March 26, 2011
By SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
London
A REVOLUTION resembles the death of a fading star, an exhilarating Technicolor explosion that gives way not to an ordered new galaxy but to a nebula, a formless cloud of shifting energy. And though every revolution is different, because all revolutions are local, in this uncertain age of Arab uprisings and Western interventions, as American missiles bombard a defiant Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, as the ruler of Yemen totters on the brink and Syrian troops fire on protesters, the history of revolution can still offer us some clues to the future.
The German sociologist Max Weber cited three reasons for citizens to obey their rulers: “the authority of the eternal yesterday,” or historical prestige; “the authority of the extraordinary personal gift of grace,” or the ruler’s charisma; and “domination by virtue of legality,” or order and justice. The “authority of the eternal yesterday” is especially important because in the Arab world even republics tend to be dynastic.
Before his ouster, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was grooming hereditary heirs. Before his death in 2000, Hafez al-Assad, the long-reigning Syrian dictator, handed over power to his son Bashar. Colonel Qaddafi has long ruled through a phalanx of thuggish dauphins, each playing a different role — one the totalitarian enforcer, another, the pro-Western liberalizer — and each vying for the succession. Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh similarly is safeguarded by special forces commanded by sons and nephews.
Yet “the life span of a dynasty corresponds to the life span of an individual,” wrote Ibn Khaldun, the brilliant 14th-century Islamic historian-statesman. All these Arab “monarchies” have rested on the prestige of a religion (Saudi Wahhabism or Iranian Twelver Shiism), a personality (in Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the revolution; in Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, the memory of the most popular Arab ruler since Saladin, President Gamal Abdel Nasser; in Saudi Arabia, the founder-king Ibn Saud) or a heredity link (Jordan’s King Abdullah II’s descent from Muhammad). But “prestige ... decays inevitably,” ruled Ibn Khaldun.
Revolutions are set off by dramatic events, yes — a stolen election in Iran in 2009, a self-immolation in Tunisia. But they also reflect longstanding economic depression, not to mention rising expectations and the temptations of comparison: the Internet meant Arab youth could now compare their own stunted rights with those of their Western counterparts. The generational difference between their wizened pharaohs and the Twitter-obsessed youth worsened the crisis, which may yet mark the end of the ancient paradigm of the Arab ruler, the wise strong sheik, el Rais, the Boss. A dictator who is regularly mocked by the young for his Goth-black dyed hair and surgically enhanced cheekbones, and whose entourage features as many nurses as generals, is in trouble — he has lost “the personal gift of grace.”
Such dictators are often so sclerotic that they do not even realize there is a revolution until it is upon them. In 1848, Prince Metternich, the Austrian chancellor, was so old that he literally could not hear the mobs outside his own palace. When the riots started, I imagine Colonel Qaddafi or King Hamad al-Khalifa of Bahrain had a conversation something like this one:
“So what is it? A riot?” asked King Louis XVI in Paris in 1789.
“No, Sire,” replied his confidant La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, “it is a revolution.”
Leaderless revolutions without organization have a magically spontaneous momentum that is harder to crush. Lenin had just reflected that the revolution would never happen in his lifetime when in February 1917, hungry crowds in Petrograd overthrew Nicholas II while the revolutionaries were abroad, exiled or infiltrated by the secret police.
This time, headless spontaneity has been aided by Facebook, which certainly accelerates the mobilization of crowds — and the transmission of Western culture, whether it concerns Charlie Sheen’s soliloquies or the joys of American democracy. But technology’s effect is exaggerated: in 1848, the revolution that most resembles today’s, uprisings spread from Sicily to Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Budapest in mere weeks without telephones, let alone Twitter. They spread through the exuberance of momentum and the rigid isolation of repressive rulers.
Once the crowds are in the streets, the ability to crush revolutions depends on the ruler’s willingness and ability to shed blood. The more moderate the regimes, like the Shah’s Iran in 1979 or Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, the easier to overthrow. The more brutal the police state, like Colonel Qaddafi’s Libya, President Saleh’s Yemen or President Assad’s Syria, the tougher to bring down. Iran has brutally repressed its opposition — it helps to not be an American ally and to exclude the international news media, as it’s much easier to massacre your people without being restrained by the State Department or CNN.
“Very pleasing commencements,” wrote Edmund Burke, observer of the French Revolution’s spiral from freedom to terror, “have often shameful, lamentable conclusions.” Look at Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution against Syria and its ally Hezbollah, which has ended with a Syrian-backed, Hezbollah-dominated government. The first success of revolution creates the exuberant dizziness of democratic freedom that we saw in Cairo and Benghazi. In Europe in 1848, in Russia in 1917, there were similarly exhilarating springs.
Often temporary leaders arise — think of Aleksandr Kerensky, the strutting Russian prime minister for some months before the Bolsheviks seized power — but every revolution has its figures who provide fig leafs for the hard men. Khomeini appointed Mehdi Bazargan, a democrat, as his prime minister, who ended up resigning during the hostage crisis.
The fiesta does not last long. The disorder, uncertainty and strife of a revolution make citizens yearn for stable authority, or they turn to radicalism. Certainly, extremists welcome this deterioration, as Lenin, that laconic dean of the university of revolutionology, expressed it with the slogan: “The worse, the better.” (At that point, extreme solutions become more palatable: “How can one make a revolution without firing squads?” asked Lenin.)
At this stage, leadership becomes vital: Lenin personally drove the Bolshevik coup in October 1917. Khomeini was decisive in creating a Shiite theocracy in Iran in 1979 just as Nelson Mandela ensured a peaceful transition in South Africa. But there are no clear opposition leaders in Libya, Yemen or Syria: a ruthless security apparatus has long since decimated any such candidates.
In 1848, the democratic spring did not last long before outside intervention: Czar Nicholas I of Russia crushed the revolutions in the Habsburg Empire, earning him the soubriquet “the gendarme of Europe.” The Saudi intervention against Shiite rebels in Bahrain suggests the Saudis are the gendarmes of the Gulf; in Yemen, President Saleh has also begged for Saudi help, which they have so far withheld. In Libya, of course, the reverse has happened: the West is backing the rebels against Colonel Qaddafi’s onslaught. Each case is different; all revolutions are local.
Whatever happens next in the Arab world, it will not simply be a reversion to Mubarak-ish military pharaohism. After the upheavals of 1848, strange political hybrids, modern yet authoritarian, emerged from the uncertainty: first Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, the so-called prince-president and later emperor, in France; and, later, in the 1860s, Otto von Bismarck in Prussia. In complex Egypt, the result of the Arab revolutions is likely to be a similar hybrid, a new democracy, with the military in a special role of Turkish-style guardianship; in repressed Libya, it may simply be a return to tribal rivalry.
Libya, strafed by British and American planes, may be in the headlines but it is a minor country: it is the destinies of the key three — Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran — that will decide everything. After all, Prince Metternich, the conservative Austrian who dominated Europe between the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the revolutions of 1848, said, “When Paris sneezes, Europe catches cold.”
Lesser countries, however, can hold the key to major ones: Syria is the old Arab heartland. The uprising in Syria could encourage resurgent revolution in its patron, Iran, which faces the challenge of exploiting the uprisings that undermine American allies without succumbing to its own unrest. Change in Syria could also liberate Lebanon from Hezbollah; the fall of the Bahraini king could infect the Saudi monarchy — just as Nasser’s overthrow of King Farouk in 1952 in Egypt led to the liquidation of the Iraqi monarchy a few years later. And we should always remember that however liberal these Facebooking revolutions may be, the rivalries between Shiite and Sunni are far more potent than Twitter and democracy.
What’s next? When Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Communist prime minister, analyzed the French Revolution two centuries later, he declared that “it’s too early to tell.” We should remember that while enthusiasts have repeatedly cited the revolutions of 1989 to 1991 as the encouraging precedent for today’s revolutions, how successful were those? Democracy flowered in Eastern Europe as well as Georgia and the Baltic countries, but most former Soviet republics are dictatorships like Uzbekistan or Belarus, or authoritarian like Putinist Russia.
No single American doctrine can or should fit this newly kaleidoscopic, multifaceted universe that is the Middle East from Iran to Morocco. We must realize this will be a long game, the grand tournament of the 21st century. We should protect innocent lives when we can — with limited airpower, not boots on the ground. We must analyze which countries matter to us strategically, and after the Facebook party dies down and the students exit the streets, figure out who is really controlling events in the places important to us.
The wisest judgments belong to statesmen who knew much about crushing and making revolutions. “Old Europe is at the beginning of the end,” reflected the ultraconservative Metternich as he was beset by revolutions, “but New Europe however has not yet even begun its existence, and between the End and the Beginning, there will be Chaos.” Lenin understood that the ultimate question in each revolution is always the unfathomable alchemy of power: who controls whom. Or as he put it so succinctly: “Who whom?”
Simon Sebag Montefiore is the author of the forthcoming “Jerusalem: The Biography.”
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Sunday, March 27, 2011
27/03 Hoping for Arab Mandelas
March 26, 2011
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
With Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria now all embroiled in rebellions, it is not an exaggeration to suggest that the authoritarian lid that has smothered freedom in the Arab world for centuries may be coming off all 350 million Arab peoples at once. Personally, I think that is exactly what is going to happen over time. Warm up the bus for all the Arab autocrats — and for you, too, Ahmadinejad. As one who has long believed in the democracy potential for this part of the world, color me both really hopeful and really worried about the prospects.
I am hopeful because the Arab peoples are struggling for more representative and honest government, which is what they will need to overcome their huge deficits in education, freedom and women’s empowerment that have been holding them back. But getting from here to there requires crossing a minefield of tribal, sectarian and governance issues.
The best way to understand the potential and pitfalls of this transition is to think about Iraq. I know that the Iraq war and the democracy-building effort that followed have been so bitterly divisive in America that no one wants to talk about Iraq. Well, today we’re going to talk about Iraq because that experience offers some hugely important lessons for how to manage the transition to democratic governance of a multisectarian Arab state when the iron lid is removed.
Democracy requires 3 things: citizens — that is, people who see themselves as part of an undifferentiated national community where anyone can be ruler or ruled. It requires self-determination — that is, voting. And it requires what Michael Mandelbaum, author of “Democracy’s Good Name,” calls “liberty.”
“While voting determines who governs,” he explained, “liberty determines what governments can and cannot do. Liberty encompasses all the rules and limits that govern politics, justice, economics and religion.”
And building liberty is really hard. It will be hard enough in Middle East states with big, homogenous majorities, like Egypt, Tunisia and Iran, where there is already a powerful sense of citizenship and where national unity is more or less assumed. It will be doubly hard in all the other states, which are divided by tribal, ethnic and sectarian identities and where the threat of civil war is ever present.
Not one was more divided in that way than Iraq. What did we learn there? First, we learned that when you removed the authoritarian lid the tensions between Iraqi Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis erupted as each faction tested the other’s power in a low-grade civil war. But we also learned that alongside that war many Iraqis expressed an equally powerful yearning to live together as citizens. For all of the murderous efforts by Al Qaeda to trigger a full-scale civil war in Iraq, it never happened. And in Iraq’s last election, the candidate who won the most seats, a Shiite, Ayad Allawi, ran on a multisectarian platform with Sunnis. Lesson: While these tribal identities are deeply embedded and can blow up at anytime, there are also powerful countertrends in today’s more urbanized, connected, Facebooked Middle East.
“There is a problem of citizenship in the Arab world,” said Michael Young, the Lebanese author of “The Ghosts of Martyr’s Square,” “but that is partly because these regimes never allowed their people to be citizens. But despite that, you can see how much the demonstrators in Syria have been trying to stay nonviolent and speak about freedom for the whole nation.”
Lesson two: What was crucial in keeping the low-grade civil war in Iraq from exploding, what was crucial in their writing of their own Constitution for how to live together, and what was crucial in helping Iraqis manage multiple fair elections was that they had a credible neutral arbiter throughout this transition: the U.S.
America played that role at a staggering cost, and not always perfectly, but played it we did. In Egypt, the Egyptian Army is playing that arbiter role. Somebody has to play it in all these countries in revolt, so they can successfully lay the foundations of both democracy and liberty. Who will play that role in Libya? In Syria? In Yemen?
The final thing Iraq teaches us is that while external arbiters may be necessary, they are not sufficient. We’re leaving Iraq at the end of the year. Only Iraqis can sustain their democracy after we depart. The same will be true for all the other Arab peoples hoping to make this transition to self-rule. They need to grow their own arbiters — their own Arab Nelson Mandelas. That is, Shiite, Sunni and tribal leaders who stand up and say to each other what Mandela’s character said about South African whites in the movie “Invictus”: “We have to surprise them with restraint and generosity.”
This is what the new leaders of these Arab rebellions will have to do — surprise themselves and each other with a sustained will for unity, mutual respect and democracy. The more Arab Mandelas who emerge, the more they will be able to manage their own transitions, without army generals or outsiders. Will they emerge? Let’s watch and hope. We have no other choice. The lids are coming off.
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
With Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria now all embroiled in rebellions, it is not an exaggeration to suggest that the authoritarian lid that has smothered freedom in the Arab world for centuries may be coming off all 350 million Arab peoples at once. Personally, I think that is exactly what is going to happen over time. Warm up the bus for all the Arab autocrats — and for you, too, Ahmadinejad. As one who has long believed in the democracy potential for this part of the world, color me both really hopeful and really worried about the prospects.
I am hopeful because the Arab peoples are struggling for more representative and honest government, which is what they will need to overcome their huge deficits in education, freedom and women’s empowerment that have been holding them back. But getting from here to there requires crossing a minefield of tribal, sectarian and governance issues.
The best way to understand the potential and pitfalls of this transition is to think about Iraq. I know that the Iraq war and the democracy-building effort that followed have been so bitterly divisive in America that no one wants to talk about Iraq. Well, today we’re going to talk about Iraq because that experience offers some hugely important lessons for how to manage the transition to democratic governance of a multisectarian Arab state when the iron lid is removed.
Democracy requires 3 things: citizens — that is, people who see themselves as part of an undifferentiated national community where anyone can be ruler or ruled. It requires self-determination — that is, voting. And it requires what Michael Mandelbaum, author of “Democracy’s Good Name,” calls “liberty.”
“While voting determines who governs,” he explained, “liberty determines what governments can and cannot do. Liberty encompasses all the rules and limits that govern politics, justice, economics and religion.”
And building liberty is really hard. It will be hard enough in Middle East states with big, homogenous majorities, like Egypt, Tunisia and Iran, where there is already a powerful sense of citizenship and where national unity is more or less assumed. It will be doubly hard in all the other states, which are divided by tribal, ethnic and sectarian identities and where the threat of civil war is ever present.
Not one was more divided in that way than Iraq. What did we learn there? First, we learned that when you removed the authoritarian lid the tensions between Iraqi Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis erupted as each faction tested the other’s power in a low-grade civil war. But we also learned that alongside that war many Iraqis expressed an equally powerful yearning to live together as citizens. For all of the murderous efforts by Al Qaeda to trigger a full-scale civil war in Iraq, it never happened. And in Iraq’s last election, the candidate who won the most seats, a Shiite, Ayad Allawi, ran on a multisectarian platform with Sunnis. Lesson: While these tribal identities are deeply embedded and can blow up at anytime, there are also powerful countertrends in today’s more urbanized, connected, Facebooked Middle East.
“There is a problem of citizenship in the Arab world,” said Michael Young, the Lebanese author of “The Ghosts of Martyr’s Square,” “but that is partly because these regimes never allowed their people to be citizens. But despite that, you can see how much the demonstrators in Syria have been trying to stay nonviolent and speak about freedom for the whole nation.”
Lesson two: What was crucial in keeping the low-grade civil war in Iraq from exploding, what was crucial in their writing of their own Constitution for how to live together, and what was crucial in helping Iraqis manage multiple fair elections was that they had a credible neutral arbiter throughout this transition: the U.S.
America played that role at a staggering cost, and not always perfectly, but played it we did. In Egypt, the Egyptian Army is playing that arbiter role. Somebody has to play it in all these countries in revolt, so they can successfully lay the foundations of both democracy and liberty. Who will play that role in Libya? In Syria? In Yemen?
The final thing Iraq teaches us is that while external arbiters may be necessary, they are not sufficient. We’re leaving Iraq at the end of the year. Only Iraqis can sustain their democracy after we depart. The same will be true for all the other Arab peoples hoping to make this transition to self-rule. They need to grow their own arbiters — their own Arab Nelson Mandelas. That is, Shiite, Sunni and tribal leaders who stand up and say to each other what Mandela’s character said about South African whites in the movie “Invictus”: “We have to surprise them with restraint and generosity.”
This is what the new leaders of these Arab rebellions will have to do — surprise themselves and each other with a sustained will for unity, mutual respect and democracy. The more Arab Mandelas who emerge, the more they will be able to manage their own transitions, without army generals or outsiders. Will they emerge? Let’s watch and hope. We have no other choice. The lids are coming off.
27/03 Phóng xạ tăng trong nước biển đông bắc Nhật
Chủ nhật, 27/3/2011, 11:53 GMT+7
Mức độ phóng xạ trong nước biển tại khu vực gần nhà máy điện hạt nhân Fukushima I của Nhật tăng cao, trong lúc các chuyên gia nhận định rằng khủng hoảng hạt nhân Nhật "còn lâu mới chấm dứt".
Trong khi đó các công nhân đang nỗ lực đưa nước có độ phóng xạ cao đọng trong khu vực lò phản ứng ra ngoài, sau khi có trường hợp công nhân bị bỏng chân do giẫm phải loại nước này. Việc lắp đặt cáp để đưa điện vào, khôi phục hệ thống làm mát lò phản ứng vẫn đang tiếp tục.
Hôm nay, các công nhân trong lò phản ứng số 2 vừa phải sơ tán khẩn cấp do nước trong lò nhiễm xạ ở mức độ rất cao, AFP dẫn tin hãng thông tấn Nhật cho biết.
Một phụ nữ nhặt lại đồ của mình bên cạnh một tòa nhà đổ ở thành phố Onagawa, tỉnh Miyagy, hôm qua, hai tuần sau động đất sóng thần. Ảnh: AFP
Tờ NYT đăng lời bình luận của giám đốc cơ quan an toàn hạt nhân quốc tế Yukia Amano cho rằng cuộc khủng hoảng hạt nhân ở Nhật còn xa mới đến hồi kết thúc, có thể hàng tuần thậm chí hàng tháng nữa. Tuy nhiên ông không phê phán nỗ lực của chính phủ Nhật, mà chỉ thêm rằng "cần làm nhiều việc hơn nữa để chấm dứt vụ việc này".
Phát ngôn viên chính phủ Nhật Yukio Edano thừa nhận: "Chúng tôi những muốn đặt ra thời hạn rõ ràng, khi nào cuộc khủng hoảng này sẽ được giải quyết, những người đang làm việc tại hiện trường cũng vậy", ông Edano phát biểu trên NHK hôm nay.
"Nhưng tôi không thể lạc quan hơn, với tình hình hiện nay".
Mức phóng xạ cao trong nước khiến sứ mệnh giải cứu nhà máy điện hạt nhân thêm khó khăn, khiến nhiều người lo ngại rằng các thanh nhiên liệu trong lò hoặc các van và ống dẫn đã bị rò rỉ. Một trong những kịch bản tồi tệ nhất có thể xảy ra là nhiên liệu trong phần lõi của lò phản ứng - gồm hỗn hợp uranium và plutonium - đã nóng chảy và thoát ra qua lớp vỏ thép chịu áp cao bao quanh nó.
"Nước nhiễm xạ ở nồng độ cao hiện diện trong lò và sau đó tuôn ra biển, gây lo ngại cho sự sống của cá và các loại sinh vật khác", một chuyên gia của Viện ann toàn phóng xạ hạt nhân Pháp lo ngại. "Một giả thuyết đặt ra là có thể vỏ lò phản ứng bị thủng, chất phóng xạ đang thoát ra ngoài".
Nước ở Thái Bình dương, cách nhà máy khoảng vài trăm mét, hiện có hàm lượng oidine cao gấp 1.250 lần mức cho phép, Công ty điện lực Toyo, bên điều hành nhà máy điện hạt nhân, cho hay. Tuy vậy các chuyên gia cho rằng mức này chưa đe dọa sức khỏe người ở iodine bay biến khá nhanh, trong vòng 8 ngày. Khi con người ăn phải thực phẩm có nguồn gốc ở khu vực nước biển bị nhiễm, lượng iodine đã biến mất trước đó rồi, một chuyên gia nhận xét.
Tuy nhiên một nhân tố nguy hiểm khác là caesium-137, có vòng đời hàng chục năm - hiện cao gấp 80 lần mức cho phép. Cả hai loại chất trên nếu thẩm thấu vào có thể gây ung thư cho người.
Lo ngại về lượng muối tích tục trong lò có thể gây ăn mòn các bộ phận hoặc ảnh hưởng đến quá trình thải nhiệt của các bộ phận, các kỹ sư Nhật bắt đầu bơm nước ngọt vào các lò phản ứng. Quân đội Mỹ hỗ trợ công việc này bằng cách chở hai sà lan nước ngọt đến từ căn cứ của họ gần Tokyo.
Nhật Bản đã tăng diện tích khu vực sơ tán quanh nhà máy hạt nhân, từ bán kính 20 lên 30 km. Nước máy ở Tokyo đã được phát hiện là nhiễm xạ cao hơn mức cho phép và không được dùng cho trẻ sơ snh. Tổ chức môi trường Green Peace tuyên bố đã bắt đầu các quan trắc riêng của mình và đánh giá rằng giới chức sở tại luôn "đánh giá thấp nguy cơ".
Mai Trang
Mức độ phóng xạ trong nước biển tại khu vực gần nhà máy điện hạt nhân Fukushima I của Nhật tăng cao, trong lúc các chuyên gia nhận định rằng khủng hoảng hạt nhân Nhật "còn lâu mới chấm dứt".
Trong khi đó các công nhân đang nỗ lực đưa nước có độ phóng xạ cao đọng trong khu vực lò phản ứng ra ngoài, sau khi có trường hợp công nhân bị bỏng chân do giẫm phải loại nước này. Việc lắp đặt cáp để đưa điện vào, khôi phục hệ thống làm mát lò phản ứng vẫn đang tiếp tục.
