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As an introduction, here is a translation of an article in Japanese from Our Planet. There is also a video here, but in Japanese. I may provide a summary later if I have time...
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Fourteen Children of Koriyama City (Fukushima Prefecture) File for a Provisional Injunction to Demand a Mass Evacuation of Schools [Official name of the trial is Fukushima Shu-dan Sokai Saiban, The Fukushima Mass Evacuation Trial]
(Our Planet, 15:32, Saturday, 25 June 2011)
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The parents of 14 elementary and middle school children who attend schools in Koriyama City, Fukushima Prefecture filed a provisional injunction against Koriyama City on 24 June at the Koriyama Branch of the Fukushima District Court to demand a mass evacuation by each school due to strong fears of health damage from radiation emitted by the Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Station. This is the first case of a request for the judiciary to decide on radiation exposure due to the nuclear power station accident.
In April, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) issued a notification that the standard for radiation exposure of schoolchildren in school playgrounds would be set at a maximum of 20 millisieverts/year. This, however, met with opposition from parents, and at the end of May MEXT announced that it would set a goal of less than one millisievert/year, the limit for radiation exposure for the general public set by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). Nevertheless, estimates from the monitoring data by MEXT and others show that the radiation air dose at the seven elementary and middle schools the 14 children are attending reached an accumulated 3.80 to 6.67 millisieverts in just 75 days, from the time the accident occurred on 12 March up to 25 May. Since the external radiation exposure alone greatly exceeds 1 millisievert, the parents are demanding a mass evacuation for each school due to the risk of health damage from radiation exposure.
According to the estimate by the legal team, of the 266 elementary and middle schools in urban areas in Fukushima Prefecture, only five schools show an accumulated annual dose of less than 1 millisievert. Even in Aizu, where the dose rate is relatively low, only one school is below the I milliseivert/year level. Following the filing of the injunction, the legal team held a press conference in Koriyama City at which one of the lawyers, Ken’ichi Ido stated, “The purpose of this action is to see that all children in Fukushima Prefecture are able to take classes in a safe place.”
Until March this year, Mr. Ido was a judge at the Kanazawa Chapter of the Nagoya Court of Appeal. In 2006, he handed down a verdict suspending the operation of the No.2 reactor at the Hokuriku Power Company’s Shika Nuclear Power Station in Ishikawa Prefecture.
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Also see/hear Skype conversations between Chris Busby and the legal team at a press conference on June 24 - with English-Japanese/Japanese-English non-simultaneous interpreting, which takes quite a long time.
2) For a little more background to the MEXT standards and the backlash from the parents see the following entry in the Rolling Update No.3 on the Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Station disaster.
Huge Outcry Erupting: Gov’t is leaving Fukushima to suffer and perish — Impossible to evacuate Fukushima City, home to 300,000 under the update for May 23.
3) For a little more background to Mr. Ken'ichi Ido, see the gist of the article from the Tokyo Newspaper (in green font) under the update for April 23. He was the only judge ever in Japan to hand down a verdict against a nuclear power plant reactor.
4) This is the first case to be filed on radiation exposure due to the nuclear power station accident, but at least one more (in Ibaraki Prefecture) is in preparation.
Big capitalism and the population growth lobby force people to live in dangerously risky conditions which by tradition they used to avoid. Only by returning power to the citizens via local and regional governments can we stop the population growth and the constant increase in accidents, corruption and diminished quality of life. To return power to local citizens, we need better laws to stop media ownership residing in so very few hands and being allowed to be the default 'information' conduite for government and the principle means of publicising candidates for election.
Tony Boy's rolling update on the nuclear disaster in Japan is highly informative and stimulating because it continually raises very topical issues about the consequences of overpopulation and big scale market capitalism. Yesterday he wrote about how laws existed in Japan against building on tsunami-prone coastal areas in the 1930s, but how, probably in the 1950s, these laws were changed.
It is typical that in the 1950s, a time of massive supplies of cheap fossil fuel and turbo-charged population growth, now falsely associated with durable democracy by growth economists and foreign aid proponents, peoples' rights to self-government were sacrificed.
How similar to the situation in Queensland today, where a backward, growth-obsessed government not only allowed building on flood plains, but advertised for more and more people to come and live in this dangerously situated city. (See "Queensland Floods 2011.")
