MG: Hi, you’re listening to the Fairewinds Energy Education podcast hosted by the Fairewinds crew. I’m Maggie Gundersen, and today I’m joined by Caroline Philips, Fairewinds Program Administrator, Toby Aronson, our Media Producer, and Chief Engineer, Arnie Gundersen,. Welcome to the show. Today is our final installment of Japan’s speaking tour. We, the Fairewinds’ crew, will hear Arnie’s reflections on his trip to Japan and discuss comments by Japan’s Prime Minister Abe, recent articles about the ongoing tragedy at Fukushima Daiichi, and Japanese court orders to halt operating nuclear reactors. Arnie, could you begin by talking to us about your reflections on the trip.
AG: Hi, everybody. It’s nice to be in the same room instead of half a world away. Yeah, I’ve been reflecting a lot over the last week and a half about what the trip meant to me personally and what I learned and what Fairewinds learned and what we all can learn from that experience. The first thing is, people are nice everywhere. The people I met on the trip and who hosted me were just wonderful human beings, and terribly concerned about their country and concerned about their children, and welcomed Fairewinds with open heart. It was really, really special to see so much outpouring of grace and, in fact, love. It was really wonderful. The second thing is the inhumanity of the Japanese government, the Japanese utilities and the Japanese banks toward their own population. I’m just appalled at how the power structure in Japan is ignoring what its people want and basically ramming nukes down the throat of their population.
TA: Let’s cut to a quote directly from Prime Minister Abe, speaking before the Olympics Committee in 2013, and let’s listen to what he says about where the country is at at that time. “Japan has its narrative. The narrative is from devastation to revitalization. It is about disasters we endured – the earthquake, the tsunami and nuclear failure. But it is also about the revitalization, the bridge between the two was compassion, courage and calmness.” The English was potentially a little unclear, so I’ll just read the quote quick. And it says “Japan has its narrative. The narrative is from devastation to revitalization. It is about the disasters we have endured, the tsunami and nuclear failure. But it is also about the revitalization, the bridge between the two was compassion, courage and calmness.” Arnie, can you kind of clue us into what Abe is saying here?
AG:Yeah, I think there’s another quote that sort of goes along with that. It was all about getting the Olympic games back a year or two after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima. His other quote was to the Olympic Committee: “Some may have concerns about Fukushima. Let me assure you, the situation is under control.” You know, and as I look at all the news stories that came out in this last week with the fifth anniversary of the disaster, Abe was wrong. And we all knew he was wrong. The situation wasn’t in control in 2012, 2013 – and here we are in 2016 and the situation still isn’t in control.
CP: (3:56) It’s five years after Fukushima and there’ve been a lot of commentary and a lot of various news articles talking about Fukushima and quoting Abe. Recently he said, according to ABC News, “Our country is a resource-poor nation, and in order to secure energy supply while considering economic efficiency and climate change problems, nuclear power is indispensable,” Prime Minister Abe said. And this comment he made is coming a day after Japanese courts ordered the shutdown of two nuclear reactors that were previously declared safe under post-disaster safety rules. So it seems clear that Abe is pushing for this nuclear restart, doesn’t want a change of policy, but it sounds like from that, Arnie, that even within the Japanese court system, there is – and there’s good reason for pause, there’s good reason to look at these nuclear reactors and say, hey, wait a minute, is this really ready to go. What is your take on that, having just been in Japan?
AG: Yeah, you know, the deck is stacked against the Japanese people. The banks control the DIET, which is their parliament, as do the ten big utilities. And they want to get their asset performing again. Their assets are 40-some-odd nukes that are permanently shut down right now. So they want their money flowing. And the only way to get their money flowing is to get the electricity flowing. You know, you talk about global warming and how to prevent it, and Fukushima showed us that you can (1) destroy the fabric of a country overnight; and (2) you can lose all your nuclear generation for as long as five years with one disaster. I think that really drives the issue back to renewables. Japan’s not resource poor. I mean they’ve got lots of wind; they’ve got lots of sun. And they’ve got geothermal. So I think a concerted effort by the Japanese over the last five years could have weaned themselves from this nuclear bind that Abe has put them into.
