Fukushima Reconstruction Committee Issues Urgent Global Appeal (Niigata-Nippo Shimbun, Japan)

It may have been largely forgotten by the global media, but the nuclear catastrophe in Japan has not been concluded. This editorial from Japan’s Niigata-Nippo Shimbun, packaged with video on the latest assessments on the disaster from both in and out of Japan, offers a glimpse of the ongoing nuclear turmoil confronted by the Japanese people.

The Niigata-Nippo Shimbun editorial says in part:

‘If Fukushima doesn’t call for an end to nuclear energy, what will? The whole world is watching … we must clarify our position on nuclear power before we can embark on our plans for reconstruction,’ the Reconstruction Planning Committee is reported to have strongly argued.

After the accident at Fukushima Daiichi reactor No. 1, a panel of experts was appointed by the Reconstruction Planning Committee to propose ideas for rebuilding Fukushima prefecture. The committee compiled a draft of fundamental principles and made their central tenet a nuclear opt-out. It is a declaration of intent that all 10 reactors in the prefecture should be scrapped, including Daiichi plant reactors 5 and 6 – and the Daini plant. Daiichi plant reactors 1-4 are already scheduled for decommissioning. The draft proposal appeals to Fukushima residents, all local governments with nuclear plants in their jurisdictions – and the world. In the event of a large-scale nuclear accident, the resulting radioactive contamination is not limited to any locality, but impacts nationally and globally as well.

The fundamental principle of denuclearization must be sincerely considered, not just by Fukushima residents, but by the whole of Japan. A global debate about whether energy policies that rely on nuclear plants are appropriate is needed now. Japan has a responsibility to begin that discussion.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

4 Responses to “Fukushima Reconstruction Committee Issues Urgent Global Appeal (Niigata-Nippo Shimbun, Japan)”

1. RON BEASLEY says:

   June 24, 2011 at 5:59 pm

   I fear we will need our own Chernobyl like reaction here in the US before we will do anything. And don’t forget we are just one incident that “nobody could have predicted” away like a dam failure on the Missouri River.
2. LOGAN PENZA says:

   June 24, 2011 at 11:04 pm

   Combine “the end of nuclear energy” overreaction with the zero-tolerance towards carbon emissions of the global warming climate change hysterics, and the real agenda of radical environmentalism becomes rather clear: deindustrialization without regard to the massive cost in human lives that would result.
3. DLS says:

   June 26, 2011 at 3:18 pm

   In some cases, Logan, it’s fair to suspect they either don’t care about the lives lost but want some lives lost — as was expressed in the past, by these same types of people (the solution is always the same, the problem chosen for which the same solution is sought changes from decade to decade since the “population explosion” craziness in the 1960s, “famine” in the 1970s, etc.).

   The anti-nuclear subcultural craze is irrational and leftist anti-tech and anti-progress. (Only recently have lefties adopted tech play-toy favorites. It’s not just more advanced solar and wind power tech, but also their giggly telecomm toys, easily most of all) It’s also anti-business, anti-conventional-society-and-cultural lefty behavior. (Would things have been different if public power generation been more widespread here, and nuke plants thus been public rather than private? I suspect it would be different.)

   Ron, it may be fun in a perverse way (laughing at the idiocy of the authors in expressing their lunacy!) to peruse the following,

   http://mothersforpeace.org/resources/maps/chernobylAppliedToDiablo/view

   http://mothersforpeace.org/data/ChernobylFalloutMap/at_download/file

   but as has always been known by the informed and competent the USA doesn’t have Chernobyl-style power plants, and so you’ll have to wait a long time before seeing any Chernobyl-style catastrophe (rationally, perhaps 1+ million years) even if we had Chernobyl-style power plants in this country. (They’d still be superior to solar and wind, obviously, as well as to coal, the serious alternative to nuclear for electricity generation, a major reason, no doubt, that Eastern Europe still has reactors like Chernobyl.) It’s irrational to wage war against a top energy source.

   The following is older, but remains top quality. Instructive or instructional reading, a link to the Chernobyl chapter of Cohen’s book provided once more on this site — and the rest of the book ought to be read, too, especially to those who view nuclear power as some mysterious demon (and suitably attacked by the Left).

   http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter7.html

   Postscript: from Cohen,

   The opposition to nuclear power among politicians started in the early 1970s when they stopped taking advice from the scientific establishment and instead began taking it from political activist groups belonging to what is generally referred to as “the environmental movement.” These groups, principally led by Ralph Nader, used or desired little scientific information. They largely formulated their beliefs on the basis of political philosophy, and then found scientists wherever they could to support them, without regard to the consensus of opinions throughout the scientific community.

   Nowadays with academia and science itself corrupted by leftist politics, we not only have pro-PC-tech lefties, but PC science giving superficial “credibility” to “climate change” enviro-politics.
4. DLS says:

   June 26, 2011 at 5:02 pm

   I’ll just add that this “Chernobyl” (or the even more wrong and wrongful “Hiroshima”) label on Western nuclear power is an old game.

   1. Here is the CND (which organized an anti-nuclear-power protest recently; they’ve never gotten out of the game they’ve been playing for so many years, decades) Web site with a Fukushima entry. (Posting plus 19 comments; author put in place)

   Experts are drawing parallels with the Chernobyl disaster, 25 years ago next month. Tens of thousands of people have died as a result of that meltdown, and parts of Britain are still affected by the radioactive pollution from 1986.

   http://www.cnduk.org/index.php/kate-hudson-s-blog/fukushima-another-chernobyl-1008.html

   More related (CND) extremism here:

   http://www.cnduk.org/index.php/press-releases/Nuclear-Power/

   And finally, an excerpt from a book by someone knowledgeable. This excerpt or some of it was placed by James Lovelock (of Gaia fame) into his chapter on energy sources and the routine leftist and “environmentally” minded people (acting the opposite) who are opposed to nuclear power:

   [William J. Nuttall, in the UK]

   The real opposition to nuclear power within the public grew in the 1970s and the 1980s. It may be argued that this has been a consequence of the rise of single-issue pressure groups and yough culture. That is, as the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the late 1960s grew out of earlier Civil Rights demonstrations, so the anti-nuclear demonstrations of the 1970s arose directly from the Vietnam War protests, once that conflict had come to an end. This, however, is a rather Americanized perspective on what has been an erosion of enthusiasm for nuclear power. In Britain the defining socio-political events of relevance are those associated with the rise of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the late 1960s and resurgently in the 1980s. Not only was CND passionate and anti-American, but it was also fun and it was cool. This fusion of popular culture with the British anti-nuclear movement of the 1960s is vividly captured by the present writer’s uncle Jeff Nuttall in his visceral autobiography Bomb Culture in which he described one CND Aldermaston march as a Carnival of Optimism [47]: ‘Protest was associated with festivity.’ This important aspect of matters nuclear has only slightly attenuated with the passing decades. Those advocating nuclear renaissance ignore such aspects of the politics of nuclear power at their peril.

   http://books.google.com/books?id=qi_wlX2WuHgC&lpg=PA69&ots=YRWY-g3190&dq=jeff%20nuttall%20nuclear%20cnd%20cool&pg=PA69#v=onepage&q=jeff%20nuttall%20nuclear%20cnd%20cool&f=false

   Happy (nuclear) disintegration (RADIOACTIVITY, oooo) to you…