Devangshu Datta: Why push nuclear power?
New Delhi
March 24, 2012
Business Standard
The Kudankulam row encapsulates the tragicomedy of Indian governance. On one side, there’s the establishment determined to push through a nuclear agenda. On the other, there’s a bunch of activists determined to oppose it. To a dispassionate observer, it’s a huge misdirection of energy.
The nuclear power industry accounts for two to three per cent of India’s electricity generation with about 4,800 Mw in installed capacity. Even if opposition magically evaporates and the 2,000 Mw Kudankulam project goes ahead, it will not make a material difference to power shortages, for the next three years.
Instead of trying to bulldoze through the stalled project, the establishment’s energies could be more efficiently deployed in targeting other sectoral problems. There are many lower-hanging fruit visible.
http://easss.com/nuclear
For example, national transmission and distribution (T&D) losses are close to 30 per cent. China has a gross eight per cent T&D loss; the European Union averages around seven per cent.
If India cut T&D losses to, say, 10-15 per cent, it would be the equivalent of instantly adding five or six times nuclear capacity, while incurring zero environmental costs and risks.
There would be no protests about implementing improved T&D practices.
Many other issues can also be tackled with a little common sense and some managerial skill.
For example, Coal India’s lackadaisical performance results in significant fuel shortages and lower plant load factors. State power companies’ losses lead to unpaid bills for fuel suppliers and central utilities. The national grid is incomplete. Open access norms have been legislated but not adopted.
The above issues are long-standing. They have never been dealt with adequately. They mostly involve government-run organisations. There would be no protests if they were faced head-on. The pay-offs, for the sector and downstream for the entire economy, would be huge.
Also, there are more politically sensitive issues at hand in the country’s conventional sector. But even these are less explosive than nuclear and they offer larger pay-offs for viable solutions.
Captive coal blocks are allocated non-transparently, thus leading to scandals. Environmental clearances for projects are delayed and arbitrary. Captive blocks are awarded (never mind how), and then the environmental boffins point out that these blocks are in no-go areas. Would it hurt for “Power” to talk to “Coal” and “Environment” and work out transparent formulae for block awards, with clear timelines for clearances?
The focus on ramming through nuclear power is, therefore, misplaced. Long-term nuclear plans project a ramp-up to 45,000 Mw by 2020 (around nine per cent of 2020 capacity) and to 63,000 Mw by 2032.
It’s unlikely that those deadlines will be met, given the vehemence of protests at Jaitapur and Kudankulam.
Nuclear power has been centre stage since 2008, when the Indo-US rapprochement occurred during the first term of the United Progressive Alliance. It was the last time India’s prime minister displayed a spine. In theory, that cleared the way for the import of technology and fuel supply.
However, Fukushima put the nuclear industry on the back foot. It triggered a wave of NIMBY (not-in-my-back-yard) protests by locals at proposed plant locations.
Nuclear plants have to be near water sources and that makes them vulnerable to cyclones, tidal waves, floods, etc.
It’s a moot point if Indian plants will be designed, operated and maintained with such high standards as to allay fears of disaster. Even more troubling, the methods of disposal of spent fuel don’t inspire confidence.
Everyone who is anyone, from A P J Abdul Kalam to Jairam Ramesh, concurs that India will have to develop a nuclear power industry in the long run.
However, it would be far more efficient in terms of both time and pay-off to do simpler, less politically explosive things first, and thus put the conventional power industry on a more stable footing. But then, instead of beating up activists in Kudankulam, the establishment would need to take a long hard look in the mirror and get its own act together.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Future cancers caused by Fukushima radiation may be hidden
Future cancers caused by Fukushima radiation may be hidden
By Malcolm Ritter
NOV. 21, 2011
Associated Press
In this Nov 12 photo, workers in protective suits and masks wait to enter the emergency operation center at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
AP
FUKUSHIMA —
Even if the worst nuclear accident in 25 years leads to many people developing cancer, we may never find out.
Looking back on those early days of radiation horror, that may sound implausible.
But the ordinary rate of cancer is so high, and our understanding of the effects of radiation exposure so limited, that any increase in cases from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster may be undetectable.
http://www.facebook.com/nuclearfree
http://www.facebook.com/nukefree
Several experts inside and outside Japan told The Associated Press that cancers caused by the radiation may be too few to show up in large population studies, like the long-term survey just getting under way in Fukushima.
That could mean thousands of cancers under the radar in a study of millions of people, or it could be virtually none. Some of the dozen experts the AP interviewed said they believe radiation doses most Japanese people have gotten fall in a “low-dose” range, where the effect on cancer remains unclear.
The cancer risk may be absent, or just too small to detect, said Dr. Fred Mettler, a radiologist who led an international study of health effects from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
That’s partly because cancer is one of the top killers of people in industrialized nations. Odds are high that if you live long enough, you will die of cancer. The average lifetime cancer risk is about 40%.
