"Japan was warned in 2018 it needed to improve risk communications by the World Health Organization, but failed to act on the advice until the coronavirus crisis deepened this month."
Today marks the 9th anniversary of the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan's north, most widely remembered for the nuclear disaster they triggered in Fukushima. For years before Fukushima, too, academics and others had warned such a disastrous outcome was possible without safety improvements. Due to "regulatory capture" -- not uncommon in the nuclear industry -- those measures were never enforced and thus never implemented. This story in the Nikkei seems to suggest that very little was learned, which is just about the biggest kick in the teeth you could dish out to the the 160,000 people who were displaced by Fukushima and, along with countless other, were and continue to be severely impacted by the disasters. Every year my thoughts are with those people, some of them friends from my time in Fukushima, and this year even more so. I suspect they might be furious.

I have just returned from another visit to Fukushima and unsurprisingly the talk among local residents centred around the recent advise from a panel of experts that the contaminated water being stored within the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant should be released into the sea.

The draft proposal, penned by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), recommends the gradual release of the water into the Pacific Ocean as a safer, more feasible method than evaporation, which was the method used after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in southeastern U.S. state of Virginia.

Once the proposal has been submitted to the government deliberations will begin on exactly when and how the water should be released. 

Much of the contaminated water, which is being stored within the Fukushima No.1's grounds in massive steel containers,  has been treated to strip it of 62 of the 63 radionuclides that leaked from the facility after it experienced multiple meltdowns and explosions in March 2011.

The only contaminant that has yet to be removed is tritium, which some experts say is harmless in small doses.

The government has been attempting to release the water for almost three years, despite objections from local fisheries and other groups in the devastated area that have been struggling to rebuild communities devastated by massive earthquakes and tsunami that hit the region on March 11, 2011 and triggered the nuclear disaster.

Those voices grew after plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) initially claimed in 2017 it had stripped the contaminated water of all dangerous particles except for tritium, but was forced to backtrack following tests that showed the wastewater still contained many highly dangerous radionuclides.

Among those contaminants was strontium -- known as a bone-seeker as, much like calcium, it seeks out bones when imbibed but with a significant difference: strontium can lead to cancer in later life.

Trust such proclamations has long been in low supply since the disasters, with reports of coverups by TEPCO and other scandals having a severely negative impact on an increasingly skeptical public. 

"You can't help but feel suspicious of this kind of report, especially when METI is involved," said one man in Fukushima City on February 2 in reference to the ministry's well-documented indiscretions favouring the nuclear industry. "I hear that there are still other avenues that should be explored before releasing the water. such as treating it to remove the tritium. It seems cost is the reason that's getting in the way."

In an earlier blog I reported comments by Shaun Burnie, a nuclear expert with Greenpeace, who has similarly criticised the government's efforts to release the water,  calling it “the worst option” available. 

“The only viable option, and it’s not without risks, is the long-term storage of this water in robust steel tanks over at least the next century, and the parallel development of water processing technology,” Burnie said during an interview. 

A number of proposals to treat the water were submitted to a Japanese government task force by nuclear companies, all of which were dismissed as being impracticable – a euphemism for “too expensive,”  said Burnie.
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“The reality is there is no end to the water crisis at Fukushima, a crisis compounded by poor decision-making by both TEPCO and the government,” he said.

​The Japanese government looks set to ignore such opinion and the most recent assessment comes three months after then  Environment Minister Yoshiaki Harada said draining the contaminated water into the sea was the “only option” left as the site is running out of space to store it.

The volume of radioactive water at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has been growing daily since the March 2011 meltdowns at the plant. It is the result of groundwater mixing with radioactive contaminants from three reactors that experienced meltdowns and explosions following a massive earthquake and tsunami in the region.


In addition to local Fukushima fisheries and other residents who continue to protest its release into the Pacific, Japan's neighbour South Korea has also expressed concerns. In October 2019, Seoul sent a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency calling on the nuclear watchdog to play a more active role in the wastewater issue. It also summoned a senior Japanese embassy official to explain how Japan plans to deal with the water and has asked Japan “to take a wise and prudent decision on the issue.”