MG: I remember, Arnie, that that was something that you and Mark Pendergrast, an author from Colchester, Vermont, who wrote Mirror, Mirror and Japan’s Tipping Point discussed, because right after the disaster and the triple meltdown, it was clear that Japan had a chance to move on to wave action, to move on to wind, to move on to solar. And they were being encouraged around the world. What’s interesting to me is that Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who is a physicist by training, decided to make this change for Germany because the risk of nuclear power is too great. I know that in your private meetings with former Prime Minister Naoto Kan – he made mention about his change from being pro-nuclear to becoming against nuclear power because the risk for health impact and financial devastation is way too great. Can you speak to that?
AG: Yeah. One of the stories out this week was Naoto Kan was being briefed, and he talked about he had the head of what we would call the Nuclear Regulatory Commission – the METI – in to discuss what was going on at Fukushima. And this is the head regulator of the nuclear industry, and he didn’t know anything. And he admitted to Abe that he wasn’t an engineer, that he was an economics major. Economics has been driving the nuclear industry in Japan before the disaster at Daiichi, and since Prime Minister Abe has been elected, he’s stacking the deck again with regulators with a pro-nuclear bent. It’s frustrating to see essentially every woman in the country and more than half the men disagreeing with their own government, and still making no progress. Let me just read a couple of headlines. These are just the headlines. We have these things posted on the site. So remember back in 2013, Abe saying, “Let me assure you the situation is under control.” Well, last week, Reuters said, “Fukushima ground zero: no place for man or robot.” Scientific American: “Crippled Fukushima reactors are still a danger five years after.” And The New York Times: “Fukushima keeps fighting radioactive tide five years after disaster.” I mean these are not left-wing news stories. Our mainstream media has finally come over to realize that what Abe said to get the Olympics back in 2012 was a marketing ploy, and in fact, the situation in Fukushima is not safe now and it wasn’t safe then.
TA: (9:12) Just another question regarding the media sources. You mentioned that we have Scientific American, New York Times, ABC News at the fifth year mark here coming out and saying that this is still an issue, whether it’s from cancers to contamination to people displacement, this is still a huge problem. As far as media in Japan goes, from your trip over there, what sense do you get from the message and the sort of rhetoric people are being fed by media sources in Japan?
AG: I think they still feel pressure under that State Secrets Act. Nobody wants to push too hard against the Abe administration. As a matter of fact, one of Abe’s prime key ministers came out and said twice now that if the media is not good to the administration – basically, if the media doesn’t say what the administration wants them to say, they’re going to pull their licenses. So the pressure is on the media in Japan to whistle the tune that the Abe administration wants them to whistle.
CP: In line with that, I mentioned earlier that there was a district court order to stop the restart of two reactors in Japan that have been very questioned, highly questioned by the public – the Kenji Electric Power Companies, Takahama Nuclear Power Plant in the Fukui Prefecture – I think it’s reactors 3 and 4, I believe. And in line with this, this district court pointed out that not only are these risks bad for Japan, but these risks have a worldwide effect. And going hand in hand with that, the District Court pointed out – and this is a direct quote – “The Japanese public who watched the disaster unfold at the Fukushima number one plant understood the overwhelming scope of the damages caused by the accident, as well as the great confusion that arose during the evacuation process. Yet both the government and electric utilities are working in tandem to restart reactors as if they’d forgotten what happened five years ago.” And that speaks volumes, at least to me, that a Japanese district court is pointing this out, which is so in line with what you’re saying. The general public of Japan has huge reason to be concerned about nuclear restart. They are concerned. And it seems so apparent when reading this news that the government and electric utilities – they really are brushing over this whole saga, just trying to put a nice sort of veil over it.
MG: Thanks, Caroline, for elaborating on that. What really struck me is that one of the articles on the Japanese court orders was an editorial from the Japanese paper, Asah Shimbun, and it said, “Despite utilities’ attempts, nuclear safety myth can never be revived.” And to have more than 70 percent of the people standing up and demonstrating consistently, which has not been covered in the media, in rallies, in marches, in papers, in the active citizens’ groups – adding that to the newspapers pushing back against the Abe regime, which has this para-military stance, I think it’s heartening to see press and individuals taking a stand even though they’re being threatened with jail.
