She used to be an announcer who once reported sympathetically on children in the areas severely affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Time has passed and she has flipped to the pro-nuke spokeswoman along the way.
Now rumored to be selected to Shinzo Abe's new cabinet, 67-year-old Ms. Sakurai spoke to the officials of Futaba County of Fukushima Prefecture, and told them the standard for decontamination and radiation exposure needs to be loosened to preserve the life and living of people in Fukushima.
She says 20 millisieverts for adults, and 10 millisieverts for children are safe, and the government should guarantee it.
I have this sinking feeling that she will become the Minister of the Environment, if she was speaking about decontamination and radiation exposure in Fukushima.
People may soon start to miss Goshi Hosono and his disaster debris dolls.
From Kahoku Shinpo (12/9/2012):
ジャーナリストの桜井よしこさんが８日、福島県郡山市であった福島県双葉郡８町村の議員研修会で講演し「年１ミリシーベルトの除染基準は古里再生のために緩和すべきだ」と述べた。双葉郡は福島第１原発事故で多くの住民が避難を続けており、質疑で議員が反発する場面もあった。
On December 8, journalist Yoshiko Sakurai gave a speech in Koriyama City in Fukushima Prefecture to a group of assemblymen from 8 municipalities in Futaba County. She said, "The standard of 1 millisievert/year radiation exposure for decontamination should be loosened in order to revive your home towns." Many Futaba County residents continue to remain away from their homes due to the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident, and some assemblymen got angry in the Q&A session.
桜井さんは「放射線には幅広い意見があるが、政治家は事実を見るべきだ。人類が持つ科学的事実は広島、長崎、チェルノブイリの疫学データしかない。国連科学委員会や国際放射線防護委員会は１００ミリシーベルト以下の影響に有意性はないと結論付けている」と強調した。
Ms. Sakurai forcefully said, "There is a wide range of opinions regarding radiation, but politicians should see the facts. Only scientific facts [regarding radiation] available to the human race are the epidemiological data from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Chernobyl. UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) and the International Commission on Radiological Protection have already concluded that there is no [statistical] significance of radiation below 100 millisieverts."
その上で「科学的根拠のない年１ミリシーベルトを除染の基準にして大量の土砂を積み上げ、自分たちで新たな問題をつくり出している。大人は年２０ミリシーベルト、子どもも１０ミリシーベルトまでは大丈夫と、国の責任で言わなければならない。町村議は住民と一緒にうろたえていてはいけない」と言い切った。
Further, she declared, "To set 1 millisievert per year as standard for decontamination, which is scientifically baseless, and to create large piles of dirt, you are creating a new problem yourselves. It's the national government's responsibility to say that up to 20 millisieverts/year is safe for adults, and 10 millisieverts/year is safe for children. You, as municipal assemblymen, should not lose your head like the residents."
議員からは「安全性を本当に担保できるのか」「１ミリシーベルトは避難者の心のよりどころ」と反論が相次いだ。桜井さんは「反発、失望には驚かない。事実へ議論を積み重ねることが大切。私も福島復興のため最後まで関わり続ける」と応じた。
Her remarks stirred angry feeling in the assemblymen gathered, who asked her, "Can you really guarantee the safety?", "1 millisievert [per year] is the last resort for the evacuees." Ms. Sakurai responded, "I'm not surprised by your anger and disappointment. It's important to continue the discussion toward the facts. I will get involved until the recovery and revival of Fukushima."
So you get angry? I don't care, she says.
I was afraid she would be the next Minister of the Environment, but I've just happened on a suggestion that's far worse. She may become the Minister of Education.
30-Day free trial by following the link.
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26 comments:
Noooo, not education please !
the minister of brainwasing and ignorance.
All this "revival of Fukushima" and "support Tohoku" talk is just insanity to me. These areas are CONTAMINATED death zones for the most part and should be EVACUATED and QUARANTINED. Instead these maniacs are pushing people to live there and the rest of the country (and world) to consume food from there. Absolute insanity.