In any case, the 2 million residents of Fukushima Prefecture, targeted in the new, 30-year survey, probably got too little radiation to have a noticeable effect on cancer rates, said Seiji Yasumura of the state-run Fukushima Medical University. Yasumura is helping run the project.
“I think he’s right,” as long as authorities limit children’s future exposure to the radiation, said Richard Wakeford, a visiting epidemiology professor at the Dalton Nuclear Institute at the University of Manchester in England.
Wakeford, who is also editor of the Journal of Radiological Protection, said he’s assuming that the encouraging data he’s seen on the risk for thyroid cancer is correct.
The idea that Fukushima-related cancers may go undetected gives no comfort to Edwin Lyman, a physicist and senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that advocates for nuclear safety. He said that even if cancers don’t turn up in population studies, that “doesn’t mean the cancers aren’t there, and it doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.”
“I think that a prediction of thousands of cancer deaths as a result of the radiation from Fukushima is not out of line,” Lyman said. But he stressed that authorities can do a lot to limit the toll by reducing future exposure to the radiation. That could mean expensive decontamination projects, large areas of condemned land and people never returning home, he said. “There’s some difficult choices ahead.”
Japan’s cabinet this month endorsed a plan to cut contamination levels in half within the next two years. The government recently announced it plans to study the risk from long-term exposure to the low-dose radiation level used as a trigger for evacuations.
The plant was damaged March 11 by a tsunami triggered by a magnitude-9 earthquake. Japanese authorities estimate it leaked about one-sixth as much radiation as the Chernobyl accident. It spewed radioactive materials like iodine-131, cesium-137 and 29 others contaminating the water, soil, forests and crops for miles around. A recent study suggested that emissions of cesium-137, were in fact twice what the government has estimated.
So far, no radiation-linked death or sickness has been reported in either citizens or workers who are shutting down the plant.
And a preliminary survey of 3,373 evacuees from the 10 towns closest to the plant this summer showed their estimated internal exposure doses over the next several decades would be far below levels officials deem harmful.
Many don’t trust gov’t reassurances
But while the Fukushima disaster has faded from world headlines, many Japanese remain concerned about their long-term health. And many don’t trust reassurances from government scientists like Yasumura, of the Fukushima survey.
Many consumers worry about the safety of food from Fukushima and surrounding prefectures, although produce and fish found to be above government-set limits for contamination have been barred from the market. For example, mushrooms harvested in and around Fukushima are frequently found to be contaminated and barred from market. Controversy has also erupted around the government’s choice of a maximum allowed level for internal radiation exposure from food.
Fukushima has distributed radiation monitors to 280,000 children at its elementary and junior high schools. Many children are allowed to play outside only two or three hours a day. Schools have removed topsoil on the playgrounds to reduce the dose, and the Education Ministry provided radiation handbooks for teachers. Thousands of children have been moved out of Fukushima since the March disasters, mainly due to radiation fears.
Many parents and concerned citizens in and around Fukushima, some even as far as Tokyo, carry Geiger counters for daily measurement of radiation levels in their neighborhoods, especially near schools and kindergartens. The devices are probably one of the most popular electronics gadgets across Japan these days. People can rent them at DVD shops or drug stores in Fukushima, while many Internet rental businesses specializing in Geiger counters also have emerged.
Citizens groups are also setting up radiation measuring centers where people can submit vegetables, milk or other foods for tests. Some people are turning to traditional Japanese diet—pickled plum, miso soup and brown rice—based on a belief that it boosts the immune system.
“I try what I believe is the best, because I don’t trust the government any more,” says Chieko Shiina, who has turned to that diet. The 65-year-old Fukushima farmer had to close a small Japanese-style inn due to the nuclear crisis.
She thinks leaving Fukushima would be safer but says there is nowhere else to go.
“I know we continue to be irradiated, even right at this moment. I know it would be best just to leave Fukushima,” she said.
Yuka Saito, a mother of four who lives in a Fukushima neighborhood where the evacuation order was recently lifted, said she and her three youngest children spent the summer in Hokkaido to get away from the radiation. She tells her children, ages 6 to 15, to wear medical masks, long-sleeved shirts and a hat whenever they go out, and not to play outside.
She still avoids drinking tap water and keeps a daily log of her own radiation monitoring around the house, kindergarten and schools her children attend.
“We Fukushima people are exposed to radiation more than anyone else outside the prefecture, but we just have to do our best to cope,” she said. “We cannot stay inside the house forever.”
Mental health problems prevalent
Japanese officials say mental health problems caused by excessive fear of radiation are prevalent and posing a bigger concern than actual risk of cancer caused by radiation.
But what kind of cancer risks do the Japanese really face?
Information on actual radiation exposures for individuals is scarce, and some experts say they can’t draw any conclusions yet about risk to the population.
But Michiaki Kai, professor of environmental health at Oita University of Nursing and Health Sciences, said that based on tests he’s seen on people and their exposure levels, nobody in Fukushima except for some plant workers has been exposed to harmful levels of radiation.
