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"In principle, we will not build new nuclear plants; then there will be no more nuclear plants in 40 years," Maehara said, adding that Japan needs to seek "the best energy mix" while it phases out of its nuclear-reliant energy policy.Before the March accident, Japan derived about 30 percent of its electricity from nuclear plants, and the government intended to increase that to 50 percent by 2030 — a plan that has now been scrapped.

Kaieda, whose minister was broadly responsible for nuclear energy promotion, said he planned to decommission aging nuclear plants found to have problems during stress tests, but did not detail his vision for the future of atomic energy.He promised to speed up decontaminaton efforts and launch health check programs for concerned residents.

"We will achieve a cold shutdown of the reactors as soon as possible," Kaieda said. "I will take concrete measures to address the residents' concerns about their health."Kan announced Friday he would resign after serving nearly 15 months that have been plagued by ruling party infighting, gridlock in parliament and clamorous criticism of his administration's reponse to the March disasters and ensuing nuclear crisis.The Japanese public, yearning for political unity and resolve in the wake of the catastrophe, has grown disgusted with the squabbles and blame-trading that have dominated parliamentary sessions.

the gathering also helped bring out some policy differences between the five, which also includes Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda, considered a fiscal conservative, former Transport Minister Sumio Mabuchi and Agricultural Minister Michihiko Kano.Maehara said he would favor reaching out to key opposition parties to form a limited "grand coalition" on certain key policies, such as tsunami reconstruction, social security and tax reforms. Maehara also said he would support a U.S.-backed free trade zone called the Trans-Pacific Partnership.Kaieda, a 62-year-old former television commentator on economic matters, said the so-called TPP needed to be studied more and rejected the idea of a grand coalition, saying the party had not even discussed such a proposal.

A China hawk, Maehara, 49, gained prominence by taking a firm stand toward Beijing during a territorial spat last year over some disputed islands in the East China Sea

Since the Liberal Democratic Party selected him as prime minister in September 2006, the hawkish Abe repeatedly called for Japan to move beyond the postwar formula of a strictly defensive posture and non-nuclear principles. Advocacy of a nuclear-armed Japan arose from his family tradition. His grandfather Nobusuke Kishi nurtured the wartime atomic bomb project and, as postwar prime minister, enacted the civilian nuclear program. His father Shintaro Abe, a former foreign minister, had played the Russian card in the 1980s, sponsoring the Russo-Japan College, run by the Aum Shinrikyo sect (a front for foreign intelligence), to recruit weapons scientists from a collapsing Soviet Union.   The chief obstacle to American acceptance of a nuclear-armed Japan was the Pentagon, where Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima remain as iconic symbols justifying American military supremacy.The only feasible channel for bilateral transfers then was through the civilian-run Department of Energy (DoE), which supervises the production of nuclear weapons.

Camp David Go-Ahead   The deal was sealed on Abe's subsequent visit to Washington. Wary of the eavesdropping that led to Richard Nixon's fall from grace, Bush preferred the privacy afforded at Camp David. There, in a rustic lodge on April 27, Bush and Abe huddled for 45 minutes. What transpired has never been revealed, not even in vague outline.   As his Russian card suggested, Abe was shopping for enriched uranium. At 99.9 percent purity, American-made uranium and plutonium is the world's finest nuclear material. The lack of mineral contaminants means that it cannot be traced back to its origin. In contrast, material from Chinese and Russian labs can be identified by impurities introduced during the enrichment process.

The flow of coolant water into the storage pools ceased, quickening evaporation. Fission of the overheated cores led to blasts and mushroom-clouds. Residents in mountaintop Iitate village overlooking the seaside plant saw plumes of smoke and could "taste the metal" in their throats.   Guilty as Charged   The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami were powerful enough to damage Fukushima No.1. The natural disaster, however, was vastly amplified by two external factors: release of the Stuxnet virus, which shut down control systems in the critical 20 minutes prior to the tsunami; and presence of weapons-grade nuclear materials that devastated the nuclear facility and contaminated the entire region.   Of the three parties involved, which bears the greatest guilt? All three are guilty of mass murder, injury and destruction of property on a regional scale, and as such are liable for criminal prosecution and damages under international law and in each respective jurisdiction.

