Help us shut down Tomari nuclear power plant

Please circulate widely below online petition, calling the president of Hokkaido Electric to immediately shut down Tomari nuclear power plant in Hokkaido, Japan. I live in Sapporo Hokkaido, 110km away from the plant. In 2009 an active fault line was found near Tomari, which could cause earthquake of at least 7.5 magnitude and this means that Tomari could be next Fukushima Daiichi anytime. The deadline for signing the petition is 30 April.

Sign the petition (English)

I hope that you are fine. I am fine. But Fukushima put an end to my quiet life in Japan.

Our 3 April emergency demonstration calling for ‘Shut Down Tomari nuclear power plant, Hokkaido’ was a success, with record high attendance in our standard.

Here is some footage of the 3 April demonstration:

Internet Video stream
Hokkaido Press news video

We are expecting two important elections on 10 April, when we will have our second demonstration, calling to Shut Down Tomari and for a nuclear free world. As you may have heard, Tokyo Electric is releasing 1,500 tons of radioactive waste-water into the sea, only informing fishermen in the area with a one-page fax on the release. So far there are over 10,000 people dead and almost 20,000 missing; those bodies found near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants are so heavily contaminated that they cannot be cremated or buried without further spreading radioactivity. We do not know yet how many children have been orphaned. It was heartbreaking to see a photo of so many small school bags left behind, while their owners disappeared after a whole primary school had been taken by tsunami.

After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan suffered from poverty; communists and unions were getting strong, which made USA fear that Japan might be taken by the then Soviet Union as an ally.

It was this American conspiracy in close alliance with then main Japanese media company, which controlled both TV and newspaper Yomiuri. Their ‘Psychological Strategy’ successfully manipulated nuclear-allergic Japanese to believe that a resource-poor Japan need to have nuclear power plants with ‘peaceful use of nuclear energy’.

Fukushima Daiichi and the Ministry of Finance have worked closely to hide information on accidents, leakage of wastes, extending the period of using almost 40-year old nuclear power plants, despite warnings. There is a problem of ‘Amakudari’ whereby retired staff from the ministry are hired by Fukushima Daiichi, which works against independent control by the ministry over the company.

The top ten leaders of Fukushima Daiichi are said to be lawyers and economists without any knowledge of nuclear power plants. Only today we were told by the designer of the Fukushima Daiichi that the oldest nuclear reactors were simply copied from an American one which was built for an area without any risk of earthquake. Our government kept repeating that it was safe even after the accident happened, and they keep saying that ‘radioactivity level is minimum without any “immediate” risk to human health’. Yet, in Tokyo young mothers were told not to give tap water to their babies.

And the latest news is that the national weather casting association has instructed its members and researchers not to release their own data on radioactivity movement – another manipulation of critical information.

This is a human-made disaster; nobody knows how long it will last. Livelihoods have been taken from fishermen, farmers, those who decided to evacuate, and many more.

We shall have a meeting today with the staff of nuclear power plants safety control in Hokkaido as well Hokkaido Electric, which runs Tomari nuclear power plants.

I have one request. If it is possible to contact a company who is producing radioactivity detectors in your country, please let me know. Under tremendous uncertainty on the levels of radioactivity, schools in Fukushima are starting a new school year just now. Parents are very worried about sending their children to school and they desperately need radioactive detectors, which are in short supply in Japan today.

Moves from the government and big relief organisations are not fast enough in this regard.

I have never imagined earlier that Japan would be a recipient of World Food Program (WFP) relief. I have seen corruptions, I have seen how those in power, with money and contacts, make the lives of the people who are living honestly and struggling everyday to make the end meets. But only now I am witnessing it happening so openly in Japan. Fukushima was an eye opener for me. Our ultimate objective is to have a nuclear and corruption free world.