Call for international protest against Japanese Prime Minister Noda's decision to allow the restart of Ohi nuclear power plant

[A PDF version of this call is posted here.]

Dear Friends,

The Japanese Prime Minister Noda has announced his decision to order the restart two nuclear reactors in the town of Ohi in the prefecture of Fukui in Western Japan. He also claimed that nuclear energy will remain an important source of energy for Japan also in the future, thereby reconfirming Japans nuclear energy policy.

Despite all our efforts, despite the strong resistance in the region of Western Japan surrounding Ohi, and despite the fact that a majority of the Japanese people is against nuclear power, the Japanese government is bowing to pressures of the nuclear lobby in Japan. We have tried hard on our own, but now we believe that coordinated international pressure on the Japan government is essential to bring on real and substantial change. We believe that the Japanese government and the Japanese public will react very sensitively to international pressure, so we wish to ask you for your support to initiate and coordinate international protest against the Japanese government.

Specifically we suggest the following action within the following days (preferably on Wednesday to Friday this week / June 13~15, 2012):

1. Please assemble in front of the Japanese embassies in your capital to voice your protest against the decision and policy of Prime Minister Noda

2. Please try to submit a letter of protest -addressed to Prime Minister Noda- to the Japanese Ambassador in your country and request the Japanese Ambassador to forward this letter of protest to the Japanese Prime Minister

3. Please try to seek coverage of this action by your local and international media, especially Japanese media, as well as on the Internet

4. Please give us notice about your planned action, so we can organize a press event in Japan to reinforce your message to the Japanese government.

Please note that we wish these protests to be absolutely civil and peaceful, and to fully observe the sovereign rights of the Japanese embassies abroad.

A draft letter of protest is attached, so you just need to sign it.

We thank you for your support.  

Japan, June 11^th, 2012

Hideyuki BAN, Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center (CNIC)

Kanna MITSUTA, FoE Japan

Aileen Mioko SMITH, Green Action

Daisuke SATO, No Nukes Asia Forum

Akira KAWASAKI, Peace Boat

Kaori IZUMI, Shut Tomari

Sample language for a letter of protest to Japanese Prime Minister Noda re: his re-start approval for Ohi nuclear power plant, Fukui Prefecture

Letter of Protest [A PDF version of letter of protest is posted here]

To: Mr. Yoshihiko Noda, Prime Minister of Japan

“Shame on you, Mr. Noda  – listen to your people and act responsibly – Don’t restart Ohi reactors – Come up with a responsible energy policy based on conservation and renewable energy”

Dear Prime Minister,

We protest your decision to restart two nuclear power reactors in the town of Ohi in Fukui Prefecture. We ask you to reconsider and instead impose a moratorium on nuclear power in Japan. We ask you to come up with a responsible energy policy for a Japan without nuclear power and based on energy conservation and renewable energies.

Here are our reasons:

① Your decision is undemocratic. The Japanese public is not supporting you. Many members and parliamentarians of your own party are not standing with you. 

② The full truth about the meltdown of the three reactors in Fukushima has not been established, yet.

③ The prevailing, temporary safety standards that have been applied by the stress tests and that you referred to when you declared the Ohi reactors to be safe, are insufficient. At present, essential safety measures that are required by the stress tests have not yet  been implemented in Ohi. It is not verified whether the reactors can be shut down safely if a serious earthquake were to occur.

④ Any new regime of safety standards must be formulated and overseen by a truly independent Nuclear Safety Agency. This agency has not yet been established, and parliamentary procedures have just been started. 

⑤ The sharp increase in seismic activities in Japan since the earthquake and tsunami catastrophe of March 11 is alarming. The fact that there are active fault lines in the vicinity of the Ohi reactors, and perhaps even under the site is a major reason of concern.

You may reject this letter as an outside interference into the internal affairs of Japan. However, we know since Chernobyl and Fukushima that the fallout of nuclear accidents does not know national borders, but severely impacts the global environment and bears unknown risks to the health of all mankind. We believe it is our moral obligations to voice our concerns to you.