An unannounced reason for Cheney's visit was to promote a quadrilateral alliance in the Asia-Pacific region. The four cornerstones - the US, Japan, Australia and India - were being called on to contain and confront China and its allies North Korea and Russia.. From a Japanese perspective, this grand alliance was flawed by asymmetry: The three adversaries were nuclear powers, while the U.S. was the only one in the Quad group.   To further his own nuclear ambitions, Abe was playing the Russian card. As mentioned in a U.S. Embassy cable (dated 9/22), the Yomiuri Shimbun gave top play to this challenge to the White House : "It was learned yesterday that the government and domestic utility companies have entered final talks with Russia in order to relegate uranium enrichment for use at nuclear power facilities to Atomprom, the state-owned nuclear monopoly." If Washington refused to accept a nuclear-armed Japan, Tokyo would turn to Moscow.

Throughout the Pantex caper, from the data theft to smuggling operation, Bush and Cheney's point man for nuclear issues was DoE Deputy Director Clay Sell, a lawyer born in Amarillo and former aide to Panhandle district Congressman Mac Thornberry. Sell served on the Bush-Cheney transition team and became the top adviser to the President on nuclear issues. At DoE, Sell was directly in charge of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, which includes 17 national laboratories and the Pantex plant. (Another alarm bell: Sell was also staff director for the Senate Energy subcommittee under the late Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who died in a 2010 plane crash.)   An Israeli Double-Cross   The nuclear shipments to Japan required a third-party cutout for plausible deniability by the White House. Israel acted less like an agent and more like a broker in demanding additional payment from Tokyo, according to intelligence sources. Adding injury to insult, the Israelis skimmed off the newer warhead cores for their own arsenal and delivered older ones. Since deteriorated cores require enrichment, the Japanese were furious and demanded a refund, which the Israelis refused. Tokyo had no recourse since by late 2008 principals Abe had resigned the previous autumn and Bush was a lame duck.

The Japanese nuclear developers, under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, had no choice but to enrich the uranium cores at Fukushima No.1, a location remote enough to evade detection by nonproliferation inspectors. Hitachi and GE had developed a laser extraction process for plutonium, which requires vast amounts of electrical power. This meant one reactor had to make unscheduled runs, as was the case when the March earthquake struck.   Tokyo dealt a slap on the wrist to Tel Aviv by backing Palestinian rights at the UN. Not to be bullied, the Israeli secret service launched the Stuxnet virus against Japan's nuclear facilities.   Firewalls kept Stuxnet at bay until the Tohoku earthquake. The seismic activity felled an electricity tower behind Reactor 6. The power cut disrupted the control system, momentarily taking down the firewall. As the computer came online again, Stuxnet infiltrated to shut down the back-up generators. During the 20-minute interval between quake and tsunami, the pumps and valves at Fukushima No.1 were immobilized, exposing the turbine rooms to flood damage.

The Texas Job   BWXT Pantex, America's nuclear warhead facility, sprawls over 16,000 acres of the Texas Panhandle outside Amarillo. Run by the DoE and Babcock & Wilson, the site also serves as a storage facility for warheads past their expiration date. The 1989 shutdown of Rocky Flats, under community pressure in Colorado, forced the removal of those nuclear stockpiles to Pantex. Security clearances are required to enter since it is an obvious target for would-be nuclear thieves.   In June 2004, a server at the Albuquerque office of the National Nuclear Security System was hacked. Personal information and security-clearance data for 11 federal employees and 177 contractors at Pantex were lifted. NNSA did not inform Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman or his deputy Clay Sell until three months after the security breach, indicating investigators suspected an inside job.

The White House, specifically Bush, Cheney and their co-conspirators in the DoE, hold responsibility for ordering the illegal removal and shipment of warheads without safeguards.   The state of Israel is implicated in theft from U.S. strategic stockpiles, fraud and extortion against the Japanese government, and a computer attack against critical infrastructure with deadly consequences, tantamount to an act of war.   Prime Minister Abe and his Economy Ministry sourced weapons-grade nuclear material in violation of constitutional law and in reckless disregard of the risks of unregulated storage, enrichment and extraction. Had Abe not requested enriched uranium and plutonium in the first place, the other parties would not now be implicated. Japan, thus, bears the onus of the crime.

