Volunteering group blog post

  I have been volunteering as long as I can remember, as early as boyhood day when I was a boy scout day.  I undersatnd volunteering as doing something for no reward, to imporive of livelyhood of a person and or society,  and I do believe that volunteering is a vital aspect of human development that should be enshrined in the hearts and minds of every person as they grom up.

  However, I sometimes see volunteering being used as cover up by weak institutions and government or failed states who cannot provide the basic needs a tax paying community deserves.  Obviously this does not include times of natural disasters like 3/11, droughts as in Somalia etc...  But in normal circumstances with tax paying citizens, and all the health, eductaion, sanitary etc services being done by volunteer, whlist corrupt officials embezell government coffers.  This is particurlarly true of most third world countries.

Nuclear Society Blog Post

  I think in any serious argument about Nuclear energy today. the most politically correct side to be would the anti nuclear side.  So natural result in this atmosphere is the downplaying the uses and importants of nuclear energy * nuclear health, cheap energy, envronmenatally friendly energy, technologically adavncing academic discipline*, what we only concentrate on are the negative things *radio-active contamination, uranium disposal, Fukushima Dai Ichi, Chernobyl etc.

  I think a much wiser view would be to appreciate though fair and sound evaluation of the both the good and bad aspects of nuclear energy.  I am not saying that the negative aspects of nuclear energy should be ignored, no not at all, They are very serious and cannot be ignored.  I am only saying that they should be weighed without predertemined conclusions or special interests in mind.

Media Repersentation Group Blog Response

When the 3/11  disaster struck, I had just into a new apartment a few days earlier, so did not have a TV set and internet access as yet.

  My main source of information was through friends and Japanese mass media like Newspapers and the daily updates I saw on Train TV news.

  Whenever I got acces to the internet and TV, I really did not trust what the foreing media especially Fox News and CNN, as they seemed to blow everything out of proportion by their dramatic exaggerations.

  I am not a very big fan of social medis sites, so did make any use of Facebook. twitter etc..

Diplomatic Reaction Blog assignment

  As a citizen of Zimbabwe, which is represented by the Embassy of Zimbabwe in Japan which is under the umbrella of the African Diplomatic Corps, ADC, in Japan.  I really got a tremendous amount of help from both the embassy of Zimbabwe and the African Diplomatic Corps.

  They were the sort of gospel for me to stay in calmly and comfortably in Japan.  Their constant communications through emails, on the development of the situation in Eastern Japan, especially that of the Fukushima Power Plant, was very regular and always up to date.  Even at times when there was nothing new to say, they communicated that there was nothing new to report, and alwasy assured us to be calm and take as many precautionary measures as possible but to always react appropriatley and in accordance to the needs of the situation.  Which most of us did.  I highly congratulate on them on a job well done.

  Given the graveness of the situation then, their and everyone elses limited expertise on dealing with such great disaster of such magnitude, lack of resourses and havoc in communication lines, I think that they did a great job that they need to be commended on.

  I think the co-operation that my embassy and the African Deplomatic Corps had with the Japanese authorities, went a long way to bolster relationships in tyhe future.

 

An interesting program on NHK NOW!!!

There is a very interesting program on NHK with expects from the IAEA, which I think is very to our course with Professor Watanabe.

Nuclear Power in Japan: the longer view (ByMARTIN DUSINBERRE)

Nuclear Power in Japan: the longer view

HISTORY ON THE LINE | MARCH 22, 2011 BY MARTIN DUSINBERRE | 1 COMMENT AND 0 REACTIONS

TAGS: FEATURED, FUKUSHIMA, JAPAN, NUCLEAR POWER, POST-WAR HISTORY

Explosions at Japan's Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Creative Commons/daveeza.

I imagine I’m not alone in looking at the apocalyptic images of north-eastern Japan in the last ten days and thinking, I wish I were a doctor of medicine or engineering, not one of history.  Or, to put it more bluntly, a useful doctor, not a paper one.

Yet even historians have their uses at times such as these.  Japan has suffered three disasters since 11 March, and thanks to the expertise of our scientific colleagues appearing in the media, most of us can now hold our own in basic conversations concerning not only tectonic plates and wave structures, but also fuel rods and cooling systems.  Such knowledge is important, but we also need to know how Japan got here in the first place.  Why did the only country in the world to experience the horrors of nuclear weapons in 1945 end up being the third-largest user of nuclear power by 2011?

Bald statistics highlighting the Japanese economy’s overdependence on crude oil imports from the Middle East in the 1960s and early 1970s go only so far in helping us answer that question.  In addition to acknowledging Japan’s lack of natural resources, what we also need to grasp are the ‘cultures of technology’, such as those examined by Gabrielle Hecht in her study of the French nuclear power industry and post-war national identity.  Moreover, with a similar focus on culture and social interactions—the bread-and-butter of historians’ work—we also need to study local politics in order to understand the rise of the nuclear power industry in post-war Japan.  For as Tokyo bureaucrats had realized by the time of the 1973 Oil Shock, there would be no industry at all if local communities refused to host power plants.  No nuclear power industry, and no high-speed economic growth.

