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DESCRIPTION:4/11 SF Japan Consulate Speak-out-Evacuate The Families and Children Of 
 Fukushima And Stop The Cover-up\nTuesday April 11, 2016 3:00 PM\nSan 
 Francisco Japanese Consulate\n275 Battery St./California St.\nSan 
 Francisco\n\nThe  radioactive leakage in Fukushima continues to threaten 
 the residents, the people of Japan and the world. There are thousands of 
 tanks filled with radioactive water and the government is pushing to 
 release it to the Pacific ocean despite the opposition of fisherman, their 
 co-op  and the community. The government is also demanding that the 
 families, mother and children either go back to Fukushima or be faced with 
 a cutoff of housing benefits. This effort to blackmail the families to go 
 back to Fukushima is further terrorizing the victims of Fukushima.\nAt the 
 same time the government is demanding that other prefectures or states take 
 contaminated soil and material to be used in their region. They government 
 says it has been decontaminated but who can believe the Abe government 
 which promised the Olympics that the crisis at Fukushima is over despite 
 the mounting problems.\nWhile the government wants to cut off money for 
 housing benefits for the families it is spending billions of dollars to 
 build Henoko naval base and a new military airforce base in Okinawa. These 
 bases will also be used to for transfer and placement of nuclear weapons 
 which is when the people of Okinawa oppose.\nPlease join us to demand that 
 the families, women and children of Fukushima must not be forced back and 
 for an end to the restarting of all Japanese nuclear plants.\nWe need to 
 defend the people of Fukushima, Japan and the world.\n\nSpeak Out and Rally 
 initiated by\nNo Nukes Action 
 Committee\nhttp://nonukesaction.wordpress.com/\n\n\nJapan Government 
 proposes reusing decontaminated Fukushima soil as 
 landfill\nhttp://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/03/27/national/government-proposes-reusing-decontaminated-fukushima-soil-landfill/#.WNlglxRBi-Q\nKYODO\nMAR 
 27, 2017\nThe Environment Ministry on Monday proposed reusing 
 decontaminated soil from disaster-hit Fukushima Prefecture as landfill for 
 parks and green areas.\n\nAt a meeting of an advisory panel, the ministry 
 also called for launching a new organization to map out plans on how to 
 gain public understanding about reusing decontaminated soil, ministry 
 officials said.\n\nThe proposals come at a time when Fukushima Prefecture 
 faces a shortage of soil due to the decontamination work stemming from the 
 2011 triple core meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant.\n\nAt the 
 meeting on radioactivity, the ministry presented a plan under which 
 decontaminated soil will be reused only on land away from residential 
 areas. It will be used to fill in depressions, which will have vegetation 
 planted on top.\n\nLast year, it decided it was OK to use soil containing 
 cesium emitting 5,000 and 8,000 becquerels per kilogram or lower in public 
 projects, such as coastal levees and roads.\n\nBut it remains unclear 
 whether the initiative will proceed as some people in areas where the soil 
 will be used may oppose the idea.\n\nThe ministry is considering putting 
 stricter standards on cesium so people nearby would be exposed to less than 
 1 millisievert per year.\n\nJapanese Government and Utility Are Found 
 Negligent in Nuclear 
 Disaster\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/world/asia/japan-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-tepco-ruling.html?partner=rss&emc=rss\n\nTOKYO 
 — The Japanese government and the electric utility that operated the 
 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were negligent in not preventing the 
 meltdowns in 2011 that forced thousands of people to fleethe area, a 
 district court in eastern Japan ruled on Friday.\n\nIt was the first time 
 that a court determined that both the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or 
 Tepco, and the government bore responsibility for the nuclear disaster that 
 followed a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. The decision 
 could influence dozens of similar lawsuits filed by close to 12,000 
 evacuated residents now living across the country.\n\nAccording to Japanese 
 news reports of the ruling by the Maebashi District Court in Gunma 
 Prefecture, the court said that the disaster, considered the worst nuclear 
 calamity since Chernobyl in 1986, was “predictable” and that it was 
 “possible to prevent the accident.”\n\nThe court ordered the government 
 and Tepco to pay damages totaling 38 million yen, or about $335,000, to 62 
 residents who were evacuated from the towns around the Fukushima plant and 
 who relocated to Gunma. Each was awarded a different amount, but the total 
 worked out to an average of $5,400 a person.\n\nIn their lawsuit, 137 
 former residents had sued for damages of ¥11 million, about $97,000, per 
 person, and the court awarded damages to half the plaintiffs. About half of 
 them had left on government evacuation orders while the other half had 
 decided to leave on their own. Each case was evaluated individually.\n\nThe 
 court weighed whether Tepco and the government had paid adequate damages to 
 the nearly 160,000 people who evacuated from the towns around Fukushima. 
