Japan’s Nuclear Sites Raised U.S. Concerns, Cables Show

 

The cables from the United States Embassy in Tokyo were sent in 2006 and 2007, and recount warnings from American diplomats who visited Japanese nuclear plants and observed security drills. The Americans were raising concerns about Japan’s readiness for guerrilla-style attacks by groups like civilian terrorists or North Korean commandos.

In a cable dated Feb. 26, 2007, American officials expressed concern about the absence of armed guards at a nuclear facility in Tokaimura, north of Tokyo, which they described as “a major plutonium storage site.” But the Ministry of Science and Education, which oversees Japan’s nuclear sites, said “there was not a sufficient threat to justify armed police,” the cable said.

The Japanese explained that the site was protected by civilian guards, who cannot be armed under Japanese law, the cable said.

Other cables described the placement of fences, security cameras and motion detectors, and the readiness of Japan’s coast guard to protect nuclear plants near the ocean from seaborne attacks.

In the 2007 cable, the Americans also asked the ministry to conduct background checks of workers with access to sensitive areas of the Tokaimura site, as is standard practice in the United States. Ministry officials replied that while such checks were conducted “unofficially,” constitutional restrictions and privacy concerns prevented the government from making them routine.

While the cables noted that Japan was becoming more aware of threats to its nuclear facilities, they also faulted some countermeasures, particularly antiterrorism training drills, characterized as unrealistic.

A cable dated Jan. 27, 2006, describes an antiterrorism drill at the Mihama nuclear plant in central Japan as “a bit too scripted and perfect.” A cable dated Nov. 2 of the same year faults a drill at the Tokaimura facility at which participants had been given “advance copies of the scenario.”

 

Workers Enter Japan’s Crippled Reactor Building

TOKYO — Workers entered a damaged reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Thursday for the first time since explosions crippled the Japanese power plant two months ago.

The plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said the workers were trying to install a ventilator to help lower radiation levels in the reactor building.

If all goes according to plan, the reduced radiation should allow workers to enter the plant for short periods to begin the critical task of installing a new cooling system. It will also reduce the chance that radiation will be released into the environment, said Michael Friedlander, a former senior nuclear power plant operator in the United States.

“In general, it’s all positive,” he said.

The power company said a dozen workers in antiradiation suits entered the outer rooms of Unit 1 to begin installing the system for filtering out radioactive particles in the air. Last month, robots found dangerously high radiation levels in the building, which was damaged by a hydrogen explosion after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan.

The filter will act like a vacuum cleaner, absorbing radioactive particles from the building’s air.

Tokyo Electric officials said the ventilator should lower radiation levels enough that workers would be able to enter the rest of the building within three days.

The company can then begin replacing the cooling system to regain control of the overheated reactor, which has partly melted down.

Tokyo Electric must install cooling systems at three of the Fukushima plant’s six reactors to stay on its current timetable of stabilizing the plant within six to nine months.

The cooling systems were knocked out, and storage pools for spent fuel rods compromised, by the earthquake and tsunami.

The workers were sent into the plant after robots found that radiation levels in the building had dropped from last month, though they are still high.

To limit exposure, the workers were split into four groups of three. Each group entered in 10-minute shifts, the company said. The workers also carried their own oxygen tanks to reduce risk, the company said.

The workers are installing large ducts that will be used to filter the air inside the building.

If the air purification system is properly set up and running, it is reasonable to assume that workers can move to the next step of installing a cooling system by early next week, Mr. Friedlander said.

Kevin Drew contributed reporting from Hong Kong.

View the original article here

Cables Show U.S. Concern on Japan’s Disaster Readiness

The cable, sent by Ambassador J. Thomas Schieffer, said Japan was preparing for earthquakes and even cyberattacks, but that it might prove less adept at responding to unforeseen disasters. “Compartmentalization and risk aversion within the bureaucracy, however, could increase Japan’s vulnerability to threats for which it is less prepared,” warned the cable, dated March 18.

Bureaucratic decision making has been cited as a factor in Japan’s lack of preparedness, almost exactly three years later, for the record-breaking tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and set off the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. While the cable offers few specifics about the weaknesses in Japan’s disaster planning, it does go on to warn that a blow that disables the country could have catastrophic consequences for global trade and finance.

