The Japanese ruling class has helped finance the U.S. military-industrial complex by buying bonds, no? Otherwise, the American empire couldn't have been kept up with such a low domestic saving rate. As for Playstation 2 & plutonium reactors, make sure that hardware isn't radioactive:
***** The Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo) May 30, 2000, Tuesday SECTION: Pg. 10 HEADLINE: Radioactive metal waste incidents set off alarm bells BYLINE: Yutaka Ishiguro Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer ; Yomiuri
Harmful radioactive materials have recently been found in metallic waste taken to iron manufacturing companies for recycling in Wakayama and Hyogo prefectures. In each case the substance was detected by radiation gauges that the companies voluntarily installed at their gates. Without these instruments, workers could have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. These were the first occasions when radioactive materials have been discovered in metallic trash for recycling in Japan. By Yutaka Ishiguro Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer On April 28 a truck container filled with stainless steel waste tested positive in a radioactivity check at a Sumitomo Metal Industries ironworks in Wakayama. The waste had been imported from overseas.
Science and Technology Agency inspectors detected gamma rays and neutron rays being emitted from a mixture of radium, beryllium and cesium source material. These materials are often used in the manufacture of industrial instruments that measure the moisture content and density of metal products.
The container passed through the Osaka Custom House without being checked. There were no prior documented cases of radioactive materials passing through the facility, so officers were not on the lookout for such material.
Two domestic laws--the law regulating nuclear source material, nuclear fuel material and reactors, and the law concerning prevention of radiation hazards due to radioisotopes, etc--are aimed at regulating companies that use radioactive materials, but they do not cover similar materials brought in from overseas.
The Science and Technology Agency specifies particular radioactive materials and offers instructions on how to treat them, but an official of the agency's Nuclear Safety Bureau said that it had no real power to clamp down. "We can only advise and lend a helping hand," he said.
So it is not clear where responsibility lies in such cases. This lack of foresight on the part of the administration is making local residents uneasy.
Wake-up call for officials
The Wakayama case should make the government realize anew the necessity of checking cargo shipments before they enter the country.
As a rule, the customs houses at Japanese ports do not test for radioactivity. But, Junko Matsubara, a member of the Nuclear Safety Commission said, "Such cases are not uncommon in other countries."
In Taiwan, many people were exposed to radiation in the late '80s and early '90s because iron used in the construction of nuclear power plants was reused in condominiums after the power plants were dismantled.
In Thailand, a collector of waste products in suburban Bangkok died of radiation sickness in February after dismantling a container holding radioactive cobalt.
Countries with advanced technology are not exempt. Several batches of radioactive material have been detected at metal recycling facilities in the United States since 1994. In Staffordshire, England, uranium fuel rods were found at a dumping ground for metallic trash in March.
The Japan Iron and Steel Federation urged member companies to install radiation detectors at their gates, but of the approximately 100 member factories in Japan, only two-thirds have done so.
'Radioactive' label concealed
The Japanese system for controlling radioactive materials has begun to spring serious leaks.
A lead container collected by the Kobe-based metallic processing company Shimabun Co. tested positive in the radiation check at the gate of Kakogawa ironworks of Kobe Steel, Ltd. in Kobe, and the truck carrying the cargo was turned away.
The container was taken to the Japan Radio Isotope Association in Tokyo, where it was determined that the content was radium source material intended for medical use. The red warning label indicating the presence of radioactive material was concealed by adhesive tape. The Hyogo prefectural police have been trying to find out who covered the label.
There are about 5,300 facilities using radioactive materials in Japan. This kind of work requires the permission of the Science and Technology Agency, but, if the facilities use only small amounts of radioactive material, they need only inform the agency in writing.
Radioactive material is used primarily for industrial, medical and research purposes. Metal fatigue testers used by industrial companies often contain radioactive components. More than 800 medical facilities use radiation for treatment and photography equipment.
The Science and Technology Agency has the right to make on-the-spot inspections at facilities using radioactive materials, but due to a manpower shortage, the agency can inspect only 300 to 400 facilities per year.
So the agency recently issued an official notice asking these facilities to thoroughly monitor their radioactive materials. There is a fear that the Kobe case could indicate that facilities in general are becoming careless. *****
***** Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) May 4, 2000, Thursday, Metro Edition SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 21A HEADLINE: The fallout from Tokaimura; Japan's nuclear power quandary shows power of public opinion BYLINE: Koichi Hasegawa; Jeffrey Broadbent
...Over the past two months, the Japanese government announced rethinking its entire energy supply strategy, possibly canceling at least five of 20 planned nuclear plants. Electric power companies went even further, saying they would build no more than 13 additional nuclear plants.