During an IAEA board meeting in Vienna a month earlier, Japan’s ambassador Takeshi Hikihara reportedly said Japan has been transparent in showing to the international community how it has been dealing with the aftermath of the nuclear accident and is taking every precaution to ensure the safety of the marine environment.

TEPCO has said it will run out of storage space at the plant by 2022, while environment minister Harada says the dumping of the current load — which is being stored within the plant’s grounds in more than 1,000 containers — could makeup to 17 years, once it has been treated and diluted to acceptably safe levels. 

The typhoon that wreaked havoc throughout much of Japan over the weekend reportedly scattered contaminated waste from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster zone.

Officials from Tamura in Fukushima Prefecture reported Sunday that dozens of flexible bags containing radioactive waste were swept away from a storage facility by Typhoon Hagibis, which claimed at least 40 lives and left thousands homeless.

The facility holds some 2,700 one-ton bags of waste, mostly radioactive vegetation that has been removed from the grounds of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which experienced triple meltdowns and explosions in March 2011 — the second-worst nuclear disaster in history. ​

According to national broadcaster NHK 10 bags were retrieved from a nearby stream, but it remained unclear how many of the remaining bags stored at the facility were still missing.

An online petition urging an appeal to the acquittal of three men charged in relation to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster has proven successful. 

Japanese lawyers lodged an appeal Sept. 30 to a ruling earlier in the month that cleared three top executives of utility company Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), which operates the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, of professional negligence.

It is the only criminal trial to have been held as a result of the 2011 disaster, which was triggered by a massive tsunami that resulted in multiple meltdowns at the plant, forcing the evacuation of 160,000 residents.

The three former executives, former Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and senior executives Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro, were accused of professional negligence causing death and injury having failed to heed advice about the possibility of a large-scale tsunami inundating the nuclear facility.

Prosecutors, who had sought 5-year prison terms for the trio, had argued that there had been sufficient warnings and evidence that such an event could occur and that the TEPCO executives had ignored that evidence and failed to improve the plant’s defence system.

Defence lawyers argued that even if countermeasures had been carried out, they would not have prevented a disaster that so large nobody had ever predicted it could happen. 

Presiding judge, Kenichi Nagafuchi, agreed with the defence, ruling at the Tokyo District Court on Sept. 19 that the executives could not have foreseen the magnitude 9 quake.

Around 14,000 people have since signed an online petition demanding an appeal of that ruling, prompting lawyers to file with the Tokyo District Court. 

Though TEPCO claims the nuclear disaster itself did not lead directly to any fatalities,  around 50 residents — mostly  elderly — died as a result of the enforced evacuation.

Thousands of evacuees who have been unable to return to their homes are currently suing TEPCO for millions of dollars in damages in civil law cases.

SOURCES: NHK, Asahi Shimbun 

Three former executives of the utility operating the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant have been cleared of professional negligence by a Tokyo court.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) executives, former chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and vice-presidents Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro,  were accused of failing to implement adequate countermeasures to safeguard the plant against the magnitude 9 earthquake and towering 15 meter tsunami that devastated the region on March 11, 2011. 

The tsunami triggered multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima plant, causing the evacuation of more than 160,000 residents living in the immediate vicinity. Most of them have been unable to return, or chosen not to, due to lingering high  levels of radiation.

In the only criminal case resulting from the disaster, which was the worst since Chernobyl in 1986, the trio were acquitted of professional negligence leading to death and injury. Prosecutors argued that there had been sufficient warnings and evidence that such an event could occur.

In 2002 one Tohoku University professor had warned that a tsunami of more than 15 metres could hit the plant, while in the same year an internal TEPCO study, based on a government report, had itself concluded that a 15.7 meter wave could hit the plant in the event of an magnitude 8.3 quake. 

However TEPCO executives ignored the evidence and failed to improve the plant’s defence system.