The International Criminal Court has sufficient grounds for taking up a case that involves the health of millions of people in Japan, Canada, the United States, Russia, the Koreas, Mongolia, China and possibly the entire Northern Hemisphere. The Fukushima disaster is more than an human-rights charge against a petty dictator, it is a crime against humanity on par with the indictments at the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. Failure to prosecute is complicity.   If there is a silver lining to every dark cloud, it's that the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami saved the world from even greater folly by halting the drive to World War III.

In his speech, Noda referred to the Sept. 10 resignation of Yoshio Hachiro as industry minister for making insensitive remarks about the crisis at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. "It is extremely regrettable that a Cabinet minister had to resign for inappropriate remarks that lacked consideration for the emotions of the disaster victims," the prime minister said. "In order to regain the trust that has been lost, the Cabinet will work as one to bring the nuclear accident to a conclusion as well as to provide assistance to the disaster victims."

Germany announced plans in late May to close all the country's nuclear power plants by 2022 -- making it the largest industrialized nation to do so. Nuclear power supplies 23 percent of its energy grid. Since the Japan disaster it has permanently shuttered eight plants (including the seven oldest in the country). That leaves nine plants to go -- six of which, the government announced, will close up by 2021.

Switzerland No neutrality here -- the government announced in May it too was taking a side against nuclear technology, in response to Japan's disaster. Nuclear energy accounts for roughly 40 percent of Switzerland's energy supply. Its five nuclear reactors won't fully be phased out, experts estimate, until 2040. The move is popular with the Swiss citizens -- 20,000 of whom demonstrated against the technology before the government's decision

Italy Last month, Silvio Berlusconi's plans to return Italy to the nuclear club were dashed by a referendum that found 90 percent of Italians rejected the technology.

As a result the embattled prime minister said, "We shall probably have to say goodbye to nuclear [energy]." He noted that the government will instead shift its energies to developing renewable energy sources. Berlusconi had been trying to reconstitute an industry that was already abandoned once before -- back in 1987. Currently there are no nuclear plants, but the prime minister hoped to get nuclear power to account for a quarter of the country's energy needs and planned to begin building new plants by as early as 2013.

Mexico Despite the fact that nuclear energy only accounts for less than 5 percent of the market in Mexico, which has only one plant, a recent worldwide survey found that Mexico was one of the most anti-nuclear countries in the world, with about 80 percent of its population opposing the power source. That doesn't bode well for future nuclear development.

Mexico is one of only three Latin American nations that uses nuclear power. And last year the country delayed a decision until at least 2012 on whether to go ahead with plans to build 10 more plants, according to the country's energy minister. President Felipe Calderon has said he'd push to make sure "clean energy" accounts for at least 35 percent of the country's energy needs.

France Let's be clear, France is unlikely to ditch nuclear power completely anytime soon. A longtime champion of the technology, it accounts for 75 percent of the country's energy needs. But there are indications political leaders are falling out of love -- ever so slightly -- with the power source. On Friday, July 8 the government launched a study of energy technologies that included one potential scenario of completely doing away with nuclear power by 2040. It's the first time the government has ever even mentioned the possibility. A more likely result of the study will be cutting the nuclear share of the market. Indeed, France has increased its investment in wind energy lately. The government is likely responding to growing public pressure to do away with nuclear energy. A recent BBC survey found 57 percent of French respondents opposed the technology.

And while there have been scattered reports already of food contamination—of tea leaves and spinach, for example—Mr. Kosako said there will be broader, more disturbing discoveries later this year, especially as rice, Japan’s staple, is harvested. “Come the harvest season in the fall, there will be a chaos,” Mr. Kosako said. “Among the rice harvested, there will certainly be some radiation contamination—though I don’t know at what levels—setting off a scandal. If people stop buying rice from Tohoku, . . . we’ll have a tricky problem.”