Radiation generally raises cancer risk in proportion to its amount. At low-dose exposures, many experts and `regulators embrace the idea that this still holds true. But other experts say direct evidence for that is lacking, and that it’s not clear whether such small doses raise cancer risk at all.
“Nobody knows the answer to that question,” says Mettler, an emeritus professor of radiology at the University of New Mexico and the U.S. representative to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, or UNSCEAR. If such low doses do produce cancers, they’d be too few to be detected against the backdrop of normal cancer rates, he said.
To an individual the question may have little meaning, since it deals with the difference between no risk and small risk. For example, the general population was told to evacuate areas that would expose them to more than 20 millisieverts a year. A millisievert measures radiation dose and 20 mSv is about seven times the average dose of background radiation Americans get in a year. A child exposed to 20 mSv for a year would face a calculated risk of about 1 in 400 of getting cancer someday as a result, says David Brenner of Columbia University. So that would add 0.25% onto the typical lifetime cancer risk of about 40%, he said.
And the average dose among the 14,385 workers who worked on the plant through July was 8 mSv, according to the Japanese government. The average lifetime risk of cancer to an individual from that dose alone would be calculated at about 0.05%, or 1 in 2,000, Brenner said.
Brenner stresses that such calculations are uncertain because scientists know so little about the effects of such small doses of radiation.
But in assessing the Fukushima disaster’s effect on populations, the low-dose question leads to another: If a lot of people are each exposed to a low dose, can you basically multiply their individual calculated risks to forecast a number of cancers in the population?
Brenner thinks so, which is why he believes some cancers might even appear in Tokyo although each resident’s risk is “pretty minuscule.”
But Wolfgang Weiss, who chairs the UNSCEAR radiation committee, said the committee considers it inappropriate to predict a certain number of cancer cases from a low-dose exposure, because low-dose risk isn’t proven.
Nuclear accidents can cause cancer of the thyroid gland, which can absorb radioactive iodine and become cancerous. That disease is highly treatable and rarely fatal.
After the Chernobyl disaster, some 6,000 children exposed to radioactive fallout later developed thyroid cancer. Experts blame contaminated milk. But the thyroid threat was apparently reduced in Japan, where authorities closely monitored dairy radiation levels, and children are not big milk drinkers anyway.
Thyroids of 360,000 young people to be checked
Still, the new Fukushima survey will check the thyroids of some 360,000 young people under age 18, with follow-ups planned every five years throughout their lifetimes. It will also track women who were pregnant early in the crisis, do checkups focused on mental health and lifestyle-related illnesses for evacuees and others from around the evacuation zone, and ask residents to fill out a 12-page questionnaire to assess their radiation exposure during the first weeks of the crisis.
But the survey organizers are having trouble getting responses, partly because of address changes. As of mid-October, less than half the residents had responded to the health questionnaire.
Some residents are skeptical about the survey’s objectivity because of mistrust toward the government, which repeatedly delayed disclosing key data and which revised evacuation zones and safety standards after the accident. Also, the government’s nuclear safety commission recommended use of iodine tablets but none of the residents received them just before or during evacuation, when the preventive medicine would have been most effective.
Some wonder if the study is using them as human guinea pigs to examine the impact of radiation on humans.
Eisuke Matsui, a lung cancer specialist and a former associate professor at Gifu University School of Medicine, criticized the project. He said it appears to largely ignore potential radiation-induced health risks like diabetes, cataracts and heart problems that have been hinted at by some studies of Chernobyl.
“If thyroid cancer is virtually the only abnormality on which they are focusing, I must say there is a big question mark over the reliability of this survey,” he said.
He also suggested sampling hair, clipped nails and fallen baby teeth to test for radioactive isotopes such as strontium that are undetectable by the survey’s current approach.
“We should check as many potential problems as possible,” Matsui said.
Yasumura acknowledges the main purpose of his study is “to relieve radiation fears.” But Matsui says he has a problem with that.
“A health survey should be a start,” Matsui says, “not a goal.”
Tatsuhiko Kodama, head of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo, urged quick action to determine the cancer risks.
He said big population surveys and analysis will take so long that it would make more sense to run a careful simulation of radiation exposures and do anything possible to reduce the risks.
“Our responsibility is to tell the people now what possible risks may be to their health,” he said.
By Malcolm Ritter
NOV. 21, 2011
Associated Press
In this Nov 12 photo, workers in protective suits and masks wait to enter the emergency operation center at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
AP
FUKUSHIMA —
Even if the worst nuclear accident in 25 years leads to many people developing cancer, we may never find out.
Looking back on those early days of radiation horror, that may sound implausible.
But the ordinary rate of cancer is so high, and our understanding of the effects of radiation exposure so limited, that any increase in cases from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster may be undetectable.
http://www.facebook.com/nuclearfree
http://www.facebook.com/nukefree
Several experts inside and outside Japan told The Associated Press that cancers caused by the radiation may be too few to show up in large population studies, like the long-term survey just getting under way in Fukushima.