I tought the limit was already changed to 20 msv last year after Fukushima. This caused an international outcry among some nuclear experts who broke the line of silence of the Pro-Nuclear industrials and governements comunity.
More Japanese cowards join this great country of neo-fascist courageless and virtuless leaders. They require limits imposed to others that they would do everything possible to avoid for themself.
Did she request that her familiy be imposed a 100 msv limit to show that it is a healthy limit? Or is she trying to get some attention from business money providers that benefit from a higher limit? She is not trying to protect people from a safe side point of view.
YOSHIKO SAKAMOTO is a yellow journalist, dangerously ignoramus. If she were any good as a journalist, she would have easily found out these:
1) By today's standard, the widely-cited Hiroshima study was flawed because of the very small sample size (it looked only at children who had been x-rayed and surveyed only 8 hospitals), medically and statistically too short study period (less than 10 years), and the most grievously, it looked only for leukemia, nothing about other cancers at all.
In fact, one author of the study, Richard Doll, later admitted that this survey was “not very good” and the results were “unreliable” and that “I never really thought it carried much weight… I’ve never really been happy with that study.”
It did not occur to the study authors back then to look into the non-leukemia deaths. It did not occur to them that majority of the children who survived the catastrophic atom bomb exposure might have died off easily from any numbers of minor causes such as an infection or common cold -- without living long enough to develop any cancer -- because their immune system had been decimated from the high dose radiation exposure. (This mistake was repeated also by later researchers such as Jablon and Kato).
2) Currently radiation exposure limits are based on this flawed Hiroshima study. International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) and other international atomic agencies used the detonation-based high dose data of Hiroshima/Nagasaki to extrapolate (i.e., guess work) the low dose risk by using a simple linear equation. Such projection method artificially reduces the low dose risk indefinitely close to zero. You don’t have to be a statistician to see a big hole here.
Based on “scientific” considerations, ICRP arbitrarily set the 5 rem (50 mSv) Annual Occupational Dose Equivalent dose.
They had full knowledge that there will be health consequences and death from using this number (at least 1 in 5,000 chance of contracting cancer from the exposure), but it was decided that “the overall societal benefits of atomic energy would outweigh damages to the few.”
In fact, after the Fukushima incident, I remember seeing on Youtube one TV show by Japanese NHK that investigated how “scientific” ICRP decision was. It turned out that they plucked out 5 rem annum and other limit numbers to ensure that nuclear power and nuclear weapons industries would be able to continue functioning (keep sending workers into the risky business) without being held accountable legally. The NHK reporter traced one original member of the standard setting commit to his residency in Canada, and this guy basically said there was NO scientific data to back the decision, and that the majority of committee members were from atomic industry , so his sole vote-down did not count. (sorry I cannot find the youtube video now, perhaps NHK had it takent down).
3) 5 rem (50 mSv) is the annual Occupational limit for atomic industry workers. 20 mSv is an average Occupational dose limit OVER 5 years! (See, http://goo.gl/QTvxq)
Notice that these are EXTERNAL exposure limit numbers for atomic industry workers. These people are trained on radiation (more or less), given protective gears, and paid accordingly for the risk.
Now the Japanese leaders and noisemakers want to use 20mSv for the public. This does not even consider that people in Japan are also subject to high INTERNAL exposure!
4) Clear correlation between low dose radiation and developing cancer has been established by many scientists who do not take atomic industry money. These include Alice Stewart (the Oxford Survey of Childhood Cancer), Brian MacMahon (Harvard University School of Public Health), etc.
What are these people thinking? if she/they acknowledge 100msv as a threshold for health effects, what do they think will happen to someone who lives in a 20msv environment for 5 years? (20msv x 5 years = 100msv)
Even if she was right (which she is not), this type of thinking of just kicking the can(cer) down the road.
Sorry about the long entry above, but I thought people who come to this site will find it valuable.
