Monday, February 10, 2014

#Nuclear Japan: Nuclear Plant Operators Breathe a Sigh of Relief on Masuzoe's Win, "He Is Someone We Can Work With"


It's not just TEPCO, which provides electricity in Tokyo, but also other nuclear power plant operators, as Sankei Shinbun hints.

Again, so much for the Tokyo governor race being just a provincial, local race where jobs and social welfare should be the top issues.

The election to choose the head of a prefecture with over 10,000,000 electoral votes may be on par with a national election to choose the head of the state in mid- to small-size European countries.

It is really funny and sad at the same time (or schadenfreude) that all of Japan's mainstream media, including Sankei, started covering the nuclear issues as presented during the Tokyo gubernatorial election campaign, as soon as the election was over at 8PM on February 9, and continues to do so now.

During the election, they made sure they didn't cover the issue, and were very busy downgrading the issue, ridiculing the one candidate who put an enormous emphasis on the issue, and ridiculing his extremely vocal supporter. They didn't even show their faces in the video clips.

During the election, they completely buried the coverage of Hosokawa/Koizumi in their reporting. Now, almost all of them now say it was Hosokawa, with the strong support from Koizumi, that the Abe administration feared.

From the unabashedly pro-nuclear and pro-Abe Sankei Shinbun (2/10/2014; part) on the reaction to the election result from electric power companies:

「建設的な議論ができる人という印象だ」。東京電力幹部は舛添氏をこう評す。舛添氏の勝利に電力業界にも安堵の空気が広がる。「原発ゼロ」を唱える細川元首相が当選すれば、各社が待ち望む原発再稼働が遠のく恐れがあったからだ。

"Our impression is that he is someone whom we can hold a constructive talk," executives at TEPCO commented on Mr. Masuzoe. The electric utility industry breathes a collective sigh of relief on Mr. Masuzoe's victory. It is because there was a chance that the restart of nuclear power plants that all [nuclear power plant] operators have been waiting for might have been further delayed if former Prime Minister Hosokawa, who was calling for "Zero Nuke Plant", had won.


Still, the supporters of the "socialist attorney" who came in the victorious (to him) second in the election are still busy dissing the Hosokawa supporters, or in rare cases telling them, "Let's work together again, let bygones be bygones."

Work, like carrying a banner in one of those festive demonstrations with chants and songs and dances, probably.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

After re-starting the nukes, these events are likely to occur like dominos: after more diplo-pouches are delivered the Shinzoid Abe will get more F-35 components built in Japan. Will the Japanese people countenance a Hitler-like re-arming of Japan?

That 8pm deadline is pure newspeak. How do these media employees reconcile such restrictions? Do they interview their own people, ever, to poll their views on such requirements made of them?

Anonymous said...

And the new Fukushima is in the making. And the Japanese voted for that by themselves.
According to my Japanese friend, there are no more ignorant people than the Japanese. So I asked are they that stupid? Answer, you have no idea...

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

I just realized what February 9 was. It was a Sunday in the middle of the long weekend for many people. Tuesday February 11 is a national holiday (National Foundation Day) in Japan. Many people took Monday off to have a 4-day vacation. Thus the extremely low turnout, which wasn't helped at all by snow.

A very smart move by someone who wanted to make sure the turnout was low. (I'm just being paranoid.)

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't call it paranoia. Just the results of secrecy games.

The Diaoyu/Senkaku thing is really almost certainly a "pissing match" between navy's in that region, and ADIZs are the face they decided to give to what is really submarine intrusion activity by all the actors. Basically a budget in search of a donor.

" .. small diesel-electric submarines are difficult to detect and destroy in shallow coastal waters .. Nuclear submarines are larger and suited to open waters. .. The U.S. Navy had previously leased a Swedish Gotland-class submarine, and found that its air-independent propulsion system made it quieter than other non-nuclear submarines .. Diesel-electric submarines cost 60-85 percent less than nuclear submarines to build and can sometimes be quieter even in open water. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarines_in_the_United_States_Navy#Post_Cold_War_.281991.E2.80.93Present.29

https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htsub/articles/20121219.aspx

China apparently has its counterparts to Japan's outrageous statement Statesmen,
"China also claims all of Taiwan and some Chinese officials are suggesting that a case can be made for all or part of the Philippines being part of “Greater China.”

https://www.strategypage.com/qnd/phillip/articles/20140208.aspx

A Song for AEGIS, lol

http://allamericanblogger.com/12773/chinese-sub-surprises-u-s-aircraft-carrier-battle-group/

Anonymous said...

Masuzoe thinks that nuclear energy is no business for Tokyo governor. Both he and his voters have possibly forgotten that, in a worst case scenario, Tokyo would have to be evacuated. Such scenario is not that far fetched because the US military authorities indeed evacuated the families of their personnel stationed in Yokosuka, which is farther from Fukushima than Tokyo.

sangell said...

Japan's decision on whether or not to operate nuclear power plants is one thing. Whether to restart the ones they have is another. I'm no expert but the events that happened at Fukushima have show that those reactors were not safe to operate even absent a tsunami causing a station blackout. Reactor pressure relief valves did not operate, staff were unable to determine if isolation condensors were operating or not. They didn't even have procedures to test these components in place. The location of backup power systems, batteries, you name it was simply wrong. They haven't even been able to conduct a thorough examination of the reactor and piping to understand if seismic bracing was adequate.
In short, restarting any reactor that has anything in common with Fukushima is premature until the KNOWN deficiencies have been corrected and has that taken place anywhere?

Anonymous said...

Not only the reactors' innards, sangell, but their decision to build an ice wall between the reactors and ocean is a big mystifier.

How could it not have been obvious it needed to be done upstream of the reactors??? first??

Penny-wise pound-foolish yen-crazed?

Anonymous said...

But then again perhaps it is foolish to attribute sanity, even temporarily, to corporations that promote nuclear disaster energy.

Ginned-up conflicts to sell nuke subs instead of clean diesels, NASA even would have you believe plutonium is needed to power space probes while Dyson-Harrop satellites would be more than sufficient anywhere in the solar system.

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