TEPCO Executives Go On Trial For Fukushima Reactor Disaster

Three former executives with the operator of the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have pleaded not guilty to charges of professional negligence, in the only criminal action targeting officials since the triple meltdown more than six years ago.

In the first hearing of the trial at Tokyo district court, Tsunehisa Katsumata, who was chairman of Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) at the time of the disaster, and two other former executives argued they could not have foreseen a tsunami of the size that knocked out the plant’s backup cooling system, triggering a meltdown in three reactors.

“I apologise for the tremendous trouble to the residents in the area and around the country because of the serious accident that caused the release of radioactive materials,” Katsumata said, bowing slightly.

Prosecutors alleged that the 77-year-old, along with his co-defendants, Sakae Muto, 67, and Ichiro Takekuro, 71 – both former Tepco vice-presidents – had been shown data that anticipated a tsunami of more than 10 metres in height that could cause a power outage and other serious consequences.

A report by a government panel said Tepco simulated the impact of a tsunami on the plant in 2008 and concluded that a wave of up to 15.7 metres (52 feet) could hit the plant if a magnitude-8.3 quake occurred off the coast of Fukushima. Executives at the company allegedly ignored the internal study.

 

The three men – charged with professional negligence resulting in death and injury – have since retired from Tepco.

The company, which faces a multibillion-dollar bill for decommissioning Fukushima Daiichi, is not a defendant in the trial. If convicted, the men face up to five years in prison or a penalty of up to 1m yen ($10,000).

Although there are no records of anyone dying as a result of exposure to radiation from the plant, prosecutors alleged the executives were responsible for the deaths of 40 elderly people who were evacuated from a hospital near the plant.

The Fukushima plant had a meltdown after the tsunami, triggered by a magnitude-9 earthquake, hit the plant on the afternoon of 11 March 2011.

The tsunami killed almost 19,000 people along the north-east coast of Japan and forced more than 150,000 others living near the plant to flee radiation. Some of the evacuated neighbourhoods are still deemed too dangerous for former residents to return to.

“They continued running the reactors without taking any measures whatsoever,” the prosecutor said. “If they had fulfilled their safety responsibilities, the accident would never have occurred.”

Muto challenged the allegation by the prosecution that he and the other defendants failed to take sufficient preventative measures despite being aware of the risk of a powerful tsunami more than two years before the disaster.

“When I recall that time, I still think it was impossible to anticipate an accident like that,” he said. “I believe I have no criminal responsibility over the accident.”

Investigations into the accident have been highly critical of the lax safety culture at Tepco and poor oversight by industry regulators. Prosecutors considered the case twice, and dropped it both times, but a citizens’ judicial panel overrode their decision and indicted the former executives.

Outside the court, Ruiko Muto, a Fukushima resident and head of the group of plaintiffs, said: “Since the accident, nobody has been held responsible nor has it been made clear why it happened. Many people have suffered badly in ways that changed their lives. We want these men to realise how many people are feeling sadness and anger.”

Reuters

PM Abe Dismisses Calls For Imamura Resignation

Imamura At Diet Thursday

 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dismissed opposition calls Thursday for the resignation of the disaster reconstruction minister, Masahiro Imamura, over remarks implying Fukushima evacuees yet to return to parts of the prefecture deemed safe to live in should fend for themselves.

Masahiro Imamura had been defending at a Tuesday press conference the central government’s decision to delegate help for the “voluntary evacuees” from the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster when he said it is such people’s “own responsibility, their own choice” not to return.

“I want him to continue to be alongside those affected by the disaster and devote every effort to his duties with the aim of realizing reconstruction as soon as possible,” Abe said during a plenary session of the House of Representatives.

Earlier Thursday, Imamura, 70, apologized for “causing a nuisance to everyone” at a session of the lower house committee on reconstruction from the 2011 disaster.

Housing subsidies ran out last month for people who left areas other than government-designated zones around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

At the Japanese Lower House of the Diet on Thursday Imamura said “Prime Minister Abe said I should apologize that I used a disparaging word and gave the impression that (the evacuees) are responsible for their own (return) despite the fact that they are displaced because of the nuclear disaster, and I deeply apologize,” Imamura said.

Kazuko Kori, a lawmaker from the main opposition Democratic Party the recovering area of northeastern Japan, had called for Imamura to resign because “we cannot discuss reconstruction under this minister.”

Many in the Diet have dismissed Imamura's aplogy as being nothing more than "Abe told me to, so that is the sole reason I am apologizing".

But Imamura vowed to “keep performing my duties in good faith.”

Imamura had aggressively lashed out at the reporter who had asked him the question on Tuesday, yelling “shut up” at the reporter during the press conference. He offered a brief apology the same day for having “become emotional.”