The MacMahon study was a better designed study than the Hiroshima study. The Oxford Survey by Alice Stewart showed that a low dose, single prenatal X-ray led to twice more childhood cancer rate in the next 10 years, in the era (1950-70s) when governments, atomic industry, and even doctors insisted no harm from low radiation. Her study eventually became one of the largest data study on childhood cancer.
Alice Stewart, along with Thomas Mancuso and George Kneale, later studied the data from the U.S. Hanford weapons complex in Washington and discovered the industry was about 20 times more dangerous than the government was telling people to believe.
There is an excellent book on all of these if you want to learn -- "The Woman Who Knew Too Much: Alice Stewart and The Secrets of Radiation" by Gayle Greene.
...............................
Japan is the ONLY advanced nation today where radiation genocide is being institutionalized by its leaders, where children and future babies are forced into genocidal experiment by the adults.
I am a Japanese, I still have family in Japan. As sad as I am, I will never visit Japan again, I will never let my children and husband go there, I will take every opportunity to dissuade everyone I meet not to visit Japan.
Great comment everyone. One of the few voices of reason out there from the start has been Arnie Gundersen. He and his wife have expanded their education efforts in recent months, and have set a fund raising goal of $50K to help get this rolling. Their website is fairewinds. org
In the face of well-funded government PR campaigns and politicians like Sakurai and Abe, we all need to do what we can to support those scientific voices of reason who are trying to educate the public and policy makers about the true science.
I hope you will join me in digging deep this holiday season to contribute something more than usual to Arnie, Maggie and their team.
Anon at 11:54AM, the comment section is not an ad space. If anything, readers here should be contributing to this blog.
Anon at 11:10AM, Ministry of Education tried to make 20 millisieverts/year equivalent (they set it as per hour radiation exposure) a standard for children in Fukushima. Faced with vehement opposition from parents the Ministry backed down, and removed the mention of standard. Instead they settled on 1 millisievert per year as a "target".
What a disaster. Institutionalizing denial, ignorance and lies. Well, to a more extreme and lethal extent than most other countries.
I suppose the only possible good thing to come from this may be to teach the Japanese people the inevitable result of such thinking - as the numbers of dead and dying children and adults mount.
At some point the numbers will be too great for the obedient hospitals and doctors to cover up per their orders, and then... what will happen then? When a nation of compulsive conformists finally understand their leaders are killing them?
TerraHertz
She already looks dressed for everyone's funeral.
@ Anonymous 11:34. Where are you located now if you do not mind me asking (country)? I wish I was able to be in contact with more Japanese like you. I left Japan with my wife and we have yet to really meet any Japanese people (outside of Japan) that feel the way you (and I) do. It is very difficult and stressful not being able to share about this and our feelings regarding it.
Go to your local japanese language association if you are in a city, there should be one.
I know several families in different cities accross North America who were able to escape from Japan. I am just praying that we will all be fine. Even though we left, we were there when the worst heppened.
Sorry to hear you were then when the worst was going on. Were you in the Tohoku area? We were thankfully further away in Tokyo (although not far enough in my opinion.....only ~200km away) and left as quickly as we could after 3.11. It was a crazy experience and uprooted our entire lives....we are just now starting to feel a little settled again where we are in Canada.
I have to second the posts above. Alice Stewart devoted her entire life to study low levels of radiations. Her conclusions are : any amount of radiation is dangerous, including background radiation. Period.
No amount of fabricated lies (oh dear, there we go again with the Chernobyl studies conveniently started 5+ years afterwards, and the 80yo+ studies about atomic bombs... IIRC, Fukushima was not bombed, was it ?) can prove the opposite. Actually, I have a friend working at the National Cancer center in Tsukiji, and they got govt approval for working around the Fukushima case recently... Like, 18 months later.
Stewart should have got a Nobel prize. On second thought, seeing who gets peace prize these days, it's better she didn't get one...
Also, I strongly suggest that Miss Sakurai studies the aftermath of the Sellafield/Windscale debacle. Those poor souls living around there accepted the bloodonium money during the nuke bubble. Even the leukemia counts are going crazy over there. If Fukushima should be compared to something, I would go for Sellafield over Chernobyl. Sellafield was/is a collection of leaky sites coordinated with a brilliant cover-up on the pretense of national security (sounds familiar?). Their future is... not so bright.