This top-down focus on local communities in the late 1960s and 1970s was one means by which policymakers addressed Japan’s so-called ‘nuclear allergy’.  The allergy was not only triggered by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also by the Lucky Dragon incident in 1954, in which members of a Japanese fishing vessel were exposed to radioactive debris from US hydrogen-bomb tests on the Bikini Atoll.  The plight of the fishermen, one of whom died within six months, captured the imagination of Tokyo housewives in particular, and led to the formation of the anti-nuclear movement in Japan.  (The Lucky Dragon incident was also the inspiration for the 1954 blockbuster, Godzilla.)  By targeting resources at local constituencies likely to oppose the arrival of nuclear power in their back yard—fishermen and housewives, for example—Tokyo hoped if not to overcome, then at least to manage the post-war nuclear allergy.

The new regime of subsidies available to host communities, the Three Power Source Development Laws (1974), also addressed a second problem in post-war Japanese society.  Economic growth from the mid-1950s onwards may have been impressively high-speed, but it was unevenly distributed.  By the time of the first Oil Shock, much of rural Japan had entered a depopulation crisis.  For example, Kaminoseki, the small town in south-western Japan which I’ve studied, lost a third of its population between 1960 and 1975 alone, as young people in particular sought education and work in distant cities.  Attempts to attract new investment by major corporations failed, leaving Kaminoseki politicians and bureaucrats ever more desperate in their desire to ‘halt’ depopulation.  In the early 1980s, therefore, they struck on the solution of nuclear power, and the first vote to request a power plant (and the central government subsidies that would come with it) was made in 1984.

This was an example of what we might call Definitely In My Back Yard, rather than the more commonly studied phenomenon, Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY).  But although Kaminoseki’s active pursuit of nuclear power was somewhat unusual, the arguments that made nuclear plants attractive to the majority of townspeople were nevertheless the same as those found in host communities throughout Japan.  A power station would create jobs—less in the plant itself than in secondary industries, such as construction and services. Nuclear subsidies would bring new infrastructure, such as roads, schools, and care centres for the elderly. Nuclear subsidies would lead to lower municipal taxes and subsidised child care.  In Kaminoseki, nuclear subsidies even funded the construction of a new town history museum.

In these ways, the debate about the pros and cons of atomic energy at a local level focused as much on questions of municipal survival as nuclear safety.  In towns such as Kaminoseki, the risks posed to the community by population decline and resulting loss of identity were arguably more visible in everyday life than the abstract, future risks posed by a nuclear power station not yet built.

Even when safety issues were explicitly addressed, technological considerations were filtered by cultural and social interactions.  For example, the electricity companies regularly took residents from potential host communities on ‘study visits’ of nuclear plants in other parts of the country.  To participate in such a visit implied that one had ‘studied’ the issue; those who did not participate, and who questioned the scientific basis of the information on offer, could thus be labelled as having insufficiently ‘studied’ the issue.  In the dispute between majority pro-nuclear and minority anti-nuclear campaigners in Kaminoseki, the pro-campaigners accused their opponents of lacking proper ‘understanding’ of safety issues.  This focus on study and understanding merely polarized the debate over safety: either one understood the issue or one did not.

We should perhaps not go so far in insisting that the only true understanding of the nuclear crisis in Japan can come from studying post-war history.  Nevertheless, any discussion of the post-Fukushima future of the Japanese nuclear industry will be incomplete without at least some understanding of Japan’s nuclear past.  The legacies of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Lucky Dragon remain on the national psyche, as does Japan’s long-held desire for energy independence.  But the dynamics and management of the nuclear power debate at a local level will be as equally important in determining how society responds to the nuclear crisis of 2011.

Martin Dusinberre is Lecturer in Modern Japanese History at Newcastle University.  His first book,Hard Times in the Hometown: A Microhistory of Modern Japan, is forthcoming from the University of Hawaii Press: http://uhpress.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/

F

Commentary on an editorial about Nuclear Energy.

The recently held G8 summit which was held in France could almost be termed a damage control event, as it was taken by unfolding events, not the traditional and always planned agenda issues like economic growth and security of member states.  This year it was the internal unrests in Arab countries especially Libya and the Fukushima nuclear disaster that were the main focus items on the agenda for discussion.