 About 90,000 people have returned or settled in other places, and Tepco has 
 already paid about ¥7 trillion in compensation.\n\nIn the lawsuit, the 
 plaintiffs said that the central government and Tepco should have foreseen 
 the possibility of a tsunami of the magnitude that hit the plant and that 
 they should have done more to protect the plant.\n\nThe March 11, 2011, 
 meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi, which is on the eastern coast of Japan, 
 occurred when 32-foot waves breached the power station’s protective sea 
 walls, flooding buildings and destroying diesel-powered electricity 
 generators that were designed to keep critical systems functioning in a 
 blackout.\n\nTepco did not deny responsibility in a statement on 
 Friday.\n\n“We again apologize from the bottom of our hearts for giving 
 great troubles and concerns to the residents of Fukushima and other people 
 in society by causing the accident of the nuclear power station of our 
 company,” Isao Ito, a spokesman, said. “Regarding today’s judgment 
 given at the Maebashi local court today, we would like to consider how to 
 respond to this after examining the content of the 
 judgment.”\n\nYoshihide Suga, the chief cabinet minister to Prime 
 Minister Shinzo Abe, told reporters that the government had yet to see the 
 details of the ruling.\n\n“The concerned ministries and agencies are 
 going to thoroughly examine the content of the judgment and discuss how we 
 will respond to it,” Mr. Suga said.\n\nAnalysts said the case appeared to 
 set an important precedent.\n\n“Tepco’s argument all along has 
 basically been that everything it did before the accident had been approved 
 by the government, while the government has claimed that Tepco failed to 
 follow guidance,” said Azby Brown, director of the Future Design 
 Institute at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology and a volunteer 
 researcher with Safecast, an independent radiation-monitoring 
 group.\n\n“This suit seems to have concluded that the evidence shows they 
 share culpability,” he said. “I expect the government and Tepco to 
 appeal, and for this to drag on for years.”\n\nIzutaro Managi, a lawyer 
 representing another class-action lawsuit against the government and Tepco, 
 said that the government had failed in its oversight responsibilities. He 
 said the damages were “not big enough.”\n\nRepresentatives of groups 
 that have sued the government and Tepco for negligence said they were more 
 interested in the principle of the case than the amount of compensation 
 awarded.\n\n“The money is not a problem,” said Koichi Muramatsu, 66, a 
 former resident of Soma City in Fukushima and the secretary of a victims 
 group representing 4,200 plaintiffs in the suit being handled by Mr. 
 Managi. “Even if it’s ¥1,000 or ¥2,000, it’s fine. We just want the 
 government to admit their responsibility. Our ultimate goal is to make the 
 government admit their responsibility and remind them not to repeat the 
 same accident.”\n\nIn a statement, Katsumasa Suzuki, the chief lawyer for 
 the plaintiffs, called the ruling significant because it “legally 
 reconfirmed that government regulation was inappropriate.”\n\nBut he said 
 he was disappointed by the low total of the damages.\n\n“It is largely 
 questionable whether the mental distress the plaintiffs faced was 
 adequately evaluated,” he said.\n\nFollow Motoko Rich on Twitter 
 @MotokoRich.\n\n-- Court orders TEPCO, state to pay evacuees of nuclear 
 disaster\nhttp://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201703170069.html\nTHE ASAHI 
 SHIMBUN\nMarch 17, 2017 at 18:45 JST\n\nLawyers and others show banners in 
 Maebashi on March 17 after the ruling. One of the banners reads, “(The 
 court) acknowledges the government’s responsibility for compensation." 