Hôm nay, các công nhân trong lò phản ứng số 2 vừa phải sơ tán khẩn cấp do nước trong lò nhiễm xạ ở mức độ rất cao, AFP dẫn tin hãng thông tấn Nhật cho biết.
Một phụ nữ nhặt lại đồ của mình bên cạnh một tòa nhà đổ ở thành phố Onagawa, tỉnh Miyagy, hôm qua, hai tuần sau động đất sóng thần. Ảnh: AFP
Tờ NYT đăng lời bình luận của giám đốc cơ quan an toàn hạt nhân quốc tế Yukia Amano cho rằng cuộc khủng hoảng hạt nhân ở Nhật còn xa mới đến hồi kết thúc, có thể hàng tuần thậm chí hàng tháng nữa. Tuy nhiên ông không phê phán nỗ lực của chính phủ Nhật, mà chỉ thêm rằng "cần làm nhiều việc hơn nữa để chấm dứt vụ việc này".
Phát ngôn viên chính phủ Nhật Yukio Edano thừa nhận: "Chúng tôi những muốn đặt ra thời hạn rõ ràng, khi nào cuộc khủng hoảng này sẽ được giải quyết, những người đang làm việc tại hiện trường cũng vậy", ông Edano phát biểu trên NHK hôm nay.
"Nhưng tôi không thể lạc quan hơn, với tình hình hiện nay".
Mức phóng xạ cao trong nước khiến sứ mệnh giải cứu nhà máy điện hạt nhân thêm khó khăn, khiến nhiều người lo ngại rằng các thanh nhiên liệu trong lò hoặc các van và ống dẫn đã bị rò rỉ. Một trong những kịch bản tồi tệ nhất có thể xảy ra là nhiên liệu trong phần lõi của lò phản ứng - gồm hỗn hợp uranium và plutonium - đã nóng chảy và thoát ra qua lớp vỏ thép chịu áp cao bao quanh nó.
"Nước nhiễm xạ ở nồng độ cao hiện diện trong lò và sau đó tuôn ra biển, gây lo ngại cho sự sống của cá và các loại sinh vật khác", một chuyên gia của Viện ann toàn phóng xạ hạt nhân Pháp lo ngại. "Một giả thuyết đặt ra là có thể vỏ lò phản ứng bị thủng, chất phóng xạ đang thoát ra ngoài".
Nước ở Thái Bình dương, cách nhà máy khoảng vài trăm mét, hiện có hàm lượng oidine cao gấp 1.250 lần mức cho phép, Công ty điện lực Toyo, bên điều hành nhà máy điện hạt nhân, cho hay. Tuy vậy các chuyên gia cho rằng mức này chưa đe dọa sức khỏe người ở iodine bay biến khá nhanh, trong vòng 8 ngày. Khi con người ăn phải thực phẩm có nguồn gốc ở khu vực nước biển bị nhiễm, lượng iodine đã biến mất trước đó rồi, một chuyên gia nhận xét.
Tuy nhiên một nhân tố nguy hiểm khác là caesium-137, có vòng đời hàng chục năm - hiện cao gấp 80 lần mức cho phép. Cả hai loại chất trên nếu thẩm thấu vào có thể gây ung thư cho người.
Lo ngại về lượng muối tích tục trong lò có thể gây ăn mòn các bộ phận hoặc ảnh hưởng đến quá trình thải nhiệt của các bộ phận, các kỹ sư Nhật bắt đầu bơm nước ngọt vào các lò phản ứng. Quân đội Mỹ hỗ trợ công việc này bằng cách chở hai sà lan nước ngọt đến từ căn cứ của họ gần Tokyo.
Nhật Bản đã tăng diện tích khu vực sơ tán quanh nhà máy hạt nhân, từ bán kính 20 lên 30 km. Nước máy ở Tokyo đã được phát hiện là nhiễm xạ cao hơn mức cho phép và không được dùng cho trẻ sơ snh. Tổ chức môi trường Green Peace tuyên bố đã bắt đầu các quan trắc riêng của mình và đánh giá rằng giới chức sở tại luôn "đánh giá thấp nguy cơ".
Mai Trang
26/03 She Ended the Men’s Club of National Politics
March 26, 2011
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Geraldine A. Ferraro and Walter F. Mondale on July 20, 1984.
More Photos »
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Geraldine A. Ferraro, the former Queens congresswoman who strode onto a podium in 1984 to accept the Democratic nomination for vice president and to take her place in American history as the first woman nominated for national office by a major party, died Saturday in Boston.
She was 75 and lived in Manhattan.
The cause was complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that she had battled for 12 years, her family said in a statement. She died at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she had been undergoing treatment since Monday.
“If we can do this, we can do anything,” Ms. Ferraro declared on a July evening to a cheering Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. And for a moment, for the Democratic Party and for an untold number of American women, anything seemed possible: a woman occupying the second-highest office in the land, a derailing of the Republican juggernaut led by President Ronald Reagan, a President Walter F. Mondale.
It did not turn out that way — not by a long shot. After the roars in the Moscone Center had subsided and a fitful general election campaign had run its course, hopes for Mr. Mondale and his plain-speaking, barrier-breaking running mate were buried in a Reagan landslide.
But Ms. Ferraro’s supporters proclaimed a victory of sorts nonetheless: 64 years after women won the right to vote, a woman had removed the “men only” sign from the White House door.
It would be another 24 years before another woman from a major party was nominated for vice president — Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican running mate of Senator John McCain, in 2008. And though Hillary Rodham Clinton came close to being nominated that year as the Democratic presidential candidate, a woman has yet to occupy the Oval Office. But Ms. Ferraro’s ascendance gave many women heart.
Ann Richards, who was the Texas state treasurer at the time and went on to become governor, recalled that after the Ferraro nomination, “the first thing I thought of was not winning in the political sense, but of my two daughters.”
“To think,” Ms. Richards added, “of the numbers of young women who can now aspire to anything.”
In a statement, President Obama said Saturday, “Geraldine will forever be remembered as a trailblazer who broke down barriers for women and Americans of all backgrounds and walks of life.”
As Mr. Mondale’s surprise choice, Ms. Ferraro rocketed to national prominence, propelled by fervid feminist support, a spirited and sometimes saucy personality, canny political skills and the calculation by Democratic strategists that Reagan might be vulnerable on issues thought to be more important to women.
But it proved to be a difficult campaign. The incumbent Reagan-Bush ticket presented a formidable enough challenge in and of itself, but Ms. Ferraro found herself on the defensive almost from the start, answering critics who questioned her qualifications for high office. Then there were damaging revelations about the finances of her husband, John Zaccaro, forcing Ms. Ferraro to release his tax returns and hold a marathon news conference in the middle of the general election race. Some said she had become a liability to Mr. Mondale and only hurt his chances more.
Quick Study as Candidate
A former Queens criminal prosecutor, Ms. Ferraro was a vigorous but relatively inexperienced candidate with a better feel for urban ward politics than for international diplomacy. But she proved to be a quick study and came across as a new breed of feminist politician — comfortable with the boys, particularly powerful Democrats like the House speaker, Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., and less combative than predecessors like Representative Bella Abzug of New York.
She was also ideal for television: a down-to-earth, streaked-blond, peanut-butter-sandwich-making mother whose personal story resonated powerfully. Brought up by a single mother who had crocheted beads on wedding dresses to send her daughter to good schools, Ms. Ferraro had waited until her own children were school age before going to work in a Queens district attorney’s office headed by a cousin.
In the 1984 race, many Americans found her breezy style refreshing. “What are you — crazy?” was a familiar expression. She might break into a little dance behind the speaker’s platform when she liked the introductory music. Feeling patronized by her Republican opponent, Vice President George Bush, she publicly scolded him.
With Ms. Ferraro on the ticket, Democrats hoped to exploit a so-called gender gap between the parties. A Newsweek poll taken after she was nominated showed men favoring Reagan-Bush 58 percent to 36 percent but women supporting Mondale-Ferraro 49 percent to 41 percent.
For the first time, a major candidate for national office talked about abortion with the phrase “If I were pregnant,” or about foreign policy with the personal observation “As the mother of a draft-age son....” She wore pearls and silk dresses and publicly worried that her slip was showing.
She also traveled a 55,000-mile campaign trail, spoke in 85 cities and raised $6 million. But in November the Democratic ticket won only one state — Mr. Mondale’s Minnesota — and the District of Columbia.
And to the Democrats’ chagrin, Mr. Reagan captured even the women’s vote, drawing some 55 percent; women, it appeared, had opposed, almost as much as men, the tax increase that Mr. Mondale, a former senator and vice president under Jimmy Carter, had said in his acceptance speech would be inevitable, an attempt at straight talking that cost him dearly at the polls.
Most election analysts believed that from the start the Democratic ticket had little chance against a popular incumbent who was basking in an economic recovery and proclaiming that it was “morning again in America.” Some said the choice of the little-known Ms. Ferraro had been a desperate move to attract the female vote in a daunting election year. Compounding the campaign’s woes was a barrage of questions about the Ferraro family finances — often carrying insinuations about ties to organized crime — that not only blemished Ms. Ferraro’s stature as the first Italian-American national candidate but also diverted attention from other issues.
Ms. Ferraro’s politics teetered from liberal positions, like her support for the Equal Rights Amendment for women and a nuclear freeze, to conservative ones, like her opposition to school busing and her support of tax credits for private and parochial school parents. In her first race for the House of Representatives, in 1978, from New York’s Ninth Congressional District in Queens, a Republican stronghold, her slogan was “Finally, a tough Democrat.”
The abortion issue, magnified because she was Roman Catholic and a woman, plagued her campaign. Though she opposed the procedure personally, she said, others had the right to choose for themselves. Abortion opponents hounded her at almost every stop with an intensity seldom experienced by male politicians.
Writing in The Washington Post in September 1984, the columnist Mary McGrory quoted an unnamed Roman Catholic priest as saying, “When the nuns in the fifth grade told Geraldine she would have to die for her faith, she didn’t know it would be this way.”
Named for a Brother
Geraldine Anne Ferraro was born on Aug. 26, 1935, in the Hudson River city of Newburgh, N.Y., where she was the fourth child and only daughter of Dominick Ferraro, an Italian immigrant who owned a restaurant and a five-and-dime store, and the former Antonetta L. Corrieri. One brother died shortly after birth, and another, Gerard, died in an automobile accident when he was 3, two years before Geraldine was born.
Geraldine was born at home; her mother, who had been holding Gerard at the time of the crash and who had washed and pressed his clothes for months after his death, would not go to the hospital for the delivery and leave the third brother, Carl, at home.
Geraldine was named for Gerard, but in her book “Framing a Life: A Family Memoir,” written with Catherine Whitney, Ms. Ferraro said her mother had emphasized that she was not taking his place.
“Gerry is special,” she quoted her mother as saying, “because she is a girl.”
Unknown to Ms. Ferraro at the time, her father had repeated trouble with the state liquor authorities and ultimately lost his restaurant license. During the vice-presidential campaign, she learned by reading The New York Post that her father had been arrested on charges of running a numbers racket but had died of a heart attack the morning he was to appear in court. Her mother was arrested as an accomplice, but the charges were dropped after her husband’s death, Ms. Ferraro wrote.
She called her father’s death, which happened when she was 8, “a dividing line that runs through my life.” In her grief, she said, she developed anemia.
Her mother soon sold the store and the family’s house and moved to the South Bronx. With the proceeds from the sale of property in Italy that her husband had left her, she sent Geraldine to the Marymount School, a Catholic boarding school in Tarrytown, N.Y. She sent Carl to military school.
Ms. Ferraro’s outstanding grades earned her a scholarship to Marymount College in Tarrytown, from which she transferred to the school’s Manhattan branch. She commuted there from Queens, where her mother had moved by then. An English major, Ms. Ferraro was editor of the school newspaper and an athlete and won numerous honors before graduating in 1956. “Delights in the unexpected,” the yearbook said.
After graduating, Ms. Ferraro got a job teaching in a public grade school in Queens. She later applied to Fordham Law School, where an admissions officer warned her that she might be taking a man’s place. Admitted to its night school, she was one of two women in a class of 179 and received her law degree in 1960.
Ms. Ferraro and John Zaccaro, whose family was in the real estate business, were married on July 16, 1960, two days after she passed her bar exam. She was admitted to the New York State bar in 1961, and decided to keep her maiden name professionally to honor her mother. (She was admitted to the United States Supreme Court bar in 1978.)
For the first 13 years of her marriage, Ms. Ferraro devoted herself mainly to her growing family. Donna was born in 1962, John in 1964 and Laura in 1966. Ms. Ferraro did some legal work for her husband’s business, worked pro bono for women in Family Court and dabbled in local politics. In 1970 she was elected president of the Queens County Women’s Bar Association.
In 1973, after her cousin Nicholas Ferraro was elected Queens district attorney, she applied for and got a job as an assistant district attorney in charge of a special victims bureau, investigating rape, crimes against the elderly, and child and wife abuse.
The cases were so harrowing, she later wrote, that they caused her to develop an ulcer. And the crime-breeding societal conditions she saw, she said, planted the seeds of her liberalism.
Sights Set on Congress
One night, before he became governor of New York, Mario M. Cuomo gave Ms. Ferraro and her husband a ride home from a bar mitzvah. She told him she was thinking of running for public office. “What about Congress?” Mr. Cuomo asked.
Ms. Ferraro found her opportunity in 1978, when James J. Delaney, a Democratic congressman from a predominantly working-class district in Queens, announced his retirement. In a three-way Democratic primary for the seat, Ms. Ferraro won with 53 percent of the vote. In the general election campaign, a slugfest against a Republican assemblyman, Alfred A. DelliBovi, she won by 10 percentage points, helped by her law-and-order background.
In the House, Ms. Ferraro was assigned to unglamorous committees but used them to her advantage. On the Public Works and Transportation Committee, she successfully pushed for improved mass transit around La Guardia Airport.
Mr. O’Neill, the speaker, took an immediate liking to her, and in her three terms she voted mostly with her party’s leadership. Liberal and labor groups gave her high ratings, though she was less adamant than many liberal Democrats about cutting military spending.
Ms. Ferraro was a co-sponsor of the Economic Equity Act, which was intended to accomplish many of the aims of the never-ratified Equal Rights Amendment. She also supported federal financing for abortions.
“She manages to be threatening on issues without being threatening personally,” Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, told The Chicago Tribune in 1984.
Others were less laudatory. “Some see her as too compromising, too ambitious, too close to the leadership,” The Washington Post wrote that same year.
Her friendship with Mr. O’Neill helped her career. Thanks in part to him, she was elected secretary of the Democratic caucus, giving her influence on committee assignments, and in 1983 she was awarded a seat on the powerful budget committee, where she received a crash course in economics. To enhance her foreign policy credentials, she took trips to Central America and the Middle East.
It was Ms. Ferraro’s appointment as chairwoman of the 1984 Democratic Platform Committee that gave her the most prominence. In her book “Ferraro: My Story,” written with Linda Bird Francke, she said that in becoming the first woman to hold that post she owed much to a group of Democratic women — Congressional staffers, abortion rights activists, labor leaders and others — who called themselves Team A and who lobbied for her appointment.
Even before then, however, Ms. Ferraro’s name had been mentioned on lists of potential candidates for vice president, along with Representative Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, the former congresswoman Barbara Jordan and Dianne Feinstein, the mayor of San Francisco. By May 1984, Mr. O’Neill had endorsed her for the No. 2 spot on the ticket. It was, as Ms. Ferraro later put it, “the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.”
On July 1, the National Organization for Women threatened a convention floor fight if the Democrats did not choose a woman, and three days later a delegation of Democratic women went to Minnesota to urge Mr. Mondale to do so.
Mr. Mondale made his historic call, asking Ms. Ferraro to be his running mate, on July 11. His campaign believed that she would do well not only among women but also among blue-collar workers. Eight days later, wearing a white dress she had bought on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, she accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president.
Trouble Over Finances
Her campaign was soon stalled by accusations about her personal finances. The storm reached its height in a two-hour press conference on Aug. 21, after Ms. Ferraro had released the tax returns of her husband, Mr. Zaccaro. She responded to question after question in a confident, relaxed manner. Mr. Cuomo called it “one of the best performances I’ve ever seen by a politician under pressure.”
Ms. Ferraro later faced down hecklers in Texas and pro-Reagan auto workers in Illinois. After Vice President Bush was overheard bragging that “we tried to kick a little ass last night,” referring to a debate with Ms. Ferraro, she declined to comment directly, though her aides called the remark insulting and demeaning. There were signs at campaign rallies saying, “Give ’em hell, Gerry!”
Everywhere people were adjusting — or manifestly not adjusting — to a woman on a national ticket. Mississippi’s agriculture secretary called Ms. Ferraro “young lady” and asked if she could bake blueberry muffins. When a Roman Catholic bishop gave a news conference in Pennsylvania, he repeatedly referred to the Republican vice-presidential nominee as “Mr. Bush” and to the Democratic one as “Geraldine.”
Ms. Ferraro’s words raised hackles as well. She was criticized for suggesting that Reagan was not a “good Christian” because, she said, his policies hurt the disadvantaged.
Her inability to escape questions about her finances was partly brought on by her husband’s initial refusal to release his tax returns. She riled Italian-Americans when she explained, “If you’re married to an Italian man, you know what it’s like.”
When her financial situation was finally disclosed, it turned out that the candidate with the rags-to-riches story had a net worth approaching $4 million, a boat, a full-time uniformed maid and vacation homes on Fire Island in New York and in the Virgin Islands.
Mr. Bush’s wife, Barbara, complained that Ms. Ferraro was masquerading as a working-class wife and mother, calling her a “four-million-dollar — I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich.”
Her associations and finances revealed one questionable thing after another. The Federal Election Commission fined her 1978 campaign committee for accepting $134,000 in contributions from her husband and children when they were legally allowed to contribute only $4,000.
Evidence also emerged that organized-crime figures had contributed to her campaigns. When a House ethics panel investigated her financial disclosures, it came out that one of Mr. Zaccaro’s companies had rented two floors of a building to a pornography distributor.
The disclosures damaged a campaign that was already fighting an uphill battle; Mr. Mondale later said he thought they cost the campaign 15 percentage points in the polls. He also suggested that a male running mate might not have been dissected so severely. After the election, the House ethics committee determined that Ms. Ferraro’s financial disclosures had been inadequate. In 1986, the elections commission said one of her campaign committees had improperly allocated funds.
Ms. Ferraro’s family experienced legal problems of its own. In 1985, Mr. Zaccaro pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge that he had schemed to defraud a mortgage broker. Two years later he was acquitted of attempted extortion in a cable television company’s bid to get a Queens franchise. And in 1988 the couple’s son, John Jr., was convicted of a felony for selling cocaine in Vermont while a student at Middlebury College.
After her defeat in 1984, Ms. Ferraro was criticized for appearing in a Diet Pepsi commercial. Feminists in particular called it undignified.
She is survived by her husband, three children and eight grandchildren.
Later Bids for Office
Weary of the spotlight on her family, Ms. Ferraro passed up a chance to challenge Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, Republican of New York, in his bid for a second term in 1986. But she decided to seek the seat in 1992 and entered the Democratic primary. She finished 10,000 votes (1 percent of the total) behind Robert Abrams, the state attorney general, who lost to Mr. D’Amato in the general election. She again ran for the Senate in 1998 but lost to Charles E. Schumer in the Democratic primary by a lopsided margin.
Ms. Ferraro was later ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission during the Clinton administration and co-host of the CNN program “Crossfire” from 1996 to 1998. She also wrote books and articles and did business consulting.
Near the end of 1998, she learned she had multiple myeloma, a bone-marrow cancer that suppresses the immune system. She was one of the first cancer patients to be treated with thalidomide, a drug used in the 1960s to treat morning sickness that caused severe defects in unborn children.
“Such a strange thing,” Ms. Ferraro said in an interview with The New York Times in 2001. “What was terrible for a healthy fetus has been wonderful at defeating the cancer cells.”
She addressed her place in history in a long letter to The Times in 1988, noting that women wrote to her about how she had inspired them to take on challenges, “always adding a version of ‘I decided if you could do it, I can too.’ ” Schoolgirls, she said, told her they hoped to be president someday and needed advice.
“I am the first to admit that were I not a woman, I would not have been the vice-presidential nominee,” she wrote. But she insisted that her presence on the ticket had translated into votes that the ticket might otherwise have not received.
In any event, she said, the political realities of 1984 had made it all but impossible for the Democrats to win, no matter the candidates or their gender. “Throwing Ronald Reagan out of office at the height of his popularity, with inflation and interest rates down, the economy moving and the country at peace, would have required God on the ticket,” Ms. Ferraro wrote, “and She was not available!”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 26, 2011
An earlier version of a video associated with this article misstated the year Ms. Ferraro was nominated for vice president. It was 1984, not 1983.
Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesGeraldine A. Ferraro and Walter F. Mondale on July 20, 1984.
More Photos »
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Geraldine A. Ferraro, the former Queens congresswoman who strode onto a podium in 1984 to accept the Democratic nomination for vice president and to take her place in American history as the first woman nominated for national office by a major party, died Saturday in Boston.
She was 75 and lived in Manhattan.
The cause was complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that she had battled for 12 years, her family said in a statement. She died at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she had been undergoing treatment since Monday.
“If we can do this, we can do anything,” Ms. Ferraro declared on a July evening to a cheering Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. And for a moment, for the Democratic Party and for an untold number of American women, anything seemed possible: a woman occupying the second-highest office in the land, a derailing of the Republican juggernaut led by President Ronald Reagan, a President Walter F. Mondale.
It did not turn out that way — not by a long shot. After the roars in the Moscone Center had subsided and a fitful general election campaign had run its course, hopes for Mr. Mondale and his plain-speaking, barrier-breaking running mate were buried in a Reagan landslide.
But Ms. Ferraro’s supporters proclaimed a victory of sorts nonetheless: 64 years after women won the right to vote, a woman had removed the “men only” sign from the White House door.
It would be another 24 years before another woman from a major party was nominated for vice president — Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican running mate of Senator John McCain, in 2008. And though Hillary Rodham Clinton came close to being nominated that year as the Democratic presidential candidate, a woman has yet to occupy the Oval Office. But Ms. Ferraro’s ascendance gave many women heart.