The Atlantic points out:

The reason for official reluctance to admit that the earthquake did direct structural damage to reactor one is obvious. Katsunobu Onda, author of TEPCO: The Dark Empire … who sounded the alarm about the firm in his 2007 book explains it this way: “If TEPCO and the government of Japan admit an earthquake can do direct damage to the reactor, this raises suspicions about the safety of every reactor they run. They are using a number of antiquated reactors that have the same systematic problems, the same wear and tear on the piping.”

Oddly enough, while TEPCO later insisted that the cause of the meltdown was the tsunami knocking out emergency power systems, at the 7:47 p.m. TEPCO press conference the same day, the spokesman in response to questions from the press about the cooling systems stated that the emergency water circulation equipment and reactor core isolation time cooling systems would work even without electricity

On May 15, TEPCO went some way toward admitting at least some of these claims in a report called “Reactor Core Status of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit One.” The report said there might have been pre-tsunami damage to key facilities including pipes. “This means that assurances from the industry in Japan and overseas that the reactors were robust is now blown apart,” said Shaun Burnie, an independent nuclear waste consultant. “It raises fundamental questions on all reactors in high seismic risk areas.”

Eyewitness testimony and TEPCO’S own data indicates that the damage [done to the plant by the quake] was significant. All of this despite the fact that shaking experienced at the plant during the quake was within it’s approved design specifications

The Wall Street Journal writes:

A former nuclear adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan blasted the government’s continuing handling of the crisis, and predicted further revelations of radiation threats to the public in the coming months. In his first media interview since resigning his post in protest in April, Toshiso Kosako, one of the country’s leading experts on radiation safety, said Mr. Kan’s government has been slow to test for possible dangers in the sea and to fish and has understated certain radiation dangers to minimize what it will have to spend to clean up contamination.

Former Minister for Internal Affairs Haraguchi Kazuhiro has alleged that radiation monitoring station data was actually three decimal places greater than the numbers released to the public. If this is true, it constitutes a “national crime”, in Nishio’s words

And – as the Guardian notes in a third article – the collusion between the British government and nuclear companies is leading to political fallout:

It’s not just the Japanese. As the Guardian notes:

The Guardian reports in a second article

British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known. Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse… Officials stressed the importance of preventing the incident from undermining public support for nuclear power.

The Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, who sits on the Commons environmental audit committee, condemned the extent of co-ordination between the government and nuclear companies that the emails appear to reveal.

The official suggested that if companies sent in their comments, they could be incorporated into briefs to ministers and government statements. “We need to all be working from the same material to get the message through to the media and the public

The office for nuclear development invited companies to attend a meeting at the NIA’s headquarters in London. The aim was “to discuss a joint communications and engagement strategy aimed at ensuring we maintain confidence among the British public on the safety of nuclear power stations and nuclear new-build policy in light of recent events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant”. Other documents released by the government’s safety watchdog, the office for nuclear regulation, reveal that the text of an announcement on 5 April about the impact of Fukushima on the new nuclear programme was privately cleared with nuclear industry representatives at a meeting the previous week. According to one former regulator, who preferred not to be named, the degree of collusion was “truly shocking”.

The release of 80 emails showing that in the days after the Fukushima accident not one but two government departments were working with nuclear companies to spin one of the biggest industrial catastrophes of the last 50 years, even as people were dying and a vast area was being made uninhabitable, is shocking

What the emails shows is a weak government, captured by a powerful industry colluding to at least misinform and very probably lie to the public and the media.

To argue that the radiation was being released deliberately and was “all part of the safety systems to control and manage a situation” is Orwellian.

