Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Official in Date City, Fukushima: "Residents Here Think They are the Victims of Accident Caused by TEPCO"

I thought they were. Apparently not to this official of a city where radioactive cesium in rice has just been found that exceeds the national provisional limit, and where blasting the fruit trees with water from a high-pressure washer and stripping the barks will decontaminate the fruits next year.

The following article appeared on the Fukushima local version of the largest national paper Yomiuri Shinbun.

From Yomiuri Shinbun Local (Fukushima) version (11/27/2011):

東京電力福島第一原発事故を受け、国際放射線防護委員会(ICRP)の委員らが26日、県庁を訪れ、自治体の担当者らと意見交換した。

Commissioners from the ICRP visited the Fukushima government office on November 26 to exchange ideas with the municipal officials in Fukushima.

 放射線防護の専門家であるICRP委員が直接、県内の現状を聞いて除染や健康管理などの面で助言し、復興に役立てるのがねらい。

The purpose was for the ICRP commissioners to directly learn about the current situation in Fukushima Prefecture and to advise on decontamination and health care and assist in recovery and reconstruction [of Fukushima].

 ICRP第4委員会のジャック・ロシャール委員長や丹羽太貫・京都大名誉教授のほか、チェルノブイリ原発に近いベラルーシやフランス、ノルウェーの研究者らも出席。自治体や県立医大の担当者らが、それぞれ福島の現状について発表した。伊達市の職員は、「住民に除染方法を説明しても『東電がやるべきだ』と被害者意識が強く、なかなか協力が得られない」などと実情を説明した。

In attendance were Jacques Lochard, ICRP Committee 4 Chair, Otsura Niwa, professor emeritus at Kyoto University, and researchers from Belarus, France, and Norway. Officials from local municipalities and the prefectural medical university made the presentation on the current situation in Fukushima. An official from Date City explained the situation in the city, saying "Even when we explain how to decontaminate to the residents of the city, they have this victim mentality of "TEPCO should do it", and they don't cooperate readily."

 意見交換会は27日も行われ、ICRPの委員らが、土壌改良や住民の健康管理などチェルノブイリ原発事故で得た経験を披露し、福島第一原発事故での放射線防護について助言などを行う。

The meeting will continue on November 27. The ICRP commissioners will share the experience they have obtained from the Chernobyl accident in soil remediation and health care of the residents, and advise on the radiation protection from the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident.

The official from Date City is complaining that the residents think they are the victims of the worst nuclear accident that the country has ever had, and that they are not doing what the officials like him tell them to do, which is to clean up the mess (radioactive materials spewed out of the broken reactors and spent fuel pools in Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant) themselves.

Amazing.

By the way I happen to remember seeing Dr. Niwa's name somewhere else at some other time. He was one of those "experts" who ridiculed and trashed people of Kyoto in August who were against burning the radioactive firewood (1130 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium) from Rikuzen Tataka City in Iwate Prefecture.

Dr. Niwa is now the president of his own company, Biomedics, which specializes in pharmaceuticals for cancer and auto immune diseases.

Interesting.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

What? Officals want the citizens to clean up the radioactivity themselves?

Anonymous said...

AND everyone is buying up stock in pharmaceuticals for cancer and auto immune diseases...and in burning radioactive trash from Fukushima. Greed is nuclear..

Sebaschan said...

wow, even now everyone is thinking about their own profit... but deliberatly trying to get new cancer patients in order to sell their own products... that is murder.

Genpachin said...

If Dr. Niwa is a Kyoto University professor someone should put him in touch with the Zengakuren students to exchange views. Would be another interesting confrontation to go on Youtube...

As for the outrageous comments of the Date city official, it is just another illustration of how government and the nuke industry are "working" together. Why is it that although being responsible for a nuclear disaster of this scale TEPCO is still doing business as usual? Where are the class actions? When are the people of Fukushima going to make TEPCO pay for the massive damages?

It's too bad people in Japan generally tend to have an aversion for court cases...

Anonymous said...

Well tepco SHOULD bloody well NOT do it (just pay for it, all of it, they're incompetent enough as it is, no need to add more tasks that are beyond their ken) and the people ARE victims.

Anonymous said...

Genpachin wrote:

"As for the outrageous comments of the Date city official, it is just another illustration of how government and the nuke industry are "working" together. Why is it that although being responsible for a nuclear disaster of this scale TEPCO is still doing business as usual? Where are the class actions? When are the people of Fukushima going to make TEPCO pay for the massive damages?"

The higher up one goes in the Japanese court system the more effective is the rigging in favour of the corporations, the government and the bureaucracy. Historically Japanese plaintiffs against the government, or the corporations on whose behalf the government works, may win in lower courts like the Tokyo District Court, or various High Courts, only to have the ruling mysteriously overturned by the Supreme Court.

I don't know when the majority of Japanese people will wake up to the magnitude of the crime that has been committed against them and the rest of the world by their thorougly decadent and corrupt ruling class.

Anonymous said...

It's like these mechanistic paper-pushers in Japan see Japanese society like a sort of giant corporate ant-colony where worker-ants can just be ordered to shut it and not be allowed to voice a view or make an independent decision outside of the hierarchical collective. Do what you're told, pronto, Big Brother ANT knows what's best ... for homeland and corporate colony.

Then they act SURPRISED when it turns out Japanese humans don't act like these idealised corporate ant colony workers? Wow, how out of touch with reality, paper-pushers! Yes, it needs to be cleaned up, or rather, not actually "cleaned up", but the lingering hazard merely minimised as much as possible. Personal health care is a good reason to cooperate to do that. But if those responsible (or in this case, irresponsible and unpunished) do not pay dearly for this, with every bit of fiat and skin they personally have, and gouged out of the public purse in subsidies, what is the incentive for distressed and angry people to clean it up, when it can all just occur again next week.

Are they just sweeping the floor before a dust storm?

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