Antinuclear

Fukushima’s Olympic makeover: Will the ‘cursed’ area be safe from radioactivity in time for Games?    VIDEO,  

Although the work undertaken over the past 10 years is colossal and the region is partly rebuilt, it’s still not free from radioactivity. The NGO Greenpeace has detected radioactive hotspots near the Olympic facilities. And at the Fukushima power plant, Tepco engineers continue to battle against radioactive leaks. They also face new issues such as contaminated water, which is accumulating at the site and poses a new-fangled problem for Japan. Our reporters were able to visit the notorious nuclear power plant.

They bring us a chronicle of daily life in Fukushima, with residents determined to revive their stricken region.

Particles of radioactive fallout from the blast landed on the island of Rongelap (100 miles away) to a depth of one and a half inches in places, and radioactive mist appeared on Utirik (300 miles away). The US navy did not send ships to evacuate the people of Rongelap and Utirik until three days after the explosion. Fallout from this one nuclear weapon detonation spread over more than 7,000 square miles, and traces were detected throughout the Pacific, in India, Japan, the United States and Europe. The Marshallese, and other Pacific peoples subjected to more than 300 full scale nuclear bomb detonations in the Pacific – conducted by Britain, France and the US – were used as human guinea pigs in an obscene experiment to ‘progress’ the insane pursuit of nuclear weapons supremacy.

Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Day is a day to remember that the arrogant colonial mindset which allowed, indeed encouraged, this horror continues today – the Pacific is still neither nuclear free nor independent.

Much of the Pacific remains under foreign control, from military or illegal occupation to dependence on a coloniser state for international representation, including ‘American’ Samoa, Cook Islands, French-Occupied Polynesia, Guam, Hawai’i, Kanaky, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Marianas, Pitcairn Island, Rapa Nui, Tokelau, Uvea mo Futuna, and West Papua. The voices of these Pacific peoples, along with the voices of ngā hapū o Aotearoa and indigenous Australians, are not heard directly in the UN General Assembly and other international forums where so many decisions on crucial issues affecting our region are made – not only on nuclear weapons and other disarmament priorities, but also on social and economic justice, human rights, protection of natural resources and the environment, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate justice and demilitarisation.

The Pacific is one of the regions that is being, and will continue to be, most impacted by climate change and extreme weather events which are affecting low-lying islands and Pacific peoples who are dependent on natural resources for food, clothing and shelter, and on water sources that are vulnerable to salinisation by rising sea levels and high seas. Yet the overwhelming majority of fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions do not come from the Pacific island nations.

The Pacific is also one of the most highly militarised regions in the world – but only four Pacific island nations have armed forces. The overwhelming majority of militarisation in the Pacific comes from outside the region – military bases, military training exercises, and military occupation by the armed forces of Indonesia, France and the United States, in particular, along with Australia, Britain, China, New Zealand, Russia and others.

Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Day is a day to think about the many faces of colonisation – physical, cultural, spiritual, economic, nuclear, military – past and present; the ongoing issues of independence, self-determination and sovereignty here in Aotearoa New Zealand and the other colonised and occupied countries of the Pacific; and the ability of Pacific peoples to stop further nuclearisation, militarisation and economic exploitation of our region.

It is a day to acknowledge and remember those who have suffered and died in the struggle for independence around the Pacific; those who have opposed colonisation in its many forms and paid for their opposition with their health and life; and those who have suffered and died as a result of the nuclear weapons states’ use of the Pacific for nuclear experimentation, uranium mining, nuclear bomb blasts and nuclear waste dumping.

It is a day to celebrate the courage, strength and endurance of indigenous Pacific peoples who have maintained and taken back control of their lives, languages and lands to ensure the ways of living and being which were handed down from their ancestors are passed on to future generations.

It is the day to pledge your support to continue the struggle for a nuclear free and independent Pacific, as the theme of the 8th Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Conference said: “No te parau tia, no te parau mau, no te tiamaraa, e tu, e tu – For justice, for truth and for independence, wake up, stand up!”

Ex-PMs Kan, Koizumi urge Japan to quit nuclear power generation  

Both were proponents of nuclear power while in office but became critics following the March 11, 2011, earthquake, tsunami and subsequent triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

“Japan has so much natural sources of energy like solar power, hydropower and wind power. Why should we use something that’s more expensive and less safe?” said Koizumi, a maverick reformist who held office from 2001 to 2006, at a joint press conference.

Kan, who led the response to the disaster at the time, criticized Yoshihide Suga’s vow to reduce Japan’s net carbon emissions to zero by 2050, calling it a pretense to restart nuclear reactors across the country, most of which have been halted as utilities wait to clear tougher regulations imposed after the Fukushima crisis.

While the former prime ministers come from opposite ends of the political spectrum — Koizumi led the center-right Liberal Democratic Party while Kan headed the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan, which leaned left — they said opposing nuclear energy was a nonpartisan stance.

The main obstacle to shifting toward renewable energy is structural, Kan said, stemming from the entrenched interests of utility companies, government agencies and academics who constitute the “nuclear power village.”

“They know it would be too expensive to build new plants, or that there’s no way to properly dispose of nuclear waste. But there are a lot of stakeholders and they want to keep it that way,” said Kan, now a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan.

Regarding tritium-laced water at Fukushima Daiichi quickly filling up tanks, Koizumi said in the press conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan that plans to release the water into the sea were fiercely opposed by local fishermen and that further research into other options was needed.

Japan got 76 percent of its electricity from thermal power in fiscal 2019, compared with 18 percent from renewable energy and 6 percent from nuclear energy, according to preliminary data from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

Under Suga’s “Green Growth Strategy,” the country is aiming to increase renewable energy to 50-60 percent while thermal power and nuclear energy is to constitute a combined 30-40 percent.