After admitting slowness in responding to last fall's Tokaimura nuclear fuel accident, the government revoked the offending nuclear company's license and carried out a nuclear emergency drill at a reactor. It also passed new nuclear safety laws, improved the regulatory bureaucracy, and postponed the use of imported recycled plutonium fuel.
The catalyst for these changes was last fall's Tokaimura accident. Under company orders, workers had been using short-cut methods to mix nuclear fuel. This caused a chain reaction and bursts of radiation. Two workers have died as a result; more than 400 people were irradiated, with uncertain consequences.
The town of Tokaimura, host of Japan's first public nuclear power plant and many other nuclear power facilities, should have been a center of safe practice. But the accident revealed corporate illegality and dismal government regulation, oversight and disaster preparation. Neither company nor local government had an effective emergency plan.
The Tokaimura accident was only the latest in a string of Japanese nuclear accidents: the 1995 sodium leak and fire at the Monju reactor, a 1997 explosion at another Tokaimura plant, falsification of data about accidents. Moreover, government fumbling of response to the Kobe earthquake and the financial crisis added to public unease.
These incidents have shattered public confidence in government and corporate nuclear oversight. The Japanese government claims that most people still support its nuclear power expansion program. In a recent poll, though, only 11 percent supported government plans to increase nuclear power. One-third wanted to reduce or stop nuclear power. People feeling "very uneasy" about nuclear power went from one-fifth before the Tokaimura accident to over half afterward (Japan Public Opinion Corp., Oct. 23 poll). A majority preferred nonnuclear options, such as solar, wind generation and conservation. Clearly, the Japanese public does not buy government arguments that nuclear power is safe, necessary and ecological.
The reigning Liberal Democratic Party fears an electoral backlash if it does not deal with the dangers of nuclear power. Given its 1993 electoral loss, the party's current rule is no longer so certain. Moreover, public resistance has made the siting of nuclear plants increasingly problematic. In 1996, the residents of Maki, in Japan's first citizen referendum, rejected a nuclear plant. This spring, the governor of Mie Prefecture rejected a long-planned nuclear power plant.
Japan's basic problem is that it has no independent nuclear regulatory "watchdog," and no law with teeth. There have been no criminal charges in the Tokaimura accident. In the United States, the autonomous Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) imposes strong oversight and disaster preparation. Japan's Nuclear Safety Council, in contrast, is tiny in budget and staff (1 percent of NRC) and lacks regulatory power. Pro-nuclear agencies "regulate" the plants....
Jeffrey Broadbent, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, is author of the book "Environmental Politics in Japan: Network of power and protest." Koichi Hasegawa teaches sociology at Tohoku University in Japan. *****
***** The Independent (London) April 8, 2000, Saturday SECTION: FOREIGN NEWS; Pg. 17 HEADLINE: AFTER THE BINGE, A HANGOVER FOR JAPAN'S ATOMIC ALLEY BYLINE: Richard Lloyd Parry In Takahama
BETWEEN THE Tsuruga Peninsula and the little town of Takahama, along what used to be one of the loneliest and most beautiful stretches of Japanese coastline, is the short strip of rocky promontories and beaches that the local people refer to as Genpatsu Ginza.
The second word alludes to Tokyo's most famous and elegant shopping district, a byword for upmarket good taste. The first word means "nuclear power plant"....
...From one end to another it is no more than 40 miles, but crammed into that space are 15 nuclear reactors, nearly a third of Japan's total, clustered along Wakasa Bay like radioactive department stores. Since the first began operating almost 30 years ago, they have transformed the prefecture of Fukui from one of the poorest in the country to a comfortable position in the middle ranks.
Cumulatively, Fukui provides 23 per cent of Japan's nuclear-generated electricity; its Monju reactor is pioneering Japan's ambitious fast-breeder reactor programme.
But for five years, Japan has been suffering the worsening consequences of its nuclear binge, and few populations have a worse hangover than the people of Genpatsu Ginza.
Fukui's dilemma is obvious in the small town of Takahama. Behind are low, snowy mountains where mushrooms and yams grow; the sea contains smelt, mackerel and squid and, for a few weeks in the summer, people come from Osaka to swim off the yellow beach.
There are dull towns like Takahama all over Japan. They have a few little inns, run by fishermen's wives, a noodle restaurant or two, and an unambitious group of local politicians who keep things ticking over. But Takahama has the 40-room Wave Hotel, with its exterior of violently aquamarine tiles; it has restaurants serving Italian-style pasta and American-style hamburgers; and it has a history of bitter political struggles and allegations of massive financial impropriety. The reason is 20 minutes' drive away, in an inlet by the village of Otom, crowded into a narrow valley, the cream domes, girders and cooling channels of the Takahama nuclear plant.
