Stop selling your nuclear monster to India, Mr Abe

How green do our becquerels glow. Shinzo Abe and Manmohan Singh in New Delhi, 2014 January. Photo: Press Information Bureau, Government of India

The Japanese salesman has come and gone, leaving behind him not the whiff of cherry blossoms but the stench of radiation. Shinzo Abe the prime minister of Japan, sipped tea with his host and counterpart in India, Manmohan Singh, as they watched the Republic Day parade together. The future of republics (indeed of democratic principles) must have been a distant matter for these two prime ministers, both glowing with a renewed nuclear fervour.

For, although the long history of accidents at nuclear facilities is painfully evident to all those of us who have lived through an era that included Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, Prime Ministers Abe and Singh promised to “make our nuclear power generation increasingly safe” and to “ensure that the safety and livelihoods of people are not jeopardised in our pursuit of nuclear power”. Who is the “our”, we ask. And because neither can answer, Abe’s visit was met with widespread protests.

In his letter, made public, eminent Gandhian Narayan Desai wrote to Abe: “People of India have learnt from the experience of nuclear power over the last six decades. Local communities have overwhelmingly opposed nuclear projects despite persistent government propaganda … Developing closer relations between our two countries is a desirable goal. However, for this to happen on a healthy durable basis, it is necessary that people’s wishes are listened to and their long term interests protected. Selling nuclear components to help facilitate setting up of nuclear power plants is not the way. This is doubly so, when India has not signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and is actively engaged in the production of nuclear weapons. The well-being of future generations should not be sacrificed for short term commercial gains.”

In the ‘Jaitapur Times’, a resistance newspaper in Marathi printed in the district where the Jaitapur nuclear power plant is being opposed, a protest banner is reproduced.

More comprehensively, in ‘Resisting Abe’s Sales Pitch’, M V Ramana (Programme on Science and Global Security, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University and author of ‘The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India‘ (Penguin 2012)) has said that “Abe’s democratic credentials are evident from his various attempts at peddling reactors despite this overwhelming opposition. One outcome of Abe’s globe-trotting atomic roadshow was an agreement with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, another head of state who doesn’t seem to be particularly concerned about democratic sentiment, to sell two nuclear reactors. The majority of the Turkish public too opposes the construction of nuclear power plants.”

Abe must have warmly appreciated the technique of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (ably abetted by a ministers’ cabinet intent on gutting the country of its natural resources, witness the triumphant pronouncements by Veerappa Moily, the Minister for the Destruction of the Environment who is also the Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas) who is skilled at replacing one bland statement with another opaque one and in this case he said, “Our negotiations towards an agreement for cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy have gained momentum in the last few months”.

But apart from the boring boilerplate statements, Manmohan Singh has presented himself as the South Asian buyer of what the then Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan called “a mutually satisfactory agreement for civil nuclear cooperation at an early date”. That the Japanese chair is filled by someone else now is of little consequence, for the position of Japan’s PM is to be an enthusiastic salesman for the country’s biggest businesses – high-speed rail, nuclear power and water-related infrastructure systems. [See the whole gamut of scary capitalist high-technology and anti-democratic partnership-mongering outlined here.]

The front page of the ‘Jaitapur Times’, a resistance newspaper in Marathi printed in the district where the Jaitapur nuclear power plant is being opposed.

The slow-motion nuclear meltdown that is taking place at Fukushima Daichi had prompted Kan to say that Japan should aim to be “a society without nuclear power”. But in India, inconveniently for a Japanese salesman PM and our own salesman PM, there is now significant opposition to nuclear power, especially at all the sites that have been selected for installing reactors imported from companies like Westinghouse, General Electric and Areva.

We have been educated by honest truth from within Japan itself, like the testimony of a Japanese engineer who helped build reactor 4 at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and who said such plants are inherently unstable, urging Taiwan to ditch atomic energy for renewable resources. Our public opposition knows well that the primary motivation for a nuclear agreement between Japan and India dates back to the US-India nuclear deal. M V Ramana has reminded us that in 2008, William Burns, a senior American diplomat, told the Senate of his country that as its part of the bargain, the Manmohan Singh (UPA) government had “provided the United States with a strong Letter of Intent, stating its intention to purchase reactors with at least 10,000 megawatts (MW) worth of new power generation capacity from U.S. firms [and] has committed to devote at least two sites to U.S. firms”.

These are the deals struck in secret – whose grossly anti-democratic nature Abe and Singh were upholding as they watched soldiers from India’s most decorated regiments march down Rajpath – and here was a salesman who only a few months earlier had midwived a secrecy act that would make unlawful the release of information about the situation at Fukushima. In Japan itself, some of its most famous scientists, including Nobel laureates Toshihide Maskawa and Hideki Shirakawa, have led the opposition against this new state secrecy legislation with 3,000 academics signing a public letter of protest. These scientists and academics declared the government’s secrecy law a threat to “the pacifist principles and fundamental human rights established by the constitution and should be rejected immediately”.

The sites promised to American firms, said Ramana, are Mithi Virdi in Gujarat and Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh. We also know thanks to Wikileaks that in 2007, former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Anil Kakodkar told a nuclear trade delegation from the US-India Business Council that “the Jaitapur site in southern Maharashtra would go to the French”. Now, the salient point is that all of these reactors need key components produced in Japan and the Japanese government has to formally allow these exports.

Abe’s Republic Day sales trip has come soon after the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) acknowledged (was forced to, and did so, shamelessly and for the first time, nearly three years after
the accident started), that water was leaking from the reactor containment vessel in Unit 3 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant. According to Tatsujiro Suzuki the vice chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC), “the leakage is a significant finding [and] could indicate that the Unit 3 containment vessel has significant damage”. Barely a fortnight ago, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported that TEPCO has withheld 140 measurements of radioactive strontium levels taken in groundwater and the port of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant between June and November last year. But Prime Merchant Manmohan Singh and his colleagues are intent on completing the US-Japan-India trimurti while the ordinary folk of India are demanding anumukti.

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Fukushima’s final emergency

Art to honour the Fukushima 50. Illustration by ‘tiger-never-die’ at deviantart.com

After 29 months of grave nuclear threat, all that matters now is for the world’s experts on radiation and decontamination to join forces and help fix the deadly poison streaming silently out of Fukushima. Because Japan’s political class has betrayed its people and lied to the world.

The world’s nuclear industry, the agencies of the principal nuclear powers, the reactor manufacturers and their lobbyists and financiers must cease their talk and stand aside, for they have been dealers of slow death. Now it is time for every reactor in the world – every single last nightmare nuclear pile – to begin shutting down.

This is a matter serious enough for the UN General Assembly to call an extraordinary and emergency session, and for the agenda to have two items only: (1) the immediate containment of the poison spewing out of the crippled reactors in Fukushima must be an international undertaking, (2) the safe, total and irrevocable decommissioning of all the world’s nuclear reactors must begin at once.

There is no other way. The events August 2013 alone tell us why:

Technicians work to address leaks from a tank storing highly radioactive water at the wrekced Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant on Aug. 20. Photo: The Asahi Shimbun/Hiroshi Kawai

August 23, 2013 – More tanks at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant site may have leaks as Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant operator, said on August 22 that high radiation levels were detected near a second section of storage tanks.

August 21, 2013 – Japan’s nuclear authority said on August 21 that a radioactive water leak at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant represents a “serious incident” under an international scale, the latest blow in the struggle against contaminated water accumulating at the site.

August 19, 2013 – The operator of Japan’s crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant said on August 19 that two workers were found to be contaminated with radioactive particles, the second such incident in a week involving staff outside the site’s main operations centre.

August 14, 2013 – The Nuclear Regulation Authority, Japan’s nuclear regulator, officially approved a plan that lays out ­in detail everything from the broad road map that Fukushima Daiichi operator Tokyo Electric Power Company is following to clean up and dismantle the crippled plant.

Clean up and dismantle – but even the tiniest mistake during an operation to extract over 1,300 fuel rods at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan could lead to a series of cascading failures with an apocalyptic outcome, fallout researcher Christina Consolo told the news website RT.

Fukushima operator TEPCO wants to extract 400 tons worth of spent fuel rods stored in a pool at the plant’s damaged Reactor No. 4. The removal would have to be done manually from the top store of the damaged building in the radiation-contaminated environment.

Radioactive water contamination graphic by Asahi Shimbun

In the worst-case scenario, a mishandled rod may go critical, resulting in an above-ground meltdown releasing radioactive fallout with no way to stop it, said Consolo. But leaving the things as they are is not an option, because statistical risk of a similarly bad outcome increases every day, she said. Indeed, renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku stated in an interview a few weeks after the initial accident that “TEPCO is literally hanging on by their fingernails.” They still are, and always have been.