Ann Richards, who was the Texas state treasurer at the time and went on to become governor, recalled that after the Ferraro nomination, “the first thing I thought of was not winning in the political sense, but of my two daughters.”
“To think,” Ms. Richards added, “of the numbers of young women who can now aspire to anything.”
In a statement, President Obama said Saturday, “Geraldine will forever be remembered as a trailblazer who broke down barriers for women and Americans of all backgrounds and walks of life.”
As Mr. Mondale’s surprise choice, Ms. Ferraro rocketed to national prominence, propelled by fervid feminist support, a spirited and sometimes saucy personality, canny political skills and the calculation by Democratic strategists that Reagan might be vulnerable on issues thought to be more important to women.
But it proved to be a difficult campaign. The incumbent Reagan-Bush ticket presented a formidable enough challenge in and of itself, but Ms. Ferraro found herself on the defensive almost from the start, answering critics who questioned her qualifications for high office. Then there were damaging revelations about the finances of her husband, John Zaccaro, forcing Ms. Ferraro to release his tax returns and hold a marathon news conference in the middle of the general election race. Some said she had become a liability to Mr. Mondale and only hurt his chances more.
Quick Study as Candidate
A former Queens criminal prosecutor, Ms. Ferraro was a vigorous but relatively inexperienced candidate with a better feel for urban ward politics than for international diplomacy. But she proved to be a quick study and came across as a new breed of feminist politician — comfortable with the boys, particularly powerful Democrats like the House speaker, Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., and less combative than predecessors like Representative Bella Abzug of New York.
She was also ideal for television: a down-to-earth, streaked-blond, peanut-butter-sandwich-making mother whose personal story resonated powerfully. Brought up by a single mother who had crocheted beads on wedding dresses to send her daughter to good schools, Ms. Ferraro had waited until her own children were school age before going to work in a Queens district attorney’s office headed by a cousin.
In the 1984 race, many Americans found her breezy style refreshing. “What are you — crazy?” was a familiar expression. She might break into a little dance behind the speaker’s platform when she liked the introductory music. Feeling patronized by her Republican opponent, Vice President George Bush, she publicly scolded him.
With Ms. Ferraro on the ticket, Democrats hoped to exploit a so-called gender gap between the parties. A Newsweek poll taken after she was nominated showed men favoring Reagan-Bush 58 percent to 36 percent but women supporting Mondale-Ferraro 49 percent to 41 percent.
For the first time, a major candidate for national office talked about abortion with the phrase “If I were pregnant,” or about foreign policy with the personal observation “As the mother of a draft-age son....” She wore pearls and silk dresses and publicly worried that her slip was showing.
She also traveled a 55,000-mile campaign trail, spoke in 85 cities and raised $6 million. But in November the Democratic ticket won only one state — Mr. Mondale’s Minnesota — and the District of Columbia.
And to the Democrats’ chagrin, Mr. Reagan captured even the women’s vote, drawing some 55 percent; women, it appeared, had opposed, almost as much as men, the tax increase that Mr. Mondale, a former senator and vice president under Jimmy Carter, had said in his acceptance speech would be inevitable, an attempt at straight talking that cost him dearly at the polls.
Most election analysts believed that from the start the Democratic ticket had little chance against a popular incumbent who was basking in an economic recovery and proclaiming that it was “morning again in America.” Some said the choice of the little-known Ms. Ferraro had been a desperate move to attract the female vote in a daunting election year. Compounding the campaign’s woes was a barrage of questions about the Ferraro family finances — often carrying insinuations about ties to organized crime — that not only blemished Ms. Ferraro’s stature as the first Italian-American national candidate but also diverted attention from other issues.
Ms. Ferraro’s politics teetered from liberal positions, like her support for the Equal Rights Amendment for women and a nuclear freeze, to conservative ones, like her opposition to school busing and her support of tax credits for private and parochial school parents. In her first race for the House of Representatives, in 1978, from New York’s Ninth Congressional District in Queens, a Republican stronghold, her slogan was “Finally, a tough Democrat.”
The abortion issue, magnified because she was Roman Catholic and a woman, plagued her campaign. Though she opposed the procedure personally, she said, others had the right to choose for themselves. Abortion opponents hounded her at almost every stop with an intensity seldom experienced by male politicians.
Writing in The Washington Post in September 1984, the columnist Mary McGrory quoted an unnamed Roman Catholic priest as saying, “When the nuns in the fifth grade told Geraldine she would have to die for her faith, she didn’t know it would be this way.”
Named for a Brother
Geraldine Anne Ferraro was born on Aug. 26, 1935, in the Hudson River city of Newburgh, N.Y., where she was the fourth child and only daughter of Dominick Ferraro, an Italian immigrant who owned a restaurant and a five-and-dime store, and the former Antonetta L. Corrieri. One brother died shortly after birth, and another, Gerard, died in an automobile accident when he was 3, two years before Geraldine was born.
Geraldine was born at home; her mother, who had been holding Gerard at the time of the crash and who had washed and pressed his clothes for months after his death, would not go to the hospital for the delivery and leave the third brother, Carl, at home.
Geraldine was named for Gerard, but in her book “Framing a Life: A Family Memoir,” written with Catherine Whitney, Ms. Ferraro said her mother had emphasized that she was not taking his place.
“Gerry is special,” she quoted her mother as saying, “because she is a girl.”
Unknown to Ms. Ferraro at the time, her father had repeated trouble with the state liquor authorities and ultimately lost his restaurant license. During the vice-presidential campaign, she learned by reading The New York Post that her father had been arrested on charges of running a numbers racket but had died of a heart attack the morning he was to appear in court. Her mother was arrested as an accomplice, but the charges were dropped after her husband’s death, Ms. Ferraro wrote.
She called her father’s death, which happened when she was 8, “a dividing line that runs through my life.” In her grief, she said, she developed anemia.
Her mother soon sold the store and the family’s house and moved to the South Bronx. With the proceeds from the sale of property in Italy that her husband had left her, she sent Geraldine to the Marymount School, a Catholic boarding school in Tarrytown, N.Y. She sent Carl to military school.
Ms. Ferraro’s outstanding grades earned her a scholarship to Marymount College in Tarrytown, from which she transferred to the school’s Manhattan branch. She commuted there from Queens, where her mother had moved by then. An English major, Ms. Ferraro was editor of the school newspaper and an athlete and won numerous honors before graduating in 1956. “Delights in the unexpected,” the yearbook said.
After graduating, Ms. Ferraro got a job teaching in a public grade school in Queens. She later applied to Fordham Law School, where an admissions officer warned her that she might be taking a man’s place. Admitted to its night school, she was one of two women in a class of 179 and received her law degree in 1960.
Ms. Ferraro and John Zaccaro, whose family was in the real estate business, were married on July 16, 1960, two days after she passed her bar exam. She was admitted to the New York State bar in 1961, and decided to keep her maiden name professionally to honor her mother. (She was admitted to the United States Supreme Court bar in 1978.)
For the first 13 years of her marriage, Ms. Ferraro devoted herself mainly to her growing family. Donna was born in 1962, John in 1964 and Laura in 1966. Ms. Ferraro did some legal work for her husband’s business, worked pro bono for women in Family Court and dabbled in local politics. In 1970 she was elected president of the Queens County Women’s Bar Association.
In 1973, after her cousin Nicholas Ferraro was elected Queens district attorney, she applied for and got a job as an assistant district attorney in charge of a special victims bureau, investigating rape, crimes against the elderly, and child and wife abuse.
The cases were so harrowing, she later wrote, that they caused her to develop an ulcer. And the crime-breeding societal conditions she saw, she said, planted the seeds of her liberalism.
Sights Set on Congress
One night, before he became governor of New York, Mario M. Cuomo gave Ms. Ferraro and her husband a ride home from a bar mitzvah. She told him she was thinking of running for public office. “What about Congress?” Mr. Cuomo asked.
Ms. Ferraro found her opportunity in 1978, when James J. Delaney, a Democratic congressman from a predominantly working-class district in Queens, announced his retirement. In a three-way Democratic primary for the seat, Ms. Ferraro won with 53 percent of the vote. In the general election campaign, a slugfest against a Republican assemblyman, Alfred A. DelliBovi, she won by 10 percentage points, helped by her law-and-order background.
In the House, Ms. Ferraro was assigned to unglamorous committees but used them to her advantage. On the Public Works and Transportation Committee, she successfully pushed for improved mass transit around La Guardia Airport.
Mr. O’Neill, the speaker, took an immediate liking to her, and in her three terms she voted mostly with her party’s leadership. Liberal and labor groups gave her high ratings, though she was less adamant than many liberal Democrats about cutting military spending.
Ms. Ferraro was a co-sponsor of the Economic Equity Act, which was intended to accomplish many of the aims of the never-ratified Equal Rights Amendment. She also supported federal financing for abortions.
“She manages to be threatening on issues without being threatening personally,” Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, told The Chicago Tribune in 1984.
Others were less laudatory. “Some see her as too compromising, too ambitious, too close to the leadership,” The Washington Post wrote that same year.
Her friendship with Mr. O’Neill helped her career. Thanks in part to him, she was elected secretary of the Democratic caucus, giving her influence on committee assignments, and in 1983 she was awarded a seat on the powerful budget committee, where she received a crash course in economics. To enhance her foreign policy credentials, she took trips to Central America and the Middle East.
It was Ms. Ferraro’s appointment as chairwoman of the 1984 Democratic Platform Committee that gave her the most prominence. In her book “Ferraro: My Story,” written with Linda Bird Francke, she said that in becoming the first woman to hold that post she owed much to a group of Democratic women — Congressional staffers, abortion rights activists, labor leaders and others — who called themselves Team A and who lobbied for her appointment.
Even before then, however, Ms. Ferraro’s name had been mentioned on lists of potential candidates for vice president, along with Representative Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, the former congresswoman Barbara Jordan and Dianne Feinstein, the mayor of San Francisco. By May 1984, Mr. O’Neill had endorsed her for the No. 2 spot on the ticket. It was, as Ms. Ferraro later put it, “the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.”
On July 1, the National Organization for Women threatened a convention floor fight if the Democrats did not choose a woman, and three days later a delegation of Democratic women went to Minnesota to urge Mr. Mondale to do so.
Mr. Mondale made his historic call, asking Ms. Ferraro to be his running mate, on July 11. His campaign believed that she would do well not only among women but also among blue-collar workers. Eight days later, wearing a white dress she had bought on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, she accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president.
Trouble Over Finances
Her campaign was soon stalled by accusations about her personal finances. The storm reached its height in a two-hour press conference on Aug. 21, after Ms. Ferraro had released the tax returns of her husband, Mr. Zaccaro. She responded to question after question in a confident, relaxed manner. Mr. Cuomo called it “one of the best performances I’ve ever seen by a politician under pressure.”
Ms. Ferraro later faced down hecklers in Texas and pro-Reagan auto workers in Illinois. After Vice President Bush was overheard bragging that “we tried to kick a little ass last night,” referring to a debate with Ms. Ferraro, she declined to comment directly, though her aides called the remark insulting and demeaning. There were signs at campaign rallies saying, “Give ’em hell, Gerry!”
Everywhere people were adjusting — or manifestly not adjusting — to a woman on a national ticket. Mississippi’s agriculture secretary called Ms. Ferraro “young lady” and asked if she could bake blueberry muffins. When a Roman Catholic bishop gave a news conference in Pennsylvania, he repeatedly referred to the Republican vice-presidential nominee as “Mr. Bush” and to the Democratic one as “Geraldine.”
Ms. Ferraro’s words raised hackles as well. She was criticized for suggesting that Reagan was not a “good Christian” because, she said, his policies hurt the disadvantaged.
Her inability to escape questions about her finances was partly brought on by her husband’s initial refusal to release his tax returns. She riled Italian-Americans when she explained, “If you’re married to an Italian man, you know what it’s like.”
When her financial situation was finally disclosed, it turned out that the candidate with the rags-to-riches story had a net worth approaching $4 million, a boat, a full-time uniformed maid and vacation homes on Fire Island in New York and in the Virgin Islands.
Mr. Bush’s wife, Barbara, complained that Ms. Ferraro was masquerading as a working-class wife and mother, calling her a “four-million-dollar — I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich.”
Her associations and finances revealed one questionable thing after another. The Federal Election Commission fined her 1978 campaign committee for accepting $134,000 in contributions from her husband and children when they were legally allowed to contribute only $4,000.
Evidence also emerged that organized-crime figures had contributed to her campaigns. When a House ethics panel investigated her financial disclosures, it came out that one of Mr. Zaccaro’s companies had rented two floors of a building to a pornography distributor.
The disclosures damaged a campaign that was already fighting an uphill battle; Mr. Mondale later said he thought they cost the campaign 15 percentage points in the polls. He also suggested that a male running mate might not have been dissected so severely. After the election, the House ethics committee determined that Ms. Ferraro’s financial disclosures had been inadequate. In 1986, the elections commission said one of her campaign committees had improperly allocated funds.
Ms. Ferraro’s family experienced legal problems of its own. In 1985, Mr. Zaccaro pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge that he had schemed to defraud a mortgage broker. Two years later he was acquitted of attempted extortion in a cable television company’s bid to get a Queens franchise. And in 1988 the couple’s son, John Jr., was convicted of a felony for selling cocaine in Vermont while a student at Middlebury College.
After her defeat in 1984, Ms. Ferraro was criticized for appearing in a Diet Pepsi commercial. Feminists in particular called it undignified.
She is survived by her husband, three children and eight grandchildren.
Later Bids for Office
Weary of the spotlight on her family, Ms. Ferraro passed up a chance to challenge Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, Republican of New York, in his bid for a second term in 1986. But she decided to seek the seat in 1992 and entered the Democratic primary. She finished 10,000 votes (1 percent of the total) behind Robert Abrams, the state attorney general, who lost to Mr. D’Amato in the general election. She again ran for the Senate in 1998 but lost to Charles E. Schumer in the Democratic primary by a lopsided margin.
Ms. Ferraro was later ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission during the Clinton administration and co-host of the CNN program “Crossfire” from 1996 to 1998. She also wrote books and articles and did business consulting.
Near the end of 1998, she learned she had multiple myeloma, a bone-marrow cancer that suppresses the immune system. She was one of the first cancer patients to be treated with thalidomide, a drug used in the 1960s to treat morning sickness that caused severe defects in unborn children.
“Such a strange thing,” Ms. Ferraro said in an interview with The New York Times in 2001. “What was terrible for a healthy fetus has been wonderful at defeating the cancer cells.”
She addressed her place in history in a long letter to The Times in 1988, noting that women wrote to her about how she had inspired them to take on challenges, “always adding a version of ‘I decided if you could do it, I can too.’ ” Schoolgirls, she said, told her they hoped to be president someday and needed advice.
“I am the first to admit that were I not a woman, I would not have been the vice-presidential nominee,” she wrote. But she insisted that her presence on the ticket had translated into votes that the ticket might otherwise have not received.
In any event, she said, the political realities of 1984 had made it all but impossible for the Democrats to win, no matter the candidates or their gender. “Throwing Ronald Reagan out of office at the height of his popularity, with inflation and interest rates down, the economy moving and the country at peace, would have required God on the ticket,” Ms. Ferraro wrote, “and She was not available!”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 26, 2011
An earlier version of a video associated with this article misstated the year Ms. Ferraro was nominated for vice president. It was 1984, not 1983.
27/03 A Girl’s Nude Photo, and Altered Lives
March 26, 2011
By JAN HOFFMAN
LACEY, Wash. — One day last winter Margarite posed naked before her bathroom mirror, held up her cellphone and took a picture. Then she sent the full-length frontal photo to Isaiah, her new boyfriend.
Both were in eighth grade.
They broke up soon after. A few weeks later, Isaiah forwarded the photo to another eighth-grade girl, once a friend of Margarite’s. Around 11 o’clock at night, that girl slapped a text message on it.
“Ho Alert!” she typed. “If you think this girl is a whore, then text this to all your friends.” Then she clicked open the long list of contacts on her phone and pressed “send.”
By JAN HOFFMAN
LACEY, Wash. — One day last winter Margarite posed naked before her bathroom mirror, held up her cellphone and took a picture. Then she sent the full-length frontal photo to Isaiah, her new boyfriend.
Both were in eighth grade.
They broke up soon after. A few weeks later, Isaiah forwarded the photo to another eighth-grade girl, once a friend of Margarite’s. Around 11 o’clock at night, that girl slapped a text message on it.
“Ho Alert!” she typed. “If you think this girl is a whore, then text this to all your friends.” Then she clicked open the long list of contacts on her phone and pressed “send.”
26/03 U.N.’s Nuclear Chief Says Japan Is ‘Far From the End’
March 26, 2011
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID JOLLY
The world’s chief nuclear inspector said Saturday that Japan was “still far from the end of the accident” that struck its Fukushima nuclear complex and continues to spew radiation into the atmosphere and the sea, and acknowledged that the authorities were still unsure about whether the reactor cores and spent fuel were covered with the water needed to cool them and end the crisis.
The inspector, Yukiya Amano, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, taking care to say that he was not criticizing Japan’s response under extraordinary circumstances, said, “More efforts should be done to put an end to the accident.”
More than two weeks after a devastating earthquake and tsunami, he cautioned that the nuclear emergency could still go on for weeks, if not months, given the enormous damage to the plant.
His concerns were underscored on Sunday when officials in Japan announced higher levels of radiation in pools of water at the facility’s stricken reactors. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that water seeping out of the crippled No. 2 reactor into the adjacent turbine building contained levels of radioactive iodine 134 that were about 10 million times the level normally found in water used inside nuclear power plants. The higher levels further suggested there was a leak from the reactor’s fuel rods — either from damage to the piping or suppression chamber under the rods — or a breach in the pressure vessel that houses the rods, the agency said.
Tests also found increased levels of radioactive cesium, a substance with a longer half-life, it said.
“Because these substances originate from nuclear fission, there is a high possibility they originate from the reactor,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, the agency’s deputy director-general, at a news conference. He said that it was likely that radiation was leaking from the pipes or the suppression chamber, and not directly from the pressure vessel, because water levels and pressure in the vessel were relatively stable.
He also said that radioactive iodine in seawater just outside the plant had risen to 1,850 times the usual level on Sunday, up from 1,250 on Saturday.
“Radiation levels are increasing and measures need to be taken,” he said, but added that he did not think there was need to worry about high levels of radiation immediately escaping the plant.
Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said he did not think the pressure vessel, which cases the fuel rods, was broken at the No. 2 reactor. He said pressure levels inside the reactor remained higher than atmospheric pressure, suggesting that there was no breach.
“I don’t think the container is breached, but there is a possibility the water is coming from somewhere inside the reactor,” he said. “We want to find out as quickly as possible where the highly radioactive water is leaking from, and take measures to deal with it,” Mr. Edano said on a live interview on the public broadcaster, NHK, early Sunday.
On Saturday, the Japanese government said that it could not predict when the nuclear complex would be brought under control. Mr. Edano insisted that the situation at the damaged plant was not getting worse, but said that “this is not the stage for predictions” about when the crisis would be over.
Mr. Amano, a former Japanese diplomat who took over the United Nations nuclear agency in late 2009, said in a telephone interview from Vienna that his biggest concern now centered on spent fuel rods sitting in open cooling pools atop the reactor buildings.
He said he was still uncertain that the efforts to spray seawater into the pools — to keep the rods from bursting into flames and releasing large amounts of radioactive material — had been successful. If workers fill the pools with water but leave the cooling systems unrepaired, he said, “The temperature will go up,” raising the threat of new radioactive releases.
He said he was particularly concerned about the pool at Reactor No. 4, which contains the entire core of a reactor that was removed shortly before the disaster struck, and is particularly radioactive. “But the need exists for all of them” to be cooled, he said.
He also said he was concerned about radioactivity in the environment.
The Japanese authorities have played down the news of the elevated levels of iodine in the seawater. Mr. Nishiyama said Saturday that he expected the iodine to dilute rapidly, minimizing the effect on wildlife, and pointed out that fishing had been suspended in the area after the earthquake and tsunami.
“There is unlikely to be any immediate effect on nearby residents,” he said.
Mr. Amano said that he believed that the Japanese authorities were not withholding information, but that his recent trip back to Japan had been intended to secure from Prime Minister Naoto Kan a commitment to what he called “full transparency.”
In recent days, American and international officials have said that the statements from Japan asserting that the nuclear cores and fuel ponds were covered with water were essentially inferences, based on how much seawater had been poured in and analysis of the radioactive steam emerging from the plant. But they expressed little confidence that many details were known about what was taking place inside the buildings, with instruments still knocked out.
“There are areas where we don’t have information,” Mr. Amano said. “We don’t, and the Japanese don’t, too.”
Workers at the plant began pumping in fresh water to reactors No. 1, 2 and 3 on Saturday, after days of spraying them with corrosive saltwater. The United States military was aiding the effort, sending two barges carrying a total of 500,000 gallons of fresh water from the Yokosuka naval base.
The workers also restored lighting to the central control room of the No. 2 unit, Tokyo Electric Power said, an incremental step in efforts to restart the cooling system there that shut down after the disaster. That leaves only the No. 4 unit without lighting.
The National Police Agency said Saturday that the official death toll from the earthquake and tsunami had reached 10,418, with 17,072 listed as missing. The authorities have said that the final death toll will surpass 18,000. There are 244,339 people in refugee centers around Japan, the police said.
Damage to oil refineries across the country, as well as to ports and roads, has created a fuel shortage in the disaster zone, hampering relief efforts.
Joy Portella, an aid worker with Mercy Corps, a United States-based group, said that fuel shortages remained acute in the hardest-hit areas. The group distributed about 500 gallons of kerosene in the town of Kesennuma on Saturday, she said.
The amount of radiation in Tokyo’s water supply continued to diminish for a third day after a big scare on Wednesday. The city’s waterworks bureau said samples showed no radiation in the water at one plant, and lower levels at two plants.
Until now, Mr. Amano, the United Nations nuclear chief, has tended to be more reassuring in his public comments.
On Saturday, his tone seemed to darken. He stressed the emergency steps taken so far were only stopgaps, not solutions. “This is a very serious accident by all standards,” he said, “and it is not yet over.”