British Shenanigans

“This deliberate and (sadly) very effective attempt to ‘calm’ the reporting of the true story of Fukushima is a terrible betrayal of liberal values. In my view it is not acceptable that a Liberal Democrat cabinet minister presides over a department deeply involved in a blatant conspiracy designed to manipulate the truth in order to protect corporate interests”. -Andy Myles, Liberal Democrat party’s former chief executive in Scotland “These emails corroborate my own impression that there has been a strange silence in the UK following the Fukushima disaster … in the UK, new nuclear sites have been announced before the results of the Europe-wide review of nuclear safety has been completed. Today’s news strengthens the case for the government to halt new nuclear plans until an independent and transparent review has been conducted.” -Fiona Hall, leader of the Liberal Democrats in the European parliament

But submission of the report is only the beginning of a long process before reactors can actually restart.Trade Minister Yukio Edano said on Friday it would take several months before Kansai can restart the unit.The stress tests evaluate each reactor's resilience against four severe events -- earthquake, tsunami, station blackout and loss of water for cooling -- and a reactor operator's management of multiple steps to protect reactors.

If there is any doubt on the basis of a reactor's safety assumptions, such as estimated standard earthquake ground motion, that should be discussed before giving approval to its stress test, said Tomoya Ichimura, director of NISA's safety regulatory standard division.The checks by NISA on each utility's assessments on a reactor would be followed by approval by the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan, an independent entity which monitors relevant agencies including NISA.NISA will take into account test results for EU rectors, which are undergoing similar stress tests, with results due this month. It also plans to seek advice on the regulation process from the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency.

Approval would then be needed from the prime minister and relevant ministers, as well as local governments."It is impossible to gauge mathematically the level of confidence (over the reactor restart) by local communities and our people. We, politicians, are responsible to make the judgement," Edano said.How to ensure safety for the first reactor to restart in the post-Fukushima era is being carefully watched at home and from abroad.

"Greenpeace is extremely concerned that this government is going to push through the restart of reactors without having learned the key lessons from what really went wrong in terms of organisation and crisis management during the Fukushima crisis," the international environmental group said in a statement after Kansai's stress test submission.An investigation is under way by government-appointed experts into the causes of the Fukushima incident, but it could take years to complete.Setsuko Kuroda, a woman from Koriyama city in Fukushima prefecture and one of dozens of those who protested against atomic power in front of the trade ministry on Friday, said restarting reactors while the Fukushima crisis continues is out of the question.

Why are they even saying this when the situation (at Fukushima) is still under such condition? Is the economy more important or are lives more important?" she questioned.Only 10 of Japan's 54 commercial reactors are currently online, as the Fukushima crisis and subsequent scandals have left communities reluctant to allow restarts.Then Prime Minister Naoto Kan in July introduced the stress tests as preconditions before idled reactors restart.First-stage tests are on idled reactors which are ready to restart and second-stage tests apply to all reactors. (Additional reporting by Osamu Tsukimori, Yuko Inoue and Yoko Kubota; Editing by Michael Urquhart)

Therefore, the fetuses and small children, with cells that rapidly divide, are most susceptible to radiation danger. Even for adults, there are cells that rapidly divide such as hair, blood cells and intestinal epitheria, and they can be damaged by radiation.Let me give you an example of what we know about internal radiation.

One genetic mutation does not cause cancer. After the initial hit by radiation, it needs a different trigger for a cell to mutate into a cancer cell, which is called "driver mutation" or "passenger mutation". (For details please refer to the attached document about the cases in Chernobyl and cesium.)Alpha radiation is most famous. I was startled when I learned of a professor at Tokyo University who said it was safe to drink plutonium.

Alpha radiation is the most dangerous radiation. It causes thorotrast liver damage, as we, liver specialists, know very well.Internal radiation is referred to as such-and-such millisieverts, but it is utterly meaningless. Iodine-131 goes to thyroid gland, and thorotrast goes to liver, and cesium goes to urothelium and urinary bladder. Whole body scan is utterly meaningless unless you look at these parts in the body where radiation accumulates.

Thorotrast was a contrast medium used in Germany since 1890. It was used in Japan since 1930, but it was found that 25 to 30% of people developed liver cancer 20 to 30 years later.Why does it take so long before cancer develops? Thorotrast is an alpha-radiation nuclide. Alpha radiation injures nearby cells, and the DNA that is harmed most is P53. We now know, thanks to genome science, the entire sequence of human DNA. However, there are 3 million locations on the DNA that are different from person to person. So today, it doesn't make sense at all to proceed as if all humans are the same. The basic principle should be the "personal life medicine" when we look at internal radiation - which DNA is damaged, and what kind of change is taking place.