One final word, on Areva. Areva chairman recently stated that it would be hard for Japan to get rid of all their NPPs because the coal/oil imports were killing the trade balance (or something like this). The same Areva that is bribing Niger's government (with a brand new airplane... reminds me of the movie tropic thunder) to keep buying cheap (i.e. stealing) uranium from their own ground.
it's difficult to strike a balance between unfounded fears and an unsafe "business-as-usual" attitude.
While it may be true there is no "threshold" for radiation risk, such a risk is very small for the doses people are normally exposed to: 3 mSv/year is average, 5 mSv/y is very common throughout the world (Cornwall, Britain ~7 mSv/y avg., almost 1 µSv/h): one always has to balance the consequences of evacuating (hardship, which also leads to premature deaths) with the ones of the exposure level.
In this light, setting a short-term limit of 1-20 mSv/y, and a long-term one of <1 mSv/y appears reasonable, and corresponds to ICRP recommendations:
http://www.icrp.org/docs/Fukushima%20Nuclear%20Power%20Plant%20Accident.pdf
What seems to be missing now is a good way to estimate your dose. Background radiation is not very useful, as most people only spend 1-2h/day outdoors on average: the indoor level (>90% of your time, house and work!), and corresponding decontamination of buildings and surroundings, is much more important.
(Food, in contrast to the opinion held by many, does not play a large role as long as you're not reckless: you have to eat 800 kg of it at the maximum level of 100 Bq/kg to reach 1 mSv!)
Of course, if any population is moved back home, the govt. should give dosimeters to a sizeable sample, and regularly check and publish the results, including reports on cases where a higher-than-average dose is seen.
This would seem to be a sensible strategy, but Ms. Sakurai's posturing ("it's perfectly safe") will most likely generate only more distrust…
In answer to above. The person writing is confusing external radiation with internal radiation.90 %of the contamination at Chernobyl comes from internal radiation from consuming radioactively contaminated food and water. For an equivalent amount, internal radiation causes tens if not hundreds of times the damage. You can understand this if you think of one particle of plutonium giving off a pulse of radioactivity inside the lung every minute, for the rest of your life. It only travels one cell or more, but that constant bombardment is what causes a cancer, perhaps in ten to twenty years. For me as a sixty year old woman, perhaps not so bad, but for a child, it is a death sentence.Thus tiny amounts of internal radiation damage your health if breathed in or eaten. Different radionuclides concentrate in different organs of the body. Caesium 137 is attracted to muscle and in particular to the heart muscle. See the work of the Belarussian scientist Bandajevsky. Strontium is attracted to the bone.
As for levels at which cancers appear, the 15-country study authored by 51 radiation scientists, (Cardis et al in 2007, I think)is the largest study ever conducted of nuclear workers; it found increased cancer risk among workers; the average worker dose was 2 millisiverts per year; most workers received under 5 millisiverts per year; and the maximum dose allowed in Japan is 20 millisieverts per year, 10 times higher than the average annual worker dose and 4 times higher than most worker doses.
Even more importantly is the fact that children, and girls in particular are much more vulnerable to radiation because of the rate of cell replication. The BEIR report (Biological Effects of Iionising Radiation) that informs the nuclear industry in the USA has even quantified this difference in vulnerability. They found that children, and most especially girls, are the most at risk of radiation-induced caner. In fact, girls are almost twice as vulnerable as same-aged boys, and a 5-year-old girl is 5 times and an infant female 7 times more vulnerable than a 30-year-old man. So girls bear the brunt force of radiation's impact on the human race. What is so amazing about the nuclear industry is that even within their own institutions, the information is there, staring us in the face, if we will just MAKE THE CONNECTIONS.