AG: (12:49) Yeah. You know, the one thing I learned when I was in the resettlement communities is that they’ve all been told that there will be no resettlement communities by the time the Olympics start. The plan is to move people back into their homes in the contaminated areas, or to move them somewhere else in Japan to permanent homes. And that all of these essentially trailer parks for the resettlement of 160,000 people will be gone. Why? So Japan can show the world that the disaster is behind them. And it’s anything but.
MG: I was devastated when I saw some of the pictures that you took in Japan, Arnie. When I have looked at Japan’s pictures from all my other friends and colleagues who have traveled there, and just the beauty and the peacefulness and the serenity of the gardens. Even in Tokyo people have gardens they can walk to and areas they can walk along waterways to have a chance for peace and reflection. And these barracks – and that’s all they are, these temporary housings – just look like military barracks on bare pavement – is horrific for the people who have been stuck there. And I was surprised at one of your inquiries on one of our earlier podcasts when you met with the women who had been evacuated from Fukushima Prefecture. And no one in the government had come to their community of 62 people in the five years to tell them about radiation, what to look for, what to look for in terms of radiation poisoning symptoms. And now to hide the radiation – extensive radiation – that’s there and re-depositing in the already cleaned areas from snowmelt and flooding and rain, and to say it’s okay and send everyone back is a death sentence to all these families and children and grandchildren.
AG: Yeah, let me get back to the first thing I said about the inhumanity toward their own people. We had doctors tell us when they treated somebody for radiation illness, if they put radiation illness on the hospital forms, the government refused to pay. So doctors were literally going out of business because they were doing their job and treating people. But the other thing I learned on the last day of the trip was that there’s a huge spike in the death rates within Fukushima Prefecture for young children compared to what it was in previous years. But that story has been stifled by the Japanese medical and government agencies. Nobody’s publishing the data that the Japanese have been publishing for years leading up to the disaster. So where are the death data on Fukushima Prefecture? And the answer is it hasn’t been published because the Japanese government doesn’t want it out there. When you control the medical community, the epidemiological data that you need to prove a case is really, really difficult. I think Fairewinds did a good job in the time we were over there getting sample data with a group of scientists that may affect the way the world looks at the disaster. But the other half of that is, you’ve got to get the doctors on board to report honestly what they’re seeing. And the medical community is even more under the thumb of the Abe regime than is the press. It’s very depressing.
CP: I read a BBC article that was inspiring. It was about a group of women – mothers – who have come together and taken the time to not only get a Geiger counter, but learn how to operate it, learn about Becquerels and microsieverts and sieverts. They’ve been working alongside university professors to understand, and they now have a lab running. And there’ve been hundreds – in this article I was reading – there’ve been hundreds of little popup community laboratories. But what sets them apart is that they can read both gamma and beta rays. And it’s wonderful that the Japanese people have taken the initiative to try to find out these things. Because like you said, the epidemiological studies are going to be close to near impossible to take place in the future because the data is so hidden. The data is so convoluted. And these women are really working hard to protect their children, to protect their community and their land. It was sweet. They even have opened a clinic now where they do have doctors that give free thyroid screenings to children. So it’s a wonderful thing. It’s admirable and courageous of these women.
AG: Yeah. The trust the people have for their government is tenuous, but was very strong in Japan before the disaster. But that bond of trust is totally breached now and it’s wonderful that citizens came forward and did what the government should do. Again, the government should have done it and nobody trusts them any more.
MG: I want to thank all of you for joining us today. And I want to let you know that Arnie and other scientists are working on some really significant studies from samples that scientists have taken in Japan and sent to labs in Japan and in the U.S. Fairewinds will be participating in a report that will be issued on this and we will keep you up to date. It takes time to do this testing, but as soon as it’s ready, it will be publicized. We’re very thankful for the support of all of our followers that enabled Arnie to make this trip, and for the beautiful letters and emails we’ve received about the poignant stories we’ve been able to share with you. Caroline, Tony, Arnie, thanks for joining me today. This is Maggie Gundersen signing off. And we’ll keep you informed.
