#Radioactive Disaster Debris Talk in Osaka: Officials Didn't Know Anything About Radiation

A bullet-point summary at Kouta Kinoshita's blog on the meeting between the Osaka prefectural government official and three citizens about Osaka's guideline in preparation for accepting and burning the debris from Miyagi and Iwate.

The citizens are against it, fearing the secondary radiation contamination from burning and burying the debris in Osaka which has largely escaped the contamination from the nuke plant accident.

１２月２８日、大阪府　資源循環課　小西裕絵主査（検討会議の事務局）市民３名との会談での発言

Meeting on December 28 between Hiroe Konishi of the resource recycling division of the Osaka prefectural government (serving as the secretariat of the committee to discuss debris acceptance) and 3 citizens

（１）指針は安全基準ではない
（２）作業者や市民が被ばくする可能性を否定しない
（３）内部被ばくのことは検討会議でもほとんど検討されていない
（４）指針には法的拘束力はない　
（５）組織が決定したら、市民の側に立つのでなく、組織の決定に従う→10万人にひとりを無作為に抽出して殺すということを組織が決定したら、あなたはその決定に従うのかという質問に対しては、無言。
（６）２２日の市民との会談で、直属上司の磯田課長が「内部ひばくのことは知らなかった」「専門家の意見を聞く」と発言したことについては、とぼける。
（７）ECRR 2010年勧告、2005年のNAS BEIR-VIIの報告書、2009年 NYASの論文集のことは、まったく「知らなかった」（従って、低線量内部被ばくがどんな障害を引き起こすかについては、知識はほとんどななかった）。

(1) The guideline is not the safety standard.

(2) [Konishi] didn't deny the possibility that the workers and Osaka residents would be exposed to radiation.

(3) In the committee discussing the debris acceptance, there's hardly any discussion of internal radiation exposure.

(4) The guideline isn't legally binding.

(5) [Konishi said] Once it's decided by the organization [like the Osaka government] she would follow the decision by the organization, instead of siding with the citizens. To the question [from a citizen] whether she would follow the order if the organization decides to pick out one person for every 100,000 people at random and kill him/her, she was silent.

(6) When asked about her direct supervisor Isoda who had said during the meeting with the citizens on December 22 that he didn't know about internal radiation and that he would consult experts, [Konishi] pretended she didn't know about it.

(7) She didn't know anything at all about 2010 ECRR recommendation, 2005 NAS BEIR-VII report, or 2009 NYAS papers (in other words, hardly any knowledge as to the damage that may be caused by low-dose internal radiation).

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Al Jazeera: Japan Radiation Levels to Exceed Chernobyl Disaster

Al Jazeera's Steve Chao reported on September 17.

He first meets Kouta Kinoshita, an independent journalist whom I have quoted several times here and who has been spearheading the grassroots effort to measure the radiation levels in many parts of Tohoku, Kanto, and now in Chubu and Kansai and beyond. He has also urged from the beginning of the crisis for people to leave Tohoku and Kanto, including Tokyo, as the contamination levels there are much more grave than the national or municipal government has admitted. In the interview, he says there are many spots in the Tokyo Metropolitan area where the radiation levels exceed those in Chernobyl where people had to evacuate.

Kinoshita's blog (in Japanese) is full of anecdotal but excellent information of change in people's health in various parts of Japan. Some of them may be just rumors, but many write their own experiences in the comment sections.

Then a mother and her young daughter who live in Tokyo. She says her daughter has been having symptoms that she never had before the accident: severe joint pains, fatigue, deep rings under her eyes, diarrhea. The mother says the daughter got better right away when they temporarily moved from Tokyo for the summer.

Then he goes to see one of the government researcher, Toru Kikuchi, sporting his glass badge for radiation monitoring, who assures him and the Al Jazeera audience that it's all just psychological, and that the radiation is not much different from before the accident.

Amazing. Not much higher? What planet does he live on? I think this is the same Mr. Toru Kikuchi who said the following back in April (from Mainichi Daily English article dated 4/13/2011, which has since been removed; I got the copy from this blog):

In its announcement, the Japanese government said that 370,000 to 630,000 terabecquerels of radiation are estimated to have been released from the Fukushima plant. Regarding that amount, Toru Kikuchi, general director of the Japan Association on Radiological Protection in Medicine, said that “compared to contamination caused by atmospheric nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States and the Soviet Union since the 1950s, the amount of radiation is very small.”

Kikuchi is with the Jichi Medical University Radioisotope Center. Jichi Medical University is a private university, but Al Jazeera is excused for calling him "government" researcher as he has helped the government promote the notion that it's all in people's head, the radiation.

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