In a real democracy where the scale of the economy permits local populations to adjust in advance to conditions and risks, laws and projects will be responsive to local conditions. Where laws and projects are conceptualised and pushed by capital from distant places, common sense and democratic objections will be overwhelmed in a system that actually leaves people open to natural disasters. See, for instance, "Prof Robin Batterham - Australia should buy farms in Mozambique." Adding insult to injury, the same system will demand that the citizens compensate big business for its own mistakes as well as forfeit their lives and possessions. Also, due to the distorting nature of market capitalism, disaster can be turned into a profit making industry - the insurance industry. If governments compensated tax-payers for natural and man-made disasters, we could be sure that buildings would not be put on flood plains and that nuclear power plants would be rare power-sources and not placed near population centers.
The cause of these problems is the scale of government and profit in capitalist economies that have grown beyond local and regional control and feedback. As Tony Boys has written, "a large part of the destruction, and the nuclear disaster, could have been avoided if the collective memory had remained intact."
The problem is that capitalism, by prioritising the market over the needs of citizens, will always over-ride common sense, courtesy and safety. Local knowledge, which often resides in elderly people, suffers through the deliberate diminishing of the status of the elderly in our shallow 'modern' capitalist societies. The mainstream press, as well as being a vehicle for all kinds of market-weighted information distortions, undermines the huge importance of local memory and old people. Old people, who can remember how things were offer a significant curb to media and politicians which find real information inconvenient. See for instance, "Should Jeannie Pratt and Elisabeth Murdoch downsize to high rises in Activity Centers to give young people more room?"
We can see this in the Australian growth lobby's demand for Australia to have an obviously unsustainable population. A hallmark of this lobby is its distortion of facts regarding dependency ratios, plus its disrespect and callousness towards elderly people.
Victorian Premier, Ted Baillieu's statement "Interstate raiders buying up Melbourne properties," by Simon Johanson, David Rood, Jason Dowling, The Age, April 2, 2011, was typical of this dangerously subservient attitude to the market.
Premier Ted Baillieu said he would never ''put up the stop sign'' to curb population growth. He warned that Victorians will have to ''endure'' the problems of growth. This attitude is completely irresponsible, first in terms of putting the interests of outside investors ahead of the people he was elected to represent and, second, in snubbing his nose at the adverse impact of increasing population on environmental issues.
These sort of elite behaviours are indicative of the working contempt for democracy and quality of life within such systems. The only ideas that get up are those which focus money-aggregation in the short term. Population growth and capitalism are co-malignancies. The push for nuclear to maintain and increase huge undemocratic populations is a product of these unwieldy self-perpetuating systems. As the supply of cheap petroleum runs down, nuclear at any price is being pushed.
The bottom line is actually that humans are capable of allowing their populations to wind down naturally, as long as the remain in control of information, land and government. (See Sheila Newman, The Urge to Disperse(2011) If they are distributed in large artificial cities like animals in intensive farms they have no real autonomy or links to significant traditions and information on which to base building, immigration, and family-size decisions. For instance, left to themselves, Australians were on course to allow their population to diminish. But nasty elites, persuaded by a 'financial' bottom line, which is anything but realistic, have demanded and forced the country to take more and more immigrants. This is a terrible interference in peoples' rights, safety, democracy and security.
Look for "Tokyo Newspaper, p.20" in
Tony's rolling update no. 2, here: but I am citing it below anyway:
"An article on p.20 mentions that a) tsunami in the Tokai region in 1498 reached a height of 15 m and killed 50,000 people at a time when Japan's population totalled only about 12 million, and that b) this is far larger than current assumptions concerning possible tsunami disasters. A second article on p.20 mentions that after the Showa Sanriku earthquake in 1933, Miyagi Prefecture issued regulations including fines or imprisonment clauses prohibiting construction (of homes and so on) in coastal areas likely to be affected by tsunamis. The regulations appear to have been rescinded in the 1950s, when the national Building Standards Law was introduced. Over three thousand people lost their lives in the 1933 earthquake and tsunami. An article I missed in the yesterday's (April 6) Akahata (p.14) describes a book published in 1995 by former public school teacher Mr Yugi Iinuma on the history of the dangers of living in the flat coastal area of Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture. A picture in the article shows the former teacher, now 80, holding the book at an evacuation center in Miyagino Ward, Sendai City. Mr Iinuma's house was destroyed in the tsunami, but he managed to escape in the time between the earthquake and the arrival of the tsunami. It would seem that people forget about the dangers of tsunamis over time. It's sad to see how a large part of the destruction, and the nuclear disaster, could have been avoided if the collective memory had remained intact."