In a statement read during a court hearing a former TEPCO tsunami countermeasures official, Kazuhiko Yamashita, said the three executives had first approved plans to carry out tsunami safety measures but later shelved the plans due to concerns that they may lead to calls to shut down the plant.

Defence lawyers argued that even if countermeasures had been carried out, they would not have prevented a disaster which was of a scale that nobody had predicted. 
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Prosecutors had sought 5 year prison terms for the trio but in concluding the two-year trial, presiding judge, Kenichi Nagafuchi, agreed with the defence, ruling that the executives could not have foreseen the magnitude 9 quake.

Though TEPCO claims the nuclear disaster itself did not lead directly to any fatalities,  around 50 residents — mostly  elderly — died as a result of the enforced evacuation.

While protestors outside the court, some who had traveled from Fukushima 160 miles away, expressed their dismay at the ruling, former TEPCO chairman Katsumata said that he wanted to reiterate his apologies for the trouble caused to Japanese society by the nuclear disaster.
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In some of the 30 civil cases that have been brought against TEPCO and the government by over 10,000 evacuees, district courts have ruled the utility could have predicted and prevented the nuclear crisis. 

Sources: NHK, Mainichi Shimbun

Japan’s new environment minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, says the country should shut down all its nuclear reactors to ensure there are no more Fukushimas. 

Koizumi, who is the son of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, said during his first news conference Wednesday that he wants to look into “how we will scrap [nuclear reactors], not how to retain them.” 

Koizumi Jr. was appointed environment minister, which overseas Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority, during a recent Cabinet reshuffle by Prime Minister Shinzi Abe, a notoriously pro-nuclear hardliner. 

As indeed was Koizumi’s father, until the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011, when massive earthquakes and tsunami  triggered three nuclear reactor meltdowns and explosions, leading to the evacuation of 160,000 residents.

The former prime minister has since become a highly vocal opponent of nuclear energy.

Japan currently has six nuclear reactors in operation —a fraction of the 54 that were online before the March disasters that were then supplying almost 30 percent of the country’s electricity.  

Japan’s government wants to increase reactor operation so that nuclear power to make up between 20%  and 22% of the overall energy mix by 2030.

Despite each reactor having to go through multi-billion-dollar checks for relicensing under new safety standards, attempts to get more reactors online have been thwarted by protestors who believe nuclear power has no place in a country prone to major earthquakes and tsunami. Some nuclear plants have even been found to sit atop active geological faults.

Environment minister Koizumi’s belief that Japan can and should do without nuclear power is unsurprisingly dismissed by other atomic energy supporters in Abe’s government.  

“There are risks and fears about nuclear power,” trade and industry minister Isshu Sugawara told reporters. “But ‘zero-nukes’ is, at the moment and in the future, not realistic.”

Japan’s environment minister says radioactive water being stored at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant must be dumped into the ocean, a statement that comes just days after South Korea expressed concerns over the wastewater to the international nuclear watchdog. 

Environment Minister Yoshiaki Harada says draining the more than 1 million tons of contaminated water  being stored at the Fukushima plant into the sea is the “only option” left as the site is running out of space to store it.

The volume of radioactive water at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has been growing daily since the March 2011 meltdowns at the plant. It is the result of groundwater mixing with radioactive contaminants from three reactors that experienced meltdowns and explosions following a massive earthquake and tsunami in the region.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) initially claimed it had stripped the contaminated water of all dangerous particles except for tritium, but was forced to backtrack following tests that showed the wastewater still contained many highly dangerous radionuclides, including strontium and caesium.

The government is awaiting an assessment from an expert panel before deciding on how to dispose of the radioactive water, though local Fukushima fisheries and other residents continue to protest its release into the Pacific.

Neighbour South Korea is also concerned. Last Thursday, Seoul sent a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency expressing concerns over the radioactive wastewater, calling on the nuclear watchdog to play a more active role. It also summoned a senior Japanese embassy official last month to explain how Japan plans to deal with the water and has asked Japan “to take a wise and prudent decision on the issue.”