William J. Broad reported from New York, and David Jolly from Tokyo. Reporting was contributed by David E. Sanger from Palo Alto, Calif., Hiroko Tabuchi and Chika Ohshima from Tokyo, and Kevin Drew from Hong Kong.
More in Asia Pacific (7 of 47 articles)
Chinese Democracy Activist Is Given 10-Year Sentence
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By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID JOLLY
The world’s chief nuclear inspector said Saturday that Japan was “still far from the end of the accident” that struck its Fukushima nuclear complex and continues to spew radiation into the atmosphere and the sea, and acknowledged that the authorities were still unsure about whether the reactor cores and spent fuel were covered with the water needed to cool them and end the crisis.
The inspector, Yukiya Amano, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, taking care to say that he was not criticizing Japan’s response under extraordinary circumstances, said, “More efforts should be done to put an end to the accident.”
More than two weeks after a devastating earthquake and tsunami, he cautioned that the nuclear emergency could still go on for weeks, if not months, given the enormous damage to the plant.
His concerns were underscored on Sunday when officials in Japan announced higher levels of radiation in pools of water at the facility’s stricken reactors. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that water seeping out of the crippled No. 2 reactor into the adjacent turbine building contained levels of radioactive iodine 134 that were about 10 million times the level normally found in water used inside nuclear power plants. The higher levels further suggested there was a leak from the reactor’s fuel rods — either from damage to the piping or suppression chamber under the rods — or a breach in the pressure vessel that houses the rods, the agency said.
Tests also found increased levels of radioactive cesium, a substance with a longer half-life, it said.
“Because these substances originate from nuclear fission, there is a high possibility they originate from the reactor,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, the agency’s deputy director-general, at a news conference. He said that it was likely that radiation was leaking from the pipes or the suppression chamber, and not directly from the pressure vessel, because water levels and pressure in the vessel were relatively stable.
He also said that radioactive iodine in seawater just outside the plant had risen to 1,850 times the usual level on Sunday, up from 1,250 on Saturday.
“Radiation levels are increasing and measures need to be taken,” he said, but added that he did not think there was need to worry about high levels of radiation immediately escaping the plant.
Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said he did not think the pressure vessel, which cases the fuel rods, was broken at the No. 2 reactor. He said pressure levels inside the reactor remained higher than atmospheric pressure, suggesting that there was no breach.
“I don’t think the container is breached, but there is a possibility the water is coming from somewhere inside the reactor,” he said. “We want to find out as quickly as possible where the highly radioactive water is leaking from, and take measures to deal with it,” Mr. Edano said on a live interview on the public broadcaster, NHK, early Sunday.
On Saturday, the Japanese government said that it could not predict when the nuclear complex would be brought under control. Mr. Edano insisted that the situation at the damaged plant was not getting worse, but said that “this is not the stage for predictions” about when the crisis would be over.
Mr. Amano, a former Japanese diplomat who took over the United Nations nuclear agency in late 2009, said in a telephone interview from Vienna that his biggest concern now centered on spent fuel rods sitting in open cooling pools atop the reactor buildings.
He said he was still uncertain that the efforts to spray seawater into the pools — to keep the rods from bursting into flames and releasing large amounts of radioactive material — had been successful. If workers fill the pools with water but leave the cooling systems unrepaired, he said, “The temperature will go up,” raising the threat of new radioactive releases.
He said he was particularly concerned about the pool at Reactor No. 4, which contains the entire core of a reactor that was removed shortly before the disaster struck, and is particularly radioactive. “But the need exists for all of them” to be cooled, he said.
He also said he was concerned about radioactivity in the environment.
The Japanese authorities have played down the news of the elevated levels of iodine in the seawater. Mr. Nishiyama said Saturday that he expected the iodine to dilute rapidly, minimizing the effect on wildlife, and pointed out that fishing had been suspended in the area after the earthquake and tsunami.
“There is unlikely to be any immediate effect on nearby residents,” he said.
Mr. Amano said that he believed that the Japanese authorities were not withholding information, but that his recent trip back to Japan had been intended to secure from Prime Minister Naoto Kan a commitment to what he called “full transparency.”
In recent days, American and international officials have said that the statements from Japan asserting that the nuclear cores and fuel ponds were covered with water were essentially inferences, based on how much seawater had been poured in and analysis of the radioactive steam emerging from the plant. But they expressed little confidence that many details were known about what was taking place inside the buildings, with instruments still knocked out.
“There are areas where we don’t have information,” Mr. Amano said. “We don’t, and the Japanese don’t, too.”
Workers at the plant began pumping in fresh water to reactors No. 1, 2 and 3 on Saturday, after days of spraying them with corrosive saltwater. The United States military was aiding the effort, sending two barges carrying a total of 500,000 gallons of fresh water from the Yokosuka naval base.
The workers also restored lighting to the central control room of the No. 2 unit, Tokyo Electric Power said, an incremental step in efforts to restart the cooling system there that shut down after the disaster. That leaves only the No. 4 unit without lighting.
The National Police Agency said Saturday that the official death toll from the earthquake and tsunami had reached 10,418, with 17,072 listed as missing. The authorities have said that the final death toll will surpass 18,000. There are 244,339 people in refugee centers around Japan, the police said.
Damage to oil refineries across the country, as well as to ports and roads, has created a fuel shortage in the disaster zone, hampering relief efforts.
Joy Portella, an aid worker with Mercy Corps, a United States-based group, said that fuel shortages remained acute in the hardest-hit areas. The group distributed about 500 gallons of kerosene in the town of Kesennuma on Saturday, she said.
The amount of radiation in Tokyo’s water supply continued to diminish for a third day after a big scare on Wednesday. The city’s waterworks bureau said samples showed no radiation in the water at one plant, and lower levels at two plants.
Until now, Mr. Amano, the United Nations nuclear chief, has tended to be more reassuring in his public comments.
On Saturday, his tone seemed to darken. He stressed the emergency steps taken so far were only stopgaps, not solutions. “This is a very serious accident by all standards,” he said, “and it is not yet over.”
William J. Broad reported from New York, and David Jolly from Tokyo. Reporting was contributed by David E. Sanger from Palo Alto, Calif., Hiroko Tabuchi and Chika Ohshima from Tokyo, and Kevin Drew from Hong Kong.
More in Asia Pacific (7 of 47 articles)
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26/03 Radiation’s Enduring Afterglow
March 26, 2011
By GEORGE JOHNSON
Becquerels, sieverts, curies, roentgens, rads and rems. For all the esoteric nomenclature scientists have devised to parse the effects of nuclear emanations, the unit they so often fall back on is the old-fashioned chest X-ray.
Early in the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, neighbors were informed with absurd precision that the radioactivity in a liter of their drinking water had risen to the equivalent of 1/88th of a chest X-ray. One day last week the air in Tokyo registered 0.155 of a microsievert an hour — another chest X-ray, if you were confined for a month at that level. Though stretched to the point of meaninglessness, the analogy is meant to soothe — balm for a spirit burdened by a century of living uneasily with radiation.
Measured by sheer fury, the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that damaged the reactors was mightier than millions of Hiroshima bombs. It shoved the northeastern coast of Japan eastward and unleashed a tsunami that wiped civilization from the coast. But explosive power comes and goes in an instant. It is something the brain can process.
With radiation, the terror lies in the abstraction. It kills incrementally — slowly, diffusely, invisibly. “Afterheat,” Robert Socolow, a Princeton University professor, called it in an essay for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “the fire that you can’t put out.”
Nuclear scientists speak in terms of half-life, the time it takes for random disintegrations to reduce a radioactive sample to half its size. Then a quarter, an eighth, a 16th — whether measured in microseconds or eons, the mathematical progression never ends.
When traces of radioactive iodine were found last week in the drinking water in Tokyo, officials expressed the danger in becquerels, the number of nuclear disintegrations per second: 210 per liter, safe for adults but high enough to warn that infants should not drink it. As the government began distributing bottled water, the level fell significantly but not the fear. As far away as California there was a run on fallout detectors.
As these hypothetical microthreats ate at the mind, rescue workers were piling up real bodies — 10,000 so far — killed by crushing waves or their aftereffects, deaths caused by gravity, not nuclear forces. These dead will be tabulated, mourned and eventually forgotten. The toll will converge on a finite number.
In Chernobyl, the site of the world’s previous big nuclear accident, the counting continues, like languid ticks from a Geiger counter. A United Nations study in 2005 concluded that about 50 people had been killed by the meltdown but that 4,000 would ultimately die from radiation-caused cancer — victims who do not know who they are. The most debilitating effect, one investigator said, has been “a paralyzing fatalism,” a malaise brought on by an alien presence that almost seems alive.
Radiation, before we had a hand in it, was just another phenomenon. Life evolved unknowingly in its presence, with rays from the sky and earth jostling chromosomes and helping to shuffle the genetic deck. When our brains evolved to the point where we could measure and summon the effect, the first reaction was not fear but fascination. The discoverers were revered as heroes. Then their names were converted into mathematical units.
William Roentgen produced the first artificial X-rays in 1895, tantalizing the world with see-through images of his wife’s hand, then Henri Becquerel found similar emissions coming unbidden from uranium. Isolating the first minuscule specks of radium, Marie Curie, the greatest of the pioneers (1 curie = 37 gigabecquerels), marveled that its eerie blue glow “looked like faint, fairy lights.” She was seeing the optical equivalent of a sonic boom — contrails of photons produced by speeding particles. Eager to see this new world for themselves, people purchased small brass eyepieces called spinthariscopes, named for the Greek word for spark. Mounted inside was a bit of radium bombarding a scintillating screen. Hold it to your eye and behold the tiny explosions. Spinthariscopes sat on parlor shelves next to stereoscopic postcard viewers and kaleidoscopes, items in a cabinet of curiosities.
Radiation was even supposed to be good for you. Vacationers soaked in radium hot springs. Magazines carried advertisements for radium suppositories, radium toothpaste and radium bread — quack products ranging from useless to harmful. As late as the 1950s, customers could peer inside their own feet through shoe store X-ray machines, the scientific way to ensure a perfect fit.
As more bona fide uses led to a medical revolution — X-rays for medical imaging, radium for killing rapidly dividing cancer cells — hints of danger gradually accumulated. In the 1920s, women who had painted glow-in-the-dark radium watch dials began to sicken and die. Around the same time, scientists experimenting with fruit flies showed that radiation causes genetic mutations — red eyes turned to white.
With Hiroshima, Nagasaki and above-ground testing, everything nuclear began to take on a more sinister air. But the threat still seemed distant and surreal. As mothers worried about strontium-90 from fallout insinuating its way into their children’s bones, they were reading “Atomic Bunny” comic books and sending in cereal box tops for the Lone Ranger Atomic Bomb Ring, a cheap plastic spinthariscope that promised a glimpse of “genuine atoms split to smithereens.”
For all the dread evoked by the stockpiling of nuclear weapons, it was the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island that marked an abrupt turn. Just days earlier, “The China Syndrome” had its cinematic release. The “backup systems to backup systems to backup systems” Jack Lemmon boasted about to Jane Fonda crumpled on the screen, adding to the anxiety over what was happening outside. In the end the partial meltdown was contained and the damage was mostly economic. A postmortem by the American Nuclear Society reported that the average dose to people living within 10 miles of the accident was 0.8 of a chest X-ray. But the name Three Mile Island never lost its afterglow.
In the meantime, Chernobyl has become a tourist destination. Visitors board a bus in Kiev and cross the border of the “zone of estrangement.” Avoiding the remaining hot spots, they see the ghost city of Pripyat and the ruined reactor. They can feed catfish swimming in a reactor cooling pond, and none of them have three eyes.
They might also see a resurgence of wildlife: moose, roe deer, Russian wild boar, foxes, river otter and rabbits. American ecologists who conducted a study of the area in the late 1990s concluded that for all the harm caused by fallout, the biggest impact from humans has been positive: their decision to pack up and leave. “Northern Ukraine is the cleanest part of the nation,” an official of Ukraine’s Academy of Sciences said at the time. “It has only radiation.”
Only radiation. That is small consolation for the evacuees in Japan and the workers, still dousing the reactors with hoses as though fighting a fire that could be put out.
George Johnson, a former reporter and editor at The Times, is author of "The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments." He is writing a book about cancer.
By GEORGE JOHNSON
Becquerels, sieverts, curies, roentgens, rads and rems. For all the esoteric nomenclature scientists have devised to parse the effects of nuclear emanations, the unit they so often fall back on is the old-fashioned chest X-ray.
Early in the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, neighbors were informed with absurd precision that the radioactivity in a liter of their drinking water had risen to the equivalent of 1/88th of a chest X-ray. One day last week the air in Tokyo registered 0.155 of a microsievert an hour — another chest X-ray, if you were confined for a month at that level. Though stretched to the point of meaninglessness, the analogy is meant to soothe — balm for a spirit burdened by a century of living uneasily with radiation.
Measured by sheer fury, the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that damaged the reactors was mightier than millions of Hiroshima bombs. It shoved the northeastern coast of Japan eastward and unleashed a tsunami that wiped civilization from the coast. But explosive power comes and goes in an instant. It is something the brain can process.
With radiation, the terror lies in the abstraction. It kills incrementally — slowly, diffusely, invisibly. “Afterheat,” Robert Socolow, a Princeton University professor, called it in an essay for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “the fire that you can’t put out.”
Nuclear scientists speak in terms of half-life, the time it takes for random disintegrations to reduce a radioactive sample to half its size. Then a quarter, an eighth, a 16th — whether measured in microseconds or eons, the mathematical progression never ends.
When traces of radioactive iodine were found last week in the drinking water in Tokyo, officials expressed the danger in becquerels, the number of nuclear disintegrations per second: 210 per liter, safe for adults but high enough to warn that infants should not drink it. As the government began distributing bottled water, the level fell significantly but not the fear. As far away as California there was a run on fallout detectors.
As these hypothetical microthreats ate at the mind, rescue workers were piling up real bodies — 10,000 so far — killed by crushing waves or their aftereffects, deaths caused by gravity, not nuclear forces. These dead will be tabulated, mourned and eventually forgotten. The toll will converge on a finite number.
In Chernobyl, the site of the world’s previous big nuclear accident, the counting continues, like languid ticks from a Geiger counter. A United Nations study in 2005 concluded that about 50 people had been killed by the meltdown but that 4,000 would ultimately die from radiation-caused cancer — victims who do not know who they are. The most debilitating effect, one investigator said, has been “a paralyzing fatalism,” a malaise brought on by an alien presence that almost seems alive.
Radiation, before we had a hand in it, was just another phenomenon. Life evolved unknowingly in its presence, with rays from the sky and earth jostling chromosomes and helping to shuffle the genetic deck. When our brains evolved to the point where we could measure and summon the effect, the first reaction was not fear but fascination. The discoverers were revered as heroes. Then their names were converted into mathematical units.
William Roentgen produced the first artificial X-rays in 1895, tantalizing the world with see-through images of his wife’s hand, then Henri Becquerel found similar emissions coming unbidden from uranium. Isolating the first minuscule specks of radium, Marie Curie, the greatest of the pioneers (1 curie = 37 gigabecquerels), marveled that its eerie blue glow “looked like faint, fairy lights.” She was seeing the optical equivalent of a sonic boom — contrails of photons produced by speeding particles. Eager to see this new world for themselves, people purchased small brass eyepieces called spinthariscopes, named for the Greek word for spark. Mounted inside was a bit of radium bombarding a scintillating screen. Hold it to your eye and behold the tiny explosions. Spinthariscopes sat on parlor shelves next to stereoscopic postcard viewers and kaleidoscopes, items in a cabinet of curiosities.
Radiation was even supposed to be good for you. Vacationers soaked in radium hot springs. Magazines carried advertisements for radium suppositories, radium toothpaste and radium bread — quack products ranging from useless to harmful. As late as the 1950s, customers could peer inside their own feet through shoe store X-ray machines, the scientific way to ensure a perfect fit.
As more bona fide uses led to a medical revolution — X-rays for medical imaging, radium for killing rapidly dividing cancer cells — hints of danger gradually accumulated. In the 1920s, women who had painted glow-in-the-dark radium watch dials began to sicken and die. Around the same time, scientists experimenting with fruit flies showed that radiation causes genetic mutations — red eyes turned to white.
With Hiroshima, Nagasaki and above-ground testing, everything nuclear began to take on a more sinister air. But the threat still seemed distant and surreal. As mothers worried about strontium-90 from fallout insinuating its way into their children’s bones, they were reading “Atomic Bunny” comic books and sending in cereal box tops for the Lone Ranger Atomic Bomb Ring, a cheap plastic spinthariscope that promised a glimpse of “genuine atoms split to smithereens.”
For all the dread evoked by the stockpiling of nuclear weapons, it was the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island that marked an abrupt turn. Just days earlier, “The China Syndrome” had its cinematic release. The “backup systems to backup systems to backup systems” Jack Lemmon boasted about to Jane Fonda crumpled on the screen, adding to the anxiety over what was happening outside. In the end the partial meltdown was contained and the damage was mostly economic. A postmortem by the American Nuclear Society reported that the average dose to people living within 10 miles of the accident was 0.8 of a chest X-ray. But the name Three Mile Island never lost its afterglow.
In the meantime, Chernobyl has become a tourist destination. Visitors board a bus in Kiev and cross the border of the “zone of estrangement.” Avoiding the remaining hot spots, they see the ghost city of Pripyat and the ruined reactor. They can feed catfish swimming in a reactor cooling pond, and none of them have three eyes.
They might also see a resurgence of wildlife: moose, roe deer, Russian wild boar, foxes, river otter and rabbits. American ecologists who conducted a study of the area in the late 1990s concluded that for all the harm caused by fallout, the biggest impact from humans has been positive: their decision to pack up and leave. “Northern Ukraine is the cleanest part of the nation,” an official of Ukraine’s Academy of Sciences said at the time. “It has only radiation.”
Only radiation. That is small consolation for the evacuees in Japan and the workers, still dousing the reactors with hoses as though fighting a fire that could be put out.
George Johnson, a former reporter and editor at The Times, is author of "The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments." He is writing a book about cancer.
Status of the Nuclear Reactors
Status of the Nuclear Reactors
A daily tracker of the damage at the two imperiled nuclear plants.
A daily tracker of the damage at the two imperiled nuclear plants.
26/03 Japanese Rules for Nuclear Plants Relied on Old Science
March 26, 2011
By NORIMITSU ONISHI and JAMES GLANZ
TOKYO — In the country that gave the world the word tsunami, the Japanese nuclear establishment largely disregarded the potentially destructive force of the walls of water. The word did not even appear in government guidelines until 2006, decades after plants — including the Fukushima Daiichi facility that firefighters are still struggling to get under control — began dotting the Japanese coastline.
The lack of attention may help explain how, on an island nation surrounded by clashing tectonic plates that commonly produce tsunamis, the protections were so tragically minuscule compared with the nearly 46-foot tsunami that overwhelmed the Fukushima plant on March 11. Offshore breakwaters, designed to guard against typhoons but not tsunamis, succumbed quickly as a first line of defense. The wave grew three times as tall as the bluff on which the plant had been built.
Japanese government and utility officials have repeatedly said that engineers could never have anticipated the magnitude 9.0 earthquake — by far the largest in Japanese history — that caused the sea bottom to shudder and generated the huge tsunami. Even so, seismologists and tsunami experts say that according to readily available data, an earthquake with a magnitude as low as 7.5 — almost garden variety around the Pacific Rim — could have created a tsunami large enough to top the bluff at Fukushima.
After an advisory group issued nonbinding recommendations in 2002, Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant owner and Japan’s biggest utility, raised its maximum projected tsunami at Fukushima Daiichi to between 17.7 and 18.7 feet — considerably higher than the 13-foot-high bluff. Yet the company appeared to respond only by raising the level of an electric pump near the coast by 8 inches, presumably to protect it from high water, regulators said.
“We can only work on precedent, and there was no precedent,” said Tsuneo Futami, a former Tokyo Electric nuclear engineer who was the director of Fukushima Daiichi in the late 1990s. “When I headed the plant, the thought of a tsunami never crossed my mind.”
The intensity with which the earthquake shook the ground at Fukushima also exceeded the criteria used in the plant’s design, though by a less significant factor than the tsunami, according to data Tokyo Electric has given the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, a professional group. Based on what is known now, the tsunami set off the nuclear crisis by flooding the backup generators needed to power the reactor cooling system.
Japan is known for its technical expertise. For decades, though, Japanese officialdom and even parts of its engineering establishment clung to older scientific precepts for protecting nuclear plants, relying heavily on records of earthquakes and tsunamis, and failing to make use of advances in seismology and risk assessment since the 1970s.
For some experts, the underestimate of the tsunami threat at Fukushima is frustratingly reminiscent of the earthquake — this time with no tsunami — in July 2007 that struck Kashiwazaki, a Tokyo Electric nuclear plant on Japan’s western coast.. The ground at Kashiwazaki shook as much as two and a half times the maximum intensity envisioned in the plant’s design, prompting upgrades at the plant.
“They had years to prepare at that point, after Kashiwazaki, and I am seeing the same thing at Fukushima,” said Peter Yanev, an expert in seismic risk assessment based in California, who has studied Fukushima for the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Department.
There is no doubt that when Fukushima was designed, seismology and its intersection with the structural engineering of nuclear power plants was in its infancy, said Hiroyuki Aoyama, 78, an expert on the quake resistance of nuclear plants who has served on Japanese government panels. Engineers employed a lot of guesswork, adopting a standard that structures inside nuclear plants should have three times the quake resistance of general buildings.
“There was no basis in deciding on three times,” said Mr. Aoyama, an emeritus professor of structural engineering at the University of Tokyo. “They were shooting from the hip,” he added, making a sign of a pistol with his right thumb and index finger. “There was a vague target.”
Evolution of Designs
When Japanese engineers began designing their first nuclear power plants more than four decades ago, they turned to the past for clues on how to protect their investment in the energy of the future. Official archives, some centuries old, contained information on how tsunamis had flooded coastal villages, allowing engineers to surmise their height.
