Disaster (Radioactive) Debris Burning: Now It's Labor Union's Turn to Say "Yes, Let's!"

There is always "the first".

It's not just the mayor of a small city in Shizuoka who happens to own a waste processing business, or large cement companies eager to accept and burn at their plants in Saitama Prefecture. Please welcome the labor union in Ehime Prefecture in Shikoku, Rengo Ehime with 50,000 members, as the latest entity to strongly support burning the debris in their prefecture to help Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures "recover".

From Nankai Broadcasting Company (2/17/2012):

連合愛媛は、東日本大震災で発生した大量のがれきの処理について、愛媛県内での受け入れ実現に向けた取り組みを求める要請書を県に提出することを決めました。

Rengo Ehime [Labor Union Ehime] has decided to submit a request to the Ehime prefectural government to come up with the plan to move forward in accepting the disaster debris from the March 11, 2011 earthquake/tsunami in Ehime.

　これは、１７日開かれた連合愛媛の執行委員会で決まったものです。東日本大震災で発生した震災がれきを巡っては、東京や山形などが受け入れを実施していますが、原発事故による放射性物質の影響などを理由に多くの自治体は受け入れに消極的な対応となっています。要請書案では、被災地の仮置き場に積み上げられた震災がれきが復興・再生の妨げになっているとして、県に対し、一刻も早くがれきの受け入れが実現するよう取り組むことを求めています。連合愛媛は週明け早々にも、要請書を県に提出することにしています。

This was decided on February 17 at the steering committee of Rengo Ehime. Tokyo and Yamagata have already started accepting the disaster debris, but most municipalities are reluctant to accept because of the effect of radioactive materials [on the debris] from the nuclear accident. The request states that the disaster debris piling up in the temporary storage yards in the disaster affected areas is the impediment to the recovery and renewal, and that the prefectural government should come up with the plan to facilitate the acceptance of the disaster debris into Ehime as soon as possible. Rengo Ehime plans to submit the request early next week.

Tokyo Shinbun reports (in print version only) that there is hardly any sign of the disaster debris in the disaster-affected areas being perceived as the impediment to recovery by people in the disaster-affected areas themselves. The facts are apparently none of the concern for the labor union in Ehime; it's the idea that matters, or what the labor union thinks it must be. In that, the union is not alone, either.

Ehime Prefecture takes up the northwest quadrant of the island of Shikoku, facing the Setonaikai, the Inland Sea of Japan. Temperate climate, famous for Ehime mandarin oranges (called "satsumas" in the US, as the orange originated in Satsuma, today's Kagoshima Prefecture). The prefecture has a nuclear power plant at Ikata, on Sadamisaki Peninsula, the narrowest peninsula in Japan jutting out toward the island of Kyushu.

By the way, the entire peninsula is sitting right along the largest fault in Japan, the Median Tectonic Line. If the prefecture is that bold to build a nuclear power plant by the largest fault in the country, I suppose burning a bit of radioactive debris is nothing.

(From Wiki, the MTL in Japan, in red; Sadamisaki Peninsula in black circle)

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