 (Hiroki Endo)\nMAEBASHI--A court here on March 17 held the government and 
 Tokyo Electric Power Co. accountable for the Fukushima nuclear disaster and 
 ordered them to pay compensation to evacuees.\n\nThe ruling by the Maebashi 
 District Court was the first in a series of group lawsuits over the nuclear 
 accident.\n\nThe court ordered the government and TEPCO to pay a total of 
 38.55 million yen ($340,000) to 62 plaintiffs who evacuated to Gunma 
 Prefecture after the disaster started to unfold at the Fukushima No. 1 
 nuclear power plant in March 2011.\n\nThe group of 137 plaintiffs had 
 demanded 11 million yen each in compensation.\n\nThe court accepted most of 
 the plaintiffs’ arguments about how the government and TEPCO failed to 
 prevent the triple meltdown at the plant.\n\nThe plaintiffs pointed out 
 that TEPCO in May 2008 obtained an estimate of a tsunami as high as 15.7 
 meters that could hit the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.\n\nA wave around 
 that height did hit the plant on March 11, 2011, knocking out power and 
 leading to the reactor meltdowns.\n\nThe court said if the utility had 
 installed emergency diesel electric generators on higher ground, it could 
 have prevented the nuclear disaster.\n\nThe court also said it was possible 
 for the government to predict the tsunami.\n\nIn its long-term estimate 
 announced in July 2002, the government said the probability of an 
 earthquake striking in the Japan Trench off the coast of northeastern 
 Japan, including the sea area off the Fukushima No. 1 plant, was “about 
 20 percent within 30 years.”\n\nThe magnitude-9.0 Great East Japan 
 Earthquake spawned the tsunami that devastated coastal areas of the Tohoku 
 region, including the nuclear plant.\n\nIf the government had used its 
 regulatory powers to make TEPCO take countermeasures, such as installing 
 seawalls, against such an event, the nuclear disaster could have been 
 avoided, the ruling said.\n\nThe government and TEPCO argued that the 
 long-term estimate and the May 2008 tsunami estimate were not established 
 facts.\n\nThey also said the tsunami on March 11, 2011, was much larger 
 than anticipated, making it impossible to prevent the nuclear 
 accident.\n\nAnother point of dispute was whether TEPCO was paying a 
 reasonable amount in compensation to evacuees based on intermediate 
 guidelines compiled by a government screening panel.\n\nTEPCO currently 
 pays 100,000 yen a month to each person who was living in 
 government-designated evacuation zones around the nuclear plant. The 
 utility has also paid 40,000 yen to 720,000 yen to each person who lived 
 outside the evacuation zones but evacuated “voluntarily.”\n\nThe 
 plaintiffs argued that guidelines are overly simplistic and do not take 
 into account all the damages the evacuees have suffered.\n\nTEPCO argued 
 that the intermediate guidelines are reasonable. It said that even if 
 voluntary evacuees experienced anxieties or a sense of crisis over 
 radiation exposure, their legal rights have not been infringed 
 upon.\n\nMore than 40 percent of the plaintiffs are voluntary 
 evacuees.\n\nAbout 30 similar lawsuits involving about 12,000 people have 
 been filed throughout the country.\n\nStruggling With Japan’s Nuclear 
 Waste, Six Years After 
 Disaster\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/world/asia/struggling-with-japans-nuclear-waste-six-years-after-disaster.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront\nBy 
 MOTOKO RICH\nMARCH 11, 2017\n\n\nA worker on the outside wall of the 
 Reactor 2 building at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station last 
 month.CreditKo Sasaki for The New York Times \nFUKUSHIMA DAIICHI NUCLEAR 
 POWER STATION — Six years after the largest nuclear disaster in a 
 quarter-century, Japanese officials have still not solved a basic problem: 