So seawalls were erected higher than the highest tsunamis on record. At Fukushima Daiichi, Japan’s fourth oldest nuclear plant, officials at Tokyo Electric used a contemporary tsunami — a 10.5-foot-high wave caused by a 9.5-magnitude earthquake in Chile in 1960 — as a reference point. The 13-foot-high cliff on which the plant was built would serve as a natural seawall, according to Masaru Kobayashi, an expert on quake resistance at the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Japan’s nuclear regulator.
Eighteen-foot-high offshore breakwaters were built as part of the company’s anti-tsunami strategy, said Jun Oshima, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric. But regulators said the breakwaters — mainly intended to shelter boats — offered some resistance against typhoons, but not tsunamis, Mr. Kobayashi said.
Over the decades, preparedness against tsunamis never became a priority for Japan’s power companies or nuclear regulators. They were perhaps lulled, experts said, by the fact that no tsunami had struck a nuclear plant until two weeks ago. Even though tsunami simulations offered new ways to assess the risks of tsunamis, plant operators made few changes at their aging facilities, and nuclear regulators did not press them.
Engineers took a similar approach with earthquakes. When it came to designing the Fukushima plant, official records dating from 1600 showed that the strongest earthquakes off the coast of present-day Fukushima Prefecture had registered between magnitude 7.0 and 8.0, Mr. Kobayashi said.
“We left it to the experts,” said Masatoshi Toyoda, a retired Tokyo Electric vice president who oversaw the construction of the plant. He added, “they researched old documents for information on how many tombstones had toppled over and such.”
Eventually, experts on government committees started pushing for tougher building codes, and by 1981, guidelines included references to earthquakes but not to tsunamis, according to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. That pressure grew exponentially after the devastating Kobe earthquake in 1995, said Kenji Sumita, who was deputy chairman of the government’s Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan in the late 1990s.
Mr. Sumita said power companies, which were focused on completing the construction of a dozen reactors, resisted adopting tougher standards, and did not send representatives to meetings on the subject at the Nuclear Safety Commission.
“Others sent people immediately,” Mr. Sumita said, referring to academics and construction industry experts. “But the power companies engaged in foot-dragging and didn’t come.”
Meanwhile, the sciences of seismology and risk assessment advanced around the world. Although the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission has come under severe criticism for not taking the adoption of those new techniques far enough, the agency did use many of them in new, plant-by-plant reviews, said Greg S. Hardy, a structural engineer at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger who specializes in nuclear plant design and seismic risk.
For whatever reasons — whether cultural, historical or simply financial — Japanese engineers working on nuclear plants continued to predict what they believed were maximum earthquakes based on records.
Those methods, however, did not take into account serious uncertainties like faults that had not been discovered or earthquakes that were gigantic but rare, said Mr. Hardy, who visited Kashiwazaki after the 2007 quake as part of a study sponsored by the Electric Power Research Institute.
“The Japanese fell behind,” Mr. Hardy said. “Once they made the proclamation that this was the maximum earthquake, they had a hard time re-evaluating that as new data came in.”
The Japanese approach, referred to in the field as “deterministic” — as opposed to “probabilistic,” or taking unknowns into account — somehow stuck, said Noboru Nakao, a consultant who was a nuclear engineer at Hitachi for 40 years and was president of Japan’s training center for operators of boiling-water reactors.
“Japanese safety rules generally are deterministic because probabilistic methods are too difficult,” Mr. Nakao said, adding that “the U.S. has a lot more risk assessment methods.”
The science of tsunamis also advanced, with far better measurements of their size, vastly expanded statistics as more occurred, and computer calculations that help predict what kinds of tsunamis are produced by earthquakes of various sizes. Two independent draft research papers by leading tsunami experts — Eric Geist of the United States Geological Survey and Costas Synolakis, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Southern California — indicate that earthquakes of a magnitude down to about 7.5 can create tsunamis large enough to go over the 13-foot bluff protecting the Fukushima plant.
Mr. Synolakis called Japan’s underestimation of the tsunami risk a “cascade of stupid errors that led to the disaster” and said that relevant data was virtually impossible to overlook by anyone in the field.
Underestimating Risks
The first clear reference to tsunamis appeared in new standards for Japan’s nuclear plants issued in 2006.
“The 2006 guidelines referred to tsunamis as an accompanying phenomenon of earthquakes, and urged the power companies to think about that,” said Mr. Aoyama, the structural engineering expert.
The risk had received some attention in 2002, when a government advisory group, the Japan Society of Civil Engineers, published recommended tsunami guidelines for nuclear operators.
A study group at the society, including professors and representatives from utilities like Tokyo Electric, scrutinized data from past tsunamis, as well as fresh research on fault lines and local geography, to come up with the guidelines, according to a member of the study group who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the situation.
The same group had recently been discussing revisions to those standards, according to the member. At the group’s last meeting, held just over a week before the recent tsunami, researchers debated the usefulness of three-dimensional simulations to predict the potential damage of tsunamis on nuclear plants, according to minutes from those meetings. “We took into account more than past data,” the member said. “We tried to predict. Our objective was to reduce uncertainties.”
Perhaps the saddest observation by scientists outside Japan is that, even through the narrow lens of recorded tsunamis, the potential for easily overtopping the anti-tsunami safeguards at Fukushima should have been recognized. In 1993 a magnitude 7.8 quake produced tsunamis with heights greater than 30 feet off Japan’s western coast, spreading wide devastation, according to scientific studies and reports at the time.
On the hard-hit island of Okushiri, “most of the populated areas worst hit by the tsunami were bounded by tsunami walls” as high as 15 feet, according to a report written by Mr. Yanev. That made the walls a foot or two higher than Fukushima’s bluff.
But in a harbinger of what would happen 18 years later, the walls on Okushiri, Mr. Yanev, the expert in seismic risk assessment, wrote, “may have moderated the overall tsunami effects but were ineffective for higher waves.”
And even the distant past was yielding new information that could have served as fresh warnings.
Two decades after Fukushima Daiichi came online, researchers poring through old records estimated that a quake known as Jogan had actually produced a tsunami that reached nearly one mile inland in an area just north of the plant. That tsunami struck in 869.
Norimitsu Onishi reported from Tokyo, and James Glanz from New York. Ken Belson and Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo.
By NORIMITSU ONISHI and JAMES GLANZ
TOKYO — In the country that gave the world the word tsunami, the Japanese nuclear establishment largely disregarded the potentially destructive force of the walls of water. The word did not even appear in government guidelines until 2006, decades after plants — including the Fukushima Daiichi facility that firefighters are still struggling to get under control — began dotting the Japanese coastline.
The lack of attention may help explain how, on an island nation surrounded by clashing tectonic plates that commonly produce tsunamis, the protections were so tragically minuscule compared with the nearly 46-foot tsunami that overwhelmed the Fukushima plant on March 11. Offshore breakwaters, designed to guard against typhoons but not tsunamis, succumbed quickly as a first line of defense. The wave grew three times as tall as the bluff on which the plant had been built.
Japanese government and utility officials have repeatedly said that engineers could never have anticipated the magnitude 9.0 earthquake — by far the largest in Japanese history — that caused the sea bottom to shudder and generated the huge tsunami. Even so, seismologists and tsunami experts say that according to readily available data, an earthquake with a magnitude as low as 7.5 — almost garden variety around the Pacific Rim — could have created a tsunami large enough to top the bluff at Fukushima.
After an advisory group issued nonbinding recommendations in 2002, Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant owner and Japan’s biggest utility, raised its maximum projected tsunami at Fukushima Daiichi to between 17.7 and 18.7 feet — considerably higher than the 13-foot-high bluff. Yet the company appeared to respond only by raising the level of an electric pump near the coast by 8 inches, presumably to protect it from high water, regulators said.
“We can only work on precedent, and there was no precedent,” said Tsuneo Futami, a former Tokyo Electric nuclear engineer who was the director of Fukushima Daiichi in the late 1990s. “When I headed the plant, the thought of a tsunami never crossed my mind.”
The intensity with which the earthquake shook the ground at Fukushima also exceeded the criteria used in the plant’s design, though by a less significant factor than the tsunami, according to data Tokyo Electric has given the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, a professional group. Based on what is known now, the tsunami set off the nuclear crisis by flooding the backup generators needed to power the reactor cooling system.
Japan is known for its technical expertise. For decades, though, Japanese officialdom and even parts of its engineering establishment clung to older scientific precepts for protecting nuclear plants, relying heavily on records of earthquakes and tsunamis, and failing to make use of advances in seismology and risk assessment since the 1970s.
For some experts, the underestimate of the tsunami threat at Fukushima is frustratingly reminiscent of the earthquake — this time with no tsunami — in July 2007 that struck Kashiwazaki, a Tokyo Electric nuclear plant on Japan’s western coast.. The ground at Kashiwazaki shook as much as two and a half times the maximum intensity envisioned in the plant’s design, prompting upgrades at the plant.
“They had years to prepare at that point, after Kashiwazaki, and I am seeing the same thing at Fukushima,” said Peter Yanev, an expert in seismic risk assessment based in California, who has studied Fukushima for the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Department.
There is no doubt that when Fukushima was designed, seismology and its intersection with the structural engineering of nuclear power plants was in its infancy, said Hiroyuki Aoyama, 78, an expert on the quake resistance of nuclear plants who has served on Japanese government panels. Engineers employed a lot of guesswork, adopting a standard that structures inside nuclear plants should have three times the quake resistance of general buildings.
“There was no basis in deciding on three times,” said Mr. Aoyama, an emeritus professor of structural engineering at the University of Tokyo. “They were shooting from the hip,” he added, making a sign of a pistol with his right thumb and index finger. “There was a vague target.”
Evolution of Designs
When Japanese engineers began designing their first nuclear power plants more than four decades ago, they turned to the past for clues on how to protect their investment in the energy of the future. Official archives, some centuries old, contained information on how tsunamis had flooded coastal villages, allowing engineers to surmise their height.
So seawalls were erected higher than the highest tsunamis on record. At Fukushima Daiichi, Japan’s fourth oldest nuclear plant, officials at Tokyo Electric used a contemporary tsunami — a 10.5-foot-high wave caused by a 9.5-magnitude earthquake in Chile in 1960 — as a reference point. The 13-foot-high cliff on which the plant was built would serve as a natural seawall, according to Masaru Kobayashi, an expert on quake resistance at the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Japan’s nuclear regulator.
Eighteen-foot-high offshore breakwaters were built as part of the company’s anti-tsunami strategy, said Jun Oshima, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric. But regulators said the breakwaters — mainly intended to shelter boats — offered some resistance against typhoons, but not tsunamis, Mr. Kobayashi said.
Over the decades, preparedness against tsunamis never became a priority for Japan’s power companies or nuclear regulators. They were perhaps lulled, experts said, by the fact that no tsunami had struck a nuclear plant until two weeks ago. Even though tsunami simulations offered new ways to assess the risks of tsunamis, plant operators made few changes at their aging facilities, and nuclear regulators did not press them.
Engineers took a similar approach with earthquakes. When it came to designing the Fukushima plant, official records dating from 1600 showed that the strongest earthquakes off the coast of present-day Fukushima Prefecture had registered between magnitude 7.0 and 8.0, Mr. Kobayashi said.
“We left it to the experts,” said Masatoshi Toyoda, a retired Tokyo Electric vice president who oversaw the construction of the plant. He added, “they researched old documents for information on how many tombstones had toppled over and such.”
Eventually, experts on government committees started pushing for tougher building codes, and by 1981, guidelines included references to earthquakes but not to tsunamis, according to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. That pressure grew exponentially after the devastating Kobe earthquake in 1995, said Kenji Sumita, who was deputy chairman of the government’s Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan in the late 1990s.
Mr. Sumita said power companies, which were focused on completing the construction of a dozen reactors, resisted adopting tougher standards, and did not send representatives to meetings on the subject at the Nuclear Safety Commission.
“Others sent people immediately,” Mr. Sumita said, referring to academics and construction industry experts. “But the power companies engaged in foot-dragging and didn’t come.”
Meanwhile, the sciences of seismology and risk assessment advanced around the world. Although the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission has come under severe criticism for not taking the adoption of those new techniques far enough, the agency did use many of them in new, plant-by-plant reviews, said Greg S. Hardy, a structural engineer at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger who specializes in nuclear plant design and seismic risk.
For whatever reasons — whether cultural, historical or simply financial — Japanese engineers working on nuclear plants continued to predict what they believed were maximum earthquakes based on records.
Those methods, however, did not take into account serious uncertainties like faults that had not been discovered or earthquakes that were gigantic but rare, said Mr. Hardy, who visited Kashiwazaki after the 2007 quake as part of a study sponsored by the Electric Power Research Institute.
“The Japanese fell behind,” Mr. Hardy said. “Once they made the proclamation that this was the maximum earthquake, they had a hard time re-evaluating that as new data came in.”
The Japanese approach, referred to in the field as “deterministic” — as opposed to “probabilistic,” or taking unknowns into account — somehow stuck, said Noboru Nakao, a consultant who was a nuclear engineer at Hitachi for 40 years and was president of Japan’s training center for operators of boiling-water reactors.
“Japanese safety rules generally are deterministic because probabilistic methods are too difficult,” Mr. Nakao said, adding that “the U.S. has a lot more risk assessment methods.”
The science of tsunamis also advanced, with far better measurements of their size, vastly expanded statistics as more occurred, and computer calculations that help predict what kinds of tsunamis are produced by earthquakes of various sizes. Two independent draft research papers by leading tsunami experts — Eric Geist of the United States Geological Survey and Costas Synolakis, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Southern California — indicate that earthquakes of a magnitude down to about 7.5 can create tsunamis large enough to go over the 13-foot bluff protecting the Fukushima plant.
Mr. Synolakis called Japan’s underestimation of the tsunami risk a “cascade of stupid errors that led to the disaster” and said that relevant data was virtually impossible to overlook by anyone in the field.
Underestimating Risks
The first clear reference to tsunamis appeared in new standards for Japan’s nuclear plants issued in 2006.
“The 2006 guidelines referred to tsunamis as an accompanying phenomenon of earthquakes, and urged the power companies to think about that,” said Mr. Aoyama, the structural engineering expert.
The risk had received some attention in 2002, when a government advisory group, the Japan Society of Civil Engineers, published recommended tsunami guidelines for nuclear operators.
A study group at the society, including professors and representatives from utilities like Tokyo Electric, scrutinized data from past tsunamis, as well as fresh research on fault lines and local geography, to come up with the guidelines, according to a member of the study group who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the situation.
The same group had recently been discussing revisions to those standards, according to the member. At the group’s last meeting, held just over a week before the recent tsunami, researchers debated the usefulness of three-dimensional simulations to predict the potential damage of tsunamis on nuclear plants, according to minutes from those meetings. “We took into account more than past data,” the member said. “We tried to predict. Our objective was to reduce uncertainties.”
Perhaps the saddest observation by scientists outside Japan is that, even through the narrow lens of recorded tsunamis, the potential for easily overtopping the anti-tsunami safeguards at Fukushima should have been recognized. In 1993 a magnitude 7.8 quake produced tsunamis with heights greater than 30 feet off Japan’s western coast, spreading wide devastation, according to scientific studies and reports at the time.
On the hard-hit island of Okushiri, “most of the populated areas worst hit by the tsunami were bounded by tsunami walls” as high as 15 feet, according to a report written by Mr. Yanev. That made the walls a foot or two higher than Fukushima’s bluff.
But in a harbinger of what would happen 18 years later, the walls on Okushiri, Mr. Yanev, the expert in seismic risk assessment, wrote, “may have moderated the overall tsunami effects but were ineffective for higher waves.”
And even the distant past was yielding new information that could have served as fresh warnings.
Two decades after Fukushima Daiichi came online, researchers poring through old records estimated that a quake known as Jogan had actually produced a tsunami that reached nearly one mile inland in an area just north of the plant. That tsunami struck in 869.
Norimitsu Onishi reported from Tokyo, and James Glanz from New York. Ken Belson and Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo.