That could mean thousands of cancers under the radar in a study of millions of people, or it could be virtually none. Some of the dozen experts the AP interviewed said they believe radiation doses most Japanese people have gotten fall in a “low-dose” range, where the effect on cancer remains unclear.
The cancer risk may be absent, or just too small to detect, said Dr. Fred Mettler, a radiologist who led an international study of health effects from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
That’s partly because cancer is one of the top killers of people in industrialized nations. Odds are high that if you live long enough, you will die of cancer. The average lifetime cancer risk is about 40%.
In any case, the 2 million residents of Fukushima Prefecture, targeted in the new, 30-year survey, probably got too little radiation to have a noticeable effect on cancer rates, said Seiji Yasumura of the state-run Fukushima Medical University. Yasumura is helping run the project.
“I think he’s right,” as long as authorities limit children’s future exposure to the radiation, said Richard Wakeford, a visiting epidemiology professor at the Dalton Nuclear Institute at the University of Manchester in England.
Wakeford, who is also editor of the Journal of Radiological Protection, said he’s assuming that the encouraging data he’s seen on the risk for thyroid cancer is correct.
The idea that Fukushima-related cancers may go undetected gives no comfort to Edwin Lyman, a physicist and senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that advocates for nuclear safety. He said that even if cancers don’t turn up in population studies, that “doesn’t mean the cancers aren’t there, and it doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.”
“I think that a prediction of thousands of cancer deaths as a result of the radiation from Fukushima is not out of line,” Lyman said. But he stressed that authorities can do a lot to limit the toll by reducing future exposure to the radiation. That could mean expensive decontamination projects, large areas of condemned land and people never returning home, he said. “There’s some difficult choices ahead.”
Japan’s cabinet this month endorsed a plan to cut contamination levels in half within the next two years. The government recently announced it plans to study the risk from long-term exposure to the low-dose radiation level used as a trigger for evacuations.
The plant was damaged March 11 by a tsunami triggered by a magnitude-9 earthquake. Japanese authorities estimate it leaked about one-sixth as much radiation as the Chernobyl accident. It spewed radioactive materials like iodine-131, cesium-137 and 29 others contaminating the water, soil, forests and crops for miles around. A recent study suggested that emissions of cesium-137, were in fact twice what the government has estimated.
So far, no radiation-linked death or sickness has been reported in either citizens or workers who are shutting down the plant.
And a preliminary survey of 3,373 evacuees from the 10 towns closest to the plant this summer showed their estimated internal exposure doses over the next several decades would be far below levels officials deem harmful.
Many don’t trust gov’t reassurances
But while the Fukushima disaster has faded from world headlines, many Japanese remain concerned about their long-term health. And many don’t trust reassurances from government scientists like Yasumura, of the Fukushima survey.
Many consumers worry about the safety of food from Fukushima and surrounding prefectures, although produce and fish found to be above government-set limits for contamination have been barred from the market. For example, mushrooms harvested in and around Fukushima are frequently found to be contaminated and barred from market. Controversy has also erupted around the government’s choice of a maximum allowed level for internal radiation exposure from food.
Fukushima has distributed radiation monitors to 280,000 children at its elementary and junior high schools. Many children are allowed to play outside only two or three hours a day. Schools have removed topsoil on the playgrounds to reduce the dose, and the Education Ministry provided radiation handbooks for teachers. Thousands of children have been moved out of Fukushima since the March disasters, mainly due to radiation fears.
Many parents and concerned citizens in and around Fukushima, some even as far as Tokyo, carry Geiger counters for daily measurement of radiation levels in their neighborhoods, especially near schools and kindergartens. The devices are probably one of the most popular electronics gadgets across Japan these days. People can rent them at DVD shops or drug stores in Fukushima, while many Internet rental businesses specializing in Geiger counters also have emerged.
Citizens groups are also setting up radiation measuring centers where people can submit vegetables, milk or other foods for tests. Some people are turning to traditional Japanese diet—pickled plum, miso soup and brown rice—based on a belief that it boosts the immune system.
“I try what I believe is the best, because I don’t trust the government any more,” says Chieko Shiina, who has turned to that diet. The 65-year-old Fukushima farmer had to close a small Japanese-style inn due to the nuclear crisis.
She thinks leaving Fukushima would be safer but says there is nowhere else to go.
“I know we continue to be irradiated, even right at this moment. I know it would be best just to leave Fukushima,” she said.
Yuka Saito, a mother of four who lives in a Fukushima neighborhood where the evacuation order was recently lifted, said she and her three youngest children spent the summer in Hokkaido to get away from the radiation. She tells her children, ages 6 to 15, to wear medical masks, long-sleeved shirts and a hat whenever they go out, and not to play outside.
She still avoids drinking tap water and keeps a daily log of her own radiation monitoring around the house, kindergarten and schools her children attend.
“We Fukushima people are exposed to radiation more than anyone else outside the prefecture, but we just have to do our best to cope,” she said. “We cannot stay inside the house forever.”