He said Thursday he is willing to apologize to the reporter, “if Prime Minister Abe said it is necessary.”

The lower house reconstruction committee is currently debating a proposal to reform a special law relating to the 2011 disaster that would see the state pay for cleanup efforts in the areas of Fukushima still too contaminated with radioactivity to live in.

Imamura has been in his post since a Cabinet reshuffle in August last year.

KYODO

Disaster Reconstruction Minister Masahiro Imamura Calls Fukushima Evacuees Leeches

Masahiro Imamura, Japan’s disaster reconstruction minister, said Tuesday displaced people yet to return to areas of Fukushima Prefecture deemed safe to live in are “responsible for their own lives and living,” before snapping at the reporter whose question prompted the remark.

Imamura made the comment at a press conference explaining the government’s efforts for the reconstruction of areas hit by the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.

Housing subsidies ran out last month for those who had left areas other than government-designated zones around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Citing a court decision last month that the central government and the plant’s operator were liable in the nuclear disaster in the first ruling of its kind since the crisis, a reporter asked what the state is doing to help the “voluntary evacuees.”

Imamura responded that the central government has delegated such matters to prefectural authorities, which are more knowledgeable about local conditions.

“It’s evacuees responsibility, their own choice not to return, they are acting like leeches” he said when pressed further, pointing out that other evacuees have managed to go back to the areas.

The reporter said some of those still displaced have found themselves unable to return, and asked whether the state should take more responsibility for looking after those people.

“We are taking responsibility. The evacuees refuse to return so we have the situation now. So why are you saying something so rude?” Imamura shouted, slamming his podium.

Pointing a finger at the reporter, he then yelled, “Take that back! Get out of here!”

“You’re the one who’s causing problems for the evacuees,” someone called out as Imamura walked away from the podium, to which the minister responded “Shut up! You are annoying!" before leaving the room.

“The minister has informed me that he became emotional and was unable to remain calm for part of today’s press conference,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said during a subsequent press conference.

Suga, the government’s top spokesman, said the matter is one for Imamura himself to “handle appropriately.”

Imamura apologized later Tuesday, telling reporters he had “become emotional.”  When he was pressed again to explain what the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is doing to assist the remaining evacuees, Imamura thanked the media present and left the press room without comment.

Imamura, 70, was installed in his post in a Cabinet reshuffle in August last year.

KYODO

Here is video of the exchange

Cesium Spread In Fukushima By Wild Mushrooms

Source: Asahi News - 朝日新聞

Radioactive cesium released after the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant's triple meltdown in 2011 is continuing to contaminate the environment through wild mushrooms, scientists say.

It turns out that the fungi absorb cesium and then release it through their spores after concentrating it.

But the amount of cesium in the environment is miniscule and poses no threat to human health, say the researchers, who are primarily with the Meteorological Research Institute of the Japan Meteorological Agency, Ibaraki University and Kanazawa University.

The new findings indicate that cesium is released into the environment again by mushroom spores in mountains and forests in zones designated as difficult to return to because of high contamination levels after the nuclear accident triggered by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster.

Radiation levels in the air are measured at monitoring posts and disclosed to the public. Those measurements are taken at a designated height to measure radiation from the ground and in the atmosphere.

In a separate effort, a team of scientists from the Meteorological Research Institute and other bodies measured the radioactivity concentration of cesium-137 by collecting airborne particles 1 meter above ground in Fukushima Prefecture.

The team’s survey showed that cesium levels in a mountainous area in the northwestern part of the town of Namie rise five times in summer compared with winter. The region is part of the difficult-to-return zone.

The increased cesium level during summer is equivalent to less than one ten-thousandth of the radiation dose of 2.1 millisieverts, which the average individual is naturally exposed to each year.

The latest findings were in marked contrast to studies covering the prefectural capital of Fukushima and elsewhere that showed cesium levels were higher in winter than summer.

Initially, the researchers considered the possibility of cesium on the ground's surface being kicked up by clouds of dust. But they found no clear association between the cesium level and dust.

Teruya Maki, an associate professor of microorganism ecology at Kanazawa University, analyzed genes of airborne particles gathered in forests and mountains in the northwestern part of Namie from August to September 2015.

The results showed that many of the particles were derived from mushrooms.

Between June and October last year, more than 10 kinds of wild mushrooms were gathered on 10 occasions in the region’s forests and mountains. The radioactivity concentration levels in the spores measured up to 143 becquerels per gram.

When multiplying the cesium concentration per spore by the number of collected spores per cubic meter, the result roughly matched the measured cesium concentration for the area.

“Spores in which cesium was concentrated were likely released into the atmosphere, raising the airborne concentration,” said Kazuyuki Kita, an air environment science professor at Ibaraki University, who was involved in the analysis of cesium levels.

