August 05, 2012

The safety myth - Japanese nuclear power plants touching the 'ring of fire'.

WLOE's Ursula Gelis interviewed Emiko HIRANO of the New Japan Women's Association (www.shinfujin.gr.jp) at the Abolition 2000 annual meeting in Vienna, May 2012. Ursula will be at the 67th anniversary of the bombing in Hiroshima on August 6, 2012 and will report back. This interview was done for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).

"Emiko, you are a women's rights and peace activist, working for the abolition of nuclear weapons. What is your affiliation?

I am in charge of international relations for New Japan Women's Association which is a women’s organization with 160,000 members all over the country. Our primary goal is to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons. We are also working hard to promote gender equality and women's rights. Needless to say, we are active against US military bases in Japan. We work for peace and justice in general.

In addition to that we are focusing on relief operations after the Fukushima accident of March 2011. Support for women and mothers and children of this nuclear disaster is crucial.

Roughly a year later a lot of people from the Fukushima prefecture would like to return to their homes or closer to less contaminated zones?

I do not have the exact number of people with me now but not only citizens who lived close to the nuclear power plant escaped but many other families too were afraid of radiation and left the Fukushima prefecture.

I think there are thousands who fled.

How about precautions in case of a nuclear power plant incident.
What was the policy in Japan concerning a potential accident?

Well, both the government and the electricity company, TEPCO, did not disclose enough information and issued warnings soon enough after the accident. It took them more than a day until the evacuation order was issued for the Fukushima people although they knew that the situation was very bad.

This delay of evacuation orders caused panic among the effected people. Useful information was not disclosed, for instance, officials did not admit that the meltdown was going on.

What was the knowledge of the average Japanese in terms of radiation danger in case of a nuclear power station incident?

Those of us being in the peace movement knew that the existence of nuclear power plants is dangerous in itself and also costly. Yet the Japanese government used every means to convince the local people to host nuclear power plants by saying that they are completely safe. We call this the safety myth.

All the 54 nuclear power plants are now under regular check up and are not functioning. We call on the government not to restart them because they are simply not safe.

All the plants are located in coastal areas. The local communities are suffering from this structures. Especially older people have to pay the price of having these plants around. Younger people are moving to big cities. In order to increase the acceptance of a plant in a community a lot of governmental subsidies were offered.

Now we are witnessing an increase in the Japanese anti-nuclear power movement.

Yes, especially young people, many who have not been active in any movement at all before, now feel that they have been deceived by the government and they do not want any additional nuclear accident from happening.

Is it a change in mentality?

Absolutely. A very big change." ...

Read full interview here