As Safecast’s blog has explained in educative detail, it is unclear whether the Japanese government has a clear plan for decontaminating Fukushima Prefecture. The questions raised are worrying indeed: “Are the aims they’ve stated really feasible? Is anyone really able to keep track of the changing standards and guidelines?” And that is why the Asahi Shimbun published a series of reports about changes in government decontamination plans, such as ‘Government secretly backtracks on Fukushima decontamination goal’. This is a situation tailor-made for abuse, and in January 2013, the Asahi Shimbun published a series of exposes detailing sloppy work practices and fraud, titled ‘Crooked Cleanup’.

Sizing up the deadly and fake nuclear renaissance

Two excellent resources to point to for those who want to shut down reactors and bury nuclear power once and for all. The first is ‘Quietly Into Disaster – A Plea For Survival’, a film well worth your while. It deals with facts and topics concerning nuclear fission: the damage done to health and environment, nuclear waste and politics, renewable energies, reactor safety, the serious implications of a nuclear accident and public resistance.

The second is the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2013 which provides a global overview of the history, the current status and the trends of nuclear power programmes worldwide. It examines nuclear reactor units in operation and under construction, includes an update on nuclear economics as well as an overview of the status, on-site and off-site, of the challenges triggered by the Fukushima disaster.

Nuclear Power Reactor Grid Connections and Shutdowns, 1956–2013. Source: World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2013 / IAEA-PRIS, MSC, 2013

The Report has noted that:

“For various reasons in many nations, the nuclear industry cannot tell the truth about its progress, its promise or its perils. Its backers in government and in academia do no better.”

“During the rise and fall of the bubble formerly known as “the nuclear renaissance” in the U.S. many of their tools have been on full display. Academic and governmental studies a decade ago understated the likely cost of new reactors and overstated their potential contribution to fighting climate change.”

“Where the authors introduce judgment, they explain what they have done and why. The Report has a track record stretching back years. It is much better than the embarrassing exuberances of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Nuclear Association or the pronouncements of most national governments.”

“In short, the nuclear renaissance has always consisted entirely of the number of reactors whose excess costs governments were prepared to make mandatory for either customers or taxpayers.”

Protests be damned, more money given for India’s nuclear power obsession

The announcement by India’s Department of Atomic Energy asking for recruits, to form a new cadre that will run N-power plants.

Ignoring utterly the continuous protests against nuclear power plants in India, the central government in the 2013-14 Union budget has promised even more money to the Indian nuclear power establishment. Moreover, a signal has been sent to India’s anti-nuclear power movement that the government in power intends to institutionalise the training (indoctrination) of new cadres of nuclear power plant drones who will look after (if they survive) the killer reactors being built.

But first, the finance. The Department of Atomic Energy has been allocated a proposed INR 13,879 crore (or INR 138.79 billion, equivalent to about USD 2.53 billion and about EUR 1.94 billion). The allocation in 2012-13 was INR 11,673 crore (or INR 116.73 billion, about USD 2.13 billion or about EUR 1.63 billion), and in 2011-12 it was INR 7,257 crore (or INR 72.57 billion, about USD 1.32 billion or about EUR 1.02 billion). So in two years the allocation has risen 90%.

Where is the new money going to go? INR 37 billion for research and development, INR 12 billion for industries sector projects (which sounds like preparing India’s atomic power public sector to receive foreign direct investment), INR 4.7 billion for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, a useless and dangerous plaything of the world’s pampered and irresponsible nuclear power schoolboys, and INR 2.5 billion for the Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Ltd, which is supposed to build a 500MW prototype fast breeder reactor.

A letter written by R K Gupta, who worked at the BARC plant, warning against the Indian nuclear establishment.

Second, the preparing of a first crop of wide-eyed, misguided and hopelessly uninformed young Indians to be the frontline cannon fodder when radiation leaks occur. The text of a newspaper announcement (image above), released three days after the budget, said:

“DAE [Department of Atomic Energy] invites young, dynamic engineering graduates and science post-graduates to a stimulating world of cutting edge technology in pursuit of basic and applied research and development in a wide variety of frontier areas of relevance to our nuclear programme in the domain of engineering, physical, chemical, biological and earth sciences as well as nuclear engineering including design, construction, operation and maintenance of nuclear reactors and associated fuel cycle facilities.”

On offer (without nuke hazard suits) are, a one-year orientation course for engineering graduates and science post-graduates, a two-year DAE graduate fellowship scheme for engineering graduates and post-graduates in physics.

The huge increases in the budget for the DAE have come during continuing, large-scale, organised and steadfast agitations against nuclear power plants in Koodankulam (Tamil Nadu), the proposed plants in Jaitapur (Maharashtra) and in Mithi Virdi (Gujarat). At the forefront is the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) which in a press release on 21 February 2013 said: “The officials of the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP), the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) have consistently refused to share any public documents on the KKNPP (the Koodankulam plant) and to reveal any truths about the various leaks, repairs and the technical problems in the project.”

PMANE is also coordinating opposition to a “nuclear power park” (how frightful a term is that?) that is being set up at Mithi Virdi, Gujarat. The reactor vendor Westinghouse signed a memorandum of understanding with the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) in 2012 to construct six AP1000 units at the site. The people of Mithi Virdi, Jaspara, Mandva, Khadarpar and other neighbouring villages oppose the project and in the past they forced survey engineers to leave the project site. PMANE calls it a “struggle against the American annihilation plant”.

Reportage about the opposition, the protests, the repression visited upon protesters (in their own lands and villages) by the central government has till now been frequent and independent. A recent report in the English news daily DNA had said that the decision to import 40,000 MWe capacity light water reactors (LWRs) in early 2006 was taken without any techno-economic evaluation by the Atomic Energy Commission or any other agency to assess the need for these imports, quoting a former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB). Another report explained how the local organisation spearheading the opposition to the proposed 9,900 MW nuclear power plant in Jaitapur said it wanted the whole project to be scrapped. “Our struggle is for cancellation of the nuclear plant project…. We do not want increased monetary package,” the report quoted Prakash Waghdhare, President of the Madban, Jaitapur, Mithgavane, Panchkroshi Sangharsh Samiti.

The Fukushima report, grim truth and a salute to heroism in Japan

Signatures of the ten members of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission

Japan has found new heroism and it is in the form of the ten members of the first independent commission chartered by the Diet in the history of Japan’s constitutional government. Their report, ‘The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission’, has come as a powerful call for the abandonment of nuclear power in Japan and indeed worldwide.

The voluminous report was designed from the start along lines wholly and utterly ignored by the subjects of the report – the government of Japan and the Japanese nuclear power industry (and also, by association, the international nuclear mongers). And that is the maximum degree of information disclosure. To achieve this, all 19 of the commission meetings were open to public observation and broadcast on the internet (except the first one), simultaneously in Japanese and English, to a total of 800,000 viewers. The commission also also used social media, Facebook and Twitter to communicate with the public, receiving over 170,000 comments. To gain a global perspective, the commission dispatched three teams overseas, and included interviews and hearings with experts from the USA, France, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

These ten members have shown the determination to achieve maximum information disclosure in a culture, and against unfathomable pressure, that is determined otherwise. They have posed the toughest questions possible and drawn out, from hundreds of responses, the strands of truth about Japanese society which have since 2011 March 11 been obscured by the scale of the disaster, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, and the massive, tragic loss of life.

These ten members have emphasised through their doggedness and their untiring pursuit of the truth, no matter how bitter, that it is of vital importance that their work – this report – be utilised, as they have said, “for the Japanese people and for the people of the world”. They have demanded that national pride be set aside if it obstructs the truth, and for this, they symbolise a heroism Japan has, in an hour of unprecedented public outrage, rediscovered.

They are Kiyoshi Kurokawa (chairman) and members Kenzo Oshima, Hisako Sakiyama, Masafumi Sakurai, Yoshinori Yokoyama, Mitsuhiko Tanaka, Koichi Tanaka, Katsuhiko Ishibashi, Reiko Hachisuka and Shuya Nomura. We must salute them.

The text below is from the chairman’s message in the English executive summary of the report (pdf, 2.4 mb):

Map showing accumulated cesium-137, from the report

“The earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011 were natural disasters of a magnitude that shocked the entire world. Although triggered by these cataclysmic events, the subsequent accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant cannot be regarded as a natural disaster. It was a profoundly manmade disaster – that could and should have been foreseen and prevented. And its effects could have been mitigated by a more effective human response.

“How could such an accident occur in Japan, a nation that takes such great pride in its global reputation for excellence in engineering and technology? This Commission believes the Japanese people – and the global community – deserve a full, honest and transparent answer to this question.

“Our report catalogues a multitude of errors and willful negligence that left the Fukushima plant unprepared for the events of March 11. And it examines serious deficiencies in the response to the accident by TEPCO, regulators and the government. For all the extensive detail it provides, what this report cannot fully convey – especially to a global audience – is the mindset that supported the negligence behind this disaster. What must be admitted – very painfully – is that this was a disaster “Made in Japan”. Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the program’; our groupism; and our insularity. Had other Japanese been in the shoes of those who bear responsibility for this accident, the result may well have been the same.