Of course, when I say how stimulating and interesting Tony Boy's articles on the Japanese disaster are, there is an unreal sense of irony because Tony really is living through 'interesting times' and the impetus that started him writing about this was a desire to understand the threats implied to his own life as well as a desire to stop nuclear power development. Although many people in Japan have lost their lives to earthquake and tsunami, an unknown number have lost their lives to the current nuclear disaster with another unknown number of future victims. It requires concentration to work out the true nature and severity of the nuclear power aspect of this continuing disaster. This difficulty is increased by the unreal attitude of most media resources who have begun to report the whole matter vaguely, as if in a dream. It is obvious that they are not up to the technological demands of reporting but even more than this; they are succumbing to spin that says, "Disaster and suffering are inevitable. We have to put the market first and the market has to grow so the danger has to grow." (Note that French media sources are more technologically able on the subject of nuclear, but the label (and some reality) of "Green hysteria" is being used to alienate environmental protest and the result of this is diminishing reporting of events in Japan even there.)
If you want some really critical and easy to understand, fascinating examinations, from a nuclear engineering standpoint, have a look at Arnie Gunderson's "Fukushima Updates". Beautifully short and precise, they come from a techno-legal field and seem to be far ahead of anything you will see in the mainstream or popular 'green' media.
Source of these photos was from moving footage on French News, France 2 JT, http://jt.france2.fr/20h/ Friday 1 April 2011
This space does not contain an article. It only contains photo files for a comment on Tony Boy's rolling updates to Japan's nuclear disaster.
The 2000hrs French news for Sunday 27 March essentially confirms what Tony Boys has to say in his candobetter.net article"Japan Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster - A personal story about the next 100 years of human history". The situation is very bad and could significantly deteriorate at any moment placing much of the North island of Japan at risk to life.
French commentators say that it is very difficult to analyse exactly what is happening due to conflicting and contradictory reports from TEPCO, the managers of the nuclear site in question, near Fukushima city. TEPCO looks incompetent, with a history of falsification of documentation of radiation levels.
Commentators for the French news service say, "The only certainty is that the situation has not improved; it has got much worse."
Sunday's bad news came from the basement of the second reactor's electricity building. The water there is extremely radioactive. 1000 millisiverts per hour - a peak which seems to confirm that the core of the reactor has partially melted and that the housing is not sealed. Official spokespersons from Radiation Protection and Safety in Japan say that they believe the high radiation emissions come from a leak in the reactor. For comparison, nuclear plant workers safety rules say that they should not receive more than 20 millisiverts annually. In accidents and emergencies they may risk up to 1000 millisieverts a year. (Note that the rate at the reactor above 1000 millisieverts an HOUR.) With such high radioactivity, no-one can go near the building. All work has been stopped.
Thierry Charles, Director of the France's Radiation Protection and Safety, commented that the situation cannot continue. [TEPCO] need to bring in seawater to cool it. [Ed. But sea water will cause corrosion of the plant and possibly prevent future cooling by plugging the pipes with salt.] The risk is also to fish, seaweeds, crustaceans within and outside the exclusion zone. These things form the basis of the Japanese diet.
Yves Marignac, "Independent Expert" and Director of Wise Paris, commented that the degree of danger requires an evacuation of at least 40 km from the site, much further than the area prescribed by the Japanese authorities.
This radioactivity in the second reactor is the highest measured since the beginning of the nuclear catastrophy.
Fish sales are down in Tokyo despite fishmongers now importing fish from outside the contamination zone. (This should come as no surprise.) Babies who can afford to are drinking bottled water, since mains-water has become unsafe.
Source: France 2 News, 2000hrs, 27-March-2011 Translation and article by Sheila Newman, Energy, Environment and Population Sociologist.
See also Tony's article on candobetter.net: "Japan Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster - A personal story about the next 100 years of human history"
This film signals the beginning of a major campaign to say No to Nukes that Tony Boys is launching from his farm in the nuclear hot-spot that beautiful ancient Japan has become. He asks the rest of the world to take notice and try to prevent more situations like this. He wants no new nuclear plants to be built and for current reactors to be phased out within their pre-set time. In the film he also discusses democracy, population growth, and a future without plentiful petroleum or plentiful nuclear power.
There is more footage where we discuss arable land in Japan and some options that might be available but I do not have the time to edit this yet.
Hopefully things will not deteriorate too much further in Japan and we will have more articles from Tony.
Sorry about the crackling sound; the interview was done on a computer linked phone.
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