In case of thorotrast, it is proven that P53 is damaged in the first stage, and it takes 20 to 30 years for the 2nd, 3rd mutations to occur, causing liver cancer and leukemia.About iodine-131. As you know, iodine accumulates in thyroid gland, and that is most noticeable during the formative phase of thyroid gland, i.e. in small children.

However, when the first researcher in Ukraine was saying in 1991 "There are an increasing number of thyroid cancer", researchers in Japan and the US were publishing articles in Nature magazine saying "There is no causal relationship between the radiation and thyroid cancer." Why did they say that? Because there was no data prior to 1986, there was no statistical significance.

The statistical significance was finally noted 20 years later. Why? Because the peak that started in 1986 disappeared. So even without the data prior to 1986, the occurrence of thyroid cancer and radiation exposure from Chernobyl had the causal relationship. Epidemiological proof is very difficult. It is impossible to prove until all the cases are done.Therefore, from the viewpoint of "protecting our children" a completely different approach is required.

Dr. Shoji Fukushima from a national institution called Japan Bioassay Research Center, which researches health effects of chemical compounds, has been studying diseases involving urinary tract since the Chernobyl accident.

Dr. Fukushima and doctors in Ukraine studied parts of bladders removed during more than 500 cases of prostatic hypertrophy surgery. They found out that in the highly contaminated area where 6Bq/liter was detected in urine, there was a high frequency of mutation of p53 though 6Bq may sound minuscule.

They also noticed many cases of proliferative precancerous conditions, which we assume was due to the activation of p38 MAP kinase and the signal called "NF-kappa B," leading inevitably to proliferative cystitis, with carcinoma in situ occurring with considerable frequency.Knowing this, I was astounded to hear the report that 2 to 13Bq/liter [of radioactive cesium] was detected from the breast milk of seven mothers in Fukushima.(to be continued in Part 3.)

When radioactive materials were detected from the breast milk, what did the government and government researchers say? "No need to worry. No immediate effect on health of the babies."Professor Kodama is saying that by the time we have proof that there is a causal relationship between internal radiation exposure (however small) and cancer, it may be too late.Thorotrast is a suspension containing the radioactive particles of thorium dioxide.

"According to our calculations, the cost of a kilowatt hour of electricity will go up by only one cent," says Economics Minister Philipp Rösler, head of Merkel's junior coalition partner, the Free Democrats (FDP). For an average household, this would correspond to the price of only one latte a month, says Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen, of Merkel's Christian Democrats. Germany is rapidly switching to green energy and at almost no additional cost to consumers. What conservative politician would have thought such a thing possible just a few months ago?

In reality, though, the official calculations have little connection to reality. According to an assessment by the Rhenish-Westphalian Institute for Economic Research (RWI), the politicians' estimate of the costs of expanding renewable sources of energy is far too low, while the environmental benefits have been systematically overstated.

RWI experts estimate that the cost of electricity could increase by as much as five times the government's estimate of one cent per kilowatt hour. In an internal prognosis, the semi-governmental German Energy Agency anticipates an increase of four to five cents. According to the Federation of German Consumer Organizations, the additional cost could easily amount to "five cents or more per kilowatt hour."

An internal estimate making the rounds at the Economics Ministry also exceeds the official announcements. It concludes that an average three-person household will pay an additional 0.5 to 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour, and up to five cents more in the mid-term. This would come to an additional cost of €175 ($250) a year. "Not exactly the price of a latte," says Manuel Frondel of the RWI.

The problem is the federal government's outlandish subsidies policy. Electricity customers are already paying more than €13 billion this year to subsidize renewable energy. The largest subsidies go to solar plants, which contribute relatively little to overall power generation, as well as offshore wind farms in the north, which are far away from the countries largest electricity consumers in Germany's deep south.