“Following the 1970s “oil shocks,” Japan accelerated the development of nuclear power in an effort to achieve national energy security. As such, it was embraced as a policy goal by government and business alike, and pursued with the same single-minded determination that drove Japan’s postwar economic miracle. With such a powerful mandate, nuclear power became an unstoppable force, immune to scrutiny by civil society. Its regulation was entrusted to the same government bureaucracy responsible for its promotion. At a time when Japan’s self-confidence was soaring, a tightly knit elite with enormous financial resources had diminishing regard for anything ‘not invented here’.

“This conceit was reinforced by the collective mindset of Japanese bureaucracy, by which the first duty of any individual bureaucrat is to defend the interests of his organization. Carried to an extreme, this led bureaucrats to put organizational interests ahead of their paramount duty to protect public safety. Only by grasping this mindset can one understand how Japan’s nuclear industry managed to avoid absorbing the critical lessons learned from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl; and how it became accepted practice to resist regulatory pressure and cover up small-scale accidents. It was this mindset that led to the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant.

“This report singles out numerous individuals and organizations for harsh criticism, but the goal is not—and should not be—to lay blame. The goal must be to learn from this disaster, and reflect deeply on its fundamental causes, in order to ensure that it is never repeated. Many of the lessons relate to policies and procedures, but the most important is one upon which each and every Japanese citizen should reflect very deeply. The consequences of negligence at Fukushima stand out as catastrophic, but the mindset that supported it can be found across Japan. In recognizing that fact, each of us should reflect on our responsibility as individuals in a democratic society.

“As the first investigative commission to be empowered by the legislature and independent of the bureaucracy, we hope this initiative can contribute to the development of Japan’s civil society. Above all, we have endeavored to produce a report that meets the highest standard of transparency. The people of Fukushima, the people of Japan and the global community deserve nothing less.”

How stoic Japan grew angry over the nuclear restart decision

On Sunday, 29 June 2012, a massive crowd gathered in central Tokyo to express their anger at the government’s decision to restart a reactor at the Oi nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture, as Japan Times reports.

The protest outside the prime minister’s office has become a weekly event in the past few months, with the number of participants increasing each time. “The best we Tokyo residents can do is to protest in front of the prime minister’s office, although this is really a last-minute action,” one of the protest organisers told media.

On 29 June, Japan witnessed its largest public protest since the 1960s. This was the latest in a series of Friday night gatherings outside Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko’s official residence. Well over one hundred thousand people came together to vent their anger at his 16 June decision to order a restart of Units 3 and 4 at the Oi nuclear plant, said this article on Japan Focus.

Japan shut down the last of its 54 reactors for inspections on 5 May 2012, the first time since May 1970 when Japan both of Japan’s two reactors were taken offline for maintenance. However, it now appears that Japan will only have been without nuclear power post-Fukushima for just under two months. On 8 June, Prime Minister Noda called for resumption of nuclear power generation in a nationwide address. Noda stated that he was ordering a restart of Units 3 and 4 at Oi, both pressure water reactors built in the early 1990s, because it was the ultimate responsibility of the state to “protect the livelihood of the people”.

The organisers said the rally a week earlier drew 45,000 people, while police said there were about 11,000 protesters. On Friday, organizers were aiming for a gathering of 100,000 people. Given the increasing number of participants, the police heightened security by stationing hundreds of officers there. It was the tightest security for a public protest in several decades, according to the Mainichi Shimbun.

The protest on Friday, which began at 6 p.m., saw a huge crowd gather beforehand, with participants calling on the government and Kepco not to restart the reactors. Organizers said around 200,000 people took part, while police said participants were in the tens of thousands. “I think it’s outrageous to restart (the Oi reactors) when the Fukushima No. 1 plant accident has not even been contained,” said protester Kazumi Honda, a housewife in her 40s from Minami Uonuma, Niigata Prefecture.

Honda said she lives just 60 km from the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant and thus could not ignore the Oi reactors’ situation, especially when their safety status is still tentative, as the government admits. Honda said she has participated in other protests but never before in Tokyo. The number of protesters kept swelling as time passed, and the line of people expanded a few blocks from the prime minister’s office. Participants were chanting, “No to the restarts!”

A year of Fukushima

Memory and Loss. From the Fukushima album by photographer Satoru Niwa.

A year since the great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The loss of more than 15,000 lives in Japan. The misery of the survivors and the utter anguish of those who lost loved ones, but could not go back to look for them because of the radiation from the Dai-ichi nuclear power plant reactors. The criminal negligence of the regulators in Japan and their international counterparts, the International Atomic Energy Agency. The outrage over a national government in Japan that stood by the nuclear industry rather than the victims of Fukushima. The solidarity shown by hundreds of thousands of citizens all over the world, and the determination they have shown to oppose this evil technology. The voices and visual works of hundreds upon hundreds of artists and writers, poets and craftspeople who have expressed in as many forms as they know the need for a nuclear-free world. The monumental money-fuelled obduracy of governments before the demand of their citizens, that they halt forever nuclear power generation. It has been a year since the tsunami and the meltdown at Dai-ichi. We should in this year have had not a single, not one, nuclear power plant left running on the face of the Earth. Back to work.

On this grim anniversary, here is a small compilation of recent news and views, followed by links to information and data sources.

It’s Not Just Fukushima: Mass Disaster Evacuations Challenge Planners – The Fukushima evacuation zone raises the issue of what would happen during an evacuation in heavily populated U.S. metropolises during a nuclear meltdown. In fact, in the U.S., more than four million Americans live within 10  miles of the 63 sites of nuclear power. Plants with at least one operating reactor, according to data compiled by the NRC based on the 2000 census. That number swells when the radius extends outward to 50 miles to affect more than 180 million Americans, and includes major metropolitan areas such as York City, Philadelphia, San Diego. In the wake of the in Japan and subsequent evacuations, could all these people in the U.S. be evacuated–or take some form of protective action – in time in similar circumstances?

Nuclear contamination: a year after Fukushima, why does Brussels still back nuclear power? – One year after the Fukushima disaster hit Japan, nuclear power remains very firmly on the agenda for the European Commission. Corporate Europe Observatory examines how the industry has been lobbying behind the scenes, promising that nuclear power does not pose a risk. The nuclear industry is gearing up to the first anniversary of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster by arguing that nuclear power remains central to the EU’s energy needs. Over the last year the industry has repeated key public relations messages that nuclear energy is not only safe, but central to any low carbon, secure energy future. And its vociferous PR campaign and highly effective lobby network, has been welcomed by parts of the European Commission.

Emptiness and Silence. From the Fukushima album by photographer Satoru Niwa.

A year on from Fukushima, the policy ramifications are still being felt across the EU, particularly in some member states. While the industry concedes that the accident “had a major impact on the EU institutional agenda,” has been lobbying hard to minimise these impacts, trying to make sure that Fukushima does not compromise the potential for nuclear new build in the EU.

Hundreds of Events Globally Will Mark One-Year Commemoration of Fukushima Nuclear Disaster – Hundreds of thousands of people across the world will be involved in actions around the March 11 commemoration of the Fukushima, Japan nuclear disaster which began on that date a year ago. Events will be going on throughout the month of March and into April. Beyond Nuclear has put together a Global Calendar of Events, which is frequently updated on it. There is a March Against Nuclear Madness Facebook page.

This is described as an unprecedented response to a catastrophe that is not yet over and may sadly resonate forever. “We are learning more on a daily basis – about the degree of cover-up, the level of radioactive contamination and the dangers still posed by the wrecked reactors and teetering high-level radioactive waste storage pools at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear site.”

Undeterred by Fukushima: Nuclear Lobby Pushes Ahead with New Reactors – A year after the catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, it is clear just how little the nuclear lobby and its government supporters have been unsettled by the disaster in Japan. But rejection of nuclear energy is growing among people the world over – and building new reactors makes no sense in economic terms. On the face of things, it would appear that little has changed. Only a few countries, such as Switzerland, Italy and Belgium, are joining Germany in turning their backs on nuclear energy. Indeed, it is primarily Russia and the United States, the two nuclear heavyweights, that are competing in a new atomic race, though this time with technologies geared toward civilian purposes. New nuclear power plants are being built with particular relish in emerging economies, such as China and India, who want to satisfy at least part of their energy needs with uranium.

For the builders and operators of nuclear energy plants, the accident in Japan came at what might be considered a bad time. After years of stagnation, not only the emerging economies of Asia – China, South Korea and India – but also Russia and the United States were beginning to put greater emphasis on nuclear energy. This decision was driven not only by the growing energy needs of the newly industrializing nations, but also by fears related to carbon emissions and climate change.

This prompted the backers of nuclear energy to make frantic attempts to downplay the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, with the aim of nipping the debate about nuclear safety in the bud. For example, John Ritch, the director-general of the World Nuclear Association, asserted that the disaster hadn’t cost anyone their life. “Nuclear power will be even safer after Fukushima,” Ritch told the BBC in November, “and will continue to mature as the world’s premier non-carbon technology.”