The amount of cesium contained in a spore of sampled mushrooms was extremely small.

“Even if people inhale the air in areas where mushroom spores containing cesium are spreading, that could never affect human health,” said Kazuhiko Ninomiya, a researcher of radiochemistry at Osaka University, who is a member of the research team.

The researchers are also trying to ascertain the extent to which the mushroom spores spread. They are planning more studies to figure out if the distances involved could be several kilometers.

Last summer, airborne cesium concentration levels for mountains and forests in Namie that have yet to be decontaminated were almost the same as those for an area 1 kilometer away that has been decontaminated on a trial basis.

That indicates cesium is likely spreading in the air, according to the scientists.

Asahi News

Fukushima Evacuees Face End Of Housing Subsidy

Fukushima residents protests end of evacuee subsidies

Saturday will mark six years since the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami.  It marks as well the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster which caused the evacuation of over 150,000 residents of not only Fukushima City, but Fukushima Prefecture residents also.

At the end of this month, housing subsidies run out for those who fled the Fukushima nuclear disaster from areas other than the government-designated evacuation zones, and as the clock ticks down, evacuees have had to decide whether to return or move once again.

Many of these so-called voluntary evacuees are mothers seeking to avoid risking their children’s health while their husbands remain in radiation-hit Fukushima Prefecture, according to freelance journalist Chia Yoshida.

This is why the term “voluntary evacuee” is misleading, as it gives the impression that they fled Fukushima for selfish reasons, Yoshida told a news conference in January in Tokyo.

At the same news conference, another journalist proposed using the term “domestic refugee” to describe them.

The Fukushima Prefectural Government has been paying the cost of public and private housing for voluntary evacuees under the Disaster Relief Act since the reactors melted down at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The number of evacuees from the disaster, including those from mandatory evacuation areas, peaked at 164,865 as of May 2012, according to the prefectural government.

Its latest tally, conducted earlier this year, shows that 11,321 out of the 12,239 voluntary evacuee households had already decided where to live after April, while 250 had not.

It was back in June 2015 when Fukushima announced the plan to end the rent subsidy this month, saying that decontamination work in the prefecture had advanced and food safety had been achieved.

Still, the central government’s evacuation orders have not been lifted in “difficult-to-return zones,” which include the towns of Futaba and Okuma, home to the crippled nuclear facility.

Those no-entry areas are subject to radiation of over 50 millisieverts per year, compared with the government’s long-term annual target of less than 1 millisievert after decontamination work.

Rika Mashiko, 46, is a voluntary evacuee living in Tokyo. She has decided to rent a house near the Fukushima-paid apartment where she and her daughter, now in elementary school, are currently living so that her daughter will not miss her friends.

Mashiko and her daughter fled Fukushima about two months after the nuclear crisis started, leaving behind her husband in their house in Miharu, located in the center of the prefecture.

Mashiko said many women evacuated from Fukushima with their children, compelled by their instinct as mothers to avoid danger.

“Maybe nothing might have happened, but if it had, it would have been too late,” she said.

Mashiko, who first moved to a house in Higashiyamato in eastern Tokyo that was leased for free, said mothers like her who fled the nuclear disaster feel they shouldn’t have to pay their housing costs and are angry at being “victims of the state’s nuclear policy.”

Many voluntary evacuees are financially struggling as they have to cover the double living costs in their hometowns, where typically the fathers remain, and the new places where the mothers and children moved.

In that sense, the free housing has been a “lifeline” for them, particularly in the Tokyo metropolitan area where housing costs are high, according to journalist Yoshida.

In an attempt to extend support to those families, Makoto Yamada, a veteran pediatrician in Tokyo, established a fund with ¥3 million out of his own pocket to help them rent new houses, for example by covering the deposit.

The initiative was the latest example of the support he has been providing to evacuees. Three months after the disaster, he held a counseling session in the city of Fukushima that attracted some 400 people concerned about radiation exposure. He has continued to hold similar sessions in Tokyo.

Yamada, 75, says poor understanding of the plight of voluntary evacuees has also played a role in bullying cases involving evacuee children that have been reported across Japan since last year.

In one high-profile case, a first-year junior high school student in Yokohama was called a “germ” at school, in reference to his supposed exposure to radiation.

Society appears to generally feel that voluntary evacuees have received a lot of money on top of the one-time compensation payment made by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., the operator of Fukushima No. 1.

Yamada says if people understood that voluntary evacuees had no wish to leave but felt they had to, such bullying would disappear.

The first financial support from Yamada’s fund went to 10 mothers and their children on Jan. 15. He was surprised to see the recipients shed tears of joy upon receiving ¥200,000 or ¥300,000 each.

Yamada said the government has tried to reduce the number of evacuees from Fukushima in order to claim that their ranks have decreased and that the disaster has been overcome.

