Panelists at this year’s No Nukes Asia Forum (NNAF) in Taipei yesterday highlighted the risks posed by nuclear energy and its rapid expansion despite the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster three years ago.
NNAF Japan coordinator Daisuke Saito told the forum that three years after the meltdown in Japan, about 140,000 displaced residents still live in shelters.
Despite spending ¥10 trillion (US$91.7 billion) to remove a 10cm-thick layer of soil contaminated by nuclear radiation, the Japanese government has yet to succeed in purging the land, he added.
Photo: CNA
The hope to abolish nuclear energy is a universal one, Saito said, citing as an example Japan’s Kagoshima Prefecture, where discussions on the reactivation of Sendai Power Plant are taking place, prompting about 16,000 Tokyo residents to take to the streets last week to protest the plan.
An additional 8,000 Kagoshima residents rallied in their hometown — a remarkable display of public opinion in the rural prefecture, he said.
Saito also apologized in his capacity as a Japanese national on behalf of Japanese companies Hitachi Ltd and Toshiba Corp for exporting nuclear reactor modules to Taiwan that were used in the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮).
Mari Takenouchi, a Japanese reporter from Okinawa Prefecture, accused the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation of publishing false studies that claim nuclear radiation is “harmless” to the human body.
Calling the committee’s move “criminal,” she said that the UN might appear to show concern over threats posed by nuclear power, but it is lobbying for development of the high-risk energy.
She said the chance of contracting thyroid cancer in Fukushima used to be one in 1 million, but after the nuclear accident, the figure rose to one in 3,000.
Takenouchi said the nuclear radiation emitted in the aftermath of the accident not only affected Fukushima residents, but spread across a vast area.
“My family and I were in Tokyo on March 15, 2011, when a nuclear cloud [generated from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown] passed over the city. During the several weeks that followed, my son developed fever 12 or 13 times, lost weight and had rashes all over,” she said.
Since the accident, many Fukushima residents reported symptoms including vomiting, abnormal nosebleed and loss of body hair, Takenouchi added.
Daniel Tam (譚棨禧), a member of the Hong Kong Alliance Against Nukes, warned of the rapid pace at which China is constructing nuclear plants in its coastal provinces, saying that it has least 20 operating plants and is planning to build 28 more.
“Countries all over the world have been more cautious with their nuclear energy policies after the Dai-ichi disaster. Yet, China is building nuclear plants at a speed unprecedented in human history,” he said.
“Hong Kong has been using nuclear energy for more than 20 years. Therefore, many Hong Kongers feel obligated to monitor the operation of power plants. I hope that the people of Taiwan and Hong Kong can have more interactions by disseminating information on this issue,” he said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the