- Tokyo’s French chefs surprised some F. Daiichi child evacuees with a surprise gourmet Christmas meal. 360 meals and 200 snacks were delivered to a school in Koriyama with a large number of evacuees in their enrollment. Chef Christophe Paucod supervised preparation of scalloped potatoes, buttered veggies, and roast beef, plus a scrumptious cake topped with fresh berries. He said, “It’s a different flavor for their palates. For many it is the first time they have tasted French cuisine.” Caravan Bon Appetite has been providing meals to earthquake and tsunami refugees across the Tohoku region since April, 2011. This is part of a program started by French chefs in Japan due to the 3/11/11 natural disaster that left a lot of people homeless. They send their culinary delights to the region several times a week. However, this is the first Press coverage of their gustatory philanthropy. The reason seems obvious…the Fukushima refugees are more newsworthy than the tsunami refugees. http://japandailypress.com/santa-brings-a-different-kind-of-gourmet-christmas-to-fukushima-nuclear-evacuees-1741107/ — http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/santa-takes-gourmet-dinner-to-nuclear-evacuees
- The deposed Democratic Party of Japan has harshly attacked the current regime’s energy policy. The government of Shinzo Abe has announced repeatedly that they will work towards lessening reliance of nuclear-generated electricity and promote renewables. But, to the DPJ, it is nothing more than a smokescreen to keep the nuclear industry alive in Japan. The DPJ under Naoto Kan was in power when the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami hit. Kan and his successor Yoshihiko Noda tried to end Japan’s nuclear age once and for all. However, the negative impact on the economy caused by their nuclear moratorium, their openly antinuclear agenda, and their lack of viable support for the 300,000 homeless tsunami refugees led to their landslide defeat a year ago. Undaunted in their antinuclear crusade, the DPJ says Tepco and Tokyo are not taking steps to alleviate the contamination of the Pacific by groundwater flow at F. Daiichi. They say Tepco should inject more water-stops and pump out contaminated groundwater before it reaches the shoreline. The DPJ’s current antinuclear tirade is due to Tepco announcing a new high radiation level for one of the dozens of near-shore sampling wells at F. Daiichi…63,000 Becquerels per liter. In addition, the DPJ condemned plans to restart safe, undamaged, fully-viable viable nukes while there is no firm nuclear waste policy. One DPJ politico also said nuclear power is not low cost energy because decommissioning and nuclear accident clean-up costs make it more expensive than alternatives. The DPJ has become little more than a Japanese sounding-board for time-worn criticisms of nukes borrowed from the world’s bastions of antinuclear rhetoric. http://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2013121700419 — http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/nuclear.html
- Fukushima Prefecture says the number of nuke-evacuation deaths has surpassed the number killed by the earthquake and tsunami of 3/11/11. The number of evacuee deaths now stands at 1,605 while the number directly killed by the quake/tsunami was 1603. The number of “indirect” post-evacuation deaths has been due to inappropriate medical care resulting in deteriorating health, development of new illnesses, and suicides of those who became mentally unwell. There are no firm standards for defining disaster-related deaths, but the prefecture believes the unprecedented duration of the evacuation warrants making this determination. One Tomioka official said, “We’re seeing more and more diversification, and it’s getting more complicated” to distinguish between fatalities related and unrelated to the evacuation. Tohoku Institute of Technology’s Kunihiro Fukutome added, “In Fukushima Prefecture, where evacuation is drawn out, damage from the disaster is on a different scale from what we’ve seen in the past.” http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20131217p2a00m0na010000c.html (comment – Once again there is no distinction made between the Fukushima evacuees who will never go home because their abodes were swept away by the tsunami and the nuclear-only demographic. The tsunami-devastated group should be addressed separately because they would be suffering even if the nuke accident had never happened. Thus, we would like to see statistics on how many of the above “disaster-related” fatalities are from the tsunami-devastated cohort. We would also like to know how Fukushima’s tsunami-devastated evacuees living conditions and compensatory income compares with the tsunami refugees of Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures. To date, the government has avoided doing this and the Press seems satisfied with reporting on the Fukushima refugees alone.)