On Resources Research: (1) Nuclear power in India and Prime Minister Singh’s ‘foreign’ slander; (2) Koodankulam: An Open Letter to the Fellow Citizens of India; (3) The Fukushima 50? Or the Fukushima 18,846?; (4) See the Fukushima nuclear emergency page for extensive background coverage, documents and material; (5) See the running post on Fukushima for reportage and insights.

From Japan, Bearing Witness in Debate Over Indian Point – “One quick little cigarette,” Mr. Kitajima, 45, said. The smokes, he reckoned, are an occupational hazard. Last March, unemployed and sitting in a Tokyo cafe with his girlfriend, Mr. Kitajima felt the shudders of an 8.9-magnitude earthquake. Before long, he found himself working nearly 200 miles away at the Fukushima nuclear plant, which was destroyed. “I would say about 90 percent of the workers at the plant smoke,” Mr. Kitajima said. “Stress.”

His job is to read radiation meters worn by the 3,000 people trying to clean up its lethally contaminated remnants. The most dangerous work is done at night, he said, after the main shifts are gone. A crew of 20 men is sent to pick up the irradiated rubble. Practically none of the men have families, much education or regular employment. They have no experience working in nuclear power plants. He compared them to day laborers in America. Within a few months, they accumulate what is regarded as the maximum safe dosage of radiation for four years, Mr. Kitajima said. “Then they bring in new ones,” he said. “Everybody kinds of admits to themselves that these are expendable people.”

Health uncertainties torment residents in Fukushima – Yoshiko Ota keeps her windows shut. She never hangs her laundry outdoors. Fearful of birth defects, she warns her daughters: Never have children. This is life with radiation, nearly one year after a tsunami-hit nuclear power plant began spewing it into Ota’s neighborhood, 60 kilometers away. She’s so worried that she has broken out in hives. “The government spokesman keeps saying there are no IMMEDIATE health effects,” the 48-year-old nursery school worker says. “He’s not talking about 10 years or 20 years later. He must think the people of Fukushima are fools.

“It’s not really OK to live here,” she says. “But we live here.” Ota takes metabolism-enhancing pills in hopes of flushing radiation out of her body. To limit her exposure, she goes out of her way to buy vegetables that are not grown locally. She spends 10,000 yen a month on bottled water to avoid the tap water. She even mail-ordered a special machine to dehusk her family’s rice.

Searching the Wastes. From the Fukushima album by photographer Satoru Niwa.

Released records of nuclear crisis meetings show chaos, confusion over lack of info – Just four hours after the tsunami swept into the Fukushima nuclear power plant, Japan’s leaders knew the damage was so severe the reactors could melt down, but they kept their knowledge secret for months. Five days into the crisis, then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan voiced his fears it could turn worse than Chernobyl. The revelations were in 76 documents of 23 meetings released Friday, almost a year after the disaster. The minutes of the government’s crisis management meetings from March 11—the day the earthquake and tsunami struck—until late December were not recorded and had to be reconstructed retroactively.

They illustrate the confusion, lack of information, delayed response and miscommunication among government, affected towns and plant officials, as some ministers expressed sense that nobody was in charge when the plant conditions quickly deteriorated. The minutes quoted an unidentified official explaining that cooling functions of the reactors were kept running only by batteries that would last only eight hours. “If temperatures in the reactor cores keep rising beyond eight hours, there is a possibility of meltdown,” the official said during the first meeting that started about four hours after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi plant March 11, setting off the crisis. Apparently the government tried to play down the severity of the damage. A spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency was replaced after he slipped out a possibility of meltdown during a news conference March 12.

Containing Fukushima: Saving Japan From Itself (Huffington Post / K.T. Hiraoka) – The disaster at Fukushima last year exposed how entrenched interests among key decision-makers have contaminated Japanese society, endangering the long-term prosperity of Japan. These special interests often do what is right for themselves, as opposed to what is in the best interests of the Japanese people.

In this two-part series, discussion on what has transpired over the past twelve months as a result of decisions made related to the Fukushima disaster (Part I) will lead to a look at decision-making during the crisis in subsequent weeks and months that have passed (Part II). As the current decision-making system in Japan increasingly works to the detriment of Japanese society, what is needed instead is a more transparent, honest, and benevolent decision-making system that listens to the wishes of the people and responds to it.

Lessons from Fukushima nuclear disaster report shows millions remain at risk – Greenpeace released “Lessons from Fukushima”, a new report which shows that it was not a natural disaster which led to the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant on Japan’s east coast, but the failures of the Japanese Government, regulators and the nuclear industry. The key conclusion to be drawn from the report is that this human-made nuclear disaster could be repeated at any nuclear plant in the world, putting millions at risk. “While triggered by the tragic March 11th earthquake and tsunami, the Fukushima disaster was ultimately caused by the Japanese authorities choosing to ignore risks, and make business a higher priority than safety,” said Jan Vande Putte, Greenpeace International nuclear campaigner. “This report shows that nuclear energy is inherently unsafe, and that governments are quick to approve reactors, but remain ill-equipped to deal with problems and protect people from nuclear disasters. This has not changed since the Fukushima disaster, and that is why millions of people continue to be exposed to nuclear risks.”

The matchless Japan Focus has throughout the year kept track of these sources, sincere thanks to them and appreciation for their steadfast work. The journal has provided thoughtful, critical and independent coverage of the incident and its effects.

Local Histories. From the Fukushima album by photographer Satoru Niwa.

Blogs

Fukushima Diary – “Fukushima diary is to warm people to evacuate. so it must be fast. must be before it goes on major media. That’s what I needed just after 311, that’s why I’m doing it now. Should I evacuate or not, that’s what I wanted to know. so the balance is difficult. I try to keep it not over the top but the conclusion is, everyone must evacuate.”
“The public execution has begun in Fukushima, like in Minamisoma. As I hear from people actually working there or living there, I find the situation really desperate. Nothing can be done. Now it’s only in Fukushima but it will be in Chiba, Ibaraki, Tokyo, Kanagawa, and everywhere. But even when I talk to my family, it can’t be a conversation. I’m just get out get out get out. and they are like, it’s cold, or it’s sunny, or it’s snowing or just on about meaningless things. Once I talk about their business, it wil start a fight. I guess the situation is too serious for them to accept.”

The Wall Street Journal’s blog “Japan Realtime” offers eclectic commentary on contemporary Japan. The focus is on economic issues but the blog has presented solid original reportage on Fukushima since March. A series of original translations on issues relating to the Tsunami and nuclear crisis from a McGill University translation seminar organized by Prof. Adrienne Hurley. The blog Global Voices features the work of volunteer translators who strive to spread awareness of local perspectives that often end up lost in mainstream reportage. Highlights of the Fukushima coverage include “A Nuclear Gypsy’s Tale”. A collection of links and commentary in French. Twitter stream for Fukushima articles and info in English.

On the Peace Philosophy Centre blog, Asia-Pacific Journal Coordinator Satoko Norimatsu presents a range of hard-hitting criticisms of the Japanese government and TEPCO responses to the Fukushima crisis including original translations of sources not otherwise available in English and extensive Japanese and English language coverage of official, NGO and blog sources.
Ten Thousand Things is a blog Supporting Positive Peace in Japan, the Asia-Pacific and Everywhere which includes extensive coverage of peace and environmental movements. English and Japanese blog specializing in 3.11 economic and financial issues.

NGOs and Informational Websites

Green Action Kyoto, an NGO which has campaigned against nuclear power since the early 1990s, presents a comprehensive and critical blog of Fukushima stories in English drawing on government, media and NGO sources. Greenpeace has presented some of the most critical coverage of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Greenpeace, in February 2012, published a major critical overview of the 3.11 disaster and crisis. The study examines the nuclear meltdown, assesses the dangers of radiation, the fundamental failure of the Japanese nuclear system, and the issues of compensation to victims.

The Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre is a longstanding organization that aims to provide information about nuclear energy and its risks to the Japanese public. Their bi-monthly newsletter is a valuable source of information on nuclear issues. They also offer a blog containing video resources and links to important anti-nuclear publications.

The website of Japan’s Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, an NGO devoted to phasing out atomic energy. English and Japanese sites. The Japanese website of leading nuclear protest organizer “Shiroto no Ran”. There is a collection of hundreds of anti-nuclear posters at No Nuke Art. The National Network to Protect Children from Radiation (in Japanese). EShift, a Japanese network dedicated to phasing out atomic energy in favor of natural renewables.

Fukushima coverage by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the premier source of socio-scientific views and praxis on the world nuclear industry. Arnie Gunderson’s Fairewinds Associates provides critical analysis of global nuclear issues by a scientist. It has closely followed the Fukushima situation. The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a group which aims to provide concise and easily understood commentary on important scientific issues for the general public. The Atomic Age: From Hiroshima to the Present is a resource maintained at the University of Chicago.