Mental health problems prevalent
Japanese officials say mental health problems caused by excessive fear of radiation are prevalent and posing a bigger concern than actual risk of cancer caused by radiation.
But what kind of cancer risks do the Japanese really face?
Information on actual radiation exposures for individuals is scarce, and some experts say they can’t draw any conclusions yet about risk to the population.
But Michiaki Kai, professor of environmental health at Oita University of Nursing and Health Sciences, said that based on tests he’s seen on people and their exposure levels, nobody in Fukushima except for some plant workers has been exposed to harmful levels of radiation.
Radiation generally raises cancer risk in proportion to its amount. At low-dose exposures, many experts and `regulators embrace the idea that this still holds true. But other experts say direct evidence for that is lacking, and that it’s not clear whether such small doses raise cancer risk at all.
“Nobody knows the answer to that question,” says Mettler, an emeritus professor of radiology at the University of New Mexico and the U.S. representative to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, or UNSCEAR. If such low doses do produce cancers, they’d be too few to be detected against the backdrop of normal cancer rates, he said.
To an individual the question may have little meaning, since it deals with the difference between no risk and small risk. For example, the general population was told to evacuate areas that would expose them to more than 20 millisieverts a year. A millisievert measures radiation dose and 20 mSv is about seven times the average dose of background radiation Americans get in a year. A child exposed to 20 mSv for a year would face a calculated risk of about 1 in 400 of getting cancer someday as a result, says David Brenner of Columbia University. So that would add 0.25% onto the typical lifetime cancer risk of about 40%, he said.
And the average dose among the 14,385 workers who worked on the plant through July was 8 mSv, according to the Japanese government. The average lifetime risk of cancer to an individual from that dose alone would be calculated at about 0.05%, or 1 in 2,000, Brenner said.
Brenner stresses that such calculations are uncertain because scientists know so little about the effects of such small doses of radiation.
But in assessing the Fukushima disaster’s effect on populations, the low-dose question leads to another: If a lot of people are each exposed to a low dose, can you basically multiply their individual calculated risks to forecast a number of cancers in the population?
Brenner thinks so, which is why he believes some cancers might even appear in Tokyo although each resident’s risk is “pretty minuscule.”
But Wolfgang Weiss, who chairs the UNSCEAR radiation committee, said the committee considers it inappropriate to predict a certain number of cancer cases from a low-dose exposure, because low-dose risk isn’t proven.
Nuclear accidents can cause cancer of the thyroid gland, which can absorb radioactive iodine and become cancerous. That disease is highly treatable and rarely fatal.
After the Chernobyl disaster, some 6,000 children exposed to radioactive fallout later developed thyroid cancer. Experts blame contaminated milk. But the thyroid threat was apparently reduced in Japan, where authorities closely monitored dairy radiation levels, and children are not big milk drinkers anyway.
Thyroids of 360,000 young people to be checked
Still, the new Fukushima survey will check the thyroids of some 360,000 young people under age 18, with follow-ups planned every five years throughout their lifetimes. It will also track women who were pregnant early in the crisis, do checkups focused on mental health and lifestyle-related illnesses for evacuees and others from around the evacuation zone, and ask residents to fill out a 12-page questionnaire to assess their radiation exposure during the first weeks of the crisis.
But the survey organizers are having trouble getting responses, partly because of address changes. As of mid-October, less than half the residents had responded to the health questionnaire.
Some residents are skeptical about the survey’s objectivity because of mistrust toward the government, which repeatedly delayed disclosing key data and which revised evacuation zones and safety standards after the accident. Also, the government’s nuclear safety commission recommended use of iodine tablets but none of the residents received them just before or during evacuation, when the preventive medicine would have been most effective.
Some wonder if the study is using them as human guinea pigs to examine the impact of radiation on humans.
Eisuke Matsui, a lung cancer specialist and a former associate professor at Gifu University School of Medicine, criticized the project. He said it appears to largely ignore potential radiation-induced health risks like diabetes, cataracts and heart problems that have been hinted at by some studies of Chernobyl.
“If thyroid cancer is virtually the only abnormality on which they are focusing, I must say there is a big question mark over the reliability of this survey,” he said.
He also suggested sampling hair, clipped nails and fallen baby teeth to test for radioactive isotopes such as strontium that are undetectable by the survey’s current approach.
“We should check as many potential problems as possible,” Matsui said.
Yasumura acknowledges the main purpose of his study is “to relieve radiation fears.” But Matsui says he has a problem with that.
“A health survey should be a start,” Matsui says, “not a goal.”
Tatsuhiko Kodama, head of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo, urged quick action to determine the cancer risks.
He said big population surveys and analysis will take so long that it would make more sense to run a careful simulation of radiation exposures and do anything possible to reduce the risks.
“Our responsibility is to tell the people now what possible risks may be to their health,” he said.