26/03 福島第１原発：１日で１年分の放射線量 北西３０キロ地点
福島第１原子力発電所周辺の積算線量結果
屋内退避、避難に関する指標（原子力安全委員会による）
文部科学省は２５日、東日本大震災で被災した東京電力福島第１原発から北西約３０キロの地点で、２４時間の累積放射線量が最大約１．４ミリシーベルトに上ったとする測定結果を発表した。防御なしで屋外にいた場合、一般の日本人の人工被ばく年間限度（１ミリシーベルト）を超える放射線を１日で受ける計算。【山田大輔、河内敏康】
◇異例の「自主避難」、安全委が国に要請
内閣府原子力安全委員会は同日、放射性物質の拡散が収まる見通しが立たないことを受け、政府が「屋内退避」指示を出している同原発から半径２０～３０キロ圏内の住民は「自主的に避難することが望ましい」との助言を、原子力災害対策本部（本部長＝菅直人首相）に対して行った。安全委の防災対策指針には、累積放射線量に応じて屋内退避や避難を選択するための指標があるが、どちらでもない「自主避難」を国に要請するのは極めて異例だ。
これを受け枝野幸男官房長官は同日、２０～３０キロ圏内の市町村に対し「住民の自主避難を促進するとともに、政府の避難指示が出た場合には直ちに避難を実施するようお願いしたい」と、自主避難を促す考えを示した。対象地域は９市町村で、１万１０００人程度がいるとみられる。
文科省の調査は、震災以降定期的に実施しているモニタリング（監視）で、１時間当たりの放射線量が高めに出ている北西約３０キロの５地点（福島県浪江町、飯舘村）と、南約２５キロ（同広野町）の１地点を選び、簡易型線量計を設置して２３日昼から２４時間の累積放射線量を測定した。
その結果▽浪江町の国道３９９号沿いで１．４３７ミリシーベルト▽飯舘村で０．８６４ミリシーベルトなどの高い値となった。南の広野町では０．１０９ミリシーベルトだった。文科省は「くぼ地などの地形や風向き、積雪などで特に高くなる場合もある。今後、測定を約６０地点に増やし、拡散状況の調査精度を上げたい」と話す。
安全委の助言は、２５日の臨時会で決定した。「今後なお、放射性物質の放出が継続すると考えざるを得ない状況」を踏まえ、原発の事故対応が長期化する可能性を指摘。「２０～３０キロの屋内退避区域のうち、線量が比較的高いと考えられる区域の住民については積極的な自主的避難を促すことが望ましい」と要請した。
３０キロ圏内で線量がそれほど高くない区域からも「予防的観点などから自主的に避難することが望ましい」とした。特に政府に対して避難場所の確保や地域の交通事情を考慮するよう求めたほか、避難する場合は線量が高くなる雨天時を避けるよう求めた。
一方で、避難や屋内退避区域を拡大することは現在は必要ないとしつつ、線量測定の結果次第で「見直しの必要性について適時に検討することが肝要」と、今後の監視を促している。
◇放射線量、低下傾向 安全委
安全委の代谷（しろや）誠治委員らは２５日夜に会見し、福島県浪江町などで高い累積放射線量が観測されたことについて「地域は限定的で既に住民は避難している」とし、現時点で屋内退避区域を拡大する状況にないと強調した。
「自主避難」を助言した理由については「屋内退避区域の住民は、物資調達など生活に苦労している。防災計画は、屋内退避がずっと続くことを想定しておらず、現状がある程度長く続くとの予想の下、条件が整う（避難できる）人は無理にとどまらなくてもいいということだ」と説明した。
また、高い線量は原発の水素爆発などで一時的に大量の放射性物質が放出された影響と説明した。代谷委員は「全体的に放射線量は低下傾向にある。水や食物の摂取制限を守れば健康に影響はない」と語った。
福島第１原発：民主党、事故被害の農家に一時金提言
福島第１原発：自衛隊「賞恤金」１．５倍 死傷時に適用
福島第１原発：水は原子炉から？核燃料漏出も ３人被ばく
福島第１原発：屋内退避指示「専門家の判断」 会見で首相
福島第１原発：高線量地域は自主避難を…原子力安全委提言
毎日新聞 2011年3月26日 1時05分（最終更新 3月26日 1時37分）
20/03 福島第１原発：放射性物質への対応策 Ｑ＆Ａ
福島第１原発の事故で、周辺地域の農作物などへの放射性物質の影響が次々と公表されている。現状や対応策について、専門家の話をもとにまとめた。
◇セシウム、体内１００日で半減
Ｑ 放射性物質で汚染された食品を食べるとどうなるの？
Ａ ヨウ素は甲状腺に取りこまれる性質があり、大量摂取は甲状腺がんのリスクを高める。だが半減期（放射線量が半分になる時期）は８日と短い。東京大付属病院の中川恵一准教授は「ヨウ素は１カ月で１６分の１に減り、３カ月もするとほぼゼロになる」という。一方、放射性セシウムは半減期が３０年と長い。環境への長期の影響が心配されるが、「体内では排尿などで放出されるので、１００日程度で半分になる」（中川准教授）という。
Ｑ 暫定規制値って？
Ａ 食品衛生法に基づき厚生労働省が定めている基準。放射性物質の種類や食品ごとにあり、食品１キログラムあたりの放射能の強さを測る単位「ベクレル」で示される。都道府県などが測定し、規制値を超える食品が見つかると市場に流通しないよう措置が取られる。
Ｑ 「ベクレル」って「シーベルト」との違いは？
Ａ ベクレルは放射線を出す強さの単位で、体への影響を見るにはシーベルトに換算する必要がある。１キログラムあたり１万５０２０ベクレルのヨウ素が検出されたホウレンソウを食べたときの影響は０．３３ミリシーベルト。日本人の１日の平均摂取量は約１５グラムなので、実際の影響は０．００４９ミリシーベルトになる。
Ｑ 食べ続けても大丈夫？
Ａ 日本人は普段も摂取した魚や野菜などから年間０．３ミリシーベルトを受けている。関澤純・元徳島大教授によると、ホウレンソウは洗ったり、ゆでたりすれば放射性物質はかなり減る。牛乳は「最も汚染されたもの（福島県の約１５００ベクレル）でも、数回飲むくらいなら自然被ばくの１０分の１以下で、飲み続けなければ大丈夫」という。
Ｑ 水道水は飲んでいいの？
Ａ 水１リットル（１キログラム）当たりの摂取制限の指標はヨウ素で３００ベクレル、セシウムで２００ベクレル。福島県内では１７日、一時的に３０８ベクレルのヨウ素が検出された。厚労省は指標を超えた場合、飲用は控えたほうがいいものの、風呂や手洗いなどには問題ないとしている。飲用水がなければ、飲んでも差し支えないとの見解も示している。
◇現状は雨にぬれても影響なし
Ｑ 雨が降ってきたら？
Ａ 文部科学省は全国の都道府県などに対し、地上に落ちたちりや雨に含まれる放射能を調査し、可能な限り毎日、報告するよう求めている。２０日発表されたデータでは栃木や群馬、埼玉などの都県で微量な放射性ヨウ素などが検出されているが、雨にぬれても健康に影響はないと考えていいレベルだ。ただし田中俊一・元原子力委員会委員長代理は「このまま大気中の放射性物質濃度が高い状態が数カ月続くと、健康への影響が心配になってくる」と話す。
できる限り被ばくを抑えたい人は（１）外出は雨がやんでからにする（２）髪や皮膚がぬれないようにする（３）気になる場合は、流水で洗う－－ことを心がけたい。
◇放射線被ばくについての相談電話
放射線医学総合研究所
０９０・５５８２・３５２１
０９０・４８３６・９３８６
０８０・２０７８・３３０８
（２４時間対応）
◇原発周辺住民向けの被ばく医療健康相談ホットライン（文部科学省）
０９０・５５８２・３５２１
０９０・４８３６・９３８６
０８０・２０７８・３３０８
０９０・７４０８・１０７４
０９０・８５９１・０７３５
０８０・２０７８・３３０７
（午前１０時～午後９時）
英訳
【専門医のコラム】放射線被害、現状は皆無…対応策も紹介
【ＷＨＯが断言】東京からの「避難」不要 日本渡航は安全
【全プールが１００度未満に】防衛省撮影の放射温度写真
【デマに注意】うがい薬を飲むのは厳禁、効果なし
【被災地のために】いま何ができる？ わかりやすく解説
毎日新聞 2011年3月20日 20時04分（最終更新 3月21日 10時46分）
◇セシウム、体内１００日で半減
Ｑ 放射性物質で汚染された食品を食べるとどうなるの？
Ａ ヨウ素は甲状腺に取りこまれる性質があり、大量摂取は甲状腺がんのリスクを高める。だが半減期（放射線量が半分になる時期）は８日と短い。東京大付属病院の中川恵一准教授は「ヨウ素は１カ月で１６分の１に減り、３カ月もするとほぼゼロになる」という。一方、放射性セシウムは半減期が３０年と長い。環境への長期の影響が心配されるが、「体内では排尿などで放出されるので、１００日程度で半分になる」（中川准教授）という。
Ｑ 暫定規制値って？
Ａ 食品衛生法に基づき厚生労働省が定めている基準。放射性物質の種類や食品ごとにあり、食品１キログラムあたりの放射能の強さを測る単位「ベクレル」で示される。都道府県などが測定し、規制値を超える食品が見つかると市場に流通しないよう措置が取られる。
Ｑ 「ベクレル」って「シーベルト」との違いは？
Ａ ベクレルは放射線を出す強さの単位で、体への影響を見るにはシーベルトに換算する必要がある。１キログラムあたり１万５０２０ベクレルのヨウ素が検出されたホウレンソウを食べたときの影響は０．３３ミリシーベルト。日本人の１日の平均摂取量は約１５グラムなので、実際の影響は０．００４９ミリシーベルトになる。
Ｑ 食べ続けても大丈夫？
Ａ 日本人は普段も摂取した魚や野菜などから年間０．３ミリシーベルトを受けている。関澤純・元徳島大教授によると、ホウレンソウは洗ったり、ゆでたりすれば放射性物質はかなり減る。牛乳は「最も汚染されたもの（福島県の約１５００ベクレル）でも、数回飲むくらいなら自然被ばくの１０分の１以下で、飲み続けなければ大丈夫」という。
Ｑ 水道水は飲んでいいの？
Ａ 水１リットル（１キログラム）当たりの摂取制限の指標はヨウ素で３００ベクレル、セシウムで２００ベクレル。福島県内では１７日、一時的に３０８ベクレルのヨウ素が検出された。厚労省は指標を超えた場合、飲用は控えたほうがいいものの、風呂や手洗いなどには問題ないとしている。飲用水がなければ、飲んでも差し支えないとの見解も示している。
◇現状は雨にぬれても影響なし
Ｑ 雨が降ってきたら？
Ａ 文部科学省は全国の都道府県などに対し、地上に落ちたちりや雨に含まれる放射能を調査し、可能な限り毎日、報告するよう求めている。２０日発表されたデータでは栃木や群馬、埼玉などの都県で微量な放射性ヨウ素などが検出されているが、雨にぬれても健康に影響はないと考えていいレベルだ。ただし田中俊一・元原子力委員会委員長代理は「このまま大気中の放射性物質濃度が高い状態が数カ月続くと、健康への影響が心配になってくる」と話す。
できる限り被ばくを抑えたい人は（１）外出は雨がやんでからにする（２）髪や皮膚がぬれないようにする（３）気になる場合は、流水で洗う－－ことを心がけたい。
◇放射線被ばくについての相談電話
放射線医学総合研究所
０９０・５５８２・３５２１
０９０・４８３６・９３８６
０８０・２０７８・３３０８
（２４時間対応）
◇原発周辺住民向けの被ばく医療健康相談ホットライン（文部科学省）
０９０・５５８２・３５２１
０９０・４８３６・９３８６
０８０・２０７８・３３０８
０９０・７４０８・１０７４
０９０・８５９１・０７３５
０８０・２０７８・３３０７
（午前１０時～午後９時）
英訳
【専門医のコラム】放射線被害、現状は皆無…対応策も紹介
【ＷＨＯが断言】東京からの「避難」不要 日本渡航は安全
【全プールが１００度未満に】防衛省撮影の放射温度写真
【デマに注意】うがい薬を飲むのは厳禁、効果なし
【被災地のために】いま何ができる？ わかりやすく解説
毎日新聞 2011年3月20日 20時04分（最終更新 3月21日 10時46分）
15/03 東日本大震災：「ガイガーカウンター」で測定 被ばくＱＡ
原子力災害で心配なのが、放射性物質による被ばく（汚染）だ。放射線防護の鍵は（１）放射線源から離れる（２）放射線に接する時間を短くする（３）放射線を遮る環境にとどまる。また、放射性物質に触れたらすみやかに除去することも重要だ。被ばくを最小限に抑えるための心得をまとめた。【根本毅、下桐実雅子】
Ｑ 被ばくしたかどうか確実に知りたい場合は？
Ａ 原発がある自治体や大きな病院には「ガイガーカウンター」という測定装置があり、体に放射性物質が付着していないか調べることができます。
Ｑ 住んでいる地域に屋内退避指示が出た。どうすればいい？
Ａ 窓をしっかり閉め、エアコンや換気扇を使わないようにして、換気を最小限にします。やむをえず外出する場合は、マスクやぬれタオルなどで口・鼻を覆えば、放射性物質を体内に取り込む「体内被ばく」を最小限に抑えることができます。帰宅したら服を脱いで、ポリ袋に入れて口を縛り、すぐシャワーを浴びてください。
このような対策をとっても体から放射線が測定されるようなら、体内被ばくの可能性があるので、医師の診断を受けてください。
Ｑ 避難指示が出た。どうやって避難する？
Ａ 徒歩や自転車での避難は避けて、車やバスを使ってください。肌を露出する服装にしないこと。注意点は屋内退避時の外出と同じです。
Ｑ 汚染された衣服は洗濯したらまた着られる？
Ａ 程度にもよりますが、通常の洗濯によってほとんどは除去でき、また着られます。心配な人は他の洗濯物と分けて洗えばいいでしょう。断水などで洗濯が難しい場合は、ウエットティッシュなどで表面をぬぐうだけでも、ある程度の効果があります。洗濯物を干す場合は室内に干します。
Ｑ 雨が降ったらどうすればいい？
Ａ 雨に放射性物質が含まれている可能性があります。雨にぬれないよう、屋内にいるのが一番です。外出する場合は、カッパを着るなど、皮膚や頭髪に水分がつかないよう注意しましょう。
Ｑ ネットで見たけど、ヨウ素を含むうがい薬や消毒剤を飲んだ方がいいの？
Ａ 重大事故の際に出る放射性ヨウ素は、体に取り込まれると甲状腺に集まる性質があります。これが甲状腺がんなどの原因になるため、緊急時の予防策として高濃度のヨウ素剤を服用する場合があります。
しかし、市販のうがい薬や消毒剤などでヨウ素を含んだものを、代わりに飲むことは絶対にやめてください。ヨウ素含有量が少なく効果がない上、ヨウ素以外の成分が有害な可能性もあります。
昆布などの海藻類にもヨウ素が含まれていますが、被ばくを防ぐには微量で、十分な効果は得られません。
放射線医学総合研究所では、放射線被ばくについての相談電話（０９０・５５８２・３５２１▽０９０・４８３６・９３８６、午前８時半～午後５時１５分）を設けています。
東日本大震災：救援金窓口を開設 毎日新聞東京社会事業団
計画停電：東北電力も１６日から３日間
大リーグ：松坂、岡島らが義援金集め 被災地支援広がる
東日本大震災：航空会社がマイルによる被災者支援
東日本大震災：低体温症に注意 発泡スチロール、アルミシートも暖かい 被災者向け情報（寒さ）
毎日新聞 2011年3月15日 18時45分
Ｑ 被ばくしたかどうか確実に知りたい場合は？
Ａ 原発がある自治体や大きな病院には「ガイガーカウンター」という測定装置があり、体に放射性物質が付着していないか調べることができます。
Ｑ 住んでいる地域に屋内退避指示が出た。どうすればいい？
Ａ 窓をしっかり閉め、エアコンや換気扇を使わないようにして、換気を最小限にします。やむをえず外出する場合は、マスクやぬれタオルなどで口・鼻を覆えば、放射性物質を体内に取り込む「体内被ばく」を最小限に抑えることができます。帰宅したら服を脱いで、ポリ袋に入れて口を縛り、すぐシャワーを浴びてください。
このような対策をとっても体から放射線が測定されるようなら、体内被ばくの可能性があるので、医師の診断を受けてください。
Ｑ 避難指示が出た。どうやって避難する？
Ａ 徒歩や自転車での避難は避けて、車やバスを使ってください。肌を露出する服装にしないこと。注意点は屋内退避時の外出と同じです。
Ｑ 汚染された衣服は洗濯したらまた着られる？
Ａ 程度にもよりますが、通常の洗濯によってほとんどは除去でき、また着られます。心配な人は他の洗濯物と分けて洗えばいいでしょう。断水などで洗濯が難しい場合は、ウエットティッシュなどで表面をぬぐうだけでも、ある程度の効果があります。洗濯物を干す場合は室内に干します。
Ｑ 雨が降ったらどうすればいい？
Ａ 雨に放射性物質が含まれている可能性があります。雨にぬれないよう、屋内にいるのが一番です。外出する場合は、カッパを着るなど、皮膚や頭髪に水分がつかないよう注意しましょう。
Ｑ ネットで見たけど、ヨウ素を含むうがい薬や消毒剤を飲んだ方がいいの？
Ａ 重大事故の際に出る放射性ヨウ素は、体に取り込まれると甲状腺に集まる性質があります。これが甲状腺がんなどの原因になるため、緊急時の予防策として高濃度のヨウ素剤を服用する場合があります。
しかし、市販のうがい薬や消毒剤などでヨウ素を含んだものを、代わりに飲むことは絶対にやめてください。ヨウ素含有量が少なく効果がない上、ヨウ素以外の成分が有害な可能性もあります。
昆布などの海藻類にもヨウ素が含まれていますが、被ばくを防ぐには微量で、十分な効果は得られません。
放射線医学総合研究所では、放射線被ばくについての相談電話（０９０・５５８２・３５２１▽０９０・４８３６・９３８６、午前８時半～午後５時１５分）を設けています。
東日本大震災：救援金窓口を開設 毎日新聞東京社会事業団
計画停電：東北電力も１６日から３日間
大リーグ：松坂、岡島らが義援金集め 被災地支援広がる
東日本大震災：航空会社がマイルによる被災者支援
東日本大震災：低体温症に注意 発泡スチロール、アルミシートも暖かい 被災者向け情報（寒さ）
毎日新聞 2011年3月15日 18時45分
27/03 福島第１原発：事故の影響 世界で広がる見直し
東日本大震災で被災した福島第１原発事故の影響が、世界各国に広がっている。ドイツが１９８０年以前に稼働した老朽原発７基の運転を３カ月間停止する措置に踏み切ったほか、中国も新規原発の審査を一時中断、イスラエルなどが計画中止を表明した。運転中に二酸化炭素をほとんど排出せず、地球温暖化対策の切り札として近年、再び脚光を浴びた原子力発電だが、再び「冬の時代」に逆戻りするとの懸念も出始めている。【ロンドン会川晴之、ワシントン斉藤信宏】
◇ＥＵ、検査強化で合意 反原発運動が活発化
８６年にチェルノブイリ原発事故を経験した欧州諸国は、今回の原発事故にいち早く反応した。欧州連合（ＥＵ、加盟２７カ国）は１５日の特別会合で域内諸国の原発の安全性検査を実施し、耐震性や津波対応に加え、冷却装置など、今回の事故で浮き彫りになった問題点を検査することで合意。２５日の首脳会議で正式承認した。
チェルノブイリ事故後、欧州では原発懐疑論が高まり、イタリアなどが原発建設を凍結、英国など多くの諸国も新規計画を見合わせた。だが、当時と違い、エネルギー価格は高騰、風力など再生利用エネルギーのコストはまだ高く、ＥＵの４分の１の電力を供給する原発に代わるエネルギー源確保は難しい状況にある。
経済協力開発機構（ＯＥＣＤ）のグリア事務総長は「原発は欧州の電力供給で重要な位置を占める」と強調。国際エネルギー機関（ＩＥＡ）の田中伸男事務局長も「地球温暖化対策のためには原発は不可欠」と述べるなど、各国に慎重な対応を求めている。
欧州最大の原発メーカーである仏アレバは「信頼回復が極めて重要」と、対話に努める姿勢を強調する。ただ、事故を機に、ライバルである日本メーカーが商戦から脱落する可能性が高いとの計算も働く。
しかし新規原発の審査を一時停止したスイスでは、直近の世論調査で反対派が８７％を占めた。２年前は賛成が７３％で、賛否が逆転した。ドイツでは２６日、ベルリン、ハンブルクなど４都市で２５万人規模のデモが実施されるなど、反原発運動が活発化している。
◇中国、新規建設計画を一時停止
中国は１６日に、新規原発の建設計画の審査と承認を一時停止した。
急増するエネルギー需要を背景に、現在の１３基の原発に加え、今後新たに２５基建設する計画だが、国民の不安が高まっていることを考慮した。政府は「導入予定の原発は、より安全な新世代」と安全性を強調する発言を続けている。
◇イスラエル、ベネズエラ計画断念
計画停止も相次ぐ。イスラエルのネタニヤフ首相は１７日、同国初の商業用原発計画の中止を表明した。同国沖で天然ガスが発見されたのも一因だ。
ベネズエラのチャベス大統領は２３日、計画断念を表明した。
◇トルコは続行表明
一方、日本と同じ地震国のトルコは、エルドアン首相が「原発計画を停止する考えはない」と強調する。１９年運転開始予定の黒海沿岸の原発は、東芝・東京電力の企業連合が交渉を続けているが、ユルドゥズ・エネルギー天然資源相は２４日、交渉期限を今月末から年内いっぱいに延ばす考えを示すなど、日本の状況に配慮する考えを表明している。
７９年のスリーマイル島原発事故以後、約３０年間、原発の新規着工を凍結してきた米国は１０年１月、着工容認に転じ、現在は２４基の新設計画が進行中だ。
◇支持派は１４ポイント減…米国
オバマ大統領は、就任直後から「エネルギー需要の増大に対処し、気候変動の被害を食い止めるためには原子力発電の拡大が不可欠だ」と主張してきた。しかし、福島第１原発事故後の米ＣＢＳテレビの世論調査で、新規原発建設支持派が４３％と、２年半前に比べて１４ポイント減少するなど国民に不安が高まっていることに配慮し、「国民の安全のため、責任ある対応が必要」と、安全性の検証を急ぐよう原子力規制委員会（ＮＲＣ）に指示した。
ただ、米政府が原発建設の凍結に動いたわけではない。米政府は昨年２月、ジョージア州の原発２基向けに約８３億ドル（約６７００億円）の融資に対する政府保証を決定。２５日にはＮＲＣが「ボーグル発電所で建設許可の妨げとなるような環境への悪影響は見つからなかった」と発表し、原発建設への事実上のゴーサインを出した。
世界最多１０４基の原発が稼働し、電力の約２０％を原発で賄う米国では、国民の不安を和らげつついかに計画通りに原発建設を進められるかが今後の焦点となっている。
【わかりやすく図説】日本のほかの原発は…地図で確認
【図説】被ばく量と健康への影響の目安
【２号機も高濃度の放射性物質】通常の１０００万倍
【北西３０キロ、１日で１年分の放射線】周辺町村の積算線量 地図で
【Ｑ＆Ａ】ベクレル・シーベルトの違いは？ 雨に濡れたら？
【デマに注意】うがい薬を飲むのは厳禁、効果なし
毎日新聞 2011年3月27日 20時05分（最終更新 3月27日 20時25分）
◇ＥＵ、検査強化で合意 反原発運動が活発化
８６年にチェルノブイリ原発事故を経験した欧州諸国は、今回の原発事故にいち早く反応した。欧州連合（ＥＵ、加盟２７カ国）は１５日の特別会合で域内諸国の原発の安全性検査を実施し、耐震性や津波対応に加え、冷却装置など、今回の事故で浮き彫りになった問題点を検査することで合意。２５日の首脳会議で正式承認した。
チェルノブイリ事故後、欧州では原発懐疑論が高まり、イタリアなどが原発建設を凍結、英国など多くの諸国も新規計画を見合わせた。だが、当時と違い、エネルギー価格は高騰、風力など再生利用エネルギーのコストはまだ高く、ＥＵの４分の１の電力を供給する原発に代わるエネルギー源確保は難しい状況にある。
経済協力開発機構（ＯＥＣＤ）のグリア事務総長は「原発は欧州の電力供給で重要な位置を占める」と強調。国際エネルギー機関（ＩＥＡ）の田中伸男事務局長も「地球温暖化対策のためには原発は不可欠」と述べるなど、各国に慎重な対応を求めている。
欧州最大の原発メーカーである仏アレバは「信頼回復が極めて重要」と、対話に努める姿勢を強調する。ただ、事故を機に、ライバルである日本メーカーが商戦から脱落する可能性が高いとの計算も働く。
しかし新規原発の審査を一時停止したスイスでは、直近の世論調査で反対派が８７％を占めた。２年前は賛成が７３％で、賛否が逆転した。ドイツでは２６日、ベルリン、ハンブルクなど４都市で２５万人規模のデモが実施されるなど、反原発運動が活発化している。
◇中国、新規建設計画を一時停止
中国は１６日に、新規原発の建設計画の審査と承認を一時停止した。
急増するエネルギー需要を背景に、現在の１３基の原発に加え、今後新たに２５基建設する計画だが、国民の不安が高まっていることを考慮した。政府は「導入予定の原発は、より安全な新世代」と安全性を強調する発言を続けている。
◇イスラエル、ベネズエラ計画断念
計画停止も相次ぐ。イスラエルのネタニヤフ首相は１７日、同国初の商業用原発計画の中止を表明した。同国沖で天然ガスが発見されたのも一因だ。
ベネズエラのチャベス大統領は２３日、計画断念を表明した。
◇トルコは続行表明
一方、日本と同じ地震国のトルコは、エルドアン首相が「原発計画を停止する考えはない」と強調する。１９年運転開始予定の黒海沿岸の原発は、東芝・東京電力の企業連合が交渉を続けているが、ユルドゥズ・エネルギー天然資源相は２４日、交渉期限を今月末から年内いっぱいに延ばす考えを示すなど、日本の状況に配慮する考えを表明している。
７９年のスリーマイル島原発事故以後、約３０年間、原発の新規着工を凍結してきた米国は１０年１月、着工容認に転じ、現在は２４基の新設計画が進行中だ。
◇支持派は１４ポイント減…米国
オバマ大統領は、就任直後から「エネルギー需要の増大に対処し、気候変動の被害を食い止めるためには原子力発電の拡大が不可欠だ」と主張してきた。しかし、福島第１原発事故後の米ＣＢＳテレビの世論調査で、新規原発建設支持派が４３％と、２年半前に比べて１４ポイント減少するなど国民に不安が高まっていることに配慮し、「国民の安全のため、責任ある対応が必要」と、安全性の検証を急ぐよう原子力規制委員会（ＮＲＣ）に指示した。
ただ、米政府が原発建設の凍結に動いたわけではない。米政府は昨年２月、ジョージア州の原発２基向けに約８３億ドル（約６７００億円）の融資に対する政府保証を決定。２５日にはＮＲＣが「ボーグル発電所で建設許可の妨げとなるような環境への悪影響は見つからなかった」と発表し、原発建設への事実上のゴーサインを出した。
世界最多１０４基の原発が稼働し、電力の約２０％を原発で賄う米国では、国民の不安を和らげつついかに計画通りに原発建設を進められるかが今後の焦点となっている。
【わかりやすく図説】日本のほかの原発は…地図で確認
【図説】被ばく量と健康への影響の目安
【２号機も高濃度の放射性物質】通常の１０００万倍
【北西３０キロ、１日で１年分の放射線】周辺町村の積算線量 地図で
【Ｑ＆Ａ】ベクレル・シーベルトの違いは？ 雨に濡れたら？
【デマに注意】うがい薬を飲むのは厳禁、効果なし
毎日新聞 2011年3月27日 20時05分（最終更新 3月27日 20時25分）
26/03 世界から応援メッセージ続々 米の日本人留学生がサイト
2011年3月26日23時12分