Nuclear power in India and Prime Minister Singh’s ‘foreign’ slander

Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, has accused non-government organisations and citizens’ groups in the country opposed to nuclear power as serving a foreign agenda. Singh said this recently referring to the steadfast opposition to the two new 1,000-MW nuclear reactors proposed to be built in Koodankulam, Tamil Nadu (southern India) with Russian help. The first of these reactors was to be commissioned in December 2011 while the second was to follow six months later. The continuing local protests since August 2011 – supported by dozens of NGOs and voluntary groups all over India – have halted the project.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Cartoon by Saurabh Singh / India Today

Singh’s vilification of the protesting NGOs did not come as part of a speech at home or an aside to the Indian media – it was part of an interview conducted with him by the US magazine Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It is therefore worth understanding the deeper context in which Singh expressed his frustration over public opposition to his government’s dangerous nuclear power plans.

At the Indian Science Congress held in 2012 January, Singh talked about increasing the R&D budget in India from 1% of GDP to 2% by the end of the Twelfth Five Year Plan period (that is, 2017 March). In the USA, this is seen as being equivalent to a rise from US$ 3 billion last year to US $8 billion in 2017. He specifically mentioned the increasing contribution of private sector funding that will make this possible. The increase is meant to be used for the creation of elite research institutions (which will help bring expatriate Indian scientists home, mainly from the USA), to enrich science education, and equip smart new laboratories.

According to the journal Science, included in this push is South Asia’s first biosafety level–4 lab for handling the most dangerous pathogens. Over the next 5 years, an estimated US $1.2 billion of public money will be used to set up and run a new National Science and Engineering Research Board. Modelled upon the National Science Foundation of the USA, the board will fund competitive grants.

For all the fawning that has been done over the “scholar-prime minister” who “aims for inclusive development”, Singh’s government is anything but inclusive. During the second term of the ruling United Progressive Alliance, concerned Indian publics have demanded a universal entitlement to food under a food security act – and have been denied. They have demanded accountability from elected representatives – and are being denied. They have demanded local right to accept or reject industrial and urban development, which is part of Constitutional provisions and is an essential part of the village self-governance framework – and are being systematically denied all over India but especially in the mineral-rich regions. They have agitated against steadily rising food prices and fuel prices with some rural households having to spend over 65% of their income on food – and been rewarded for annual food inflation rates of over 10%.

Singh and his ministers and his government have at the same time permitted multinational retail food chains to begin business in India, over the considered opposition by tens of thousands of small traders. Singh and his ministers and his government have opened up the health, insurance and banking sectors to multinationals, guaranteeing thereby the demise of the public sector institutions which served this sector since India’s independence in 1947. The prime minister of India has complained about what he dreams is “foreign” interference in his nuclear plans – while his government’s consorting with foreign carpetbaggers of every description is wrecking the futures of millions of poor households in India.

And that is not all. In ‘Koodankulam: An Open Letter to the Fellow Citizens of India’ the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (distributed on 28 February 2012) has said:

“There is no foreign country or agency or money involved in this classic people’s struggle to defend our right to life and livelihood. Our fishermen, farmers, workers and women make small voluntary donations in cash and kind to sustain our simple Gandhian struggle. Our needs are very few and expenses much less. We only provide safe drinking water to the hunger strikers and visitors. People from all over Tamil Nadu (and sometimes from other parts of India) come on their own arranging their own transportation. For our own occasional travel, we hire local taxis. Instead of understanding the people’s genuine feelings and fulfilling our demands, the government has foisted serious cases of ‘sedition’ and ‘waging war on the Indian state’ on the leaders of our movement. There are as many as 180-200 cases on us. There have been police harassment, intelligence officers’ stalking, concocted news reports in the pro-government media, abuse of our family members, hate mail, death threats and even physical attack.”

[Read the full Open Letter here, also the read the Citizens’ Statement Against Prime Minister’s Malicious Comment on Koodankulam Struggle]

Atomic energy and nuclear power plants, sites, institutes and agencies in India. Source: Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Government of India

Here is a selection of press reports on the matter:

The Hindu – When Dr. Singh, who has a reputation for reticence on sensitive subjects, drops dark hints about a foreign hand, it is surely something that needs to be substantiated and, if necessary, followed up with action. As if to bolster his argument, the licences of three NGOs have been cancelled and the foreign remittances received by them are being investigated. Meanwhile, the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy, the organisation spearheading the anti-Kudankulam protests, has rejected the charge and demanded the Prime Minister substantiate his remarks. Adding to the mix, Jairam Ramesh has also clarified that his decision as Environment Minister in 2010 to place a moratorium on Bt Brinjal was not influenced by NGOs, but was based on objective factors.

However, the idea that NGOs with ‘foreign’ links are fuelling the protests seems more expedient than convincing. The charge is also, at some level, quite irrelevant. For what it’s worth, tens of thousands of ordinary Indians around Kudankulam, Jaitapur and other areas where reactors will be sited are apprehensive about what the placement of large nuclear installations in their backyard might mean for their health, environment and livelihood. The government needs to engage with them in a transparent and constructive manner and allay their fears with facts and arguments rather than innuendo and slander.

The Indian Express – In an interview to Science magazine, the Prime Minister had said that these NGOs do not appreciate India’s need to make use of high-technology like nuclear energy or genetically-engineered crops to move forward on its growth agenda. “You know, for example, what is happening in Koodankulam. The atomic energy programme has got into difficulties because these NGOs, mostly I think based in the United States, don’t appreciate our country to increase the energy supply,” Manmohan Singh said.

Asked whether nuclear energy had a role to play in India’s energy sector despite last year’s accident in Fukushima, Japan, he said, “Yes, where India is concerned, yes. The thinking segment of our population certainly is supportive of nuclear energy.” He blamed these NGOs for his government’s 2010 decision to put an indefinite hold on the commercialisation of Bt brinjal as well. “There are NGOs, often funded from the United States and the Scandinavian countries, which are not fully appreciative of the development challenges that our country faces.”

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Cartoon by Amauri Alves / Toonpool

Business Standard – The Congress, in its communication to Minister for PMO V Narayanasamy, noted that it had been experiencing similar protests from various NGOs and political organisations. “Till now, with few exceptions, the reasons were generally observed to be for financial gains of the NGOs and either personal and financial benefits or pure political gains to the leaders and workers of the political organisations,” it said. “We have seen in the past protests against the Dabhol power project by the Shiv Sena and many other projects by various NGOs and political parties.” The party said now a new threat has emerged considering the anti-Kudankulam demonstrations, asking the Centre to take them seriously.

Hindustan Times – Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has blamed American and Scandivanian NGOs for fuelling protests at the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu, according to media reports. The Prime Minister has also blamed these NGOs for opposing genetically modified foods and the use of biotechnology to increase food production in the country.

India Today – The Prime Minister’s statement, in an interview to the prestigious journal Science, attributing anti-nuclear protests at Kudankulam to non-governmental organisations based in the United States, has stirred a familiar hornet’s nest, that of “the foreign hand”. The foreign hand of the CIA was of course frequently deployed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to deflect attention from domestic problems and, most memorably, to justify the imposition of the Emergency. It is deeply ironical coming from a Prime Minister whose government’s policies can be divided into two handy categories: those, such as employment guarantee and food security, that have the imprint of the Congress’s aam aadmi hand symbol; and those, such as its economic and nuclear policies, that bear the generous imprint of the foreign hand. It is amusing that the policy perspective of the US government should be so enthusiastically embraced, even as the views attributed to NGOs in that country are derisively dismissed. This has to be more than the common hypocrisy of everyday politics.

Clearly, what makes the government bristle is opposition to official initiatives. Popular protest provokes it to send its minions scurrying to sniff out a foreign conspiracy. The assumption is that any developmental project the government undertakes must be an unambiguous national good, and the support of its citizens for such projects must be the prime test of their loyalty.

The Fukushima 50? Or the Fukushima 18,846?

Japanese police man a checkpoint near the edge of the contaminated exclusion zone around the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station near Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, Japan Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011. Photo: David Guttenfelder, Pool

A new article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has exposed the large-scale and mostly invisible sub-contracting of labour in the international nuclear power industry. The article examines what has happened during the clean-up process at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and reveals exploitation of labour which is indefensible and criminal in view of the extreme hazards at the site following the 11 March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

The reference to the 18,846 workers comes at the very end of the long and dense status sheet for 2011 December.

‘Nuclear nomads: A look at the subcontracted heroes’, By Gabrielle Hecht explains in dreadful detail how: during much of the cleanup process at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, thousands of subcontracted day laborers will be exposed to levels of ionising radiation well in excess of internationally recommended annual limits; how sub-contracted labourers account for some 90% of Japanese nuclear power plant workers during normal reactor operations; they often receive around three times the annual dose absorbed by a full-time plant employee; and how the sub-contracting approach within the nuclear industry carries exceptional risks and implications. Until these are recognised and documented, complex social and physiological realities will continue to be hidden.