    I think the discussions on the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, as the editor plainly pointed, were very sticky with all the member countries being huge beneficiaries of Nuclear Energy, especially France, America and even Japan the country in question.  It  was also a very politically sensitive area to trade on countless protests in the member countries.  So after of all the diplomatic gabling, the member states were only able to agree that they need to find safer and more sustainable energy forms, while working on improving safety in nuclear energy, so that they will not be a repeat of Fukushima again.  Only Germany took the bold step by stating that they already have plans in the pipeline to be 100% free of nuclear energy by 2020.  Already they have decommissioned 8 nuclear plants in the last 3months alone.

   The truth is that nuclear energy will constitute a significant chunk of our energy pie, so long we do not have another form of energy to match in volume, economical cost, environmental cost and ,yes, safety.  Unless we can answer all the questions on cost, environment and volume, nuclear energy will still be lighting our homes and factories in a millennium.  I am sure the so called Nuclear Summit, announced by Naoto Kan will also propose the same thing that I have above.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/editorial/T110528002300.htm

The authority of Sccience and Technology in Japan, in relation with the Tohoku Earhquake.

I come from a country with a very complex and emotionally troubling colonial history which destroyed my ancestors` known and respected customs, traditions and practices into oblivion as they are today.   These not just being manners and customs, but also the dating system, the counting method, medicinal practices, agricultural practices and a great many other aspects of life, encroaching into the technological sphere.

  Resultantly most modern science we have today is not a development or extension of the reasoning and logic of my ancestors.  Nor was it a voluntary adaptation as it was in Japan.  But rather a forced idea.  Given this background, though the average Zimbabwean would study, trust and embrace the contents and instructions of period table of elements, willingly take medicine prescribed by a doctor and every now and then read a few journals of science.    They will always do this in agony, seeing them all as foreign ideas and practices, but because of their superiority, they have to swallow the ice and accept them.

  Now in Japan, a country with a very long history of sending its brightest of scholars abroad to learn from other cultures and bring back new ideas and practices to help improve the way of life in Japan.  Today`s modern day science is sort of intertwined in Japan`s history, culture and future as well.  It is not seen as foreign but as part of Japanese identity.  Given the numerous Japanese nationalities who have significantly contributed to medicine and science, it only makes it easy.

  This is very evident in the way that Japanese academics have a very high status in society.  You only have to say that ‘a university professor found that eating bananas only is very good to way to lose weight and stay healthy’, and all the bananas will be sold out the next day.  That could also be the same reason that bureaucrats seem to enjoy a position of power and  influence in the country, that is so because they are the representation of the educated.

  I could see that when the earthquake come, almost all the Japanese took the news the government announced blindly folded, even as they couldn`t understand most of the stuff that was being said. The voice the technocrats that things will be alright, seemed to spread a mood comfort and assurance.   Science, seems to have a high position of authority in Japan, more than it does in my country, where it is always stubbornly challenged and poked.

  The constant interpretations and their subsequent announcements by the authorities, did to a great extent calm the majority of the people.   Obviously, this was not everyone, but I am sure it was to a great extent, the majority of the people.  If a disaster of the same magnitude, had hit some where else not Japan, I am sure that panic alone could have cost a lot more in human life than it did in Japan.

  It is my strong belief that in Japan, Science is seen almost as an absolute authority, to be respected and rarely challenged, at least by the average citizen.

Report on Politics on Nature

Report on Politics on Nature

-Actor Network Theory and the Nuclear Industry in Japan

  IN Bruno Latour`s  very winding, complex and difficult book, The Politics of Nature, a new and somewhat odd way of looking at the relationship between Nature and the people who live in this nature is presented.  In this view ecology is given two separate faces of view points, that of facts and the other of values.  Bruno insists that only in this way can ecology be systematically weighed and measured in a qualitative manner, not “Short Circuited” for short term political gain as is the current scenario today.  As an illustrative tool, he used Plato`s Caveman metaphor to explain the problems of not separating values from facts.

  One new theory which he introduced is the Actor Network Theory (ANT) which he developed with other science and technology scholars (J Law and M Callon).  IN this theory he argues that things (including humans) are all related together in both a materialistic and semiotic manner, making them a network, thus functioning network hence becomes a single actor in the big picture.  For example at Sophia we have teachers, students, security stuff, facilities and books, all these things are linked in a materialistic and semiotic manner, making them a network.  Together they become a one single actor, but every part of the system needs to his part of the work otherwise the whole system will collapse.

  Every day I spend almost 30mins browsing the internet looking at developments concerning the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster.  As I was reading about Actor Network Theory in Bruno Latour`s book on an article that that I had read last month came to my mind.  The article was in Japan Times, and was reporting on the current common understanding that ‘lack or improper regulatory practices in the nuclear industry could be attributed to the unfolding disaster in Fukushima’.

