TODAY. The subtle ways that the nuclear lobby manipulates corporate media. Example KISHA CLUBS OF JAPAN
Media in other countries are controlled in a similar way, but Japan has the longest and most successful story of corporate media’s obedience to the pro nuclear dogma that prevails across the world.
Paul Richards 5 Jan 24
Starting with, the source: KISHA CLUBS OF JAPAN
Japan’s Press Club System, known as “kisha clubs,” is a unique arrangement that fosters close relationships between journalists and the institutions they cover. This system is prevalent in government offices, ministries, major corporations, and other influential entities.
1] STRUCTURE OF PRESS CLUBS
Exclusive Access:
Journalists from major media outlets join these clubs, gaining exclusive access to news briefings, announcements, and events hosted by specific institutions. Each institution typically has its own press club.
Regular Briefings:
Officials provide information to journalists within these clubs, fostering a symbiotic relationship. In return for access, journalists are expected to adhere to certain unwritten rules, which can include not reporting certain sensitive topics or leaks without permission.
2] HIERCAHICAL EFFECT
Access to Information:
Press club members receive information directly from sources, creating an information hierarchy where those outside the clubs might lack timely or direct access to crucial news.
Influence and Reporting Bias:
The system can create a situation where reporters develop close ties with the sources they cover. This might lead to a reluctance to publish critical or controversial information that could jeopardise their access or relationships. As a result, it can challenge the ability of the press to hold political power accountable.
3] CHALLENGING POLITICAL POWER
Limited Critical Reporting:
While the press club system provides access, it can also limit critical reporting. Journalists might self-censor to maintain access or avoid upsetting their sources, which can indirectly challenge the media’s ability to scrutinise political power thoroughly.
Alternative Media and Challenges:
Independent or smaller media outlets not part of these press clubs might face difficulties accessing information. However, these outlets sometimes challenge the established narrative and provide alternative perspectives, albeit with limited resources and access to official sources.
While the Press Club System provides journalists with unique access to information and sources, it also poses challenges to independent and critical reporting.
The hierarchical nature of information distribution in Japan within these clubs can lead to a cosy relationship between the press and political power, impacting the media’s ability to fully challenge or scrutinise those in authority.
There have been many concerns raised about the Japanese government’s ruling parties, and pressure on media outlets indirectly, such as withholding access to information or using informal means to influence coverage.
This might affect the independence and objectivity of reporting, though direct censorship is not a prevalent practice.
Overall, Japan maintains, it has a reputation for press freedom compared to many other countries.
However, concerns persist about self-censorship, indirect influences, and the limitations of the press club system that can impact the diversity and depth of news coverage.
The nature of political control over the press in Japan tends to be more subtle and indirect rather than overt and explicit.
Japan earthquake casts cloud over push to restart nuclear plants
January 5, 2024
TOKYO, Jan 4 (Reuters) – The powerful earthquake that hit Japan’s western coast on New Year’s Day has underscored the country’s exposure to natural disasters, casting fresh doubt over a push to bring its nuclear capacity back online.
Nuclear power plants dot the coast of mountainous Japan, which is prone to earthquakes and tsunamis due to its location on the seismically active “Ring of Fire” around the Pacific Ocean.
Monday’s magnitude 7.6 earthquake, which has killed more than 80 people in the Hokuriku region, destroyed infrastructure and left homes without power, struck days after regulators lifted an operational ban on Tokyo Electric’s (9501.T) Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant.
Tepco hopes to gain local permission to restart the plant, which is around 120 kilometres from the quake’s epicentre and has been offline since 2012. The utility was banned in 2021 from operating the plant due to safety breaches including a failure to protect nuclear materials.
“The Japanese public is still generally less positive toward nuclear power now than they were before the Fukushima disaster,” analysts at Rystad Energy wrote in a client note.
“As a result, public sentiment – and potentially government policy – is likely to be sensitive to any new power-plant disruptions caused by the most recent quake or any future ones.”
Japan had planned to phase out nuclear power after the March 2011 tsunami and Fukushima meltdown, but rising energy prices and repeated power crunches have prompted a shift towards restarting idled capacity and developing next-generation reactors.
After the Jan. 1 quake Tepco reported water had spilled from nuclear fuel pools at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant – the world’s largest – but said radiation levels were normal.