The heroism of the ‘Fukushima 50’ – the plant and emergency workers who exposed themselves to extremely high radiation levels to get the reactors under control – was celebrated by the international media. But, during much of the clean-up process, thousands of workers were exposed to levels of ionising radiation well in excess of internationally recommended annual limits. Rather, in what amounts to premeditated and criminal negligence by the Government of Japan and by the power plant operator, Tepco, exposure limits were raised for both workers and the public, presumably in an attempt to reduce the number of cases that need to be documented as overexposures.

[See the 2011 December status document released by Tepco here (pdf)] [See the Fukushima nuclear emergency page for extensive background coverage, documents and material.] [See the running post on Fukushima for reportage and insights.]

In ‘Nuclear Nomads’ Hecht has asked: “So how many emergency workers are there anyway, and who are they?” A new document released by Tepco in December 2011 shows that over 18,000 men had participated in clean-up work by early December 2011. Some hailed the workers as “national heroes,” men willing to sacrifice their lives for the future of their nation. A few investigative reporters and scholars, however, uncovered a different story. The vast majority of these men are subcontract employees, recruited among local residents rendered unemployed by the disaster, or among the thousands of day laborers who eke out an existence in the margins of Japanese cities.

The Unit 4 reactor building of the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station is seen through a bus window in Okuma, Japan Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011. Media allowed into Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant for the first time then saw a striking scene of devastation: twisted and overturned vehicles, crumbling reactor buildings and piles of rubble virtually untouched since the wave struck more than eight months earlier. Photo: David Guttenfelder, Pool

‘Nuclear Nomads’ has quoted one such worker: “If [day labourers] refuse, where will they get another job?… I don’t know anyone who is doing this [cleanup work] for Japan. Most of them need the money.” Cleanup workers are issued with dosimeters, and are checked at the end of each shift. Unskilled temps get paid about US$130 a day. Many don’t have written employment contracts. When they reach their exposure limit, they lose their jobs and are replaced, ideally, by non-exposed workers. Some have opted to prolong their employment by leaving dosimeters behind while working.

The overview of the status of countermeasures at Fukushima Daiichi Units 1-4 issued by Tepco in 2011 December.

The article by Hecht lists implications of the sub-contracting approach to reactor maintenance:

(1) Greater exposure. As for the accident cleanup crew, the short-term financial incentive for the temps is to abandon their dosimeters for certain jobs, so that their radiation exposures are not officially recorded. This prolongs their employment – and increases their doses.

(2) No occupational disease. Subcontract workers are often dubbed nuclear nomads because they move around from workplace to workplace, living out of trailers. There’s no compulsory centralised system for tracking cumulative exposure and health data for these temps. The absence of interactions among labor, information, and health infrastructures means that workers’ health problems are not collected and recorded in a centralized database — thus, many severe health problems never qualify as occupational diseases. Workers rarely — if ever — benefit from compensation, because their diseases cannot be linked to past exposures in ways that are scientifically or legally persuasive.

(3) Collective dose. Utilities don’t include the exposures of temp workers in their own data. That, in turn, means that data for any given nuclear power plant vastly under-reports the true collective dose (i.e., the total exposure received by the sum of both utility and subcontract workers).

“We’re not talking about a small portion of Japan’s nuclear workforce,” Hecht has said in ‘Nuclear Nomads’. “Since the late 1980s, some 90 percent of nuclear power plant workers in the country have been subcontracted. Estimates suggest that on average, during any one subcontracted job, a worker receives two to three times the annual dose absorbed by a regular plant worker.”

France nuclear emergency Marcoule

Update5: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has two articles relevant to the Marcoule explosion. In ‘Regime change for nuclear security’, two important questions are asked about the status and safety of fissile materials.

World map of nuclear states and countries with fissile materials (France in focus). Graphic: Fissile Materials Working Group

Irma Arguello, founder and chair of the Nonproliferation for Global Security Foundation (NPSGlobal), a private, nonprofit initiative; and international partner of the Fissile Materials Working Group, has written in the article that the term ‘nuclear security’ covers a vast swath of issues, including the prevention of, detection of, and response to criminal acts involving nuclear materials, radioactive materials, and facilities associated with nuclear and radioactive materials. Unsurprisingly, an intricate constellation of international instruments – mostly voluntary and nonbinding – is used to reduce the risks of nuclear terrorism and to reduce the illicit trafficking of nuclear materials and technology. Some of these are:

The Doomsday Clock that is the logo of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. It is six minutes to midnight

The Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials, enforced since 1987.
The 2005 International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism.
The 2003 Code of Conduct on the Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources and its supplementary, Guidance on the Import and Export of Radioactive Sources of 2004.
The 2004 UN Security Council Resolution 1540, which calls on states to take “adequate and effective” measures to prevent terrorism and proliferation.
The 2001 UN Security Council Resolution 1373.
The 2009 UN Security Council Resolution 1887, which assesses threats to global security derived from terrorism.
The Proliferation Security Initiative of 2003, focused on the interdiction of suspicious materials related to weapons of mass destruction during transport.
The 2002 G-8 Global Partnership, which uses fund-raising to support safety, disarmament, and nonproliferation projects.
The 2006 Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, an information-exchange initiative.

The aggregation of such tools, together with individual nations’ own laws, comprise the current nuclear security regime – a regime of overlapping efforts and initiatives, overwhelming bureaucratic burdens, a host of voluntary and nonbinding “commitments,” challenges to efficiency, a lack of authority to deal with transgressions, and a lack of consensus on key issues (like sovereign rights versus multilateral control). So, given the enormity of the nuclear security complex, how internally coherent is the nuclear security regime? More important, can it cope with current and future challenges?

In the second article, ‘Nature and malice: Confronting multiple hazards to nuclear power infrastructure’, Igor Khripunov and Duyeon Kim make several interlinked points. These are: (1) as the IAEA has suggested, the lessons of Fukushima that need particular study are “those pertaining to multiple severe hazards” that might afflict a nuclear power plant; (2) such complex hazards can emerge from natural disaster, sabotage by terrorists or other malcontents, or be a combination of natural events and intentional acts; (3) nuclear safety and security staffs – whose cultures are quite different – should be trained to interact with one another as they respond to all three types of severe hazards.

Update4: There is a critical note emerging in the French media about the Marcoule nuclear fuel plant explosion. Le Figaro has run a longish report quoting ecologists in France who are demanding ‘transparency’ from the Sarkozy government on the incident: “Marcoule : les écologistes réclament la transparence”.

In translation, Le Figaro has said that Cécile Duflot, national secretary of the Greens Europe Ecologie (EELV), said on the iTV Energy Minister Eric Besson “makes fun of the world when he said that the explosion of a furnace that burns waste irradiated is not a nuclear incident or accident. “The boss of EELV also the responsibility of leading authorities in the flow of information. “This is not to the public or local officials to seek information, it must come from the authorities and in real time,” insists Cécile Duflot. “We need people living around nuclear facilities and the whole country are aware of plans to be implemented in case of accident.”

The Association France Nature Environnement does say it is  “not surprised” by the accident of Marcoule. “It must be remembered that in France there are three reported incidents per day in the nuclear industry, and we know that this area tends to under-report such incidents,” said BFM-TV Benoît Hartmann, the spokeswoman the association. It also reviews the difference between incident and nuclear accident.

Picture taken in June 2009 of operators dismantling one of the rooms of the plant in Marcoule. Photo: AFP PHOTO/CEA/Celine Jandaureck

On the government side, Minister for Ecology Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet was expected in the late afternoon on the Marcoule site. According to his office, she will participate in “an accurate assessment of potential radiological impacts of this accident,” knowing that “no impact on the outside has been detected.” Information confirmed by the director of plant safety at the IRSN (institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire) on LCI.

The well-known daily Le Monde has reported that after the accident in Fukushima, the explosion near the French nuclear site is “a further illustration that an accident is unfortunately possible. It’s beyond our means,” said Corinne Lepage, former Minister of environment and President of CAP 21, on her Twitter account. “How many accidents, explosions, human dramas before starting the transition energy and finally ask the people if he is willing to take risks?” asked the Left Party in a statement.

Before stating: “Get away from the nuclear! Other energy choices are possible, we can not wait!” The Association France Nature Environment also said in a statement that “this new accident highlights the problems of risk control and nuclear technology in France.” “Without prejudice to the extent” of this accident, “we see that nuclear accidents at Chernobyl or Fukushima. Even in the Gard we are not immune,” said Catherine Grèze. She said “it is urgent to rethink our energy policy and nuclear power, to move towards a policy that does not pose a sword of Damocles over the heads of our citizens.”

The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) has assured that there was “no discharge outside” following the explosion that took place in a waste treatment facility operated by Socodei, a subsidiary of EDF. “‘No radioactive release according to the CEA…But who can still rely on such statements,” said Denis Baupin, assistant ecologist at the town hall of Paris, in a message broadcast on his Twitter account.