Photovoltaics, in particular, is now seen as an enormous waste of money. The technology receives almost half all renewable energy subsidies, even though it makes up less than one 10th of total green electricity production. And it is unreliable -- one never knows if and when the sun will be shining

For economic and environmental reasons, therefore, it would be best to drastically reduce solar subsidies and spend the money elsewhere, such as for a subsidy system that is not tied to any given technology. For example, wind turbines built on land are significantly more effective than solar power. They receive about the same amount of subsidy money, and yet they are already feeding about five times as much electricity into the grid. In the case of hydroelectric power plants, the relationship between subsidies and electricity generation is six times better. Biomass provides a return on subsidies that is three times as high as solar.

"We are dumping billions into the least effective technology," says Fritz Vahrenholt, the former environment minister for the city-state of Hamburg and now the head of utility RWE's renewable electricity subsidy Innogy.

"From the standpoint of the climate, every solar plant is a bad investment," says Joachim Weimann, an environmental economist at the University of Magdeburg. He has calculated that it costs about €500 to save a ton of CO2 emissions with solar power. In the case of wind energy, it costs only €150. In combination with building upgrades, the cost plummets to only €15 per ton of CO2 emissions savings.

German citizens will be able to see the consequences of solar subsidization on their next electricity bill. Since the beginning of the year, consumers have been assessed a renewable energy surcharge of 3.5 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity, up from about 2 cents last year. And the cost is only going up. Since the first nuclear power plant was shut down, the price of electricity on the European Energy Exchange in Leipzig has increased by about 12 percent. Germany has gone from being a net exporter to a net importer of electricity.

According to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSOE) in Brussels, Germany now imports several million kilowatt hours of electricity from abroad every day.

In displays on ENTSOE computers in Brussels, countries that produce slightly more electricity than they consume are identified in yellow on the monitors, while countries dependent on imports are blue. Germany used to be one of the yellow countries, but now that seven nuclear reactors have been shut down, blue is the dominant color. The electricity that was once generated by those German nuclear power plants now comes primarily from the Czech Republic and France -- and is, of course, more expensive. The demand for electricity is expected to increase in the coming years, particularly with growing numbers of electric cars being connected to the grid as they charge their batteries.

Solar panels only achieve their maximum capacity in the laboratory and at optimal exposure to the sun (1,000 watts per square meter), an ideal angle of incidence (48.2 degrees) and a standardized module temperature (25 degrees Celsius, or 77 degrees Fahrenheit). Such values are rare outside the laboratory. All photovoltaic systems are inactive at night, and they also generate little electricity on winter days

The two resignations came after a meeting of the AEC committee on July 29, in which Lin presented a 5,000-word report on the ongoing construction of the planned Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District of New Taipei City, northern Taiwan. Lin warned in the report, written in Chinese, that the construction project has many structural flaws, including those in the unique digital control system which employs nearly 40,000 signal detectors.

The way its builder, the state-run Taiwan Power Company (Taipower), has hired contractors was also "unique," Lin said, revealing that many of the contractors have never built nuclear power plants. At the construction site, supervision almost did not exist, he added. Furthermore, h

Construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant began in 1999. It was scheduled to begin commercial operations before the end of 2011 but Taipwer has announced the commercial run won't be possible until 2012. Lin's report led the July meeting to produce a resolution that the construction mu

The opposition has focused mainly on imported reactors, the designs of which are untried. "The French reactor offered to India is not working anywhere in the world and the Russian reactor had to undergo several design changes before we accepted it," says Annaswamy Prasad, retired director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai. "If any accident happens in India it will be in imported reactor and not in our home-made pressurized heavy water reactors" (PHWRs), he adds.

Ideally, says Prasad, India should boost its nuclear capacity by building more PHWRs fuelled by natural uranium, instead of importing reactors that require enriched uranium. Although the foreign vendors have agreed to supply fuel for the lifetime of their reactors, overreliance on imports will derail India's home-grown programme, the Bhabha scheme, he warns.