Scores of secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks give an inside view of Washington’s sometimes rocky relationship with Japan. The most recent cables are from February 2010, long before the earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan on March 11 of this year. They also offer a detailed look at the United States’ response to the political upheaval that had just upended Japan’s long stagnant political landscape — the end of the Liberal Democratic Party’s almost continuous rule for more than 50 years.

After the Democratic Party of Japan won a landmark election in August 2009, American officials appeared uncertain in public how to react to the country’s new leaders and played down the damage to the relationship as teething problems in a nation that had seen opposition parties take power only once before since 1955. But in private, American diplomats were delivering a much more pointed message to the government of Japan’s new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama.

This is clearly seen in a classified cable dated October 2009 that describes a visit to Tokyo at that time by the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, Kurt M. Campbell.

A few days earlier, Mr. Hatoyama had visited Beijing, where he publicly said that Japan needed to end what he characterized as its historic overdependence on the United States. According to the cable sent to Washington by the United States Embassy in Tokyo, Mr. Campbell warned a Japanese deputy minister of defense at the time, Akihisa Nagashima, that the remarks “drew surprise from the highest levels of the U.S. government.”

“Imagine the Japanese response if the U.S. government were to say publicly that it wished to devote more attention to China than Japan,” the cable quotes Mr. Campbell as saying. He warned that such remarks “would create a crisis in U.S.-Japan relations.”

Though the cables give a distinctly American view of events at a volatile time, they also provide glimpses of how the end of the Liberal Democrats’ long run in power had opened the floodgates in Japan for reconsidering the cold war-era security alliance with the United States. The cables show alarm and concern, in both the United States and Japan, about the Hatoyama government’s often clumsy and erratic efforts to lessen Japan’s postwar dependency on the United States and to flirt with closer ties to China.

The cables reveal that, in private conversations, American officials repeatedly warned the Japanese to take China’s military rise more seriously, though they avoided raising the issue in public for fear of angering China. They also played the China card to get Japan to be more cooperative.

An Oct. 15, 2009, cable described a delegation of a dozen high-ranking United States officials — including diplomats, Pentagon officials and a Marine Corps major general — who tried to persuade Japan to honor an agreement to keep an American air base on the Japanese island of Okinawa. They described the history of the agreement, and promised to address the concerns of the Democratic Party, which had vowed during the election campaign to move the base, Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, off Okinawa.

Then one of the Japanese officials asked whether the base could be moved to the United States territory of Guam. An American official bluntly replied that the United States needed to keep the base on Okinawa as one of three runways there that its forces would need to defend Japan from “the dramatic increase in China’s military capabilities,” the cable recounted.

The cables also reveal the active efforts that American diplomats were making to reach out to the new government, as well as some setbacks, including an attempt to build personal ties between Mr. Hatoyama and President Obama.

In a cable dated Dec. 10, 2009, John V. Roos, the current American ambassador to Japan, told the Japanese land minister in blunt terms that the United States had “a problem with Hatoyama telling POTUS” — the president of the United States — “to trust him, but not following through.”

 

Cables Show U.S. Concern on Japan’s Disaster Readiness

The cable, sent by Ambassador J. Thomas Schieffer, said Japan was preparing for earthquakes and even cyberattacks, but that it might prove less adept at responding to unforeseen disasters. “Compartmentalization and risk aversion within the bureaucracy, however, could increase Japan’s vulnerability to threats for which it is less prepared,” warned the cable, dated March 18.

Bureaucratic decision making has been cited as a factor in Japan’s lack of preparedness, almost exactly three years later, for the record-breaking tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and set off the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. While the cable offers few specifics about the weaknesses in Japan’s disaster planning, it does go on to warn that a blow that disables the country could have catastrophic consequences for global trade and finance.

Scores of secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks give an inside view of Washington’s sometimes rocky relationship with Japan. The most recent cables are from February 2010, long before the earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan on March 11 of this year. They also offer a detailed look at the United States’ response to the political upheaval that had just upended Japan’s long stagnant political landscape — the end of the Liberal Democratic Party’s almost continuous rule for more than 50 years.