All these factors mean that Japan's refusal to evacuate those areas contaminated by Fukushima, and to allow the Japanese to eat contaminated food, is a crime against humanity. We KNOW from Chernobyl that children are made very ill and then they die prematurely. The genetic damage will be with the people of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia for generations to come.All Japanese people must stand up against what their government is telling them, and the rest of the world must help those Japanese brave enough to tell the truth now.
I was amazed the Japanese people voted LDP back into power -- it's like voting George Bush back in after one term of Obama -- Shinzo Abe, like Bush, is an A-class airhead -- simply a pawn of the U.S. and the corporations.
@SG: it seems you are a bit confusing accidents: Fukushima is not Chernobyl, and the main releases were iodine and caesium (vs. the whole core inventory), which is what you expect with overheating and melting, due to their volatility. The behavior is well documented, and here's a good link:
http://pac.iupac.org/publications/pac/pdf/1988/pdf/6003x0323.pdf
As for the internal effects, those of Cs (soluble and gamma emitter) don't really vary between inhalation and ingestion (it is redistributed in the body anyway), and only increase somewhat vs. external (beta radiation).
This is very different from Pu-239, where external effect is essentially zero, and internal effect are much greater for inhalation than ingestion, due to low solubility, alpha emitter and retention in the lung. This is all documented in annex A of the UNSCEAR report:
http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/publications.html
Table 14: long-term external irradiation is essentially Cs-137
Table 17: for inhalation, dose factor for Pu is ~10'000x that of Cs!
Table 23: for ingestion, Cs ~ inhalation, Pu ~ 1% of inhalation
@anon 7:03
Quit wasting our time with studies that are totally controlled by the IAEA. The IAEA knew back in 1959 they had to control all medical research done on nuclear issues if they wanted their lies to be accepted as fact.
In 1959 the World Health Organisation entered into an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency which gave the unequivocally pro-nuclear IAEA a veto over WHO research into the effects of radiation.
It is important to bear in mind that the IAEA is dedicated to fostering the spread of nuclear power. That commitment is at the very begining of its constitution.
For fully half a century the WHO has been subservient to IAEA in matters of radiation and health. Under the WHO/IAEA Agreement (WHA12-40) of 28 May 1959, the IAEA has assumed a power of veto over WHO's activities. Similar "agreements" constrain other UN agencies. An international campaign opposes this conflict of interest, calling for WHO to be independent of the nuclear lobby.
"In the early days of nuclear power, WHO issued forthright statements on radiation risks such as its 1956 warning: Genetic heritage is the most precious property for human beings. It determines the lives of our progeny, health and harmonious development of future generations. As experts, we affirm that the health of future generations is threatened by increasing development of the atomic industry and sources of radiation … We also believe that new mutations that occur in humans are harmful to them and their offspring.
After 1959, WHO made no more statements on health and radioactivity. What happened? On 28 May 1959, at the 12th World Health Assembly, WHO drew up an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); clause 12.40 of this agreement says: Whenever either organisation [the WHO or the IAEA] proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organisation has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement." In other words, the WHO grants the right of prior approval over any research it might undertake or report on to the IAEA – a group that many people, including journalists, think is a neutral watchdog, but which is, in fact, an advocate for the nuclear power industry. The IAEA's founding papers state: "The agency shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity through the world."
http://www.llrc.org/health/subtopic/iaeawhoagreement.htm
http://independentwho.org/en/who-and-aiea-aggreement/
Minister of Whitewashing Atrocities would be fitting.
@Anon 6:43. It seems you're confusing IAEA and UNSCEAR, which are related but not exactly the same thing. UNSCEAR is a scientific comittee founded mainly due to concern on the effects of aboveground nuclear testing (which BTW it found to contaminate us all, especially with Sr-90, one of the reasons these tests were eventually stopped). And why on Earth would an "evil-nuclear-agency-that-wants-to-hide-the-dangers-of-radiation" state something such as "Inhalation of Pu-239 is very bad for you"?
As for IAEA, please bear in mind that nuclear power is only one aspect of "atomic energy". Politically, its main role has always rather been control of weapons proliferation, with some activity in the medical field. Actually, the majority of member countries, including the place of its HQ, have no nuclear power plants at all!
