Greenpeace to GE: "Your Business = My Risk"

Jiji Tsushin reports that Greenpeace activists covered the GE building in Brussels with posters that say "Your Business, My Risk", referring to GE's nuclear business.

From Jiji Tsushin (3/7/2013):

東京電力福島第１原発の原子炉製造に携わった米複合企業ゼネラル・エレクトリック（ＧＥ）に抗議しようと、環境保護団体グリーンピースの活動家らが７日、ブリュッセルにあるＧＥの建物に「あなたのビジネスはわれわれのリスクだ」と書いたポスターを張り付けた。

On March 7, in protest against General Electric, the US conglomerate who was involved in the manufacture of the reactors at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, Greenpeace activists put up posters on the GE building in Brussels that said "Your business is our risk".

グリーンピースは同日の声明で「ＧＥは福島原発に主要な設備を提供したが、事故の賠償責任を免れている。日本の多くの人々は妥当な補償を得ていない」と訴え、原発に依存する欧州諸国でも、こうした事態が起きる可能性はあると強調した。

Greenpeace released a statement on the same day that said "GE provided the main facilities for the Fukushima plant, but so far has been exempt from the responsibility for the damages. Many people in Japan haven't received proper compensations." The statement also emphasized that it was possible that an accident like Fukushima could occur in European countries that rely on nuclear power.

There was a rumor for a very brief time right after the nuclear accident that then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan was considering suing GE for product liability. That rumor died very quickly.

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Greenpeace Slams Japanese "Decontamination" Measures in Fukushima, Finds 3 Microsieverts/Hr Radiation in Schools and Parks in Fukushima City

3 microsieverts/hour radiation is 100 times as much as pre-nuclear-accident level in Fukushima.

From News24, citing AFP (10/23/2012; emphasis is mine):

Greenpeace slams Japan anti-radiation action

Tokyo - Government radiation monitoring in areas near Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is unreliable, Greenpeace charged on Tuesday, with heavily populated areas exposed to 13 times the legal limit.

The environmental group said authorities were wasting time cleaning up evacuated areas and should prioritise decontamination efforts in places where people live, work and play.

Greenpeace found that in some parks and school facilities in Fukushima city, home to 285 000 people, radiation levels were above 3 microsieverts (mSv) per hour. Japan's recommended radiation limit is 0.23mSv per hour.

"We also found that official monitoring posts placed by the government systematically underestimate the radiation levels," said Rianne Teule, Greenpeace's radiation expert, adding that some machines are shielded from radiation by surrounding metal and concrete structures.

Decontamination efforts

"Decontamination efforts are seriously delayed and many hot spots that were repeatedly identified by Greenpeace are still there," Teule said.

"It is especially disturbing to see that there are many hot spots around playground equipment, exposing children who are most vulnerable to radiation risks," she said.

In tests carried out over four days last week, Greenpeace also found that radiation levels in Iitate village, where the government is hoping to soon return evacuated residents, are still many times over the limit, with decontamination efforts patchy.

Greenpeace's Japan nuclear campaigner Kazue Suzuki said attempts to clean up were "misguided".

"One home or office may be cleaned up, but it is very unlikely that the whole area will be freed of radiation risks within the next few years," given the mountainous and heavily forested nature of the region, she said.

"The government continues to downplay radiation risks and give false hope [of returning home] to victims of this nuclear disaster," said Suzuki.

A huge tsunami, sparked by a massive undersea quake, swamped the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March in 2011.

Reactors went into meltdown, spewing radiation over a large swathe of Japan's agriculture-heavy northeast, in the planet's worst atomic disaster for a generation.

The natural disaster left around 19 000 people dead or missing.

However, no one is officially recorded as having died as a direct result of the nuclear catastrophe, but thousands of people have been displaced and many livelihoods wrecked.

Scientists caution it could be decades before the plant is fully decommissioned and the areas around it are safe to live in again.

Professor Hayakawa has also reported that the radiation measurement done at the monitoring posts in Fukushima differs, sometimes significantly, from the measurement done nearby.

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Reuters: Greenpeace activist paraglides into French nuclear plant

From Reuters (5/2/2012):

A Greenpeace activist dropped a smoke flare as he flew over a French nuclear reactor on a paraglider on Wednesday, seeking to draw attention to what green activists call gaps in nuclear security four days before a presidential election runoff.

The plant's owner, EDF, confirmed an engine-powered paraglider had landed within its Bugey nuclear site in southeastern France.

The pilot flew over the plant and threw a red-smoke flare on the roof of a building before landing, television images showed.

"At no moment was the safety of the installations at risk," EDF said in a statement, adding that the pilot was caught by the police in charge of protecting the site.

Separately, another man entered the Civaux nuclear site in southwestern France through the truck gate and remained hidden for an hour in a thicket in the "surveillance zone" before being arrested, EDF said.

France's dependence on nuclear energy has been much debated ahead of the vote. France is more dependent on nuclear energy than any other country, relying on it to produce 75 percent of its electricity.

"This over flight shows the vulnerability of the French nuclear site to an air attack," Sophia Majnoni d'Intignano, in charge of nuclear questions at Greenpeace, said in a statement.

"While Germany took account of a plane crash in its safety tests, France still refuses to analyze this risk for our reactors."

Similarly, in December, Greenpeace activists entered the Nogent-sur-Seine plant near Paris, climbing onto one of the domes that houses a reactor, while other activists entered other nuclear installations.

Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande has said he would shut France's oldest nuclear plant if elected.

After the Fukushima disaster in March 2011, France along with other European countries, pledged to carry out safety tests on its 58 nuclear reactors to test their capacity to resist flooding, earthquakes, power outages, failure of the cooling systems and operational management of accidents.

But those did not include terrorist attacks, or the possibility of a plane crash.

(Reporting by Thierry Leveque and Sybille de La Hamaide, additional reporting by Marion Douet, editing by Maria Golovnina)

No need to directly attack a nuke plant, as Fukushima shows. All they need is to cut off electricity supply of any kind.

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#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Greenpeace Says MOX Fuel Leaving for Japan in April from France; Same Type Used in Reactor 3

From Morningstar.co.uk (3/24/2011), citing Dow Jones Newswires citing Kyodo News English, who buries the news behind the subscription wall:

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

A ship carrying nuclear fuel processed in France is scheduled to leave for Japan in early April, Kyodo News reported Thursday, citing the French affiliate of environmental advocacy group Greenpeace.

The uranium-plutonium mixed-oxide fuel, known as MOX fuel, is the same type as the one being used in the No. 3 reactor at the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan, Greenpeace said.

The ship is expected to leave the port of Cherbourg in the week of April 4 but Areva SA (CEI.FR), France's state-controlled nuclear engineering firm, said it won't depart then, indicating a possible delay, according to Kyodo.

Areva and state power company Electricite de France SA (EDF.FR) have sent equipment to Japan to assist with the crisis at the Fukushima plant, Areva's chief executive said last week.

-Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2900

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 24, 2011 14:47 ET (18:47 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

More on MOX fuel in my previous post here.

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