Here, escorted by two armed vessels and tracked by the boats of protesting environmentalists and local fishermen, a British ship arrived last autumn bearing Takahama's latest burden, a cargo of mixed-oxide fuel (Mox) reprocessed in Sellafield by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL).
The fuel, pellets in eight fuel assemblies, was to have been fed into the plant's fourth, and newest, reactor. But soon after the fuel's delivery, BNFL admitted it had faked results of quality and safety tests.
People in Takahama were nervous enough, after an accident last September at the Tokaimura nuclear plant, where a radiation leak killed two workers, but the BNFL scandal brought it to their front door. Local activists organised a petition, calling for a referendum on the future of the Mox programme, but the referendum was rejected out of hand by the local assembly.
They had collected 2,000 signatures, almost a quarter of the voting population, and a remarkable number given that 1,100 families in the town owe their living to the plant.
"From talking to people, we think 90 per cent of people are against the nuclear programme," says Takashi Watanabe, a councillor and anti- nuclear campaigner.
"There's a feeling of crisis here, and many people tell us if there was a referendum they would vote against plutonium. But they're afraid for their jobs and they're afraid of the consequences if it becomes known they supported us." The anxiety is well founded, for jobs are not the only benefit the nuclear plants bring.
Between 1974 and 1998, the nuclear power companies presented the prefecture with 142bn yen (pounds 853m) in subsidies; tax income in the same period was 344.5bn yen (pounds 2.05bn) from the nuclear industry alone.
"The taxes, especially, are like a drug," says Aileen Mioko Smith, of the environmental group Green Action. "The prefectures get addicted to them, and the more they need them, the more plants they need to build to keep the revenue up." There is a proposal to build two more reactors.
For the anti-nuclear campaigners, pointing out the dangers of nuclear fuel is not enough; they must also bring reassurance that something will take their place.
The question is simply: what would Genpatsu Ginza do without its sinister nuclear department stores? The name Takahama is no longer a draw for tourists, and the mountain mushrooms don't have much of a name any more either.
There is fishing of course, but the men of Otomi say this has never been the same since the plant has opened - that the seaweed is thin and straggly, and that the mackerel flee the bay and stay away, far out to sea.
GRAPHIC: Fishermen of the Tsuruga Peninsula, close to the nuclear plants, say the catch is meagre now, and the mackerel are staying well out to sea; Corbis Images; The Mihama nuclear reactor plant in Fukui. *****
***** The Guardian (London) February 25, 2000 SECTION: Guardian Foreign Pages; Pg. 18 HEADLINE: Fire fuels nuclear row in Japan BYLINE: Jonathan Watts in Tokyo
Link www.jaeri.go.jp/english/index.cgi Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute Jonathan Watts in Tokyo
Japan's beleaguered nuclear industry suffered a new blow yesterday when a fire broke out at one of the country's power plants.
Although no radiation was leaked, it is the latest of many accidents in recent years that has undermined public confidence in atomic energy, which Japan relies on for more than a third of its electricity.
The fire broke out at the Onagawara nuclear power plant in Miyagi prefecture, about 200 miles north-east of Tokyo. Employees called the fire department after noticing smoke curling up from the power supply room, which is located below the control centre of the number-one reactor.
According to the operator, Tohoku Electric Power, the fire burnt itself out before firemen arrived - half an hour after the accident was reported.
The company said there were no injuries and no release of radiation because the 524-megawatt reactor had been shut down since last month for regular maintenance.
Questions are likely to be raised, however, about the cause of the fire and the slow response of the emergency services.
The accident comes five months after Japan's worst nuclear disaster, the uncontrolled chain reaction at a uranium-processing facility in Tokaimura, which killed one worker and exposed more than 400 people to radiation.
A string of fires and leaks has exposed the industry's lax safety standards and crisis management. In 1997, an explosion at a reprocessing plant in Tokaimura exposed 37 workers to low-level radiation. Two years earlier, radioactive sodium had been released from the Monju fast-breeder reactor. In these and other cases, plant officials were criticised for slow responses that appeared to focus more on covering-up mishaps than dealing with them.
In December, the government enacted new laws to tighten supervision of nuclear plants and speed up the process for dealing with accidents.
But these measures have failed to quell growing public hostility to atomic energy. In a devastating setback to the industry earlier this week, the governor of Mie prefecture became the first regional head to reject plans for a new nuclear power plant.
Because Japan has almost no natural energy resources, government officials insist that the country will push ahead with plans to build 20 new reactors by 2010, but privately some admit that this may no longer be possible. *****
Yoshie