September 2, 2013
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Esq.,
Proposal: Enact “a national project” on leak prevention against radioactive contaminated water in the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
Yasuteru Yamada
President
On behalf of Senior Veterans Corps for Fukushima
The recently revealed issue concerning the leaks of radioactively contaminated water at the TEPCO Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has showed clearly that TEPCO has been unable to arrange and organize proper internal organizational systems to acknowledge and analyze the March 11 accident systematically, and to plan and execute the right strategies. This proves again that such clean-up work should not be borne by a private company but by a national project. To bring this about, we would request you earnestly to take proper legal and financial arrangements and requirements.
We Senior Veterans Corps for Fukushima are a voluntary organization to ease radiation exposure for young generations with expertise and specialty of retired senior technicians and workers who seem to be less vulnerable against radiation exposure. We have earnestly requested the establishment of an executive body for a national project geared to adopt comprehensive approaches and tactics; cooling reactor core, contaminated water processing, retrieval of debris, radiation exposure control, decontamination, waste storage and others. It is quite obvious that a profit organization, TEPCO, which was established under laws and regulations in normal times cannot solve a catastrophic nuclear power accident caused by a massive earthquake by means of their series of partial stopgap measures.
We presented a petition to Diet for “Establishment of national project toward decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant” in May this year.
Polluted water issue is only a part of the above mentioned, diversified clean-up works though, another new influx into the sea has been was detected and thus our concern turns out to be reality in a quite serious manner. Fishermen along the Fukushima coast were compelled to stop fishing.
The problem is by no means limited to Japan. Foreign media cover this issue quite broadly and deeply. An internationally active NGO, Greenpeace, suggests a breach of international sea laws obliging member nations to protect oceanic environments. Sea pollution is sure to spoil the trust for Japan on the international stage and it affects the solicitation of the Olympic Games. The failure of polluted water management should be regarded as the “Second accidental discharge”, following the reactor core melt-down and the successive hydrogen explosion.
You have already mentioned a more positive stance “We cannot allow TEPCO to manage everything; the nation of Japan must take proper and solid measures firmly.” in a conference of Nuclear Emergency Recovery Headquarters and of other occasions. You allow no respite any more. A Korean newspaper issues an editorial saying “Japanese government can do nothing but see the Pacific Ocean being polluted?” We have to cope with the clean-up of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident as a global challenge burdening on all the people of Japan. We ask you to make an adamant decision toward the establishment of a “national project” which mobilizes worldly wisdom and know-how with our might and main.
With very best regards