Anti-nuclear activist sees commonalities between Minamata and Fukushima
Anti-nuclear activist sees commonalities between Minamata and Fukushima
(Mainichi Japan) March 4, 2012
Aileen Mioko Smith explains that she thought of "The 10 Strategies Taken by the State, Prefectural Governments, Academic Flunkies and Companies in the Cases of Minamata and Fukushima" during a sit-in in front of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
According to Aileen Mioko Smith, who together with her late husband, the photographer Eugene Smith, drew the world's attention to one of Japan's most far-reaching pollution-caused diseases, the ongoing Fukushima nuclear crisis and Minamata disease have many things in common.
"Inequality," said Smith, when asked what it is that both disasters have. It was not the government's inaction that she brought up first, but rather the unfairness of it all.
http://easss.com/nuclear
"Minamata disease emerged when major Japanese chemical manufacturer Chisso Corp. found itself lagging behind its competitors in the industry's switch to petrochemicals, decided to sacrifice Minamata (Kumamoto Prefecture), and made money from it.
While environmental contamination was forced onto Minamata, Chisso Corp.'s headquarters flourished," Smith said. "The same can be said of Fukushima. If the nuclear power plants had been built in Tokyo, no energy loss would have been incurred through electric power transmission. But the plants were built in Fukushima, and Tokyo enjoyed the electrical power. The structure of inequality, in which someone gains and someone loses, is the same."
In other words, the regional areas of Japan are sacrificed for the large cities.
"If we think about it in terms of 'damage times the number of residents,' you could say there'd be less total damage in the sparsely-populated countryside than in a major city. But doesn't such thinking ignore the value of each and every life? For each individual, sustaining any harm is already a 100-percent loss."
Smith's personal experiences began with her seeing the world from the inside of foreign-made cars. Born to an American father who was in the international trade business and a Japanese mother, it was through the windows of her father's cars that Smith saw the demonstrations against the U.S.-Japan security agreement in 1960 and poor children in Hong Kong and Vietnam leaping onto the very cars she was riding in. She felt guilt swelling up inside her, and longed to be on the outside.
After her parents divorced, the 11-year-old Smith went to stay with her grandparents in the U.S. She had been discriminated for being of mixed race while in Japan, but once she arrived in St. Louis, she was looked down upon for being Japanese. Her yearning for Japan building, Smith vowed never to tolerate those who looked condescendingly upon Japan and the rest of Asia.
At the root of Smith's disdain for inequality, then, was her wavering childhood status as victimizer and victim, the oppressor and the oppressed.
At age 20, Smith met the world-renowned photographer Eugene Smith, who was 52 years old at the time. They married and relocated to Minamata, where they took pictures. Smith served also as an interpreter for her husband, who spoke no Japanese. They accompanied Minamata disease patients to trials, and spent days and nights with them. Ever since she reported on the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, the year after her husband's death, Smith has been an avid anti-nuclear advocate based in Kyoto.
After the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 triggered a nuclear disaster, Smith has visited Fukushima numerous times as the head of an environmental civic organization. She has also staged sit-ins in tents set up in front of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).
"I've written out the things that Minamata disease and the Fukushima nuclear crisis have in common," Smith said, placing two sheets of paper on the table in front of her. The list was titled: "The 10 Strategies Taken by the State, Prefectural Governments, Academic Flunkies and Companies in the cases of Minamata and Fukushima."*
Smith explained: "No one has made it clear who is responsible for the nuclear disaster. It's not even clear who set the evacuation standard of '20 millisieverts of radiation per year.' Government bodies make use of their own sectionalism to pin the blame on each other, saying 'It's the responsibility of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology' or 'No, it's under the jurisdiction of the Nuclear Safety Commission.'
"Even though there's said to be no such thing as a 'safe' amount of exposure to radiation, authorities intentionally release the vague suggestion that 'being exposed to 100 millisieverts of radiation per year is all right,' further confusing victims. These are tactics that we saw the government and academics use all too much with the case of Minamata disease."
Smith is critical also of the Fukushima prefectural residents' health management survey conducted by the prefectural government, saying: "Its starting point is the conclusion that radiation exposure levels are not too bad, and is merely a strategy to minimize eligibility for compensation."
What pains Smith the most are the rifts appearing among disaster victims. "A teacher in Fukushima Prefecture who temporarily took time off from work immediately after the outbreak of the nuclear disaster to help evacuate family members was slammed as a 'coward' and 'traitor' from colleagues... Everyone's scared. And precisely because they so desperately want to overcome this together, people are unable to forgive those who leave Fukushima."
The people Smith sees in Fukushima look to her a lot like what she saw in Minamata. In both, things reach a reconciliation or go to trial.
"The Minamata victims also broke down into several factions, and were pushed into corners where they couldn't help hurting each other. The scars remain even today, some 50 years later," Smith said. And this is all the more reason she wants to offer this to the Fukushima victims: "To flee or not to flee. Whether one is even able to flee or not. Clashes are taking place in cities, places of work, and even families. But stop and think. It was the state and (Fukushima plant operator) Tokyo Electric Power Co. that pulled us apart. Who is going to gain from clashes among the victims?"