“Citizens had felt that Tepco could probably be able to restart reactors by the end of 2024, but this earthquake seems to have reignited a sense of fear,” said Yukihiko Hoshino, a Kashiwazaki city assembly member opposing the plant restart.
Monday’s tsunami warning reminded him of the Fukushima disaster, he said.
Tepco shares fell as much as 8% on Thursday, the first trading day since the earthquake, before closing up 2.2%.
Hokuriku Electric (9505.T), whose idled Shika plant is located around 65 kilometres from the earthquake’s epicentre, slid as much as 8% before paring losses to end down 2.2%.
The company, which reported water spill-over from spent nuclear fuel pools and oil leaks at the plant after the quake, hopes to restart the No.2 reactor there sometime after April 2026, it said in October………………………………… Reporting by Kantaro Komiya, Sudarshan Varadhan, Mariko Katsumura and Sam Nussey; Editing by Hugh Lawson
Mass layoffs at small nuclear reactor companies
Pioneering Nuclear Startup Lays Off Nearly Half Its Workforce. NuScale is the second major U.S. reactor company to cut jobs in recent months.
Huff Post, By Alexander C. Kaufman, Jan 5, 2024,
Almost exactly one year ago, NuScale Power made history as the first of a new generation of nuclear energy startups to win regulatory approval of its reactor design ― just in time for the Biden administration to begin pumping billions of federal dollars into turning around the nation’s atomic energy industry.
But as mounting costs and the cancellation of its landmark first power plant have burned through shrinking cash reserves, the Oregon-based company is laying off as much 40% of its workforce, HuffPost has learned.
At a virtual all-hands meeting Friday afternoon, the company announced the job cuts to remaining employees. HuffPost reviewed the audio of the meeting. Two sources with direct knowledge of NuScale’s plans confirmed the details of the layoffs.
NuScale did not respond to a call, an email or a text message seeking comment.
Surging construction costs are imperiling clean energy across the country. In just the past two months, developers have pulled the plug on major offshore wind farms in New Jersey and New York after state officials refused to let companies rebid for contracts at a higher rate.
But the financial headwinds are taking an especially acute toll on nuclear power. It takes more than a decade to build a reactor, and the only new ones under construction in the U.S. and Europe went billions of dollars over budget in the past two decades. Many in the atomic energy industry are betting that small modular reactors ― shrunken down, lower-power units with a uniform design ― can make it cheaper and easier to build new nuclear plants through assembly-line repetition.
The U.S. government is banking on that strategy to meet its climate goals. The Biden administration spearheaded a pledge to triple atomic energy production worldwide in the next three decades at the United Nations’ climate summit in Dubai last month, enlisting dozens of partner nations in Europe, Asia and Africa.
The two infrastructure-spending laws that President Joe Biden signed in recent years earmark billions in spending to develop new reactors and keep existing plants open. And new bills in Congress to speed up U.S. nuclear deployments and sell more American reactors abroad are virtually all bipartisan, with progressives and right-wing Republicans alike expressing support for atomic energy…………
Until November, NuScale appeared on track to debut the nation’s first atomic energy station powered with small modular reactors. But the project to build a dozen reactors in the Idaho desert, and sell the electricity to ratepayers across the Western U.S. through a Utah state-owned utility, was abandoned as rising interest rates made it harder for NuScale to woo investors willing to bet on something as risky a first-of-its-kind nuclear plant.
In 2022, NuScale went public via a SPAC deal, a type of merger that became a popular way for debt-laden startups to pay back venture capitalists with a swifter-than-usual initial public offering on the stock market.
In its latest quarterly earnings, NuScale reported just under $200 million in cash reserves, nearly 40% of which was tied up in restricted accounts……………………………………..
NuScale, which has four other projects proposed in the U.S. and tentative deals in at least eight other countries, isn’t the only nuclear startup navigating choppy waters.
In October, Maryland-based X-energy, which is working with the federal government to develop a next-generation reactor using gas instead of water for cooling, cut part of its workforce and scrapped plans to go public.