Yoshida echoed that view, describing the voluntary evacuees as “people who will be eliminated from history as the government seeks to trivialize the damage from radiation contamination and say their evacuation was unnecessary.”

As long as there are evacuees living outside Fukushima, they will remain a symbol showing the situation has yet to be solved, Yamada said.

“If you say ‘we will not forget about Fukushima,’ you should never forget the terror of radiation, bearing in mind that people will not live in safety as long as nuclear plants exist in the world,” he said. “So, I want to continue to think about the evacuees.”

Kyodo

Thyroid Cancer Rise Linked To Fukushima Radiation

Four Japanese researchers have attributed most of the thyroid cancer cases found among children and adolescents after the March 2011 nuclear power plant crisis in Fukushima Prefecture to radiation from the accident in their report published Tuesday.

Annual thyroid cancer incidence rates in Fukushima after the disaster through late last year were 20- to 50-fold higher than a pre-accident level for the whole of Japan, a team led by Toshihide Tsuda, professor of environmental epidemiology at Okayama University, said in the electronic edition of the journal of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology.

The finding, based on screening some 370,000 Fukushima residents aged 18 or younger at the time of the accident, “is unlikely to be explained by a screening surge,” the researchers said, pointing to radiation exposure as a factor behind the rise in thyroid cancer cases.

But their conclusion is refuted by other epidemiology experts, including Shoichiro Tsugane of the National Cancer Center, who said the results of the researchers’ analysis are premature.

“Unless radiation exposure data are checked, any specific relationship between a cancer incidence and radiation cannot be identified,” said Tsugane, director of the Research Center for Cancer Prevention and Screening. He also referred to a global trend of overdiagnosis of thyroid cancer.

As of late August, the Fukushima prefecture government identified 104 thyroid cancer cases in the prefecture.

But the prefectural government and many experts have doubted whether these cases are related to the nuclear disaster because the radioactive iodine released from the crisis was smaller compared with the level following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident.

Kyodo

Four Years Later, Nowhere To Store Contaminated Soil

Thousands of bags of radioactive waste on beach

Four years after the March 11, 2011 Tohoku Disaster, the central government operations to clean up evacuated areas badly contaminated by the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant finally got under way in late 2012.

However, much of the contaminated soil and other radioactive waste generated by the operation has nowhere to go, with no clear idea of where or when midterm storage sites will be built and with many municipalities still lacking even temporary storage facilities. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how effective the decontamination -- which must be completed before residents can return home -- will actually be.

Some of the contamination is stored  in plastic bags and placed on the beaches of Fukushima and Iwate prefectures.

"We must remember to hurry, people are losing patience." said a representative of the joint-venture firm tasked with the decontamination operation in Tamura yesterday.

Eleven municipalities previously covered in whole or in part by the evacuation zones around the nuclear plant have been re-designated "special decontamination areas" to be cleaned up by the central government. In Tamura, the operation covers homes, fields and local forests over some 480 hectares in the east of the city that were relabeled "resident return preparation area".

Just cutting and clearing away the grass in a cemetery here dropped the airborne radiation dose from 1.5 microsieverts per hour to 0.9. While significant, however, this is not enough. Abiding by a request from Fukushima Prefecture, the central government included a radiation target of 1 millisievert or less per year -- equivalent to an hourly dosage of 0.23 microsieverts -- in its Fukushima recovery plan (excluding natural background radiation).

"For a fairly extensive area, we should decide on a uniform depth for top soil removal and other steps to get good results as the operation moves forward," the joint venture project head said.

The Tamura city official overseeing the project, however, said, "There has to be some technique for not wasting soil that doesn't need to be. If they scrape off soil the same way everywhere, there will be just a huge amount of waste produced."

In this special decontamination zone, called the Miyakoji zone, there are four temporary waste disposal sites. Meanwhile, it appears that the city wants to avoid trying to get resident approval for more, which would be a seriously uphill struggle.

At first, national forests were considered for temporary waste sites. The idea was scrapped, however, when it became clear the roads that would need to be built through the woods would be too costly in time and money. In the end, the city established the four temporary sites on private land along a local river on the understanding that the waste would be moved to a midterm storage facility within three years. The Ministry of the Environment, meanwhile, wants to finish the decontamination operation in Tamura by the end of this fiscal year, despite persistent worries over the dearth of temporary disposal sites.

While Tamura and four other municipalities -- the towns of Kawamata and Naraha, and the villages of Kawauchi and Katsurao -- have at least found someplace to tentatively store the cleanup waste, another five are still negotiating with their residents over disposal sites.