On March 11, 2011, Smith was in the U.S. with her daughter, enjoying some time off for the first time in a while. What went through her mind when she saw television footage of the Fukushima nuclear plant in crisis was that "many decades worth of suffering was about to begin." Just like the years of suffering that the Minamata disease had wrought.
Minamata disease, a neurological syndrome caused by mercury that was dumped into Minamata Bay by Chisso Corp., was officially recognized by the government in 1956. In 2004, the Supreme Court practically overturned Minamata certification standards set in 1977, saying they were "too narrow." In 2009, the government passed a law on special measures for compensation of Minamata disease patients, but has decided to close registration for compensation claims by the end of July 2012. This has patient advocacy groups, whose fight has continued for half a century, up in arms that the government continues to write off Minamata victims.
"The leaders of Minamata advocacy groups are now in their fifties. These are people who, as young children, ingested fish that were tainted with mercury. It makes me wonder every time I go to Fukushima. I don't want to create a reality where the only choice we have when those who are young children now ask us in the future: 'What were you adults doing at the time?' is to apologize."
As I went to stand up after speaking with Smith for three hours, she stopped me and said: "I want you to understand this much."
"Having been involved in both Minamata and Fukushima, there are times when I begin to fall under the illusion that I live in the same world as the victims, but that's not true. The suffering of the victims cannot be understood unless you are in their position. To be aware of the fact that I cannot understand how they feel, and yet advocate on behalf of and face the victims straight-on is a frightening thing to do.
"But still, I think I will keep using my voice. Because I want both the people who live in Fukushima and the people who fled Fukushima to realize that as with the Minamata victims, they, too, have been forced into opposition with each other. By re-examining this fact, perhaps they can find some measure of comfort or salvation."
"The 10 Strategies Taken by the State, Prefectural Governments, Academic Flunkies and Companies in the Cases of Minamata and Fukushima"
1. Do not take responsibility. Use sectionalism to pin blame on others.
2. Confuse victims and public opinion, creating the impression that there are pros and cons on each side.
3. Position victims in conflict with each other.
4. Do not record data or leave evidence.
5. Stall for time.
6. Conduct tests or surveys that will produce underestimated results on damage.
7. Wear victims down until they give up.
8. Create an official certification system that narrows down victim numbers.
9. Do not release information abroad.
10. Call on academic flunkies to hold international conferences.
(By Ayako Oguni, Evening Edition Department)
(Mainichi Japan) March 4, 2012
Aileen Mioko Smith explains that she thought of "The 10 Strategies Taken by the State, Prefectural Governments, Academic Flunkies and Companies in the Cases of Minamata and Fukushima" during a sit-in in front of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
According to Aileen Mioko Smith, who together with her late husband, the photographer Eugene Smith, drew the world's attention to one of Japan's most far-reaching pollution-caused diseases, the ongoing Fukushima nuclear crisis and Minamata disease have many things in common.
"Inequality," said Smith, when asked what it is that both disasters have. It was not the government's inaction that she brought up first, but rather the unfairness of it all.
http://easss.com/nuclear
"Minamata disease emerged when major Japanese chemical manufacturer Chisso Corp. found itself lagging behind its competitors in the industry's switch to petrochemicals, decided to sacrifice Minamata (Kumamoto Prefecture), and made money from it.
While environmental contamination was forced onto Minamata, Chisso Corp.'s headquarters flourished," Smith said. "The same can be said of Fukushima. If the nuclear power plants had been built in Tokyo, no energy loss would have been incurred through electric power transmission. But the plants were built in Fukushima, and Tokyo enjoyed the electrical power. The structure of inequality, in which someone gains and someone loses, is the same."
In other words, the regional areas of Japan are sacrificed for the large cities.
"If we think about it in terms of 'damage times the number of residents,' you could say there'd be less total damage in the sparsely-populated countryside than in a major city. But doesn't such thinking ignore the value of each and every life? For each individual, sustaining any harm is already a 100-percent loss."
Smith's personal experiences began with her seeing the world from the inside of foreign-made cars. Born to an American father who was in the international trade business and a Japanese mother, it was through the windows of her father's cars that Smith saw the demonstrations against the U.S.-Japan security agreement in 1960 and poor children in Hong Kong and Vietnam leaping onto the very cars she was riding in. She felt guilt swelling up inside her, and longed to be on the outside.
After her parents divorced, the 11-year-old Smith went to stay with her grandparents in the U.S. She had been discriminated for being of mixed race while in Japan, but once she arrived in St. Louis, she was looked down upon for being Japanese. Her yearning for Japan building, Smith vowed never to tolerate those who looked condescendingly upon Japan and the rest of Asia.
At the root of Smith's disdain for inequality, then, was her wavering childhood status as victimizer and victim, the oppressor and the oppressed.