In September, California-based Oklo appeared to lose a $100 million contract to build its its salt-cooled “micro-reactors” at an Air Force base in Alaska, as the independent Northern Journal newsletter first reported. ………. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nuscale-layoffs-nuclear-power_n_65985ac5e4b075f4cfd24dba
Nuclear disasters–in–waiting
RICHARD STONE, Science 4 Jan 24
Having taken a heavy toll on Ukraine’s ecosystems and water resources, the war with Russia threatens to create a another environmental disaster: damage to the region’s extensive nuclear infrastructure—including 15 power reactors and three research reactors.
“There continues to be a highly precarious nuclear safety and security situation across Ukraine,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement after explosions were heard near the Khmelnitsky Nuclear Power Plant and its two Soviet-era reactors on 28 November 2023—the second near-miss in a single month at the site. “All of Ukraine’s nuclear facilities remain vulnerable, either directly if hit by a missile or indirectly if their off-site power supplies are disrupted.”
Russia’s assault on Ukrainian nuclear sites began on the very first day of the full-scale invasion. On 24 February 2022, troops overran the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, infamous for the explosion and fire there in 1986 that sent a plume of radioactive smoke into Western Europe. During 5 weeks of occupation, Russian soldiers ransacked labs and kicked up radioactive soil and dust as they dug trenches and slogged through contaminated forests in the exclusion zone around the defunct plant. To the east that spring, Russian troops frequently shelled the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, damaging a hall containing a subcritical nuclear reactor.
Shelling has also flared up repeatedly around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, a complex of six reactors that constitutes Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. Russia captured the plant in March 2022 and the reactors were shut down 6 months later, eliminating the risk of a core meltdown. Still, a prodigious amount of nuclear material remains there: The reactor halls hold 1380 tons of fresh and spent uranium oxide fuel, and two repositories store an additional 2100 tons of spent fuel laced with nasty long-lived radionuclides—the ingredients, many Ukrainians fear, of a “dirty bomb” that would use conventional explosives to spread radioactive isotopes……………………………………….
The presence of IAEA observers at the Zaporizhzhia station since September 2022 has deterred the theft of dirty-bomb ingredients. But a major missile strike on one of its spent fuel repositories could turn the plant itself into a dirty bomb, spreading radioactive contamination in a radius of up to 30 kilometers, says Volodymyr Borysenko, a nuclear engineer with the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine’s Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP).
Even a smaller strike could contaminate the reactor complex. And the spent fuel is also at risk from repeated electricity blackouts that have struck the plant, the latest in early December 2023. Diesel-fueled generators can supply power for up to 10 days, but a prolonged outage could be dangerous, as power is needed to pump cooling water into the plant’s uranium reactor cores and pools holding spent fuel.
A lesser known radioactive risk is situated about 150 kilometers upstream from the Zaporizhzhia plant on the Dnipro River. During the Cold War, the Prydniprovsky Chemical Plant was one of Europe’s largest uranium ore processing facilities. The complex accumulated some 40 million tons of tailings—leftovers of milling uranium—and other foul residues before it closed in 1992. By early 2022, Ukraine, with help from the European Union, had fenced off highly contaminated areas. But a missile or artillery strike on a tainted building or dump could disperse radioactive dust over the nearby city of Kamianske.
One relative bright spot is Chornobyl, where Ukrainian scientists are restoring labs damaged early in the war. But large parts of the exclusion zone remain off limits because of the threat of mines and unexploded ordinance, says ISPNPP Director Anatolii Nosovskiy. Complicating matters for radiation monitoring, he says, the Ukrainian army has built defensive fortifications in the zone, near the border with Belarus…………………. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn7987
We care about Japan’s disaster situation and are concerned about nuclear safety:
By Global Times, Jan 03, 2024
As of Tuesday evening, the 7.6-magnitude strong earthquake that occurred in Japan has caused at least 57 deaths, multiple casualties, building collapses, widespread power outages, and fires. The latest development is a collision between a Japan Airlines plane and a Japan Coast Guard aircraft at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport during landing, resulting in at least five deaths among the six crew members of the latter. The Japan Coast Guard aircraft was originally scheduled to transport relief supplies to the earthquake-stricken area in Ishikawa Prefecture. It was preparing for takeoff on the runway when the incident occurred. It’s not difficult to imagine the various chaos that this major earthquake has brought to Japan.