【ニューヨーク＝田中光】世界の人々が東日本大震災の被災者を励ます言葉が、インターネットのサイト「世界から日本へ１０００のメッセージ」に続々と集まっている。ニューヨーク・コロンビア大学の日本人留学生たちが「被災者のみなさんに、国境を超えてつながっていることを知ってほしい」と立ち上げた。
「世界のあらゆる街角から支援や援助の声があがっているのを知ってもらうことが、この惨事を乗り越えるみなさんの慰めに少しでもなるよう、願ってやみません」（米ニューヨーク州）「日本は見向きもされなくなったというような報道が目立ちますが、地震・津波は世界中で報道され、みな心配し応援しています」（オーストラリア・メルボルン）。約５０カ国から寄せられたメッセージは、１週間後には８００件を超えた。
企画した一人、鈴木大裕（だいゆう）さん（３７）は、「こんなに集まるとは思っていなかった」。最初は個人的な友人たちから送られてきたメールをまとめる形でサイトを始めると、瞬く間に反応が広がったという。英語などで寄せられたメッセージは、５０人を超える有志が日本語に翻訳している。
被災地からも感謝のメールが届いている。原発事故の行方が心配だという福島県に住む女性が「勇気をいただいて、涙が止まりません」「小さな子どもを抱え、不安ばかりです。でも、頑張ります」と書いた。
サイトのアドレスはhttp://jequake1000msgs.net
【ニューヨーク＝田中光】世界の人々が東日本大震災の被災者を励ます言葉が、インターネットのサイト「世界から日本へ１０００のメッセージ」に続々と集まっている。ニューヨーク・コロンビア大学の日本人留学生たちが「被災者のみなさんに、国境を超えてつながっていることを知ってほしい」と立ち上げた。
「世界のあらゆる街角から支援や援助の声があがっているのを知ってもらうことが、この惨事を乗り越えるみなさんの慰めに少しでもなるよう、願ってやみません」（米ニューヨーク州）「日本は見向きもされなくなったというような報道が目立ちますが、地震・津波は世界中で報道され、みな心配し応援しています」（オーストラリア・メルボルン）。約５０カ国から寄せられたメッセージは、１週間後には８００件を超えた。
企画した一人、鈴木大裕（だいゆう）さん（３７）は、「こんなに集まるとは思っていなかった」。最初は個人的な友人たちから送られてきたメールをまとめる形でサイトを始めると、瞬く間に反応が広がったという。英語などで寄せられたメッセージは、５０人を超える有志が日本語に翻訳している。
被災地からも感謝のメールが届いている。原発事故の行方が心配だという福島県に住む女性が「勇気をいただいて、涙が止まりません」「小さな子どもを抱え、不安ばかりです。でも、頑張ります」と書いた。
サイトのアドレスはhttp://jequake1000msgs.net
26/03 asahishimbun - 天声人語
2011年3月26日（土）
「これほどの範囲で風景が消え、物理的にも精神的にも全てが一気に奪われるとは」。建築家、安藤忠雄さんの慨嘆だ。土地の人が慣れ親しんだ景色は、変わるという手順を飛ばして眼前で消えた▼森進一さんの「港町ブルース」で、〈……あなたの影をひきずりながら／港 宮古 釜石 気仙沼〉と歌われた良港たち。リアス式海岸に連なる街は、いく手にも分かれて湾を駆け上った津波にえぐられた▼寒流と暖流が出合う三陸沖は、世界有数の漁場として知られる。豊かな魚種と漁法から、地元の漁師は「本物のプロが育つ海」と自負していた。遠洋、近海、沿岸の漁、養殖に水産加工と、持ち味が違う港町が「おさかな文化」を育んできた▼最近まで本紙の石巻支局長だった高成田享さん（６３）は、同僚たちと三陸の海の幸を取材した『話のさかな』（荒蝦夷〈あらえみし〉）に書いた。「ひとつひとつの魚には、漁の仕方があり、旬があり、民話や伝承があり、調理法や保存法がある」。そうした無形の財までが、命と一緒に流されたのではないか▼陸前高田市の女性がテレビで声を震わせた。「みんな、もう海辺には住まないって。海なんかいらないと」。潮風に背を向けるように、関東の内陸県に身を寄せた被災者も多い▼命がけの仕事の成果だけをいただく東京の魚好きが、勝手を言える状況ではない。それでも、海岸線の長さでロシアに迫る海洋国家として、大漁旗が帰る浜をまた見たい。海と共存共栄するあの三陸、どうか取り戻してほしい。消費者、漁師仲間、きっと同じ思いだ。
「これほどの範囲で風景が消え、物理的にも精神的にも全てが一気に奪われるとは」。建築家、安藤忠雄さんの慨嘆だ。土地の人が慣れ親しんだ景色は、変わるという手順を飛ばして眼前で消えた▼森進一さんの「港町ブルース」で、〈……あなたの影をひきずりながら／港 宮古 釜石 気仙沼〉と歌われた良港たち。リアス式海岸に連なる街は、いく手にも分かれて湾を駆け上った津波にえぐられた▼寒流と暖流が出合う三陸沖は、世界有数の漁場として知られる。豊かな魚種と漁法から、地元の漁師は「本物のプロが育つ海」と自負していた。遠洋、近海、沿岸の漁、養殖に水産加工と、持ち味が違う港町が「おさかな文化」を育んできた▼最近まで本紙の石巻支局長だった高成田享さん（６３）は、同僚たちと三陸の海の幸を取材した『話のさかな』（荒蝦夷〈あらえみし〉）に書いた。「ひとつひとつの魚には、漁の仕方があり、旬があり、民話や伝承があり、調理法や保存法がある」。そうした無形の財までが、命と一緒に流されたのではないか▼陸前高田市の女性がテレビで声を震わせた。「みんな、もう海辺には住まないって。海なんかいらないと」。潮風に背を向けるように、関東の内陸県に身を寄せた被災者も多い▼命がけの仕事の成果だけをいただく東京の魚好きが、勝手を言える状況ではない。それでも、海岸線の長さでロシアに迫る海洋国家として、大漁旗が帰る浜をまた見たい。海と共存共栄するあの三陸、どうか取り戻してほしい。消費者、漁師仲間、きっと同じ思いだ。
26/03 asahishimbun - 天声人語
2011年3月26日（土）
「これほどの範囲で風景が消え、物理的にも精神的にも全てが一気に奪われるとは」。建築家、安藤忠雄さんの慨嘆だ。土地の人が慣れ親しんだ景色は、変わるという手順を飛ばして眼前で消えた▼森進一さんの「港町ブルース」で、〈……あなたの影をひきずりながら／港 宮古 釜石 気仙沼〉と歌われた良港たち。リアス式海岸に連なる街は、いく手にも分かれて湾を駆け上った津波にえぐられた▼寒流と暖流が出合う三陸沖は、世界有数の漁場として知られる。豊かな魚種と漁法から、地元の漁師は「本物のプロが育つ海」と自負していた。遠洋、近海、沿岸の漁、養殖に水産加工と、持ち味が違う港町が「おさかな文化」を育んできた▼最近まで本紙の石巻支局長だった高成田享さん（６３）は、同僚たちと三陸の海の幸を取材した『話のさかな』（荒蝦夷〈あらえみし〉）に書いた。「ひとつひとつの魚には、漁の仕方があり、旬があり、民話や伝承があり、調理法や保存法がある」。そうした無形の財までが、命と一緒に流されたのではないか▼陸前高田市の女性がテレビで声を震わせた。「みんな、もう海辺には住まないって。海なんかいらないと」。潮風に背を向けるように、関東の内陸県に身を寄せた被災者も多い▼命がけの仕事の成果だけをいただく東京の魚好きが、勝手を言える状況ではない。それでも、海岸線の長さでロシアに迫る海洋国家として、大漁旗が帰る浜をまた見たい。海と共存共栄するあの三陸、どうか取り戻してほしい。消費者、漁師仲間、きっと同じ思いだ。
「これほどの範囲で風景が消え、物理的にも精神的にも全てが一気に奪われるとは」。建築家、安藤忠雄さんの慨嘆だ。土地の人が慣れ親しんだ景色は、変わるという手順を飛ばして眼前で消えた▼森進一さんの「港町ブルース」で、〈……あなたの影をひきずりながら／港 宮古 釜石 気仙沼〉と歌われた良港たち。リアス式海岸に連なる街は、いく手にも分かれて湾を駆け上った津波にえぐられた▼寒流と暖流が出合う三陸沖は、世界有数の漁場として知られる。豊かな魚種と漁法から、地元の漁師は「本物のプロが育つ海」と自負していた。遠洋、近海、沿岸の漁、養殖に水産加工と、持ち味が違う港町が「おさかな文化」を育んできた▼最近まで本紙の石巻支局長だった高成田享さん（６３）は、同僚たちと三陸の海の幸を取材した『話のさかな』（荒蝦夷〈あらえみし〉）に書いた。「ひとつひとつの魚には、漁の仕方があり、旬があり、民話や伝承があり、調理法や保存法がある」。そうした無形の財までが、命と一緒に流されたのではないか▼陸前高田市の女性がテレビで声を震わせた。「みんな、もう海辺には住まないって。海なんかいらないと」。潮風に背を向けるように、関東の内陸県に身を寄せた被災者も多い▼命がけの仕事の成果だけをいただく東京の魚好きが、勝手を言える状況ではない。それでも、海岸線の長さでロシアに迫る海洋国家として、大漁旗が帰る浜をまた見たい。海と共存共栄するあの三陸、どうか取り戻してほしい。消費者、漁師仲間、きっと同じ思いだ。
23/03 asahishimbun - 天声人語
2011年3月23日（水）
今度の大地震で、東京タワー先端部のアンテナが曲がったと知り、１８５５（安政２）年の安政江戸地震を思い起こした。浅草寺（せんそうじ）の五重塔の先が同様に傾いたとされる。都（みやこ）のシンボルの不祥は、当時の沈滞ムードを映していた▼その前々年、ペリーの黒船が浦賀沖に現れ、前年には東海、南海と大地震が続いた。世情騒然とした折に、数千人が亡くなる首都直下型である。街はすさみ、けんかが多発したという▼それでも、お救い米（まい）が配られ、家の建て直しから経済が動き出す。大工や左官の手間賃は高騰し、色町が潤った。「世直り」をはやす瓦版や浮世絵も盛んになった。一方で、幕府は内憂外患を持て余し、瓦解（がかい）へと向かう▼昨今の「騒然たる消沈」が幕末に重なる。節電で薄暗い店、歯抜けの商品棚。これも有事かと思う。昭和の終幕にも自粛の機運が広まったが、今回は工場や発電所、物流網がやられ、停電や放射能の風評被害もある。空気ではなく実を伴う消沈だ▼日本全土が現場、全国民が当事者であろう。だが、皆が沈み込んではお金が回らず、再生はおぼつかない。国費を被災地に集め、懐に余裕のある向きは「救国の散財」をしてほしい。義援金、外食、買いだめ以外の衝動買い、何でもいい▼十数兆円もの復興費用は、今の政権がどうなろうと私たちが背負うほかない。将来に備えた蓄えもあろうが、国難を皆で乗り越えてこその将来、ここは東北のために放出しよう。世界の終わりではない。安政の驚天動地の１３年先には、明治という別の地平が待っていた。
今度の大地震で、東京タワー先端部のアンテナが曲がったと知り、１８５５（安政２）年の安政江戸地震を思い起こした。浅草寺（せんそうじ）の五重塔の先が同様に傾いたとされる。都（みやこ）のシンボルの不祥は、当時の沈滞ムードを映していた▼その前々年、ペリーの黒船が浦賀沖に現れ、前年には東海、南海と大地震が続いた。世情騒然とした折に、数千人が亡くなる首都直下型である。街はすさみ、けんかが多発したという▼それでも、お救い米（まい）が配られ、家の建て直しから経済が動き出す。大工や左官の手間賃は高騰し、色町が潤った。「世直り」をはやす瓦版や浮世絵も盛んになった。一方で、幕府は内憂外患を持て余し、瓦解（がかい）へと向かう▼昨今の「騒然たる消沈」が幕末に重なる。節電で薄暗い店、歯抜けの商品棚。これも有事かと思う。昭和の終幕にも自粛の機運が広まったが、今回は工場や発電所、物流網がやられ、停電や放射能の風評被害もある。空気ではなく実を伴う消沈だ▼日本全土が現場、全国民が当事者であろう。だが、皆が沈み込んではお金が回らず、再生はおぼつかない。国費を被災地に集め、懐に余裕のある向きは「救国の散財」をしてほしい。義援金、外食、買いだめ以外の衝動買い、何でもいい▼十数兆円もの復興費用は、今の政権がどうなろうと私たちが背負うほかない。将来に備えた蓄えもあろうが、国難を皆で乗り越えてこその将来、ここは東北のために放出しよう。世界の終わりではない。安政の驚天動地の１３年先には、明治という別の地平が待っていた。
21/03 asahishimbun - 天声人語
2011年3月21日（月）
１０日ぶりに二番手のニュースを取り上げる。曽野綾子さんの『アラブの格言』（新潮新書）にモロッコの警句がある。「判事の下男が死ねば皆が弔いに行くが、判事の葬式には誰も行かない」。なるほど、権力者とは悲しいものだ▼権力者に従う者はもっとつらい。とりわけ権勢の末期である。リビアでも今ごろ、カダフィ大佐の側近らが右往左往しながら、身の振り方を案じていようか。反体制派を追い詰めるリビア政府軍に対し、英仏米などが空海から一斉攻撃に出た▼反政府の動きは東部ベンガジから広がったものの、武力に勝る政府軍がたちまち盛り返し、蜂起の市民がひどい目に遭う矢先だった。そこに、多国籍軍の「人道的介入」を認める国連決議である▼「アラブ民主革命」はチュニジアに始まり、エジプトの長期政権を倒し、アラビア半島に飛び火した。盤石にも見えたリビア独裁体制の行く末は、北アフリカと中東の明日を占う。欧米も勝負どころと踏んだようだ▼４０年におよぶ己への畏敬（いけい）と服従。その源泉が人徳なのか強権なのか、葬列の長さを思うまでもなく、カダフィ氏にも見当はつこう。大佐だからといって、多くの国民を道連れに戦死を選ぶことはない。白旗の用意をお勧めする▼先の格言集には「遠い戦いの太鼓は甘い音楽」というのがある。日本では「対岸の火事」だが、世界経済に遠い戦争はなく、油田で交える砲火に縮こまるだけである。このうえ油価が上がれば、すでに厳しい日本のエネルギー基盤が揺らぎかねない。揺れはもうたくさんだ。
１０日ぶりに二番手のニュースを取り上げる。曽野綾子さんの『アラブの格言』（新潮新書）にモロッコの警句がある。「判事の下男が死ねば皆が弔いに行くが、判事の葬式には誰も行かない」。なるほど、権力者とは悲しいものだ▼権力者に従う者はもっとつらい。とりわけ権勢の末期である。リビアでも今ごろ、カダフィ大佐の側近らが右往左往しながら、身の振り方を案じていようか。反体制派を追い詰めるリビア政府軍に対し、英仏米などが空海から一斉攻撃に出た▼反政府の動きは東部ベンガジから広がったものの、武力に勝る政府軍がたちまち盛り返し、蜂起の市民がひどい目に遭う矢先だった。そこに、多国籍軍の「人道的介入」を認める国連決議である▼「アラブ民主革命」はチュニジアに始まり、エジプトの長期政権を倒し、アラビア半島に飛び火した。盤石にも見えたリビア独裁体制の行く末は、北アフリカと中東の明日を占う。欧米も勝負どころと踏んだようだ▼４０年におよぶ己への畏敬（いけい）と服従。その源泉が人徳なのか強権なのか、葬列の長さを思うまでもなく、カダフィ氏にも見当はつこう。大佐だからといって、多くの国民を道連れに戦死を選ぶことはない。白旗の用意をお勧めする▼先の格言集には「遠い戦いの太鼓は甘い音楽」というのがある。日本では「対岸の火事」だが、世界経済に遠い戦争はなく、油田で交える砲火に縮こまるだけである。このうえ油価が上がれば、すでに厳しい日本のエネルギー基盤が揺らぎかねない。揺れはもうたくさんだ。
18/03 決済システムダウンの懸念も浮上、みずほ銀のシステムトラブル
2011年3月18日20時5分
印刷
［東京 １８日 ロイター ］ 長期化しているみずほ銀行のシステムトラブルが、決済システム全体に影響を及ぼしかねないとの懸念が浮上し始めた。システムトラブル４日目の１８日になっても解消のメドは立っておらず、安全策を取る企業が資金決済を他行に移せば、他行のシステム負荷が増すことになり、決済システムが不安定になりかねないからだ。
＜震災プラス年度末で、最悪のタイミング＞
「今回のシステムトラブルは最悪のタイミングだ」――。金融庁のある幹部は、こう漏らす。東日本大震災の非常時に加え、年度末と月末が重なっており、１年の中で最も資金決済が集中する時期だからだ。「被災した金融機関のシステムさえ稼働しているのに、なぜ被災もしていないのにシステムが動かないんだ」と同幹部は続ける。
トラブル４日目となった１８日、みずほは同日朝に入金されていなければならない給与振り込み６２万件、１２５６億円が処理できてないと発表。これまでの未処理分を合わせると１００万件以上の振り込み手続きが遅延していることになる。みずほは１８日も、１５日を指定日とする振り込み取引の処理を進めている。１９日からの３連休はＡＴＭを止め、未処理案件をすべて処理した上で、完全復旧にこぎ着けたい考えだ。
＜銀行連鎖トラブルのリスクも＞
みずほのシステムが無事に復旧するか、他行も見守っている。万全の態勢で復旧作業に取り組んでいるみずほだが、万が一でも、週明けにシステムが立ち上がらなければ、給与振り込みなどの決済業務が、自分の銀行に降りかかってくる可能性があるからだ。ある大手銀行幹部は「すでにみずほの取引先から相談を受けている」とも打ち明ける。
他行が代わりを引き受けるにしても、２５日は給与振り込みのピーク。各行ともシステムにバッファーは確保しているものの、余裕が十分にあるわけではない。しかも、準備のためには二日前には企業からそれぞれの銀行のフォーマットに合わせた磁気データを受け取らなければらないという制約もある。「下手に代わりを引き受けて、システムトラブルの連鎖を起こすわけにはいかない」と先の幹部は続ける。
企業の資金決済リスクもある。みずほへの入金が行われないことで、資金の受け取りを当てにしていた企業の資金繰りが一時的につかなくなる可能性もあるからだ。震災で、日銀は兆円単位の流動性供給を実施。日銀の中には、銀行が資金を抱え込む状態が続いているなかで、みずほの決済に支障が広がれば、代わりに資金供給を果たさなければならないリスクを抱えて、さらに資金を抱え込む動きが強まる懸念も浮上している。
（ロイターニュース 布施太郎 竹本能文；編集 石田仁志）
印刷
［東京 １８日 ロイター ］ 長期化しているみずほ銀行のシステムトラブルが、決済システム全体に影響を及ぼしかねないとの懸念が浮上し始めた。システムトラブル４日目の１８日になっても解消のメドは立っておらず、安全策を取る企業が資金決済を他行に移せば、他行のシステム負荷が増すことになり、決済システムが不安定になりかねないからだ。
＜震災プラス年度末で、最悪のタイミング＞
「今回のシステムトラブルは最悪のタイミングだ」――。金融庁のある幹部は、こう漏らす。東日本大震災の非常時に加え、年度末と月末が重なっており、１年の中で最も資金決済が集中する時期だからだ。「被災した金融機関のシステムさえ稼働しているのに、なぜ被災もしていないのにシステムが動かないんだ」と同幹部は続ける。
トラブル４日目となった１８日、みずほは同日朝に入金されていなければならない給与振り込み６２万件、１２５６億円が処理できてないと発表。これまでの未処理分を合わせると１００万件以上の振り込み手続きが遅延していることになる。みずほは１８日も、１５日を指定日とする振り込み取引の処理を進めている。１９日からの３連休はＡＴＭを止め、未処理案件をすべて処理した上で、完全復旧にこぎ着けたい考えだ。
＜銀行連鎖トラブルのリスクも＞
みずほのシステムが無事に復旧するか、他行も見守っている。万全の態勢で復旧作業に取り組んでいるみずほだが、万が一でも、週明けにシステムが立ち上がらなければ、給与振り込みなどの決済業務が、自分の銀行に降りかかってくる可能性があるからだ。ある大手銀行幹部は「すでにみずほの取引先から相談を受けている」とも打ち明ける。
他行が代わりを引き受けるにしても、２５日は給与振り込みのピーク。各行ともシステムにバッファーは確保しているものの、余裕が十分にあるわけではない。しかも、準備のためには二日前には企業からそれぞれの銀行のフォーマットに合わせた磁気データを受け取らなければらないという制約もある。「下手に代わりを引き受けて、システムトラブルの連鎖を起こすわけにはいかない」と先の幹部は続ける。
企業の資金決済リスクもある。みずほへの入金が行われないことで、資金の受け取りを当てにしていた企業の資金繰りが一時的につかなくなる可能性もあるからだ。震災で、日銀は兆円単位の流動性供給を実施。日銀の中には、銀行が資金を抱え込む状態が続いているなかで、みずほの決済に支障が広がれば、代わりに資金供給を果たさなければならないリスクを抱えて、さらに資金を抱え込む動きが強まる懸念も浮上している。
（ロイターニュース 布施太郎 竹本能文；編集 石田仁志）
27/03 みずほダウン―これでもメガバンクか
この大変な時に、いったい何をやっているのか。日本中が「またか」と怒り、あきれているに違いない。
メガバンクの一角、みずほ銀行でコンピューターシステムの大規模な障害が起きた。振り込みなど１００万件を超す資金決済が滞り、一時はすべての現金自動出入機（ＡＴＭ）やネットによる取引も止まった。
給与振り込みが集中した２５日は何とか乗り切ったようだが、発生から１０日余りたっても完全には復旧していない。振り込みでは、たとえば入学金が大学の口座に応急処理で入金されたが、誰が入金したのか分からない、といった問題が残る。
休日返上で人海戦術によるデータ修復を急ぐというが、被災地をはじめとする日本の大ピンチに、その足を引っ張っている。この状況に早く終止符を打たねばならない。
支払いが確定しないために不利益を被る利用者が出た場合など、損害の賠償に誠意をもって当たるべきことはいうまでもない。月末は多くの企業の決算期末でもある。混乱の再発は絶対に許されない。
世間が「またか」と思うのは、２００２年４月に富士、第一勧業、日本興業の３銀行の合併で、みずほ銀行が発足したとたんに大障害を起こした記憶がよみがえるからだ。２５０万件の処理が滞り、復旧に１カ月かかった。その反省は生かされなかったのか。
前回はシステム統合のテストが不十分だった。今回は震災の義援金の振込件数が一部の支店で所定の枠を超え、システムにエラーが起きたらしい。だが、他の銀行は難なく処理している。システムを調整しておかなかったのは人災だという見方もある。
処理に手間取り、雪だるま式に影響が広がったのは前回と同じだ。問題のある処理作業を分離して、後続の処理を滞らせずに済むようなシステム構造になっていないためという。
前回の失敗の教訓を生かすなら、ずっと以前にここを改修しておかなければならなかったはずだ。それができなかったのは、発足時の経営陣が責任をとらず、根本的な問題を長い間放置してきたからではあるまいか。
出身行ごとの派閥争いがやまず、特定の人脈が経営を牛耳ってきた。内部の駆け引きでエネルギーを消耗し、世の動向に疎くなり、失敗を繰り返す。そんな体質を根本的に改革しなければ、再発防止はおぼつかない。
西堀利頭取は全国銀行協会の会長就任を延ばすだけで頭取にとどまるのではないかとの観測も周囲にある。利用者は、あいた口がふさがるまい。
経営者の引責も、再発防止への保証とはならない。だが、そんなことすらできないのに銀行の体質が変わると信じる人が、どれほどいるだろうか。
メガバンクの一角、みずほ銀行でコンピューターシステムの大規模な障害が起きた。振り込みなど１００万件を超す資金決済が滞り、一時はすべての現金自動出入機（ＡＴＭ）やネットによる取引も止まった。
給与振り込みが集中した２５日は何とか乗り切ったようだが、発生から１０日余りたっても完全には復旧していない。振り込みでは、たとえば入学金が大学の口座に応急処理で入金されたが、誰が入金したのか分からない、といった問題が残る。
休日返上で人海戦術によるデータ修復を急ぐというが、被災地をはじめとする日本の大ピンチに、その足を引っ張っている。この状況に早く終止符を打たねばならない。
支払いが確定しないために不利益を被る利用者が出た場合など、損害の賠償に誠意をもって当たるべきことはいうまでもない。月末は多くの企業の決算期末でもある。混乱の再発は絶対に許されない。
世間が「またか」と思うのは、２００２年４月に富士、第一勧業、日本興業の３銀行の合併で、みずほ銀行が発足したとたんに大障害を起こした記憶がよみがえるからだ。２５０万件の処理が滞り、復旧に１カ月かかった。その反省は生かされなかったのか。
前回はシステム統合のテストが不十分だった。今回は震災の義援金の振込件数が一部の支店で所定の枠を超え、システムにエラーが起きたらしい。だが、他の銀行は難なく処理している。システムを調整しておかなかったのは人災だという見方もある。
処理に手間取り、雪だるま式に影響が広がったのは前回と同じだ。問題のある処理作業を分離して、後続の処理を滞らせずに済むようなシステム構造になっていないためという。
前回の失敗の教訓を生かすなら、ずっと以前にここを改修しておかなければならなかったはずだ。それができなかったのは、発足時の経営陣が責任をとらず、根本的な問題を長い間放置してきたからではあるまいか。
出身行ごとの派閥争いがやまず、特定の人脈が経営を牛耳ってきた。内部の駆け引きでエネルギーを消耗し、世の動向に疎くなり、失敗を繰り返す。そんな体質を根本的に改革しなければ、再発防止はおぼつかない。
西堀利頭取は全国銀行協会の会長就任を延ばすだけで頭取にとどまるのではないかとの観測も周囲にある。利用者は、あいた口がふさがるまい。
経営者の引責も、再発防止への保証とはならない。だが、そんなことすらできないのに銀行の体質が変わると信じる人が、どれほどいるだろうか。
27/03 Japanese fashion gains global recognition
BY MAKIKO TAKAHASHI ASAHI SHIMBUN SENIOR STAFF WRITER
2011/03/27
Rei Kawakubo's works were featured at the "Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion" exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. (Provided by Colin Roy)
Motorbike gang and construction worker clothing on display at the "Japan Fashion Now" exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York (Makiko Takahashi)
An exhibition of Yoji Yamamoto works at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (Makiko Takahashi)
Thirty years after Japanese clothes designers like Issey Miyake first gained global prominence, international exhibitions are putting the spotlight on the country's distinctive contribution to international fashion.