During an IAEA board meeting in Vienna Sept. 10, Japan’s ambassador Takeshi Hikihara reportedly said Japan has been transparent in showing to the international community how it has been dealing with the aftermath of the nuclear accident and is taking every precaution to ensure the safety of the marine environment.

TEPCO has said it will run out of storage space at the plant by 2022, while environment minister Harada says the dumping of the current load — which is being stored within the plant’s grounds in more than 1,000 containers — could makeup to 17 years, once it has been treated and diluted to acceptably safe levels. 

While Harada believes Japan now has no choice but to dump the water, Shaun Burnie, a nuclear expert with Greenpeace, criticised Harada's "innacurate and misleading statement" and called the discharge of the water into the ocean “the worst option” available. 

“The only viable option, and it’s not without risks, is the long-term storage of this water in robust steel tanks over at least the next century, and the parallel development of water processing technology,” he says. As Japan has no equivalent to Europe’s Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR), Greenpeace has voiced its concerns over the water crisis with the UN International Maritime Organisation, he added.

A number of proposals to treat the water were submitted to a Japanese government task force by nuclear companies, all of which were dismissed as being impracticable – a euphemism for “too expensive,”  says Burnie.
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“The reality is there is no end to the water crisis at Fukushima, a crisis compounded by poor decision-making by both TEPCO and the government,” he says.

I recently had an article published in the UK's Daily Telegraph about the health situation in Fukushima. It was based upon two visits I made to the evacuation zone, the first in December 2018 with photographer Simon Townsley, whose evocative photos accompany the story here (free registration required to view full article).

In addition to venturing deep into the evacuated zone, Simon and I also jumped aboard a fishing boat to take an early morning trip out into the Pacific with a group that takes samples of water samples near the two Fukushima nuclear plants for analysis.

It was a fascinating trip and opinions still differ hugely on the health risks. On the one hand there have been few deaths directly resulting from radiation exposure (based on information actually reported to date) and confirmed or suspected thyroid cancers among children are thought by some experts to be unrelated to the Fukushima nuclear accident. At the same time, the views of those same experts are refuted by the likes of Greenpeace and Japanese government's attempts to paint a rosy picture of the situation (not to mention historical collusion with the energy sector) does give one pause. 

From my experience during these most recent visits to the zone, I would err on the side of caution: armed with a Geiger counter, I took regular radiation measurements and one area where we visited was more than 350 times the safe limit stipulated by the International Atomic Energy Agency!

An article in the Asahi looks at Japan Prime Minster Shinzo Abe's recent "unprotected" visit to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, site of history's second-worst nuclear disaster in 2011, and his attempts to further his notorious 2013 claim that the situation in Fukushima is "under control." 

The leader visited the viewing area, which is about 100 meters from the plant, in suit and tie in a bid to show the 40-year decommissioning of the plant is progressing smoothly. Abe has also been keen to push the notion that residents evacuated from the region in the aftermath of the disaster -- triggered by a magnitude 9 earthquake and towering tsunami -- are fast returning to the area.

In fact, the actual situation in both cases is at odds with his views. Radiation levels at the plant -- and in many parts of the evacuated zone -- are still dangerously high and official resident returnee figures are greatly exaggerated, inflated considerably by itinerant cleanup workers who are occupying abandoned homes and by the government's definition of "evacuee".  

Either way, of the 100,000-plus residents who evacuated from the zone in 2011,  only 12,000 have "returned" -- around half of those are thought to be cleanup workers. It would seem that just as with Trump's America,  Japan is victim not of fake news, but fake governmental data. 

And as I mentioned in an article for the Daily Telegraph in the UK recently, the situation at the plant is far from under control, with a million tons of contaminated water and hundreds of thousands of kilograms of strontium-laced sludge being stored within the plant's grounds. Not to mention, plant officials barely know the situation within the three devastated reactors that suffered meltdowns in March 2011.

​Asahi article in English can be found here

I am happy and honoured to have a series of photos included in the 2019 Auckland Festival of Photography. The series of 25 images looks at the efforts of local residents to bring a bit of cheer to a Fukushima town that was evacuated after the 2011 nuclear disaster. More details here