This is the strongest earthquake in Japan since the “3.11” earthquake in 2011. The Japan Meteorological Agency stated on Tuesday that since January 1 local time, there have been 155 earthquakes in Japan, including two strong earthquakes of over magnitude 6. It is uncertain whether there will be continuous aftershocks or even larger earthquakes. Despite Japan’s rich experience in dealing with disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis, human society remains vulnerable in the face of unexpected natural disasters.
Meanwhile, we also notice that in this earthquake, there is some important information that may not have received enough attention. For example, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) announced on the evening of January 1 that the water from the fuel pools at the top floors of the No. 7 and No. 2 reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture spilled over due to strong earthquakes. These waters contain radioactive materials, and the radiation levels are currently being measured. In addition, there was a situation at the Shika Nuclear Power Station in Ishikawa Prefecture where some water had sloshed from a cooling pool for spent fuel rods. Regarding the issues at these two nuclear power stations, the Japanese authorities have promptly concluded that they are “currently safe,” stating that “no damage or leaks were confirmed” and that the fuel cooling at the Shika Nuclear Power Station was “unaffected.”
We certainly hope that this accurately reflects the current situation regarding the nuclear power plants. The information has garnered significant attention from netizens, leading to doubts about whether Japan will experience another catastrophic nuclear accident similar to the Fukushima incident following an earthquake. One reason for this concern is that Japan is one of the countries with the highest concentration of nuclear power plants in the world, coupled with its limited land area. Once a serious nuclear disaster occurs, Japan can hardly cope with it independently. The Fukushima nuclear accident serves as a painful reminder.
More importantly, the Japanese government and TEPCO have a bad track record of mishandling nuclear accidents. To some extent, they have lost credibility. Furthermore, Japan’s stubborn and irresponsible actions regarding the dumping of nuclear-contaminated water from Fukushima have caused great concerns among the Japanese people
Japan needs to take these legitimate concerns seriously. Although the epicenter of this earthquake was in the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, its impact was widespread, ranging from Hokkaido to Kyushu. The coastal areas of northern Japan, where numerous nuclear facilities and power plants are located, have been affected to varying degrees. The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station, which has witnessed problems, is one of the largest in the world.
It is crucial to assess the condition of these nuclear facilities and the radiation levels in the surrounding sea. Does Japan have a comprehensive monitoring plan in place? Are other nuclear power plants along the coast in a safe state? How does Japan ensure transparency in information disclosure? These issues are directly related to the well-being of the Japanese people and the surrounding countries, and they require a serious response from Japan in the process of dealing with this earthquake………………. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202401/1304687.shtml
Japan earthquake raises concerns over restarting country’s nuclear plants
The earthquake struck days after Japan’s regulators lifted a two-year operational ban on a power plant run by Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which operated the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant.
Ashima Sharma, January 5, 2024, https://www.power-technology.com/news/japan-earthquake-raises-concerns-over-restarting-countrys-nuclear-plants/?cf-view
The 7.6 magnitude earthquake that hit Japan’s western coast on 1 January has raised concerns over the push to bring the country’s nuclear capacity online.
The earthquake struck just days after the country’s regulators lifted a two-year operational ban on Tepco’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant.
Tepco’s plant is located around 120km from the earthquake’s epicentre but has been offline since 2012. Tepco was also the operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant and in 2021 was banned from transporting new uranium fuel to its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant.
The move was to prevent Tepco from restarting the facility’s seven nuclear reactors, ten years after two of its reactors incurred a triple meltdown at Fukushima.
Following the quake, Tepco reported water spillage from two nuclear fuel pools of the No. 7 and No. 2 reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant.
The company ascertained that about 14 litres of water containing radioactive materials spilled from the pools, although it said the radiation levels were normal.
The Shika nuclear power plant, operated by another company, Hokuriku Electric, and located 65km from the epicentre, also reported spillage from spent nuclear fuel pools and oil leaks.
After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011, there was a strong public and political sentiment to phase out nuclear plants in the country. However, over the years, severe power crunches coupled with rising energy prices have pushed Japan towards restarting idle reactors.
In 2023, Japan’s Kansai Electric Power restarted its 12th nuclear reactor at the Takahama plant. The 826MW Takahama No. 2 was the country’s second-oldest operating reactor, having entered service in 1975.
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