The "Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion" exhibition currently showing in Munich, Germany, has just finished a run at the Barbican Art Gallery in London, where it attracted about 35,000 visitors.
The exhibition in London, which closed in early February, was spread over two floors at the Barbican and caught many people's imagination with its diaphanous interior design, presenting garments behind transparent curtains made of white cotton gauze suspended from a vaulted ceiling.
But at the heart of the exhibition are 120 garments by prominent Japanese designers owned by the Kyoto Costume Institute.
The "In Praise of Shadows" section features early works by Rei Kawakubo, Yoji Yamamoto and other designers known for their use of blacks in often unconventional designs.
The "Flatness" section focuses on Issey Miyake and other pioneering designers' exploration of two-dimensionality.
"Tradition and Innovation" explores how Japanese techniques and materials had informed designs by Junya Watanabe, Mintdesigns and others, and the "Cool Japan" section looks at fashion styles influenced by comic books, videogames and other aspects of contemporary Japanese popular culture.
One gallery-goer in London, a lawyer, said the simplicity of the designs had been striking. Every detail and each material used in the clothes seemed to have a meaning, the visitor said.
Akiko Fukai, chief curator of the Kyoto Costume Institute, said the exhibition reflected the institutional strength and diversity of the Japanese fashion world today.
The exhibition was co-curated by Kate Bush, curator of the Barbican Art Gallery, who stressed Japanese fashion's highly original abstract and intellectual approach, as well its distinctive sense of color and shape.
The "Japan Fashion Now" exhibition's six-month run at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) museum in New York will finish in April. It features works from the 1970s and 1980s by Miyake and other renowned designers including Kenzo Takada and Mitsuhiro Matsuda.
There are also displays of street fashion including Lolita, Gothic punk and Gothic-Lolita styles, as well as "oendan" (all-male cheering squad), outrageously embroidered "bosozoku" (motorbike gang) clothing, "Akiba-kei" styles, school uniforms and "mori girl" fashion.
Valerie Steele, who put the event together, said Japanese fashion was notably fast-moving and also interesting because of its lack of engagement in political and social issues.
The "Yoji Yamamoto at the V&A" exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London runs until July 10.
About 80 garments are on display, 20 of which have been placed among other artifacts throughout the museum.
Curator Ligaya Salazar said Yamamoto's garments had changed the Western concept of garment making with their distinctive colors, shapes, materials, durability, and crossing of traditional gender lines.
At this year's Paris Fashion Week, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and other leading fashion brands also presented works inspired by Japanese culture and style.
2011/03/27
Rei Kawakubo's works were featured at the "Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion" exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. (Provided by Colin Roy)
Motorbike gang and construction worker clothing on display at the "Japan Fashion Now" exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York (Makiko Takahashi)
An exhibition of Yoji Yamamoto works at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (Makiko Takahashi)
Thirty years after Japanese clothes designers like Issey Miyake first gained global prominence, international exhibitions are putting the spotlight on the country's distinctive contribution to international fashion.
The "Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion" exhibition currently showing in Munich, Germany, has just finished a run at the Barbican Art Gallery in London, where it attracted about 35,000 visitors.
The exhibition in London, which closed in early February, was spread over two floors at the Barbican and caught many people's imagination with its diaphanous interior design, presenting garments behind transparent curtains made of white cotton gauze suspended from a vaulted ceiling.
But at the heart of the exhibition are 120 garments by prominent Japanese designers owned by the Kyoto Costume Institute.
The "In Praise of Shadows" section features early works by Rei Kawakubo, Yoji Yamamoto and other designers known for their use of blacks in often unconventional designs.
The "Flatness" section focuses on Issey Miyake and other pioneering designers' exploration of two-dimensionality.
"Tradition and Innovation" explores how Japanese techniques and materials had informed designs by Junya Watanabe, Mintdesigns and others, and the "Cool Japan" section looks at fashion styles influenced by comic books, videogames and other aspects of contemporary Japanese popular culture.
One gallery-goer in London, a lawyer, said the simplicity of the designs had been striking. Every detail and each material used in the clothes seemed to have a meaning, the visitor said.
Akiko Fukai, chief curator of the Kyoto Costume Institute, said the exhibition reflected the institutional strength and diversity of the Japanese fashion world today.
The exhibition was co-curated by Kate Bush, curator of the Barbican Art Gallery, who stressed Japanese fashion's highly original abstract and intellectual approach, as well its distinctive sense of color and shape.
The "Japan Fashion Now" exhibition's six-month run at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) museum in New York will finish in April. It features works from the 1970s and 1980s by Miyake and other renowned designers including Kenzo Takada and Mitsuhiro Matsuda.
There are also displays of street fashion including Lolita, Gothic punk and Gothic-Lolita styles, as well as "oendan" (all-male cheering squad), outrageously embroidered "bosozoku" (motorbike gang) clothing, "Akiba-kei" styles, school uniforms and "mori girl" fashion.
Valerie Steele, who put the event together, said Japanese fashion was notably fast-moving and also interesting because of its lack of engagement in political and social issues.
The "Yoji Yamamoto at the V&A" exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London runs until July 10.
About 80 garments are on display, 20 of which have been placed among other artifacts throughout the museum.
Curator Ligaya Salazar said Yamamoto's garments had changed the Western concept of garment making with their distinctive colors, shapes, materials, durability, and crossing of traditional gender lines.
At this year's Paris Fashion Week, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and other leading fashion brands also presented works inspired by Japanese culture and style.
27/03 Is there any alternative to nuclear power?
The Yomiuri Shimbun
The nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant has shaken the foundation of Japan's energy policy.
No alternative source of energy to nuclear power generation appears to be on the horizon, and the power cuts that Tokyo Electric Power Co. is resorting to in the capital and other cities are likely to continue for sometime to come.
The power shortage is not only disrupting the daily lives of the people, it will probably seriously affect the entire economy as many businesses are struggling to cope with the situation.
The government must come up with plans to find the power needed to grease the wheels of the country.
It is now forced to choose between two courses of action: Restore public confidence in nuclear power generation or find alternative energy sources.
Japan depends on other countries for most of its fuel, such as oil and liquefied natural gas. Crude oil and LNG are used for thermal power generation.
However, Japan will be in a bind if countries exporting fuel to this country are destabilized politically.
To ensure energy security, this country has to increase, even gradually, its sources of energy without relying too much on other countries.
Before the earthquake and tsunami disaster, the government came up with a plan to double the ratio of energy sources by nuclear power stations and renewable energy, including solar power, from about 35 percent in fiscal 2007 to 70 percent in fiscal 2030.
The government placed its hopes on nuclear power as a "semi-domestic energy source" because of its efficiency and because the amount of fuel required is small.
However, the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, which stretches over the borders of Okumamachi and Futabamachi in Fukushima Prefecture, has forced the government to think twice about allowing construction of new nuclear power stations.
Already there are moves to suspend construction of nuclear power plants, such as Chugoku Electric Power Co.'s Kaminoseki plant in Kaminosekicho in Yamaguchi Prefecture and TEPCO's reactors at the Higashidori power plant in Higashidorimura in Aomori Prefecture.
The Higashidori plant is shared by Tohoku Electric Power Co. and TEPCO. Tohoku Electric has already started operating its No. 1 reactor and another is in the works, while TEPCO started construction of its No. 1 reactor in January and plans to build a second one.
Operations at TEPCO's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station in Kashiwazaki and Kariwamura in Niigata Prefecture stopped in 2007 following the Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake.
The company has had great difficulty trying to win the understanding of local residents and governments toward fully restarting it. The plant is partially operating now.
As a stopgap measure, TEPCO plans to increase the operation rates of thermal power plants, but fuel costs for these power plants have increased sharply.
The political situations in Middle Eastern countries, which supply 90 percent of Japan's oil imports, are unstable and fuel imports therefore are unreliable.
Renewable energy sources, on which great expectations rest, still provide a relatively small amount of energy.
In addition, many technological problems must be solved before supplies can be increased in this field.
When Japan was adversely affected by two energy crises in the 1970s, the government and the private sector cooperated to make this country an "energy-saving society."
There is no other way to cope with the current situation than to conserve energy as much as possible.
However, a ranking Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry official issued a warning about summer shortages.
"Even if we engage in energy conservation, there'll be a shortage of electricity in the middle of summer. We need a plan to fundamentally solve the situation," the official said.
Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda said Friday that his ministry would compile as early as the end of the month guidelines to restart operations at nuclear power stations after inspections are completed.
But will the government throw itself wholeheartedly behind the nuclear option?
(Mar. 27, 2011)
The nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant has shaken the foundation of Japan's energy policy.
No alternative source of energy to nuclear power generation appears to be on the horizon, and the power cuts that Tokyo Electric Power Co. is resorting to in the capital and other cities are likely to continue for sometime to come.
The power shortage is not only disrupting the daily lives of the people, it will probably seriously affect the entire economy as many businesses are struggling to cope with the situation.
The government must come up with plans to find the power needed to grease the wheels of the country.
It is now forced to choose between two courses of action: Restore public confidence in nuclear power generation or find alternative energy sources.
Japan depends on other countries for most of its fuel, such as oil and liquefied natural gas. Crude oil and LNG are used for thermal power generation.
However, Japan will be in a bind if countries exporting fuel to this country are destabilized politically.
To ensure energy security, this country has to increase, even gradually, its sources of energy without relying too much on other countries.
Before the earthquake and tsunami disaster, the government came up with a plan to double the ratio of energy sources by nuclear power stations and renewable energy, including solar power, from about 35 percent in fiscal 2007 to 70 percent in fiscal 2030.
The government placed its hopes on nuclear power as a "semi-domestic energy source" because of its efficiency and because the amount of fuel required is small.
However, the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, which stretches over the borders of Okumamachi and Futabamachi in Fukushima Prefecture, has forced the government to think twice about allowing construction of new nuclear power stations.
Already there are moves to suspend construction of nuclear power plants, such as Chugoku Electric Power Co.'s Kaminoseki plant in Kaminosekicho in Yamaguchi Prefecture and TEPCO's reactors at the Higashidori power plant in Higashidorimura in Aomori Prefecture.
The Higashidori plant is shared by Tohoku Electric Power Co. and TEPCO. Tohoku Electric has already started operating its No. 1 reactor and another is in the works, while TEPCO started construction of its No. 1 reactor in January and plans to build a second one.
Operations at TEPCO's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station in Kashiwazaki and Kariwamura in Niigata Prefecture stopped in 2007 following the Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake.
The company has had great difficulty trying to win the understanding of local residents and governments toward fully restarting it. The plant is partially operating now.
As a stopgap measure, TEPCO plans to increase the operation rates of thermal power plants, but fuel costs for these power plants have increased sharply.
The political situations in Middle Eastern countries, which supply 90 percent of Japan's oil imports, are unstable and fuel imports therefore are unreliable.
Renewable energy sources, on which great expectations rest, still provide a relatively small amount of energy.
In addition, many technological problems must be solved before supplies can be increased in this field.
When Japan was adversely affected by two energy crises in the 1970s, the government and the private sector cooperated to make this country an "energy-saving society."
There is no other way to cope with the current situation than to conserve energy as much as possible.
However, a ranking Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry official issued a warning about summer shortages.
"Even if we engage in energy conservation, there'll be a shortage of electricity in the middle of summer. We need a plan to fundamentally solve the situation," the official said.
Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda said Friday that his ministry would compile as early as the end of the month guidelines to restart operations at nuclear power stations after inspections are completed.
But will the government throw itself wholeheartedly behind the nuclear option?
(Mar. 27, 2011)
27/03 4 reactors to be cooled by freshwater soon
The Yomiuri Shimbun
The government said it plans to soon begin using freshwater instead of seawater to cool reactors Nos. 1 to 4 at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to prevent salt from eroding water pipes, after high levels of radioactive substances were found in the sea near the facility's south drain outlet.
Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior official of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry, said Saturday morning that pressure inside the No. 1 reactor core had been stabilized thanks to freshwater injected into the reactor Friday.
After injecting freshwater into the No. 2 reactor's core Saturday morning, Nishiyama revealed a plan to also inject freshwater into the four reactors' temporary storage pools for spent nuclear fuel rods as early as Sunday.
Experts said the high level of radioactive substances found in the sea was probably from water-distribution pipes that are part of the reactors' cooling system. Those pipes are believed to have been damaged both by the March 11 earthquake and erosion from seawater used since the disaster, raising fear that further radiation leaks could occur.
Keiji Miyazaki, professor emeritus of Osaka University, said, "Crystallized salt left after seawater evaporates could clog the pipes and prevent water from flowing since seawater is about 3.5 percent salt."
"I don't know yet where [the radioactive substances] leaked from, but freshwater should be used to lessen damage to the pipes as soon as the reactors' freshwater pumps are repaired," Miyazaki said.
The Fukushima No. 1 plant's reactor cooling system normally uses freshwater from a nearby dam, removes any impurities, and saves it in a tank for emergencies. The March 11 earthquake and tsunami, however, destroyed the water-pumping equipment.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. decided to inject seawater after freshwater stored for firefighting purposes in the tank had run out. But injecting seawater with its many impurities could clog the pipes, erode cables, and damage storage pools and other equipment.
Work to enable a switch from seawater to freshwater has been in full swing after the motor for the freshwater pump was repaired Friday. Experts said it would be extremely difficult to determine how much damage seawater has caused to water pipes in the cooling system.
Meanwhile, working conditions near the reactors and turbine buildings continued to be dangerous after three workers were exposed to water with high levels of radioactive materials in the basement of the turbine building of the No. 3 reactor on Thursday. The focus is now on whether the use of freshwater can occur as scheduled.
===
Experts blame management
Meanwhile, experts said TEPCO should ensure that workers are well-informed about how to protect themselves from contamination, as pools of water containing high levels of radioactive substances have been found inside buildings related to the facilities for reactors Nos. 1 to 4, and in the rubble surrounding those buildings.
Two of the three workers were wearing shoes when they stepped into a pool of contaminated water in the turbine building. The water eventually came into contact with their skin.
"The workers could have prevented themselves from being exposed to radiation just by wearing long boots," Kyoto University Prof. Masami Watanabe said. "Management should be blamed for the accident because it failed to keep workers well-informed."
The depth of the pool of water in the turbine building varied from about 20 centimeters to 150 centimeters. TEPCO said it told the subcontracted workers they should stop their work and evacuate.
Nagasaki University Prof. Shunichi Yamashita, an expert on the environmental risks of radiation, said workers at the nuclear plant have been under great stress.
"Workers' tension levels must be peaking, as they are doing vital work that involves great risk. In this situation, they are likely to make mistakes," Yamashita said. "Management must make every effort to prevent workers from using their own judgment in these operations."
(Mar. 27, 2011)
The government said it plans to soon begin using freshwater instead of seawater to cool reactors Nos. 1 to 4 at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to prevent salt from eroding water pipes, after high levels of radioactive substances were found in the sea near the facility's south drain outlet.
Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior official of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry, said Saturday morning that pressure inside the No. 1 reactor core had been stabilized thanks to freshwater injected into the reactor Friday.
After injecting freshwater into the No. 2 reactor's core Saturday morning, Nishiyama revealed a plan to also inject freshwater into the four reactors' temporary storage pools for spent nuclear fuel rods as early as Sunday.
Experts said the high level of radioactive substances found in the sea was probably from water-distribution pipes that are part of the reactors' cooling system. Those pipes are believed to have been damaged both by the March 11 earthquake and erosion from seawater used since the disaster, raising fear that further radiation leaks could occur.
Keiji Miyazaki, professor emeritus of Osaka University, said, "Crystallized salt left after seawater evaporates could clog the pipes and prevent water from flowing since seawater is about 3.5 percent salt."
"I don't know yet where [the radioactive substances] leaked from, but freshwater should be used to lessen damage to the pipes as soon as the reactors' freshwater pumps are repaired," Miyazaki said.
The Fukushima No. 1 plant's reactor cooling system normally uses freshwater from a nearby dam, removes any impurities, and saves it in a tank for emergencies. The March 11 earthquake and tsunami, however, destroyed the water-pumping equipment.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. decided to inject seawater after freshwater stored for firefighting purposes in the tank had run out. But injecting seawater with its many impurities could clog the pipes, erode cables, and damage storage pools and other equipment.
Work to enable a switch from seawater to freshwater has been in full swing after the motor for the freshwater pump was repaired Friday. Experts said it would be extremely difficult to determine how much damage seawater has caused to water pipes in the cooling system.
Meanwhile, working conditions near the reactors and turbine buildings continued to be dangerous after three workers were exposed to water with high levels of radioactive materials in the basement of the turbine building of the No. 3 reactor on Thursday. The focus is now on whether the use of freshwater can occur as scheduled.
===
Experts blame management
Meanwhile, experts said TEPCO should ensure that workers are well-informed about how to protect themselves from contamination, as pools of water containing high levels of radioactive substances have been found inside buildings related to the facilities for reactors Nos. 1 to 4, and in the rubble surrounding those buildings.
Two of the three workers were wearing shoes when they stepped into a pool of contaminated water in the turbine building. The water eventually came into contact with their skin.
"The workers could have prevented themselves from being exposed to radiation just by wearing long boots," Kyoto University Prof. Masami Watanabe said. "Management should be blamed for the accident because it failed to keep workers well-informed."
The depth of the pool of water in the turbine building varied from about 20 centimeters to 150 centimeters. TEPCO said it told the subcontracted workers they should stop their work and evacuate.
Nagasaki University Prof. Shunichi Yamashita, an expert on the environmental risks of radiation, said workers at the nuclear plant have been under great stress.
"Workers' tension levels must be peaking, as they are doing vital work that involves great risk. In this situation, they are likely to make mistakes," Yamashita said. "Management must make every effort to prevent workers from using their own judgment in these operations."
(Mar. 27, 2011)
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