reactors quickly.
A decade ago, a center-left government drew up a plan to abandon the technology for good by 2021 because of its risks. But Merkel's government last year amended it to extend the plants' lifetime by an average 12 years -- a political liability after Fukushima was hit by Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Environmental groups welcomed Berlin's decision.
"The country is throwing its weight behind clean renewable energy to power its manufacturing base and other countries like Britain should take note," said Robin Oakley, Greenpeace UK's campaigns director.
German industry said the government must not allow the policy changes to lead to an unstable power supply or rising electricity prices.
Hans-Peter Keitel, the president of the Federation of German Industries, urged the government not to set the exit date of 2022 in stone but to be flexible if problems arise.
Switzerland, where nuclear power produces 40 percent of electricity, also announced last week that it plans to shut down its reactors gradually once they reach their average life span of 50 years -- which would mean taking the last plant off the grid in 2034.
Germany's decision broadly follows the conclusions of a government-mandated commission on the ethics of nuclear power, which on Saturday delivered recommendations on how to abolish the technology.
"Fukushima was a dramatic experience, seeing there that a high-technology nation can't cope with such a catastrophe," Matthias Kleiner, the commission's co-chairman, said Monday. "Nuclear power is a technology with too many inherent risks to inflict it on us or our children."
Geir Moulson in Berlin, Malin Rising in Stockholm, Colleen Barry in Milan, Jamey Keaten in Paris and Cassandra Vinograd in London contributed reporting.
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いまだに終わりが見えない福島原発危機
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Lethal four-sievert reading taken by robot; suppression chamber suspect
Radiation in No. 1 reactor building at highest level yet
Kyodo, AP
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Saturday it has detected radiation of up to 4,000 millisieverts per hour in the building housing the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
Where there's smoke: A video image from the Fukushima No. 1 power plant shows steam rising from an opening in the floor of the No. 1 reactor building Friday. TEPCO / AP
The radiation reading, which was taken when Tepco sent a robot into the No. 1 reactor building on Friday, is believed to be the highest detected in the air at the plant so far.
On Friday, Tepco found steam spewing from the basement into the building's first floor. Nationally televised news Saturday showed blurry video of a steady stream of smoky gas curling up from an opening where a pipe rises through the floor.
The radiation is so high now that any worker exposed to it would absorb the maximum permissible dose of 250 millisieverts in only about four minutes. Tepco said there is no plan to place workers in that area of the plant and said it will carefully monitor any developments.
The utility said it took the reading near the floor at the southeast corner of the building. The steam appears to be entering from a leaking rubber gasket that is supposed to seal the area where the pipe comes up through the first floor. No damage to the pipe was found, Tepco said.
The reactor's suppression chamber is under the building, and highly radioactive water generated from cooling the reactor is believed to have accumulated there, Tepco said, adding that the steam is probably coming from there.
Meanwhile, tanks for storing radioactive water were on their way Saturday to the plant.
Tepco has said radioactive water could start overflowing from temporary storage areas on June 20, or possibly sooner if there is heavy rainfall.
Two of the 370 tanks were due to arrive Saturday from a manufacturer in nearby Tochigi Prefecture, Tepco said. Two hundred of them can store 100 tons, and 170 can store 120 tons.
The tanks will continue arriving through August and will store a total of 40,000 tons of radioactive water, according to Tepco.
Workers have been fighting to get the plant under control since the March 11 tsunami knocked out power, destroyed backup generators and halted the crucial cooling systems for the reactors, causing the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. Several explosions have scattered radioactive debris around the plant, and reactors are spewing radiation into the air and leaking it into the sea.
On Friday, nine workers who entered the building to attach a pressure gauge to the pressure vessel of reactor No. 1 were exposed to around 4 millisieverts of radiation, according to Tepco.
The fuel rods are believed to have melted almost completely and sunk to the bottom of the containment vessels of reactors 1, 2 and 3.
A complete meltdown would have seen the fuel melt entirely through the containment vessels and into the reactor floor.
約１・７キロの福島県大熊町でプルトニウム
Monday, June 6, 2011
Plutonium found in soil at Okuma
Kyodo
Plutonium that is believed to have come from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant has been detected in the town of Okuma about 1.7 km away from the plant's front gate, a Kanazawa University researcher said Sunday.
It is the first time plutonium ejected by the stricken facility has been found in soil beyond its premises since the March 11 megaquake and tsunami led to a core meltdown there.
Professor Masayoshi Yamamoto of Kanazawa University said the level of plutonium detected in soil in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, is lower than the average level observed in Japan after nuclear tests were conducted abroad.
The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry has found plutonium in soil on the nuke plant's grounds, but it was believed to have been fallout from bomb tests abroad.
By analyzing the ratio of three types of isotopes in the plutonium, Yamamoto was able to determine that it was emitted by Fukushima No. 1 and not past bomb tests.
The soil samples were collected by a team of researchers from Hokkaido University before April 22.
AREVA is a French public multinational industrial conglomerate headquartered in the Tour Areva in Courbevoie, Paris. AREVA is mainly known for nuclear power.
Radioactive beef sold off in eight prefectures
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
By TAKAHIRO FUKADA Staff writer
Meat from six cows contaminated with radioactive materials from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant may have reached consumers in eight prefectures, including Tokyo, Kanagawa and Osaka, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government said Wednesday.
The other five prefectures are Aichi, Hokkaido, Tokushima, Kochi and Shizuoka.
Most of the prefectural governments, however, refused to disclose the names of retailers or even the cities where the meat was sold to shoppers.
"For the meat that was already sold and consumed, there is no particular necessity to worry about the health impact if (the amount individuals consume is limited)," Tatsuo Suzuki, a metropolitan government official, said at a news conference.
"There is no need for us to caution people" about the potential danger of consumption, he said, explaining that the metropolitan government has no intention of disclosing the name of any store that sold the meat.
Responding to inquiries by The Japan Times, four prefectural governments gave some more details about where the meat ended up.
Tokushima Prefecture said a Fuji GRAND supermarket in the city of Anan sold all 8.8 kg of the meat it procured from a wholesaler.
In Aichi, a barbecue restaurant in Ama whose name is being withheld sold 3.15 kg of the meat to consumers, according to the Tokyo Metropolitan and Aichi Prefectural governments.
In Hokkaido, an "izakaya" bar and barbeque restaurant in Chitose sold customers 3 kg, the Tokyo and Hokkaido governments said.
In Shizuoka, a retailer in Makinohara sold 14.5 kg to consumers.