 what to do with an ever-growing pile of radioactive waste. Each form of 
 waste at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, where three reactors 
 melted down after an earthquake and a tsunami on March 11, 2011, presents 
 its own challenges.\n\n400 Tons of Contaminated Water Per Day\n\n\nTanks 
 for contaminated water, with Reactors 1 and 2 in the background. CreditKo 
 Sasaki for The New York Times \nThe Tokyo Electric Power Company is pumping 
 water nonstop through the three reactors to cool melted fuel that remains 
 too hot and radioactive to remove. About 400 tons of water pass through the 
 reactors every day, including groundwater that seeps in. The water picks up 
 radiation in the reactors and then is diverted into a decontamination 
 facility.\n\nBut the decontamination filters cannot remove all the 
 radioactive material. So for now, all this water is being stored in 1,000 
 gray, blue and white tanks on the grounds. The tanks already hold 962,000 
 tons of contaminated water, and Tokyo Electric is installing more tanks. It 
 is also trying to slow the flow of groundwater through the reactors by 
 building an underground ice wall.\n\nWithin a few years, though, and no one 
 is sure exactly when, the plant may run out of room to store the 
 contaminated water. “We cannot continue to build tanks forever,” said 
 Shigenori Hata, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and 
 Industry.\n\nThe authorities are debating whether it might be acceptable, 
 given the relatively low radioactive levels in the water, to dilute the 
 contaminated water and then dump it into the ocean. But local fishermen are 
 vehemently opposed. Many people still do not trust Tokyo Electric because 
 of its bungled response to the disaster, the worst nuclear accident since 
 Chernobyl.\n\n3,519 Containers of Radioactive Sludge\n\nPhoto\n\nStorage 
 containers for rubble at the plant. Workers and robots are slowly trying to 
 remove the rubble left in reactors by explosions six years ago. CreditKo 
 Sasaki for The New York Times \nThe process of decontaminating the water 
 leaves radioactive sludge trapped in filters, which are being held in 
 thousands of containers of different sizes.\n\nTokyo Electric says it 
 cannot quantify the amount of radioactive sludge being generated. But it 
 says it is experimenting with what to do with it, including mixing it with 
 cement or iron. Then it will have to decide how to store it.\n\n64,700 
 Cubic Meters of Discarded Protective Clothing\n\nAn employee putting on 
 work attire.  \nVeda Shastri/The New York Times \nThe estimated 6,000 
 cleanup workers at the site put on new protective gear every day. These 
 hazmat suits, face masks, rubber gloves and shoe coverings are thrown out 
 at the end of each shift. The clothing is compressed and stored in 1,000 
 steel boxes stacked around the site.\n\nTo date, more than 64,700 cubic 
 meters of gear has been discarded, the equivalent of 17 million one-gallon 
 containers. Tokyo Electric says it will eventually incinerate all this 
 contaminated clothing to reduce the space needed to store it.\n\nBranches 
 and Logs From 220 Acres of Deforested Land\n\nContinue reading the main 
 story\nContinue reading the main story\n\nCut trees on the grounds of the 
 Fukushima plant.  \nVeda Shastri/The New York Times \nThe plant’s grounds 
 were once dotted with trees, and a portion was even designated as a bird 
 sanctuary. But workers have cleared about 220 acres of trees since the 
 meltdown spewed radiation over them.\n\nNow, piles of branches and tree 
 trunks are stacked all over the site. Officials say there are about 80,000 
 cubic meters of this waste, and all of it will have to be incinerated and 
 stored someday.\n\n200,400 Cubic Meters of Radioactive 
 Rubble\n\nPhoto\n\nThe shell of the Reactor 1 building at the plant. 