Satellite image of the Marcoule fuel plant site

Actu-Environnement, a news website for environmental scientists, technicians and development workers, reported that the fatal accident on the central processing of radioactive waste in Marcoule (Gard) has revived, if there was need to, the debate on nuclear power. “The government procrastinate by talking of an industrial accident. The site was under increased surveillance since 2008.” Given the finding of “gaps in the safety culture within the installation Centraco, the ASN has been led in 2008 to seek strong commitments to the operator.

ASN has found, through its inspections and analysis of a succession of events in the installation, failure of control operations and coordination, insufficient knowledge of the safety standard by operating personnel and a lack of safety culture within the facility,” stated the ASN in its report on nuclear safety in 2008. Eleven incidents with a level 1 were found in 2008. Thus, the operator [Areva through its subsidiary, see below] to set up an action plan. “In a new meeting between the ASN and CEO Centraco held in late 2010, the ASN asked for real ownership by the operator of its action plan to improving the safety and commitment at management to implement safety”.

Update3: Unlike the operation of nuclear reactors, the ‘back end’ – spent fuel reprocessing – is inconspicuous. The public know little about these plants, the kind of materials that pass through them, the safety measures they need, the hazards they represent. The nuclear industry likes to keep it that way. The nuclear industry is a worldwide club of nuclear technology suppliers, power companies, regulators and administrators. They work under several layers of secrecy and obfuscation, most of these depending on technical and scientific sophistry. This is part of what makes this club so dangerous.

In France, the way this club operates has been doubly dangeous because local anti-nuclear groups have hardly been heard, their small influence in no way comparable to the powerful French nuclear lobby and its mighty propaganda machine. Until Fukushima, decades of nuclear brainwashing had succeeded in making the population, if not supportive, at least passive and resigned, and accepting of the widely-spread myth of climate-friendly nuclear power. That has changed, slowly but perceptibly. The Marcoule explosion of 2011 September 12 will change it further.

Until more information is released through official sources or through the network of anti-nuke campaign groups, here is useful background information on the Marcoule plant, its operator Areva and its lousy safety record.

The MELOX plant, an Areva subsidiary, is the world leader in the market for the fabrication of recycled nuclear fuel (MOX). it makes 46% of the world’s Mixed Oxide fuel (MOX). To support business development, Areva has said, the MELOX plant, with a production capacity of 195 metric tons per year, launched a three-year investment plan at the end of 2009 to increase production capacity and flexibility, in particular to meet demand for “multi-design/multi-customer” fuel fabrication. Approximately 850 employees work at the site, in addition to nearly 400 indirect jobs. Areva expects the workforce to rise to 900 employees by 2015.

Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication – world total 420 tons (metric tons of initial heavy metal MTIHM/year)

Country – Owner/Controller – Plant Name/Location – Capacity [MTIHM/year]
Belgium – Belgonucléaire SA – Dessel (closes July 31, 2006) – 37
France – Areva NC – Cadarache (somewhat closed) – (40)
France – MELOX SA (100% Areva NC) – Marcoule – 195
India – DAE Nuclear Fuel Complex – Tarapur – 50
Japan – JNC – Tokai-Mura – 10
United Kingdom – British Nuclear Fuels, Ltd – Sellafield – 128

Areva nuclear power operations. Source: Areva annual report

Incidents/Events in the last five years at the MELOX MOX fuel fabrication plant, Marcoule (Gard, France):

1. Contamination incident at MELOX MOX fuel plant – On June 28, 2011, a mechanical failure of an assembly bench caused a radioactive contamination event at the fuel assembly stage of the MELOX MOX fuel plant. Seventeen workers could return to their workplaces after medical checks. The event was rated level 1 on the INES scale. (ASN July 5, 2011)
2. MELOX SA new owner of MELOX MOX fuel plant – On Sep. 3, 2010, the Ministry of Ecology approved the ownership change of the MELOX Marcoule plant from Areva NC to MELOX SA, a 100% owned subsidiary of Areva NC. (Journal Officiel Sep. 5, 2010)
3. Worker contaminated in glove box accident at MELOX fuel fabrication plant – On Feb. 9, 2010, a worker was contaminated when the glove box he was using was damaged in an accident. The worker was transfered to a specialized medical service in the Paris area. The event was rated level 1 on the INES scale. (ASN Feb. 11, 2010)
4. MOX fuel lots mixed up at MELOX fuel fabrication plant – On Oct. 20, 2009, three baskets carrying MOX fuel pellets were mixed up at the Marcoule MOX plant. The error was not detected until Oct. 29, 2009. ASN rated the incident level 1 on the INES scale. (ASN Nov. 6, 2009)
5. Violation of criticality rules at MELOX MOX fuel plant – On March 3, 2009, the amount of fissile material located in a working station exceeded the permissible limit by 1%. No criticality occured, as the limit is set at half the amount required to initiate a criticality. Areva had initially rated the event level 1 on the INES scale. In view of the violation of several safety requirements that led to the event, the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) changed the rating to level 2 on the INES scale. (Areva March 4, 2009; ASN March 19, 2009)
6. Spill at Marcoule waste water treatment plant – On July 17, 2007, three cubic meters of waste water with a specific activity of approx. 40 Bq/cm3 spilled inside the building; only some dozen litres reached the outside of the building. The event was rated level 1 on the INES scale.
7. Violation of criticality rules at MELOX MOX fuel plant – On May 29, 2007, an automatic transport cart carrying plutonium oxide was permitted to enter an already loaded working station. No criticality occured. The incident was rated INES 1. (ASN July 9, 2007)
8. Government authorizes further capacity increase for MELOX MOX fuel plant – On April 26, 2007, Areva received government approval for the requested capacity increase of the MELOX MOX fuel plant from 145 to 195 tHM/a. (Areva April 27, 2007)
9. Public Inquiry into further extension of MELOX MOX fuel plant – On Feb. 2, 2006, the Vice Minister of Industry announced the start of the public consultation process regarding the increase of capacity from 145 to 195 tHM/a. The public inquiry was held from April 18 to June 17, 2006.
[Source: WISE Uranium Project]

Areva's graphical description of its nuclear technologies and fuels cycle. Source: Areva 2010 Reference Document

According to Areva, MOX fuel (Mixed Oxide fuel) is a mixture of approximately 93% depleted uranium powder and 7% plutonium oxide powder. Areva is the world leader in the manufacture of MOX fuel with almost 1,570 tons of heavy metal (tML) and more than 3,000 assemblies produced since the Areva MELOX plant was put online in 1995. In 2009, approximately 139 tons of MOX were produced worldwide, 134 tML of which at the MELOX plant, representing a market share of around 95% for Areva.

Areva’s 2010 Reference Document said: “The production of MOX assemblies is handled by the MELOX plant at the Marcoule site (France – Gard region). The world leader on the MOX market, the AREVA MELOX plant has grown its capacity since 2003 in order to meet increased demand. Annual licensing therefore moved from 145 tons of heavy metal to 195 tons in 2006. Since the Areva Cadarache plant ceased production in July 2003, Areva has brought together MOX production in its MELOX plant.”

We can see clearly the links to the USA and Japanese nuclear industries from these statements in the Areva 2010 Reference Document: “In France, 21 reactors have been technically adapted to cope with this type of fuel. These reactors produce around 7% of the national electricity production. EDF licensing requests for using other reactors are pending. Japan plans to use MOX fuel in 16 to 20 reactors by 2010. A MOX fabrication plant with a capacity of around 130 tons/year is in the planning stages for the Rokkasho-Mura site. Operated by JNFL, it will benefit from an Areva technology transfer. In the United States, in partnership with the Shaw Group and on behalf of the US Department of Energy (DOE), Areva is pursuing the construction of an MFFF plant (Mixed Fuel Fabrication Facility) to manufacture MOX using plutonium of military origin.”

Update2: There’s still little official news being released by France’s government and nuclear authorities on the Marcoule reprocessing plant explosion. The word from the N-safety organisations is as follows: (1) the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has in a new statement said that the explosion occurred in a furnace used for the treatment of low level radioactive waste; (2) according to [French nuclear agency] ASN, the main radionuclide present in the waste materials in the oven is cobalt-60. Autorité de sûreté nucléaire (ASN) has confirmed that there has not been any release of radioactivity from the site and that there is no prospect of any release. According to ASN, the incident has ended. The cause of the explosion is currently unknown and is under investigation.

These statements have not helped inform a Euro and global public fearful of new nuclear disasters, just six months after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami wrecked the Fukushima nuclear power plant. A look at this twitter trendmap shows why.

The Guardian has commented that the Marcoule accident came just a week after the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, bucked the anti-nuclear trend following Japan’s Fukushima disaster and pledged €1bn (£860m) of new investment in atomic power. Despite growing worldwide concern about the safety of nuclear plants – Germany has announced it is phasing its nuclear plants out — Sarkozy said the moratorium on new nuclear reactors adopted by some countries since the Japanese nuclear crisis in March “makes no sense”. “There is no alternative to nuclear energy today,” he told journalists at the time. “We are going to devote €1bn to the nuclear programme of the future, particularly fourth-generation technology.” He also promised “substantial resources” to strengthen research into nuclear safety and a further €1.3bn investment in renewable energy.