After the Democratic Party of Japan won a landmark election in August 2009, American officials appeared uncertain in public how to react to the country’s new leaders and played down the damage to the relationship as teething problems in a nation that had seen opposition parties take power only once before since 1955. But in private, American diplomats were delivering a much more pointed message to the government of Japan’s new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama.

This is clearly seen in a classified cable dated October 2009 that describes a visit to Tokyo at that time by the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, Kurt M. Campbell.

A few days earlier, Mr. Hatoyama had visited Beijing, where he publicly said that Japan needed to end what he characterized as its historic overdependence on the United States. According to the cable sent to Washington by the United States Embassy in Tokyo, Mr. Campbell warned a Japanese deputy minister of defense at the time, Akihisa Nagashima, that the remarks “drew surprise from the highest levels of the U.S. government.”

“Imagine the Japanese response if the U.S. government were to say publicly that it wished to devote more attention to China than Japan,” the cable quotes Mr. Campbell as saying. He warned that such remarks “would create a crisis in U.S.-Japan relations.”

Though the cables give a distinctly American view of events at a volatile time, they also provide glimpses of how the end of the Liberal Democrats’ long run in power had opened the floodgates in Japan for reconsidering the cold war-era security alliance with the United States. The cables show alarm and concern, in both the United States and Japan, about the Hatoyama government’s often clumsy and erratic efforts to lessen Japan’s postwar dependency on the United States and to flirt with closer ties to China.

The cables reveal that, in private conversations, American officials repeatedly warned the Japanese to take China’s military rise more seriously, though they avoided raising the issue in public for fear of angering China. They also played the China card to get Japan to be more cooperative.

An Oct. 15, 2009, cable described a delegation of a dozen high-ranking United States officials — including diplomats, Pentagon officials and a Marine Corps major general — who tried to persuade Japan to honor an agreement to keep an American air base on the Japanese island of Okinawa. They described the history of the agreement, and promised to address the concerns of the Democratic Party, which had vowed during the election campaign to move the base, Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, off Okinawa.

Then one of the Japanese officials asked whether the base could be moved to the United States territory of Guam. An American official bluntly replied that the United States needed to keep the base on Okinawa as one of three runways there that its forces would need to defend Japan from “the dramatic increase in China’s military capabilities,” the cable recounted.

The cables also reveal the active efforts that American diplomats were making to reach out to the new government, as well as some setbacks, including an attempt to build personal ties between Mr. Hatoyama and President Obama.

In a cable dated Dec. 10, 2009, John V. Roos, the current American ambassador to Japan, told the Japanese land minister in blunt terms that the United States had “a problem with Hatoyama telling POTUS” — the president of the United States — “to trust him, but not following through.”

 

Japan’s Prime Minister Defends Handling of Crisis

In one of his most damaging charges, the adviser, Toshiso Kosako, drew attention to a recent government decision to allow children living near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to receive doses of radiation equal to the international standard for nuclear power plant workers. That level is far higher than international standards set for the public. “I cannot allow this as a scholar,” said Mr. Kosako, an expert on radiation safety at the University of Tokyo.

He also blasted the government for what he said was a lack of transparency in releasing radiation levels around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and for setting an overly high limit on radiation exposure for workers who have spent weeks struggling to keep the plant under control.

Government advisory positions are considered prestigious, and it is highly unusual for an academic to quit one in protest. The prime minister brought Mr. Kosako on as an adviser after the powerful March 11 earthquake and tsunami damaged the plant, causing the world’s biggest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

His abrupt resignation fed growing criticism of the handling of the crisis by Mr. Kan’s government, which many Japanese suspect of understating the continuing dangers the plant might pose and the amount of radioactive material released so far.

Mr. Kan’s remarks before Parliament on Saturday were an indication of how much pressure the government is under as it tries to dispute those criticisms and to determine what to do not only about the most contaminated land around the plant, but also about towns outside the evacuation zone that are reporting relatively high levels of radiation.

Any decision about the levels of permissible exposure could force expensive soil cleanups — inflating the already staggering estimates of how much money it will take to rebuild from the natural disasters, a figure already set at $300 billion. But it could also help determine how much land in this densely populated country is ruled uninhabitable.

