Tepco released video of emergency TV meeting “99.3% cut off, 1665 beep sounds, 29 image concealment” by Fukushima diary

http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/08/tepco-released-the-video-of-emergency-tv-meeting-99-3-cut-off-1665-beep-sounds-29-image-concealment/

            

Tepco released the video of emergency TV meeting held on 3/11 ~ 15/2011, but it was full of concealment as expected.
These were recorded at Tepco’s head office and Fukushima Daini, the full length is 150 hours, but the part recorded in Fukushima Daini doesn’t have audio data.
Tepco edited it to make it only 1 hour, the video of 149 hours was cut off. (99.3%) They also added beep sounds 1665 times and concealed the image 29 times. It’s to protect their privacy supposedly………

145 Lawｙers Supporting Citizens’ Right to Express their Opinions Freely

Former Chairman of the Japan Feｄeration of Bar Associations Mr. Utsunomiya and others recently handed the government a protest note with 145 lawｙers’ signatures on it, demanding that the steel barricade erected between the road and the pavement near the Prime Minister’s residential office in Tokyo be removed.  The note condemns the tight control by the police, saying that it infringes citizens’ right to express their opinions freely, and warning that the barricade is unsafe and likely to lead to accidents.

ODAKIAS - Ryuichi Sakamoto No Restarting!

Friday demo in front of Prime Minister’s residential office continues.  Not just no. of demonstrators count, each individual voice seems to be stronger and more powerful.  They really feel the government doesn’t listen to the citizens.  Prime Minister Noda still has been refusing to talk to the group.  Last Friday a world-famous musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto was among the crowd.  He composed this new piece using anti nuclear demo’s calls. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yKN174GwLY&feature=player_embedded             

Saika Do Hantai!  No restarting!

36 Percent Of Fukushima Children Have Abnormal Thyroid Growths And Doctors Are In The Dark

36 percent of Fukushima children have abnormal thyroid growths likely from radiation exposure, based on the "Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey."
Australian pediatrician Dr. Helen Caldicott's comment on this news:
 

1. "It is extremely rare to find cysts and thyroid nodules in children."

2. "This is an extremely large number of abnormalities to find in children."

3. "You would not expect abnormalities to appear so early — within the first year or so — therefore one can assume that they must have received a high dose of [radiation]."

4. "It is impossible to know, from what [officials in Japan] are saying, what these lesions are."

Dr. Caldicott explained that the high rate of abnormal growths in Fukushima children is very unusual — it usually takes five to 7 years to see what the medical implications of radiation are — and insisted that the international medical community become involved. ……. Thyroid nodules are relatively common, they are not as common in children and some of them could become cancerous.

…….Dr. Calidcott noted that Japanese officials are not sharing ultrasound results with foremost experts of thyroid nodules in children and accused the media of "practicing psychic numbing," saying that she doesn't understand why media outlets are choosing to ignore the nuclear fallout. 

http://www.businessinsider.com/fukushima-children-have-abnormal-thyroid-growths-2012-7#ixzz22VB1zCB0

http://fukushimavoice-eng.blogspot.jp/2012/07/thyroid-examination-by-fukushima.html

Prosecutors Have Opened a Criminal Investigation of the Fukushima Disaster

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/08/prosecutors-have-opened-criminal-investigation-fukushima-disaster/55296/     