At age 20, Smith met the world-renowned photographer Eugene Smith, who was 52 years old at the time. They married and relocated to Minamata, where they took pictures. Smith served also as an interpreter for her husband, who spoke no Japanese. They accompanied Minamata disease patients to trials, and spent days and nights with them. Ever since she reported on the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, the year after her husband's death, Smith has been an avid anti-nuclear advocate based in Kyoto.
After the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 triggered a nuclear disaster, Smith has visited Fukushima numerous times as the head of an environmental civic organization. She has also staged sit-ins in tents set up in front of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).
"I've written out the things that Minamata disease and the Fukushima nuclear crisis have in common," Smith said, placing two sheets of paper on the table in front of her. The list was titled: "The 10 Strategies Taken by the State, Prefectural Governments, Academic Flunkies and Companies in the cases of Minamata and Fukushima."*
Smith explained: "No one has made it clear who is responsible for the nuclear disaster. It's not even clear who set the evacuation standard of '20 millisieverts of radiation per year.' Government bodies make use of their own sectionalism to pin the blame on each other, saying 'It's the responsibility of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology' or 'No, it's under the jurisdiction of the Nuclear Safety Commission.'
"Even though there's said to be no such thing as a 'safe' amount of exposure to radiation, authorities intentionally release the vague suggestion that 'being exposed to 100 millisieverts of radiation per year is all right,' further confusing victims. These are tactics that we saw the government and academics use all too much with the case of Minamata disease."
Smith is critical also of the Fukushima prefectural residents' health management survey conducted by the prefectural government, saying: "Its starting point is the conclusion that radiation exposure levels are not too bad, and is merely a strategy to minimize eligibility for compensation."
What pains Smith the most are the rifts appearing among disaster victims. "A teacher in Fukushima Prefecture who temporarily took time off from work immediately after the outbreak of the nuclear disaster to help evacuate family members was slammed as a 'coward' and 'traitor' from colleagues... Everyone's scared. And precisely because they so desperately want to overcome this together, people are unable to forgive those who leave Fukushima."
The people Smith sees in Fukushima look to her a lot like what she saw in Minamata. In both, things reach a reconciliation or go to trial.
"The Minamata victims also broke down into several factions, and were pushed into corners where they couldn't help hurting each other. The scars remain even today, some 50 years later," Smith said. And this is all the more reason she wants to offer this to the Fukushima victims: "To flee or not to flee. Whether one is even able to flee or not. Clashes are taking place in cities, places of work, and even families. But stop and think. It was the state and (Fukushima plant operator) Tokyo Electric Power Co. that pulled us apart. Who is going to gain from clashes among the victims?"
On March 11, 2011, Smith was in the U.S. with her daughter, enjoying some time off for the first time in a while. What went through her mind when she saw television footage of the Fukushima nuclear plant in crisis was that "many decades worth of suffering was about to begin." Just like the years of suffering that the Minamata disease had wrought.
Minamata disease, a neurological syndrome caused by mercury that was dumped into Minamata Bay by Chisso Corp., was officially recognized by the government in 1956. In 2004, the Supreme Court practically overturned Minamata certification standards set in 1977, saying they were "too narrow." In 2009, the government passed a law on special measures for compensation of Minamata disease patients, but has decided to close registration for compensation claims by the end of July 2012. This has patient advocacy groups, whose fight has continued for half a century, up in arms that the government continues to write off Minamata victims.
"The leaders of Minamata advocacy groups are now in their fifties. These are people who, as young children, ingested fish that were tainted with mercury. It makes me wonder every time I go to Fukushima. I don't want to create a reality where the only choice we have when those who are young children now ask us in the future: 'What were you adults doing at the time?' is to apologize."
As I went to stand up after speaking with Smith for three hours, she stopped me and said: "I want you to understand this much."
"Having been involved in both Minamata and Fukushima, there are times when I begin to fall under the illusion that I live in the same world as the victims, but that's not true. The suffering of the victims cannot be understood unless you are in their position. To be aware of the fact that I cannot understand how they feel, and yet advocate on behalf of and face the victims straight-on is a frightening thing to do.
"But still, I think I will keep using my voice. Because I want both the people who live in Fukushima and the people who fled Fukushima to realize that as with the Minamata victims, they, too, have been forced into opposition with each other. By re-examining this fact, perhaps they can find some measure of comfort or salvation."
"The 10 Strategies Taken by the State, Prefectural Governments, Academic Flunkies and Companies in the Cases of Minamata and Fukushima"
1. Do not take responsibility. Use sectionalism to pin blame on others.
2. Confuse victims and public opinion, creating the impression that there are pros and cons on each side.
3. Position victims in conflict with each other.
4. Do not record data or leave evidence.
5. Stall for time.
6. Conduct tests or surveys that will produce underestimated results on damage.
7. Wear victims down until they give up.
8. Create an official certification system that narrows down victim numbers.
9. Do not release information abroad.
10. Call on academic flunkies to hold international conferences.
(By Ayako Oguni, Evening Edition Department)
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