The calculus is complicated by the fears of farmers and fishermen in the region, who worry that continued talk of high radiation will destroy consumers’ faith in their goods, and their livelihoods.

In rejecting Mr. Kosako’s criticism, Mr. Kan said Saturday that the adviser had resigned as a result of “a difference of opinion among specialists.”

So far, the government has evacuated an area 12 miles around the plant and has suggested, or in limited cases ordered, that people living 12 to 19 miles away leave their homes temporarily. Some towns farther away are also set to be evacuated because particularly high levels of radioactive materials were found there.

The Education and Science Ministry made its announcement about permissible exposure on April 19, when it said that schools in Fukushima Prefecture, where the plant is located, could be used if radiation levels were below 3.8 microsieverts per hour. That exposure level is too low to cause immediate health effects, but may raise the probability of developing cancer.

Environmental groups and local parents have called for lowering the limit, pointing out that children are more vulnerable to radiation than most adults. They have not addressed a perhaps more worrisome problem: if the schools have high levels of contamination, the rest of the towns and cities they are in are likely to also show high readings.

On Saturday, the chief government spokesman, Yukio Edano, defended the limit, saying that it did not mean that the government would accept such levels indefinitely and that it would do everything in its power to bring levels down to normal rates.

But at least one city in Fukushima, which is 35 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, is not waiting for the government to take action. The city of Koriyama said last week that it would remove topsoil at 15 elementary schools where radiation levels had been detected in excess of 3.8 microsieverts per hour, according to local newspaper reports.

Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting from Washington.

 

Japan’s Prime Minister Defends Handling of Crisis

In one of his most damaging charges, the adviser, Toshiso Kosako, drew attention to a recent government decision to allow children living near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to receive doses of radiation equal to the international standard for nuclear power plant workers. That level is far higher than international standards set for the public. “I cannot allow this as a scholar,” said Mr. Kosako, an expert on radiation safety at the University of Tokyo.

He also blasted the government for what he said was a lack of transparency in releasing radiation levels around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and for setting an overly high limit on radiation exposure for workers who have spent weeks struggling to keep the plant under control.

Government advisory positions are considered prestigious, and it is highly unusual for an academic to quit one in protest. The prime minister brought Mr. Kosako on as an adviser after the powerful March 11 earthquake and tsunami damaged the plant, causing the world’s biggest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

His abrupt resignation fed growing criticism of the handling of the crisis by Mr. Kan’s government, which many Japanese suspect of understating the continuing dangers the plant might pose and the amount of radioactive material released so far.

Mr. Kan’s remarks before Parliament on Saturday were an indication of how much pressure the government is under as it tries to dispute those criticisms and to determine what to do not only about the most contaminated land around the plant, but also about towns outside the evacuation zone that are reporting relatively high levels of radiation.

Any decision about the levels of permissible exposure could force expensive soil cleanups — inflating the already staggering estimates of how much money it will take to rebuild from the natural disasters, a figure already set at $300 billion. But it could also help determine how much land in this densely populated country is ruled uninhabitable.

The calculus is complicated by the fears of farmers and fishermen in the region, who worry that continued talk of high radiation will destroy consumers’ faith in their goods, and their livelihoods.

In rejecting Mr. Kosako’s criticism, Mr. Kan said Saturday that the adviser had resigned as a result of “a difference of opinion among specialists.”

So far, the government has evacuated an area 12 miles around the plant and has suggested, or in limited cases ordered, that people living 12 to 19 miles away leave their homes temporarily. Some towns farther away are also set to be evacuated because particularly high levels of radioactive materials were found there.

The Education and Science Ministry made its announcement about permissible exposure on April 19, when it said that schools in Fukushima Prefecture, where the plant is located, could be used if radiation levels were below 3.8 microsieverts per hour. That exposure level is too low to cause immediate health effects, but may raise the probability of developing cancer.

Environmental groups and local parents have called for lowering the limit, pointing out that children are more vulnerable to radiation than most adults. They have not addressed a perhaps more worrisome problem: if the schools have high levels of contamination, the rest of the towns and cities they are in are likely to also show high readings.