We also know that our concerns are shared by many people in your country and that a majority of your people does not agree with you. We have high respect for the people of Japan, for their sense of community and service in times of great harm. We believe in their creativity and strong will to overcome these difficult times, and to rebuild a Japan without nuclear power.

We, therefore, ask you to kindly reconsider the restart of the Ohi reactors and to declare a moratorium on nuclear power. We ask you to come up with a responsible energy policy for a Japan without nuclear power based on energy conservation and renewable energies.

Yours sincerely,

Date: 

Signature:

Powerful, moving pleas from Fukushima women to Noda government

On June 7, 2012, about 70 women, including 10 women from Fukushima, did a "die-in" in front of Prime Minister Noda's official residence to protest against the start of the Ohi nuclear power plant. Before the die-in, 10 Fukushima women visited the Cabinet office and met with officials to submit a letter of request addressed to Prime Minister Noda. The next day, Noda announced he would re-start Ohi. This video shows the testimony of the women - one by one - in powerful, moving orations that should not fail to move anyone thinking rationally. At the end there is footage of the die-in. Unfortunately, Noda failed to heed their pleas. Watch our bulletin, website and Facebook pages for actions to protest the irresponsible criminality of restarting reactors in Japan.

Toshio Nishi, Hoover Institute: "On the Cesium Road"

Toshio Nishi, a research associate at the Hoover Institute, published a very hard-hitting essay, "On the Cesium Road", on April 6, 2012. It begins:

"Japanese feel angry and ignored, prisoners of both radiation and bureaucracy. 

For more than a year, I have been hoping that the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company would find the courage to bear the unbearable and repair the breathtaking damage from last spring’s earthquake and tsunami. But a better tomorrow is not in sight. A deathly silence still pervades the desolate landscape of Fukushima and the long coastal line of northern Japan—the cesium road.

The Japanese government grows more incompetent and dysfunctional, while Tokyo Electric has dug a deep foxhole of self-preservation and clings tightly to its monopoly. I am embarrassed as a Japanese citizen to list some of the most glaring shenanigans that the government and the power company have been acting out in public over the past year..."

Former Japanese PM Kan: "the best way to make nuclear plants safe is not to rely on them, but rather to get rid of them”

Former Prime Minister Naoto Kan testifying before the Diet panel investigating the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe.In an article entitled "Japan's Former Leader Condemns Nuclear Power," the New York Times reported on May 28th about the three-hour testimony of Japan's former Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, before a Japanese parliamentary investigation into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe. Kan was serving during the first five months of the catastrophe, from 3/11/11 to August, when he resigned. Kan warned that the politically and economically powerful "nuclear village" in industry, government, and academia has shown "no remorse" for the catastrophe, as it pushes to re-start Japan's 50 remaining atomic reactors despite widespread grassroots opposition. Kan pointed out that “Gorbachev said in his memoirs that the Chernobyl accident exposed the sicknesses of the Soviet system. The Fukushima accident did the same for Japan.” Kan shared that he feared a worst case scenario cascade (or in the words of Kan's Chief Cabinet Secretary, now Minister of Trade, Economy, and Industry, Edano, "demonic chain reaction") of reactor meltdowns and high-level radioactive waste pool fires, which could have caused the “release into the air and sea many times, no, many dozens of times, many hundreds of times the radiation released by Chernobyl,” which would have forced the evacuation of 30 million people from Tokyo, leading to “a collapse of the nation’s ability to function.” Kan concluded “It is impossible to ensure safety sufficiently to prevent the risk of a national collapse. Experiencing the accident convinced me that the best way to make nuclear plants safe is not to rely on them, but rather to get rid of them.”

An AFP article, carried by Japan Today, reports that Kan compared the "nuclear village" in Japan to the imperial militarism that plunged Japan into World War II. Kan is quoted as saying “The nuclear accident was caused by a nuclear plant which operated as national policy...I believe the biggest portion of blame lies with the state...Before the war, the military came to have a grip on actual political power… Similarly, plant operator TEPCO and FEPC (Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan) held sway over the nation’s nuclear administration over the past 40 years...They ousted experts, politicians and bureaucrats critical of nuclear energy from the mainstream. Many others they sidelined so that they could maintain the status quo.”