Tag: Fukushima

  • Lessons from Fukushima crisis should be applied in Turkey

    Lessons from Fukushima crisis should be applied in Turkey

    TOKYO (Kyodo) — Japanese industry minister Yukio Edano expressed hope Monday for the deepening of bilateral cooperation with Turkey in the area of nuclear power generation, including exports of related Japanese technology, saying the lessons learned from the Fukushima nuclear crisis should be utilized in quake-prone Turkey.

    In this March 11, 2011 photo released Monday, April 11, 2011 by Tokyo Electric Power Co.,(TEPCO), the access road at the compound of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is flooded as tsunami hit the facility following a massive earthquake in Okuma town, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan. (AP Photo/Tokyo Electric Power Co.,)
    In this March 11, 2011 photo released Monday, April 11, 2011 by Tokyo Electric Power Co.,(TEPCO), the access road at the compound of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is flooded as tsunami hit the facility following a massive earthquake in Okuma town, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan. (AP Photo/Tokyo Electric Power Co.,)

    Speaking at the Turkey-Japan Economic Forum in Tokyo attended by visiting Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Edano said that nuclear power generation is an “important area of cooperation” with Turkey.

    “We intend to advance cooperation in a way that Turkey can apply the lessons of the accident (at the Fukushima Daiichi plant),” Edano said.

    “The nuclear accident is steadily moving toward a situation where it is brought under control,” Edano said, adding that Japan intends to realize a cold shutdown of the plant reactors by the end of this year.

    In October, Edano requested in a meeting with Turkish energy minister Taner Yildiz that Ankara continue talks with Tokyo over a nuclear power plant deal in Turkey.

    (Mainichi Japan) December 6, 2011

    via Lessons from Fukushima crisis should be applied in Turkey: Edano – The Mainichi Daily News.

  • Journalist Accuses Israel of Fukushima Sabotage

    Journalist Accuses Israel of Fukushima Sabotage

    FukushimaBy Richard Walker

    A leading Japanese journalist recently made two incredible claims about the Fukushima power plant that suffered a nuclear meltdown in March 2011, sending shockwaves around the world. First, the former editor of a national newspaper in Japan says the U.S. and Israel knew Fukushima had weapons-grade uranium and plutonium that were exposed to the atmosphere after a massive tsunami wave hit the reactor. Second, he  contends that Israeli intelligence sabotaged the reactor in retaliation for Japan’s support of an independent Palestinian state.

    According to Yoishi Shimatsu, a former editor of Japan Times Weekly, these nuclear materials were shipped to the plant in 2007 on the orders of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, with the connivance of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The shipment was in the form of warhead cores secretly removed from the U.S. nuclear warheads facility BWXT Plantex near Amarillo, Texas. While acting as the middleman, Israel transported warheads from the port of Houston, and in the process kept the best ones while giving the Japanese older warhead cores that had to be further enriched at Fukushima.

    Shimatsu credits retired CIA agent and mercenary Roland Vincent Carnaby with learning the warheads were being transported from Houston. In a strange twist, Carnaby was mysteriously shot dead less than a year later by Houston police at a traffic stop. He was shot once in the back and once in the chest. He did not have a weapon in his hands. Intelligence sources said he had been tracking a Mossad unit that was smuggling U.S. plutonium out of Houston docks for an Israeli nuclear reactor.

    In an even more explosive charge, the journalist says that 20 minutes before the Fukushima plant’s nuclear meltdown, Israel was so upset with Japanese support for a Palestinian declaration of statehood that it double-crossed Japan by unleashing the Stuxnet virus on the plant’s  computers. The virus hampered the shutdown, leading to fallout from a section of the plant housing uranium and plutonium retrieved from the warheads supplied in 2007.

    While it is impossible to verify some of Shimatsu’s claims, there was a massive cover-up at the time of the Fukushima disaster in March.  Explosions at the site were immediately downplayed. While it was subsequently reported that three reactors suffered meltdowns, Japanese authorities tried to rate the disaster as a Level 4 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, although outside experts declared it a 7, which is the highest level.

    Something worth noting is how in 2009, two years after Shimatsu says the warheads were secretly moved to Japan, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a veiled warning to Japan not to abandon its anti-nuclear weapons policy.

    The IAEA had to know, however, that Japan has long retained the potential to build nuclear weapons. That was made clear as far back as 1996 when a leaked Ministry of Foreign Affairs document exposed how Japan had been promoting a dual strategy in respect to nuclear weapons since the mid-1960s. It would often publicly profess a non-nuclear policy while maintaining the ability to build a nuclear arsenal. The Liberal Democratic Party, which has dominated Japanese politics, has always said there is no constitutional impediment to nukes.

    A factor that undoubtedly would have encouraged the Bush-Cheney White House to provide Japan with the means to secretly build nukes was the growing power of China. Cheney and Bush sought to arm Japan and India with nuclear weapons as a means of curbing China.

    americanfreepress.net, October 14, 2011

  • Greenpeace urges Turkey to scrap nuclear talks with Japan’s TEPCO

    Greenpeace urges Turkey to scrap nuclear talks with Japan’s TEPCO

    Environmentalist group Greenpeace urged Turkey to cancel nuclear talks with Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the Japanese power utility that is in charge of disaster-hit Fukushima nuclear plant.

    Raindrops are seen on the surface of a logo of Tokyo lectric Power Co. (TEPCO) at its headquarters in Tokyo on May 29, 2011.
    Raindrops are seen on the surface of a logo of Tokyo lectric Power Co. (TEPCO) at its headquarters in Tokyo on May 29, 2011.

    Turkey, which has signed an agreement with Russia for construction of its first nuclear power plant in the Mediterranean province of Mersin, was in talks with TEPCO and Toshiba on building a second one in Sinop, on the Black Sea coast. In May, Japan asked to suspend negotiations. But in June, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız signaled readiness to resume talks with the Japanese companies, saying Turkey wants to clarify the future of talks by mid-July.

    In a statement released on Thursday, Greenpeace slammed TEPCO’s conduct in the aftermath of a nuclear meltdown at Fukushima plant after a quake-triggered tsunami in March, saying it lacked transparency and accusing TEPCO officials of providing incomplete and incorrect information about radiation levels.

    “It was the Japanese side that wanted the talks on Sinop nuclear plant to be suspended. Now, only three months after the [Fukushima] accident, the Turkish government wants to continue the talks with TEPCO… This is an irresponsible attitude that endangers lives of peoples of Turkey and the neighboring countries,” Pınar Aksoğan of Greenpeace said.

    Aksoğan further urged the Turkish government not to have talks on construction of nuclear power plants with Japan or any other country because “the era of nuclear energy is over.”

    “It is the Turkish government alone that fails to see this fact,” she said.

    Turkey suffers frequent seismic activity, and fears of a major earthquake are ever present in some parts of the country, but the government wants to press ahead with plans for nuclear energy and has given assurances that all safeguards will be taken.

    via Greenpeace urges Turkey to scrap nuclear talks with Japan’s TEPCO.