On Saturday, the chief government spokesman, Yukio Edano, defended the limit, saying that it did not mean that the government would accept such levels indefinitely and that it would do everything in its power to bring levels down to normal rates.

But at least one city in Fukushima, which is 35 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, is not waiting for the government to take action. The city of Koriyama said last week that it would remove topsoil at 15 elementary schools where radiation levels had been detected in excess of 3.8 microsieverts per hour, according to local newspaper reports.

 

Miharu Journal: Japan’s Cherry Blossoms Bloom, but Nuclear Fears Keep Tourists Away

 

The town, however, may not be as resilient. The hundreds of thousands of people who come here each cherry blossom season to view the prized tree, one of the three oldest in the country and a designated national monument, are largely staying away this year, scared off by the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, just 30 miles away.

“This tree has lived through many disasters,” said Masayoshi Hashimoto, 85, a local vegetable farmer whose produce has also been rendered largely unsalable by the radioactive plume. “It may survive the nuclear accident,” he said, “but the town may not.”

Sakura, or cherry blossom season, reaches its peak this week along the Tohoku coast, a region still reeling from the March 11 quake, tsunami and accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Tohoku’s famous sakura trees usually draw hundreds of thousands of visitors, many from greater Tokyo, bringing precious tourist income to villages and towns that have little industry to speak of.

Even though many cherry trees in the disaster zone have survived, it will very likely take years to rebuild the tourism industry, officials warn. The troubles are many: severe damage to the tourism infrastructure, fears of heightened radiation levels in areas around Fukushima and an overall plunge in travelers in a country still shell-shocked by its worst disaster since World War II. JTB Corporation, Japan’s largest travel agency, said last week that it expected travel to fall 28 percent during a holiday period known as Golden Week, which starts this month.

Damage to tourism in the area adds to the woes of a local economy that has suffered severe blows: many fishing and farming communities were decimated in the tsunami, and many of the factories in the region are struggling to rebuild or restart production lines.

In Miharu, the weeping sakura has been an important source of income for an aging farming community. About 300,000 people descended on the town to view the 40-foot tree last year, spending generously at local inns and eateries, as well as on produce.

This year, the town expected the number of visitors to fall by about 80 percent. Though the town is not affected by the evacuation zone, which is now a 12-to-18-mile radius around the Fukushima plant, visitors “are playing it safe and staying away,” said Susumu Yamaguchi, a tourism official at Miharu’s town hall. “It’s a big blow for us,” he said.

In a bid to attract visitors, the town abolished its usual $3.60 viewing fee and went on a media offensive. “There won’t be any crowds this year, no traffic jam,” Miharu’s mayor, Yoshinori Suzuki, told a local paper last week.

Helped by sunny weather on Sunday, the tree attracted a larger-than-expected throng of visitors, though still far fewer than usual, according to officials.

Asuka Kimura, 29, a homemaker and mother of four from nearby Iwaki City, said that the thrill of an outing to see the cherry tree at Miharu had outweighed concerns over radiation. “I’ve had the kids play indoors for so long,” she said. “Today we’re spending the day outside, just for the day.”

The town has been desperate to protect its prized tree. Visitors were scarce during World War II, elders recall, but villagers still tended to the tree, preparing for the return to more peaceful times. Five years ago, when a blizzard threatened to overwhelm the tree, local farmers lovingly brushed off the snow and erected wooden supports to keep its branches from breaking.

They again raced to the tree after the devastating March 11 quake, which damaged some homes in the area. The tree remained intact and was far enough inland to escape the tsunami, but the bad news came the next day as the plant spewed radioactive steam toward the town. Local inns, which had been booked solid with reservations ahead of the sakura season, were inundated with cancellations.

Still, as the trees bloom, sometimes amid mountains of rubble, they have become symbols of resilience.

“These cherry trees blossom each year despite any catastrophe,” said Noriyuki Kasai, the mayor of Hirosaki, a city on the edge of the disaster zone, some 400 miles north of Tokyo. Though the city and its 2,600 cherry trees escaped the brunt of the damage, far fewer visitors are expected this season. “Like the trees, we will also recover,” he said.