One major factor in the inability to secure temporary waste sites is the fact that there are as yet no solid plans to build any midterm disposal facilities, making many residents worried that the government won't be able to keep its promise to move the waste out of temporary sites after three years. The central government is now in talks with the towns of Futaba, Okuma and Naraha -- the former two hosts to the stricken Fukushima No. 1 plant -- to open midterm storage facilities within their boundaries, though progress is very difficult due to the municipalities' fears that "midterm" will become "permanent" once the facilities are built.

"Residents tell us to hurry up with the decontamination, but they're opposed to temporary and midterm waste disposal sites," lamented one frustrated senior environment ministry official.  "Unless we have storage capability then our hands are tied."

 
Dallas Brincrest and Charles Gannon 

Japanese Government Raises Number: 250,000 Still Displaced

 

Displacement Center In Saitama - One Of Six In The City

When a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered a meltdown at the nearby Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, Yumi Kanno did not hesitate. She grabbed her 2-year-old son and aging in-laws and fled to her parents' house two hours away.

Four years later, Kanno and her extended family are still unable to return to this once-thriving village — and it appears likely they never will.

Radiation levels remain as much as 10 times above normal in areas surrounding the plant, and scores of towns and villages remain off-limits despite a massive cleanup effort. "At first, I thought we would be gone a few days or weeks. Now, I'm not sure if we will ever go back," said Kanno, 29.

As Japan marks the anniversary of the March 11, 2011, disaster, officials concede that recovery throughout the region is lagging.

Nearly a quarter-million Japanese still live in temporary or interim housing. Hundreds of square miles of forests, farmland and townships remain uninhabitable because of radiation. Endless rows of thick vinyl bags filled with contaminated soil litter the countryside — but represent just a fraction of the land that must be scraped up and hauled away before residents can return.

At the stricken power plant, radiation is no longer escaping into the air, but workers are still battling to contain leaks of contaminated water. The plant won't be fully decommissioned for at least three decades.

Yet even in areas declared safe, many evacuees are reluctant to return. They harbor a deep mistrust of officials after conflicting or hesitant evacuation orders early in the crisis, radiation readings that shift with wind and rain, and disagreements over the risks of long-term, low-level exposure.

"The situation is not finished at all," said Hatsuo Fujishima, a senior official in Fukushima prefecture. "We are moving ahead, but it will take another 30 years, probably more. This is going to be a long, uphill battle."

The magnitude-9.0 earthquake was the largest ever to strike Japan. It triggered a surge of water as high as 90 feet in some areas, washing away entire towns and communities along Japan's northeast coast, killing nearly 16,000 people. More than 2,600 are still listed as missing.

The one-two punch crippled the Fukushima nuclear plant and triggered a meltdown in three of its six nuclear reactors. The ensuing plume of radiation triggered full or partial evacuation of an area more than 18 miles away.

Much progress has been made over the past four years. Virtually all quake and tsunami debris has been hauled away. Tens of thousands of temporary homes have been built. An interim storage facility opened in February that will accommodate the tens of millions of cubic yards of soil slated for removal.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which harshly criticized the plant's initial reaction to the radiation leaks, issued guarded praise last month for recent progress toward decommissioning the reactors.

Even so, a staggering amount of work remains. Completion of permanent housing for 230,000 evacuees has been pushed back to 2017 in some areas because of difficulty finding suitable land and shortages of construction workers and materials.

The toll of the disaster is evident here in Iitate village.

Officials initially said the community, located about 19 miles from the plant, was safe from radiation. But just days later a general evacuation was ordered as radiation readings began to climb.

Residents have been allowed to return to their homes and businesses during the day, but still cannot stay overnight or return permanently. The village had a population of more than 6,000 prior to the disaster, but now only a few hundred venture there during the day.

"It's eerie here now. There are all these houses and buildings, but at night you see no lights anywhere. In the daytime, wild boars and monkeys roam around like they own place — and maybe they do," said Muneo Kanno, who owns a farm in the village and heads a volunteer group that monitors local radiation.

Radiation levels at the town hall have dropped to a level widely considered safe for long-term exposure. But Muneo Kanno (no relation to Yumi Kanno) said the radiation levels can fluctuate, and higher levels can be found in wooded areas not slated for cleanup.

"Radiation is something you can't see and can't smell. The levels fluctuate all the time. Rain can wash the contamination into a small area, and suddenly you have a hot spot," he said. "Even now, we don't know when we will be able to return here permanently."

Government policy currently calls for decontaminating all homes and buildings in affected areas, as well as all farmland. But wooded areas will be left untouched. So residents and local officials will have to decide the level of exposure they are comfortable accepting, said Norio Kanno, the mayor of Iitate village.

"People still do not understand everything about radiation and long-term exposure. Some people think it's safe at a certain level, but others don't. Are you OK as long as you don't enter the forest? If you have children, are you willing to take that chance? I understand that people are reluctant to return," he said.