 CreditKo Sasaki for The New York Times \nExplosions during the meltdown 
 filled the reactors with rubble. Workers and robots are slowly and 
 carefully trying to remove this tangled mass of crushed concrete, pipes, 
 hoses and metal.\n\nTokyo Electric estimates that more than 200,400 cubic 
 meters of rubble — all of it radioactive — have been removed so far and 
 stored in custom-made steel boxes. That is the equivalent of about 3,000 
 standard 40-foot shipping containers.\n\n3.5 Billion Gallons of 
 Soil\n\nBags of contaminated soil are stored in this lot in the town of 
 Namie.  \nVeda Shastri/The New York Times \nThousands of plastic garbage 
 bags sit in neat rows in the fields and abandoned towns surrounding the 
 Fukushima plant. They contain soil that was scraped from land that was 
 exposed to radiation in the days after the accident.\n\nJapan’s Ministry 
 of the Environment estimates that it has bagged 3.5 billion gallons of 
 soil, and plans to collect much more. It will eventually incinerate some of 
 the soil, but that will only reduce the volume of the radioactive waste, 
 not eliminate it.\n\nThe ministry has already begun building a massive, 
 interim storage facility in Fukushima prefecture and negotiating with 2,360 
 landowners for the thousands of acres needed to complete it. And that is 
 not even a long-term solution: The government says that after 30 years it 
 will need another site — or sites — to store radioactive 
 waste.\n\n1,573 Nuclear Fuel Rods\n\nPhoto\n\nA pool at the facility for 
 storing spent fuel rods. CreditKo Sasaki for The New York Times \nThe 
 ultimate goal of the cleanup is to cool and, if possible, remove the 
 uranium and plutonium fuel that was inside the three reactors at the time 
 of the disaster.\n\nHundreds of spent fuel rods are in cooling pools inside 
 the reactors, and the company hopes to have cleared away enough rubble to 
 begin removing them next year. The much bigger challenge will be removing 
 the fuel that was in use in the reactor core at the time of the 
 meltdown.\n\nThe condition and location of this molten fuel debris are 
 still largely unknown. In one reactor where a robot was sent in January, 
 much of the melted fuel is believed to have burned through the bottom of 
 the inner reactor vessel and burrowed into the thick concrete foundation of 
 the containment structure.\n\nThe plan is to completely seal the 
 containment vessels, fill them with water and use robots to find and remove 
 the molten fuel debris. But the rubble, the lethal levels of radiation and 
 the risk of letting radiation escape make this an exceedingly difficult 
 task.\n\nIn January, the robot sent into one of the reactors discovered 
 radiation levels high enough to kill a person in less than a minute. 
 Another had to be abandoned last month after debris blocked its path and 
 radiation disabled it.\n\nTokyo Electric hopes to begin removing fuel 
 debris from the reactor cores in 2021. The entire effort could take 
 decades. Some say the radioactive material may prove impossible to remove 
 safely and have suggested leaving it and entombing Fukushima under a 
 concrete and steel sarcophagus like the one used at Chernobyl.\n\nBut the 
 Japanese government and Tokyo Electric say they are committed to removing 
 all the waste and cleaning the site, estimated at a cost of $188.6 
 billion.\n\n“We want to return it to a safe state,” said Yuichi 
 Okamura, general manager of the company’s nuclear power and plant siting 
 division. “We promised the local people that we would recover the site 
 and make it a safe ground again.”\n\n\nA monitoring post in Naraha shows 
 the radiation level at the entrance gate to temporary storage for 
 contaminated soil. CreditKo Sasaki for The New York Times\n\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2017/04/07/18798097.php
SUMMARY:SF Japan Consulate Speak-out-Evacuate The Families and Children Of Fukushima And Stop The Cover-up
LOCATION:San Francisco Japanese Consulate\n275 Battery St.\nSan Francisco
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2017/04/07/18798097.php
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