In the field of NPPs, its greatest failing (due to politics) is its inability to set, or even recommend, safety standards, as if atoms (mis)behaved differently according to country…
@ Anon 1:58
It seems you need lessons in reading comprehension. "Similar "agreements" constrain other UN agencies". (this includes UNSCEAR) UNSCEAR was formed in response to "loose cannon" scientist that were pointing out all the danger UNSCEAR "uncovered" (and played down) years later.
Here is how UNSCEAR handled Chernobyl.
Baverstock and Williams (2006) rightly recommended international long-term studies of all potential health effects among the populations exposed to Chernobyl fallout. In the meanwhile, data on post-Chernobyl health detriment in the former Soviet Union and exposed parts of Europe, including evidence of association with such contamination, are already accessible, mostly electronically. Three mutually consistent findings, in particular, challenge widely publicized conclusions the World Health Organization (WHO 2005a, 2005b) (after approval by the International Atomic Energy Agency), and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR 2000).
" A 26-fold increase would mean that population exposures from the worldwide fallout was in fact more than an order of magnitude larger than assumed by UNSCEAR (2000). This would explain a variety of observed health effects that are not to be expected at currently assumed doses (Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters 2004; Fairlie and Sumner 2006; Glushenko et al. 2006)."
"direct biological dosimetry contradicts these official estimates. Several research teams investigated radiation-specific cytogenic alterations in the lymphocytes of about 1,000 exposed persons immediately after the accident and/or some years later (Schmitz-Feuerhake 2006; Schmitz-Feuerhake et al. 2006). The majority of these studies revealed that the rate of unstable and stable chromosome aberrations was about 10–100 times higher than would be expected at UNSCEAR’s estimated exposure levels (UNSCEAR 2000). Biological dosimetry is, however, consistent with the evidence for a much larger release of radioactivity in the explosion. Furthermore, multiaberrant cells, characteristic for incorporated alpha emitters, were identified well beyond 100 km from Chernobyl, whereas plutonium particles were found as far away as Norway, contradicting “negligible exposure levels” beyond 100 km"
According to the International Commission on Radiological Protection (1991), UNSCEAR (2000), and other radiation authorities, teratogenic effects should not occur below a dose threshold of about 100 mSv. However, official estimates of fetal doses after the Chernobyl explosion, even in the most contaminated regions of Germany, were < 1 mSv (UNSCEAR 2000), far below the presumed safe threshold. Thus, either the fetus is much more sensitive to radiation than officially assumed, or the estimated post-Chernobyl fetal doses are far too low (which is consistent with considerably higher radioactive releases), or, most likely, there is a combination of both.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1867971/
@anon 1:58
"As for IAEA, please bear in mind that nuclear power is only one aspect of "atomic energy". Politically, its main role has always rather been control of weapons proliferation, with some activity in the medical field."
Wrong, wrong, wrong! You obviously don't know the first thing about the IAEA (or UNSCEAR) The IAEA came into being because of Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" speech to the UN he proposed the creation of an international body to both regulate and promote the peaceful use of nuclear power (NOT weapons). Weapons proliferation didn't become an issue until years after the "Atoms for Peace" program made it possible.
Ever since the IAEA caused the proliferation problem their non-proliferation efforts have failed miserably. India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa, North Korea and soon enough Iran have all managed to operate a weapons program under the guise of "peaceful uses" yet the IAEA somehow won the Nobel prize for doing a heck of a job. The IAEA had nothing to do with Libya giving up it's nuclear aspirations the gulf wars were the deciding factor in his change of heart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Atomic_Energy_Agency
The IAEA's own mission statement puts proliferation at the bottom of the list so does their Statute. Non-proliferation was an after thought because the Atoms for Peace idiots never thought it would be a problem.
http://www.iaea.org/About/mission.html
http://www.iaea.org/About/statute.html
I would like a extend a few words on the chemical properties of Strontium Hydroxide Exporters and its advantages.
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