Satoru Mimura, a professor of disaster awareness and international affairs at Fukushima University, said residents may not be able to return to Iiwate village for three to five more years — if then.

"There won't be a lot shops or services operating in these areas," Mimura said. "There are no hospitals or markets nearby, so it's going to be very difficult to live there."

Kirk Spitzer

Government Audit: Tsunami Disaster Budget Misused

Rikuzentakata (current condition in picture) was a thriving fishing town in the Tohoku region of Japan.  The town of just over 5000 worked in some way with the once booming fishing industry on the Pacific Coast.  Then March 11, 2011 changed everything.  The tsunami on that day destroyed the harbor, the fishing warehouse, the docks, and the buildings in this town.  The next day brought the realization that the population went from 23,000 to 19,000.  3500 people were confirmed dead and 500 are still unaccounted for.

Towns affected by the disaster have been dependent upon money from the Tohoku Disaster Budget to help them rebuild and help those still left homeless.  While many towns have been cleared of debris, they are still waiting for the buildings to be built.

On Friday a government audit found that of 150 billion Yen ($1.5 billion) of the 200 billion Yen ($2 billion) of the Tohoku budget has been misused on unrelated government projects.

From a high speed highway project in Kyushu to an ad campaign in Okinawa money marked explicitly for Tohoku Disaster Relief and Reconstruction was used on completely unrelated projects.

Some 19,000 people were killed or remain missing following the tsunami and earthquake that struck north-east Japan in March 2011.  Currently there are still 35,000 people displaced in the Tohoku region.  Most are waiting to return to their homes in the exclusion zone created because of high radiation due to the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant.  These residents have been staying in temporary shelters.

The government has passed a number of supplementary budgets to fund reconstruction efforts in affected areas.  The bulk of the money was to be used to aid those in temporary shelters with food, lodging, medical, and dental care.  Some money was also to be used in helping willing people relocate to other areas of Japan.

But a government audit showed money had been used for unrelated projects included on the basis that they could boost national economic revival.  The findings come at a time when questions are being asked about the speed of Japan's reconstruction effort almost five years after the March 11, 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami.

Takashi Kubota, mayor of Rikuzentakata, a fishing port where nearly half of the houses were destroyed, said that "not one single new building yet" had been built in the destroyed downtown area.  "In five years, there have basically been no major changes aside from clearing debris." he said.

Speaking in parliament on Friday, Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso promised that problems would be addressed.

"There have been many criticisms made about how the budget for reconstruction has been spent," he said. 

"We must listen sincerely to colleagues and citizens calling for the utmost priority to be accorded to disaster area reconstruction. We will properly provide allowances for budget items that are truly needed for the Tohoku region and we will assure that they are spent as necessary." 

Aso refused responsibility saying, "These abuses began before my tenure as Finance Minister and in fact the auditing process is what needs review seeing as these abuses have been ongoing since March 2011."

Aso had been Prime Minister of Japan from March 2008 to September 2009.  Aso was drubbed in an election by the opposition party Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and resigned for the inauguration of Yukio Hatoyama on September 9, 2009.

This is the third audit that has uncovered irregularities with the Tohoku Relief Budget.  Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has refused comment saying, "This is up to the Finance Ministry and auditors to straighten out."  When asked by an AFP reporter if he felt obligation for the irregularities Abe replied, "I do not assign money from the budget."

Dallas Brincrest

Yakuza Hired By Tokyo In Fukushima

Homeless Cleaning At Fukushima Daiichi

Organized criminal groups in Japan known as Yakuza have infiltrated the massive, government-backed decontamination effort underway at the defunct Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to Reuters.

In 2011, an enormous earthquake and subsequent tsunami triggered meltdowns at three of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

More than a year after the earthquake, after the crisis at Fukushima went from bad to worse, the Japanese government commandeered the clean-up effort from Tokyo Electric Power Company, the nuclear plant’s embattled operator.

Despite the government’s intervention, the report published by Reuters suggests that the clean-up effort is still broken.

Reuters revealed that the Yakuza, the notorious criminal syndicates that control Japan’s underworld, are filling a manpower void created by Japan’s aging populations and a legacy of tight labor-market regulations.

More specifically, they are filling the void with homeless men they’ve recruited off the streets.

From Reuters:

The sprawl of small firms working in Fukushima is an unintended consequence of Japan’s legacy of tight labor-market regulations combined with the aging population’s deepening shortage of workers. Japan’s construction companies cannot afford to keep a large payroll and dispatching temporary workers to construction sites is prohibited. As a result, smaller firms step into the gap, promising workers in exchange for a cut of their wages.