- More compensation for Fukushima evacuees becomes law on Friday. The new pay-outs will include expanded support for those who want to go home (and can) plus additional money to those who need to settle elsewhere. Most already receive compensation for “lost” property value, but the new allocation is intended to let long-term evacuees buy new homes. The new package also allows mental distress compensation for long-term evacuees continuing until 2017. However, it also says that mental damages will end one year after the restrictions are lifted for residents allowed to go home. All of the government loans must eventually be repaid by Tepco and other contributing utility companies. In addition to the increased income for Fukushima evacuees, Tokyo has created new grants for Fukushima municipalities to accelerate the reconstruction of infrastructure. Lastly, the government has revised the estimate of the total loans that will eventually be extended to Tepco. The new projection is $90 billion, with nearly $50 billion devoted to evacuee compensation, $25 billion for rural decontamination and $11 billion for construction of waste storage facilities. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/nuclear.html — http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201312190046 — http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20131219_28.html
- Tepco has announced the decommissioning of F. Daiichi units #5 & 6. Neither unit suffered damage to their power production or emergency systems from the 3/11/11 tsunami. Tepco’s board of directors made the announcement to the Industry Ministry on Wednesday. The decision to decommission will become official company policy on January 31. Tepco wants to use the two units for testing of remote-control decontamination and fuel debris removal technologies, in conformance with suggestions made by the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning. Tepco President Hirose met with Fukushima governor Sato to announce the decision, but all Sato would say was, “I want you to know that the complete dismantlement of reactors in Fukushima is the general consensus of people in the prefecture,” which includes the four undamaged units at F. Daiini. http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/2013/1233020_5130.html — http://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2013121900500
- The high groundwater radioactivity at F. Daiichi mentioned above (63,000 Bq/liter) was due to sample cross-contamination. The well from which Tuesday’s sample was taken was retested later in the day. It was found to have radioactivity below the lower limit of detection. Tepco attributes Tuesday’s reading to “the incorporation of radioactive material into the sample water” from an adjacent well sampled at the same time. The adjacent well has had high contamination readings for several weeks, thought to be due to seepage from a nearby equipment tunnel containing the highest levels found outside the turbine basements. Tepco says they will upgrade sampling procedures to prevent a recurrence. http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/2013/1233005_5130.html
- A lawsuit filed by US Navy personnel in August of 2012 has been dismissed. San Diego’s federal judge Janis L. Sammartino effected the dismissal due to a jurisdictional issue. The plaintiff’s lawyers say they will re-file. The judge dismissed the lawsuit on Nov. 26 on grounds that it was beyond her authority to determine whether Tepco and Japan’s government had committed fraud. The suit claimed Tepco lied about the severity of the Fukushima atmospheric releases and that Tokyo was complicit in the lie. The plaintiffs were attached to the USS Ronald Reagan in support of tsunami efforts in Japan. They were all non-nuclear-trained. Plaintiffs say they suffered a number of post-accident ailments including rectal bleeding, gastrointestinal distress, hair loss, headaches, and fatigue. Some allege they now have thyroid and gallbladder cancer. Only hair loss and thyroid cancers can be caused by radiation exposures, and must be several orders of magnitude above the plaintiff exposures. http://japandailypress.com/us-judge-dismisses-fukushima-radiation-lawsuit-from-sailors-who-arrived-post-tsunami-1841170/
- French journalists are touring Fukushima Prefecture to check if French news reports on food radiation have been correct. They visited Yanagawa Town in Date City to witness the processes for determining whether or not Fukushima Prefecture foods are safe. Le Monde reporter Pierre Le Hir said he was impressed with how hard people work to insure the foods they produce are safe for consumption. He hopes to correct biased reports that have occurred in the French Press. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20131218_22.html