  The article argued that the too close and inter-related relationship of the regulated and the regulators in the Japanese nuclear industry led to somewhat gross negligence of duties on the part of the regulators, due to a clear and substantial conflict of interest.  In the Actor Network Theory, the nuclear power industry as a network was malfunctioning and hence unable to regulate its safety practices.  Just like would be the case if some students were also teachers and vice versa at any university.

 

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20110505f1.html

The day of the earthquake.

  When the big earthquake came I was in a very big transitional period.  As a week earlier I had just finished writing and submitted my undergraduate school graduation thesis, and was also busy preparing for my graduation ceremony which was due to be held on the 20^th of that month. The previous day, I had just finished moving all my belongings from the dormitory I used to stay into my new apartment in Asagaya.

  As such, I still had no internet connection as it takes more than two months, had all my books, clothes, cutlery, shoes, and basically everything I owned piled up in boxes all over the small apartment room.  Coming from Zimbabwe, a country that is on a very stable platonic plate and with no history of earthquakes, all odds were against me.

  On the 11^th of March I was supposed to attend a much anticipated farewell party which was being attended by more than 100 people, including alumni, university staff, my colleagues and juniors.  The farewell party is the most looked up to event in the calendar.  It is a far much bigger day than the actual graduation ceremony.  It is the epitome of tradition and pride in a cheer leader’s life.

   IN the midst of all this, all of a sudden, there was a small shack from the left to the right.  I brushed it off as one of those we normally get in Tokyo every now and then.  I stubbornly continued looking for my tie in the piles of boxes which were looking like a rubble dump.   Then the shacking continued, this time with more rage, the shacks got bigger and bigger, I could actually see the surrounding tall building swivering from side to side, which was the first time for me.  My treasured karate trophies fall from the top of the fridge where there were on display, and my prized porcelain vas of flowers full of water went crushing to the ground and there were broken glasses and water all over my new carpet.  All of this commotion really took me out of my comfort zone and got me feeling a bit scared which is quite rare for me.  I began panicking, and decided to get out of the house, my survival instincts commanding me to look for a plain area without any tall buildings.   At the same time my mind was all over the place, thinking if I should lock the door, take warm clothes, get some money, pack some food, and still worrying about the dents on my trophies that had fallen.

  When I got to the evacuation site, which was just a few hundred meters from my house, I was surprised to see so many people already there.  One old man saying that he has never experienced such a large earthquake, at the time I just realized that I had been lucky to still be alive.

　　This could have all been my experience of the great earthquake that took more than 20000 lives, destroyed property worth hundreds of billion of dollars and caused one of the biggest nuclear disasters in Asia.  Alas, I had no television set, no internet connection, no radio and my mobile phone network.  Hence there was no means of medium of communication, except through word of mouth with my neighbors whom I hardly knew as I had just moved. 　So when the whole situation rescinded I continued with my preparations for the farewell party, with no idea of the tremendous amount of damage the Tohoku area had incurred

　　When I got to the train station, the trains were no longer running, they had all been suspended indefinitely.  I asked the station staff what was the situation, and they told me the there was a chance the trains could start running immediately or not at all.  They simply had no idea, until they got orders from their head office.  So still in the dark, I decided to take a taxi cab to Shibuya so as not to be late for the party.  Fortunately there was a radio in the taxi, as the hard news slowly poured in, that is when I started to get a glimpse of the calamity that had gripped Japan.  Amazingly a distance that normally takes less than 20mins, took more than 2hrs, and I paid dearly for that.  The streets were packed, and the whole scenery was in turmoil.  People walking with theirs shoes in hand, traffic jams, babies crying, faces full of fatigue,  endless lines, no street lights, and darkness in Shibuya, a deathly silence all over the normally vibrant night spots of Shibuya.  And as can only be expected, the farewell party was cancelled、even though more than 90% of the attendees had found a way to get to the venue.  Common sense prevailed and tradition was broken.

 We dispersed, I was not prepared to part with another twenty thousand yen, so I set the whole night out in Shibuya, until trains started running in the next morning.  All this time I had not received even one telephone call as the network was congested. Meanwhile the news of the disaster was now all over the world, and in somewhat over exaggerated scales.  When the situation subsided and was able to call home my mum, sisters, and relatives were all in tears.

 

A day I will live to remember.

The situation in Fukushima, Tepco and insurance

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20110514a1.html

An Interesting article I found about the Osaka Expo....

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110512f2.html

Ten main websites of interest

http://socialcommentary13.tumblr.com/

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html

http://www.iaea.org/

http://www.tokyo-gas.co.jp/index_e.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/

http://www.au.int/en/

http://nuclearsakura.takwatanabe.net/

http://edition.cnn.com/

http://www.undp.org/

http://www.iea.org/

http://www.tse.or.jp/english/

Group Website

http://nuclearsakura.takwatanabe.net

The Nuclear Energy Industy after the Tohoku Earthquake