Below these official subcontractors, a shadowy network of gangsters and illegal brokers who hire homeless men has also become active in Fukushima. Ministry of Environment contracts in the most radioactive areas of Fukushima prefecture are particularly lucrative because the government pays an additional $100 in hazard allowance per day for each worker.

Forbes

Fukushima Residents Unsure About Return

Whenever Kazuhiro Onuki goes home, to his real home that is, the 66-year-old former librarian dons protective gear from head to toe and hangs a dosimeter around his neck.

Grass grows wild in the backyard. The ceiling leaks. Thieves have ransacked the shelves, leaving papers and clothing all over the floor so there is barely room to walk. Mouse dung is scattered like raisins. There is no running water or electricity.

Above all, radiation is everywhere.

It’s difficult to imagine ever living again in Tomioka, a ghost town about 10 kilometers from the former Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant. And yet more than three years after meltdowns at the plant forced this community of 16,000 people to flee, Onuki can’t quite make the psychological break to start anew.

His family lived here for four generations. Every time he goes back, he is overcome by emotion. Especially during that brief time in the spring when the cherry blossoms bloom.

“They flower as though nothing has happened,” he said. “They are weeping because all the people have left.”

The Japanese government is pushing ahead with efforts to decontaminate and reopen as much of a 20-kilometer no-go zone around the plant as it can. Authorities declared a tiny corner of the zone safe for living as of April 1, and hope to lift evacuation orders in more areas in the coming months and years.

Former residents have mixed feelings. In their hearts, many want their old lives back. But distrust about the decontamination program runs deep. Will it really be safe? Others among the more than 100,000 displaced have established new lives elsewhere, in the years since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami sent three of Fukushima’s reactors into meltdown.

If the evacuation order is lifted for their area, they will lose a monthly stipend of 100,000 yen they receive from Tokyo Electric Power Co, the owner of the Fukushima plant.

A survey last year found that 16% of Tomioka residents wanted to return, 40% had decided never to return, and 43% were undecided. Two-thirds said they were working before the disaster, but only one-third had jobs at the time of the survey, underlining the challenges to starting over.

Former resident Shigetoshi Suzuki, a friend of Onuki, is outraged the government would even ask such a question: Do you want to go back?

Of course, we all want to return, he said. People like him were effectively forced into retirement, the 65-year-old land surveyor said. If he hadn’t evacuated to a Tokyo suburb with his wife, he would have continued working for his longtime clients.

“It is a ridiculous question,” Suzuki said. “We could have led normal lives. What we have lost can’t be measured in money.”

In protest, he has refused to sign the forms that would allow his property to undergo decontamination.

The government has divided the no-go zone into three areas by radiation level.

The worst areas are marked in pink on official maps and classified as “difficult to return.” They are still enclosed by a barricade.

Yellow designates a “restricted” area, limiting visits to a few hours. No overnight stays are allowed.

The green zones are “in preparations to lift evacuation orders.” They must be decontaminated, which includes scrubbing building surfaces and scraping off the top layer of soil and is being carried out throughout the zones.

Tomioka has all three zones within its boundaries.

The green zones are those where authorities have confirmed radiation exposure can be brought below 20 millisieverts a year.

The long-term goal is to bring annual exposure down to 1 millisievert, or the equivalent of 10 chest X-rays, which was considered the safe level before the disaster, but the government is lifting evacuation orders at higher levels. It says it will monitor the health and exposure of people who move back to such areas.

In the yellow restricted zone, where Sukuki’s and Onuki’s homes lie, a visitor exceeds 1 millisievert in a matter of a few hours.

During a recent visit, Onuki and his wife Michiko walked beneath the pink petals floating from a tunnel of cherry trees, previously a local tourist attraction.

The streets were abandoned, except for a car passing through now and then. The neighborhood was eerily quiet except for the chirping of the nightingales.

“The prime minister says the accident is under control, but we feel the thing could explode the next minute,” said Michiko Onuki, who ran a ceramic and craft shop out of their Tomioka home. “We would have to live in fear of radiation. This town is dead.”

Both wore oversized white astronaut-like gear, which doesn’t keep out radioactive rays out but helps prevent radioactive material from being brought back, outside the no-go zone. Filtered masks covered half their faces. They discarded the gear when they left, so they wouldn’t bring any radiation back to their Tokyo apartment, which they share with an adult son and daughter.

Junji Oshida, 43, whose family ran an upscale restaurant in Tomioka that specialized in eel, was at first devastated that he lost the traditional sauce for the eel that had been passed down over generations.

He has since opened a new restaurant just outside the zone that caters to nuclear cleanup workers. He recreated the sauce and serves pork, which is cheaper than eel. He lives apart from his wife and sons, who are in a Tokyo suburb.

“There is no sense in looking back,” Oshida said, still wearing the eel restaurant’s emblem on his shirt.