Greenpeace has urged the French government to ensure local people are kept fully up to date with the situation and the potential radioactive releases. “Information is still emerging and we do not know the cause of the explosion, but it serves as yet another tragic reminder of the dangers of nuclear power and the urgent need for governments to follow the lead taken by Germany in phasing it out.” It should be noted that this installations on the Marcoule site has not been included in the stress tests of nuclear facilities requested by the French government, nor in the last inspections by the Nuclear Safety Authority.

Authoritative background on the huge Marcoule plant is to be found in the documentation by the International Panel on Fissile Materials. “France initiated a spent nuclear fuel reprocessing program to provide plutonium for its nuclear weapons program in Marcoule in 1958. Later, the vision of the rapid introduction of plutonium-fuelled fast-neutron breeder reactors drove the large-scale separation of plutonium for civilian purposes, starting with the opening of the La Hague plant in 1966, financed under the military and civilian budgets of the Atomic Energy Commission (Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique, CEA). This effort initially was supported broadly by neighboring European countries who contributed to the French fast breeder project and, along with Japan, signed up for French reprocessing services in the 1970s.”

Workers at the Marcoule Nuclear Plant. Photo: TPM Idea Lab

France’s first reprocessing plant was the Usine de Plutonium 1 (UP1, Plutonium Factory 1) at Marcoule. Thirteen thousand tons of reactor fuel from gas-graphite plutonium production and power reactors was reprocessed there between 1958 and late 1997. Today the site hosts a huge decommissioning and clean-up effort. In 2003, the clean up, including waste management, was estimated to eventually cost about €6 billion ($6 billion) and is currently expected last till 2040. In 2005, these costs and liabilities were transferred from the government-owned nuclear-services conglomerate, AREVA NC, to the CEA.

The two reprocessing sites, La Hague and Marcoule, contain over 90 percent of France’s radioactive waste inventory. Their inventories include spent fuel, separated plutonium, large quantities of liquid and vitrified high level waste, and various types of intermediate, transuranic and low level radioactive wastes. A significant fraction of these wastes remains unconditioned. Conditioning techniques have been under development for decades. In view of changing standards, much of the waste that was conditioned between the 1950s and the 1970s will have to be reconditioned. [This information has come from the International Panel on Fissile Materials, Spent Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing in France (2008 April)]

Update1: The first images about the Marcoule explosion have become available, thanks to MaxiSciences. See the photostrip below (captions in French and translated English). Not surprisingly, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), still has not even a mention of the problem on its website. The IAEA doesn’t have Fukushima on its main page either. The ‘Atoms For Peace’ agency, set up 54 years ago “to promote safe, secure and peaceful nuclear technologies”, has a lot of catching up to do.

Voici les premières images de la centrale nucléaire de Marcoule où a eu lieu ce matin un accident meurtrier. (L) Des employés prennent des mesures par sécurité, (M) Les photographes ne peuvent pas dépasser un certain périmètre, (R) Un homme réalise des mesures de la radioactivité. (L) Employees take safety precautions, (M) Photographers are stopped from entering the area, (R) A man measures radioactivity. Photos: MaxiSciences

Sciencemag has reported that on its home page, France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) says that no radioactivity appears to have leaked from the site. The plant, called Centraco, is owned by Socodei, a daughter company of French energy giant EDF (Electricite de France SA). According to Socodei’s website, Centraco “processes scrap metal in its melting plant and combustible waste in its incinerating plant. … The objective is to reduce waste volume, recycle whenever possible, and condition the remainder as ultimate waste packages accepted by the French national agency for radioactive waste management (ANDRA).”

Location of Marcoule. Graphic: Ladepeche.fr

News reports coming in about the explosion at Marcoule, southern France, are still sketchy. One death and several injuries are reported. France’s nuclear safety agency ASN (Autorité de sûreté nucléaire) has issued a short early statement to say there is no radiation threat. This is to be taken as a pre-emptive statement. As we know from the terrible record of nuclear power the world over, the Marcoule falout will become clear in the next days and weeks. [see the detailed Fukushima page and running post].

Reuters has reported that one person was killed in an explosion at the nuclear site of Marcoule in southern France, France’s ASN nuclear watchdog said on Monday, but there was no leak of radioactive material. Marcoule is a nuclear waste management site that does not include any reactors. The explosion took place near a furnace, an ASN spokesperson told Reuters.

Electricite de France SA (EDF) is described in the European bourses as a France-based integrated energy operator active in the generation, distribution, transmission and supply of energy services. It generates energy using nuclear technology, as well as thermal, hydroelectric and other renewable sources. The company is involved in energy generation and energy sales.

Early news in the French press:

Ladepeche.fr – Gard. Un mort dans l’explosion d’un four sur un site nucléaire: Un four a explosé, ce lundi, sur le site nucléaire de Marcoule dans le Gard, entraînant la mort d’un homme et en blessant quatre, dont un grièvement. Alors que la préfecture et les pompiers craignaient une fuite radioactive, l’Autorié de sûreté nucléaire (ASN), EDF et le ministère de l’Ecologie précisent que l’accident n’a provoqué aucune fuite, ni chimique, ni radioactive.

Nuclear centres in France. Graphic: Le Monde

Le site de Marcoule est un centre de traitement de déchets d’une filiale d’EDF. L’incident a eu lieu vers 11h45 dans le centre Centraco, de la société Socodei, a déclaré un porte-parole du Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA). “Pour l’instant, il n’y a pas de rejets à l’extérieur”, a-t-il ajouté. Il a également signalé qu’un périmètre de sécurité a été mis en place en raison des risques de fuite, ce que dément le Midi-Libre.

Europe 1 – Gard : explosion sur un site nucléaire

Le Monde – Explosion d’un four et risque de fuite radioactive sur le site nucléaire de Marcoule

BBC News has provided some useful background on Marcoule – the site is one of the oldest in France, and played a significant role in the development of the French nuclear and thermonuclear deterrents. It opened in 1956 – well after the US began the era of nuclear armaments, at a time when France was among the nations looking to gain their own seat at the nuclear table.

The earliest reactors generated first data and then plutonium for the first successful French test in 1960. Other defence-oriented reactors followed – and as the world contemplated a new generation of much bigger bombs with much bigger destructive capacity, a new reactor at Marcoule was built to produce tritium, fuel for hydrogen (or thermonuclear) weapons. On the civilian side, the site also housed the experimental Phenix fast-breeeder reactor, and – since 1995 – it has combined fissile uranium and plutonium into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, which can be used in nuclear power stations.

The Marcoule site dates back the dawn of the French nuclear age. Photo: BBC News

CBC has reported that the Marcoule site does not include any nuclear power reactors. It is involved with the decommissioning of nuclear facilities, and operates a pressurized water reactor used to produce tritium. The site is located in the Gard region of France, in Langedoc Roussillon, near the Mediterranean Sea. Midi Libre, a local paper in Montpellier, near the site, says the explosion occurred at 11:45 a.m. local time.

The report said one person was seriously injured and has been airlifted to a hospital in Montpellier. Three others were taken to a local hospital. No evacuation notice was given to the local area but a security perimeter around the site has been established, according to reports.

World Nuclear News has a short item – details of the event come from the French nuclear safety regulator, the ASN. It said that the incident occurred at the Centraco facility where low-level radiaoctive wastes is prepared for packing and disposal. This includes items such as equipment, filters and clothing from power plants, universities and hospitals. The facility is operated by Socodei, part of the EDF group. ASN said that its preliminary information was that the furnace used to melt lightly contaminated scrap metal had suffered an explosion. Its first assessment was that one worker was killed and four more injured, one of those seriously.

Nuclear centres in France. Graphic: Ladepeche.fr

RFI English has reported the French government as having said that there are no signs of a radiation leak after a blast at the Marcoule nuclear site in the Rhone Valley on Monday. At least one person died and four more were injured following the explosion of a furnace used to melt down radioactive material. One of the injured is said to be in a critical condition.

Bloomberg cites a spokeswoman for France’s Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet having confirmed that there has been an explosion and said that the minister will visit the site. France’s ASN nuclear safety watchdog said that it will make a statement on the incident. France, which has more nuclear reactors than any other European country, is carrying out safety checks on atomic installations to evaluate dangers from earthquakes and flooding.

News reports two months ago said that the UK is relying on EDF to build the first nuclear power stations for a generation in Suffolk and Somerset by 2018. However, suspicions are growing that EDF is preparing to delay Britain’s new plants substantially, having said it will issue a “revised timetable” for the UK in the autumn. It was understood by the British media that British officials are now working on the assumption that new nuclear will not arrive in the UK until after 2020. The reports had said costs in France have already doubled and construction is severely delayed at EDF’s flagship plant in Flamanville, which will be its first new plant in more than 15 years. Back when construction started in 2006, EDF thought it would cost just €3.3bn (£2.9bn) and take under five years to build. Until last year, EDF was still insisting that Flamanville would be ready by 2012.