The Bhabha scheme involves building PHWRs, which would produce enough plutonium as a by-product to fuel fast-breeder reactors that would in turn convert thorium — which is abundantly available in India — into fissile uranium-233. In the third and final phase, India hopes to run its reactors using the 233U–Th cycle without any need for new uranium. Gopalakrishnan says that building indigenous reactors is not enough: the country must also invest in renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power. But a survey by Subhas Sukhatme, a former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, warns that India's renewable energy sources, even stretched to their full potential, can at best supply 36.1% of the country's total energy needs by the year 2070. The balance would have to come from fossil fuels and nuclear energy. 

The conference was set up by the Ministry of the Environment to expedite the acceptance of disaster debris in Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures. People in charge of waste disposal and cleaning in 43 prefectures and 74 municipalities participated.

It is considered that the March 11 disaster resulted in about 23 million tonnes of debris. However, there are many people voicing concern for radiation contamination, and the acceptance of the disaster debris is not happening except for Yamagata Prefecture which has already been accepting the debris and Tokyo which will start accepting starting the second half of October.

The Ministry of the Environment will ask the municipalities once again about their intentions and waste processing capacities, and will coordinate between the disaster-affected areas and the municipalities that will accept the debris.

As for the Tokyo Metropolitan government, it signed the agreement with Iwate Prefecture on September 30 with hardly any consultation with the Metropolitan Assembly and zero consultation with the residents to accept about 500,000 tonnes of disaster debris. The government says it tested the ashes of the disaster debris from Miyako City in Iwate Prefecture and it was only 133 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium.What the Metropolitan government didn't bother to tell anyone was that the radioactive debris were mixed with non-radioactive regular garbage and burned. The radioactive debris were supposedly 30%. However, the Ministry of the Environment itself did the testing of the disaster debris ashes in the same city back in July, and the Ministry's number was 4895 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium. (Information from Tokyo Shinbun on 10/5/2011, in Japanese)

The PM assistant and the current Minister in charge of the nuclear accident at Fukushima I Nuke Plant Goshi Hosono is going to announce the abolition of the "emergency evacuation-ready zone", because "the 1st step in TEPCO's "roadmap" has been mostly successfully implemented".

Fukushima Prefecture has announced it will shut down the official shelters within Fukushima, which will force the evacuees to go back to their own homes.

Minami-Soma City has issued a notice to all 32,000 city residents who have been living in the shelters, temporary housing outside Fukushima Prefecture that they must return to Minami-Soma, high radiation or not. (Mainichi Yamagata version, 7/12/2011)

The national government will spend 100 billion yen (US$1.26 billion) to observe the health of 2 million Fukushima residents for 30 years, instead of evacuating them ASAP. About 1600 yen (US$20) per year per resident. Life is cheap. Since the national government is utterly broke, it will be ultimately paid for by the taxpayers of Japan.Remember, Dr. Shunichi Yamashita will be the vice president of the Fukushima Medical University who will do the observation and research.

Matsudo City in Chiba Prefecture found 47,400 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium in the ashes from the city's garbage incinerator, but the city simply mixed with other ashes with low radiation to bring the final number to 5,660 becquerels/kg. Since the final mixed ashes measured LOWER than the provisional limit for burying the ashes (8,000 becquerels/kg), the city already buried the ashes and will continue to do so. (Mainichi Chiba version, 7/13/2011)

On the other hand, Nagareyama City in Chiba Prefecture simply sent 30 tonnes of its radioactive ashes (27,000 becquerels/kg) from its incinerator by cargo train to Odate City in Akita Prefecture in Tohoku. Nagareyama City has a contract with a private waste disposal company in Odate City in Akita. This waste disposal company is not a nuclear waste disposal company; as far as I could tell from the description of the company, it is just a regular waste disposal company. (Sponichi, 7/12/2011)

By the way, Matsudo City in Chiba is simply doing what the Ministry of the Environment has decided - mix and match. If the garbage or debris is likely to exceed the 8,000 becquerels/kg limit, burn with other stuff and lower the number. If it's already in ashes, mix them up with lower radiation ashes. When the Ministry of the Environment decided this policy, the Minister was Ryu Matsumoto, who's now in hospital after resigning from his post as the Minister of Recovery and Reconstruction.