Older residents can’t give up so easily, even those who will never be able to return — like Tomioka city assemblyman Seijun Ando, whose home lies in the most irradiated, pink zone.

Ando, 59, said that dividing Tomioka by radiation levels has pitted one group of residents against another, feeding resentment among some. One idea he has is to bring residents from various towns in the no-go zone together to start a new community in another, less radiated part of Fukushima — a place he described as “for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”

“I can survive anywhere, although I had a plan for my life that was destroyed from its very roots,” said Ando, tears welling up in his eyes. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suffering. I’m just worried for Tomioka.”

AP

Fukushima Cleanup Actually Making Problems Worse

Cleanup crews in Fukushima Prefecture have dumped soil and leaves contaminated with radioactive fallout into rivers. Water sprayed on contaminated buildings has been allowed to drain back into the environment. And supervisors have instructed workers to ignore rules on proper collection and disposal of the radioactive waste.

The decontamination work witnessed by a team of Asahi Shimbun reporters shows that contractual rules with the Environment Ministry have been regularly and blatantly ignored, and in some cases, could violate environmental laws.

In signing the contracts, the Environment Ministry established work rules requiring the companies to place all collected soil and leaves into bags to ensure the radioactive materials would not spread further. The roofs and walls of homes must be wiped by hand or brushes. The use of pressurized sprayers is limited to gutters to avoid the spread of contaminated water. The water used in such cleaning must be properly collected under the ministry’s rules.

Companies hired by the government to carry out the cleanup have hired temporary workers, many of whom are homeless men recruited off the streets of Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka.  None of these workers are experienced in handling toxic waste much less radioactive materials.

From Dec. 11 to 18, four Asahi reporters spent 130 hours observing work at various locations in Fukushima Prefecture.

At 13 locations in Naraha, Iitate and Tamura, workers were seen simply dumping collected soil and leaves as well as water used for cleaning rather than securing them for proper disposal.

Photographs were taken at 11 of those locations.

The reporters also talked to about 20 workers who said they were following the instructions of employees of the contracted companies or their subcontractors in dumping the materials. A common response of the workers was that the decontamination work could never be completed if they adhered to the strict rules.

Asahi reporters obtained a recording of a supervisor at a site in Naraha instructing a worker to dump cut grass over the side of the road.

Workers involved in cleaning up the radioactive fallout from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant disaster expressed concerns. One even apologized for what he did.

But they were temps working on the decontamination process, and their words apparently meant nothing to their supervisors.

The supervisor from Dai Nippon Construction told the 30 or so workers under his watch to dump whatever would not fit into the bags or to throw materials down the slope outside of the line marked by the pink tape. Whenever the supervisor was not present, the person taking his place gave similar instructions.

The man questioned if the work could actually be called decontamination. He confronted the supervisor about his instructions on Nov. 27 and recorded the conversation.

The man can be heard asking, “Is it all right to just dump the stuff?”

The supervisor replied: “Yeah, yeah, it’s OK. It can’t be helped.”

The airborne radiation level near the gutter before the cleaning water flowed in was 0.8 microsievert per hour. The radiation level near the cleaning water hovered between 1.9 and 2.9 microsieverts. The larger figure is close to the cutoff point in determining if residents should evacuate.

In some cases, radiation levels at homes have even increased after decontamination, leading some workers to suspect that radioactive materials were blown into the area by wind.

The companies hired have connections to Diet members, ministry officials, and to Prime Minister Abe or his family.  The Mainichi Shinbum has followed a trail of connections that began under the Kan administration to the current Tokyo regime.  TEPCO executives also suggested companies that have family members and friends running the companies hired.

Nepotism and political connection are the only requirement for contracts.  None of the companies applying for contracts that had experience in cleaning up radioactive materials were hired, or even considered.  The politically connected companies have no radiological cleanup expertise and critics say they have cut corners to employ primitive — even potentially hazardous — techniques.

Also worrying, industry experts say, are cleanup methods used by the construction companies that create loose contamination that can become airborne or enter the water.

At many sites, contaminated runoff from cleanup projects is not fully recovered and is being released into the environment, multiple people involved in the decontamination work said.

In addition, there are no concrete plans about storing the vast amounts of contaminated soil and foliage the cleanup is generating, which the environment ministry estimates will amount to at least 29 million cubic meters, or more than a billion cubic feet.

The contaminated dirt lies in bags on roadsides, in abandoned fields and on the coastline, where experts say they are at risk from high waves or another tsunami.

“This isn’t decontamination — it’s sweeping up dirt and leaves and absolutely irresponsible,” said Tomoya Yamauchi, an expert in radiation measurement at Kobe University who has been helping Fukushima communities test the effectiveness of various decontamination methods.

From the Washington Blog and AFP