TOKYO — Japan’s prosecutors officially began investigating Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and its former top executives on criminal charges today in relation to the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima following last year's March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
TEPCO was formally nationalized yesterday, July 31, after a trillion yen government cash infusion. This recent turn of events coud be very bad news for the remaining executives. Most criminal sentences in Japan also include hard labor as punishment.
The responsibility for the accident at TEPCO's Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant has been a point of contention for over a year but an unprecedented special investigatory body created by the Japanese Parliament, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) released a report that put the blame squarely on the shoulders of TEPCO and the Japanese government. It concluded: “the accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties. They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents.” The report also said that the possibility an earthquake played a major role in the meltdown, long before the allegedly “unprecedented” tsunami knocked out power supplies could not be ruled out.
Since last Spring, The Tokyo Prosecutor Office Special Investigative Division has been conducting a preliminary investigation into TEPCO on charges of criminal negligence resulting in death and/or injury. The firm is also facing charges of Environmental Pollution Crimes relating to Human Health (公害罪法違反). A Ministry of Justice source close to the investigation said on conditions of anonymity, “It seems very clear that TEPCO knew that an earthquake and/or a tsunami would probably damage the reactors and result in a meltdown. They failed to take preventive measures and their response in after-math was negligent, insufficient, and under Japanese law, they will be held criminally responsible.”
Across Japan, there have been at least twenty criminal complaints filed against TEPCO and Japanese government officials since March of last year, some by residents, some by citizen groups. Prosecutors in Fukushima Prefecture and Tokyo held off officially accepting the complaints until the final government report was promulgated last month. Law enforcement sources say that the NAIIC report will be used as evidence in the investigation. Another report issued by the RJIF, which has testimony suggesting the Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant cooling system collapsed resulting in an LOCA (loss of coolant accident) before the tidal wave, is also said to be in the prosecutors’ evidence file.
The anger directed toward TEPCO and the Japanese government is quite substantial, there have been several popular books published calling for the criminal prosecution of the company and the nuclear industry, including such hits as, at right, Judging the Crimes of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident. The cover reads, "You too can file a criminal complaint against the evil nuclear industrial complex!"
TEPCO as noted above is also accused of environmental crimes as well as those violating the penal code. The problem for the prosecution is in proving, first, the meltdown could have been prevented or foreseen and that there was thus criminal negligence, second, to what extent exposure to radiation is “harmful” or if the accident has resulted in death, and, third, how to determine the extent of environmental damage. The issues of government responsibility may be far beyond the prosecution’s mandate. The investigation is expected to focus on Tsunehisa Katsumata, the chairman of TEPCO shown above at a contrite press conference three weeks after the disaster. He was absent on the day of the accident because he was visiting China on a press junket with Japanese reporters. Katsumata was the CEO of TEPCO before a minor nuclear plant accident forced him to resign and take what was deemed the lesser post of chairman.
If TEPCO executives are prosecuted for criminal neglect, it will not be the first time power company officials have faced such charges. After a much smaller scale nuclear accident at the JCO plant in Tokaimura in 1999, six employees of the firm were investigated and finally in 2003 found guilty of professional negligence resulting in death. If previous cases are any indication, the half-life of this investigation will be very long as well. 
        

Report from Fukushima – Nursery School Children have Lost the Ability to Climb

http://zasshi.news.yahoo.co.jp/article?a=20120730-00000301-jisin-soci

Although Fukushima city and Kooriyama city are 50-60km from the Fukushima nuclear plant, they contain many hotspots with an average radiation level of between 5 and 20 mSv/y, which is higher than the level at which people in Chernobyl were evacuated.  According to this recent report about two of nursery schools in Fukushima and Kooriyama city, children in nursery schools in Fukushima have been allowed outside so little since the nuclear disaster because of the high radiation levels outside that they are severely lacking in exercise and are no longer able to climb climbing frames.  Apparently, they don’t even ask to go out, seeming to know that it would be unsafe and that their parents would be worried about them.  Isn't that sad?  This fact is just one of many difficulties in life in Fukushima.

Revealed: British government’s plan to play down Fukushima

http://philosophers-stone.co.uk/wordpress/2011/07/revealed-british-governments-plan-to-play-down-fukushima/ 

By Rob Edwards

Internal emails seen by Guardian show PR campaign was launched to protect UK nuclear plans after tsunami in Japan

Government officials launched a PR campaign to ensure the accident at the Fukushima nuclear facility in Japan did not derail plans for new nuclear power stations in the UK. Photograph: AP

British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known.
Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse to try to ensure the accident did not derail their plans for a new generation of nuclear stations in the UK.
“This has the potential to set the nuclear industry back globally,” wrote one official at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), whose name has been redacted. “We need to ensure the anti-nuclear chaps and chapesses do not gain ground on this. We need to occupy the territory and hold it. We really need to show the safety of nuclear.”
Officials stressed the importance of preventing the incident from undermining public support for nuclear power.
The Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, who sits on the Commons environmental audit committee, condemned the extent of co-ordination between the government and nuclear companies that the emails appear to reveal.
“The government has no business doing PR for the industry and it would be appalling if its departments have played down the impact of Fukushima,” he said.
Louise Hutchins, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace, said the emails looked like “scandalous collusion”. “This highlights the government’s blind obsession with nuclear power and shows neither they, nor the industry, can be trusted when it comes to nuclear,” she said.
The Fukushima accident, triggered by the Japan earthquake and tsunami on 11 March, has forced 80,000 people from their homes. Opinion polls suggest it has dented public support for nuclear power in Britain and around the world, with the governments of Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Thailand and Malaysia cancelling planned nuclear power stations in the wake of the accident.