Thank you for joining our action today.
We are here because of the current nuclear situation in Japan.
That has made us aware of the danger of nuclear technology.
Probably everybody here know about the Fukushima nuclear accident that was caused by the big earthquake happened on 11 March last year in Japan.
Before the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, most of the Japanese people were not concerned about the nuclear issues, even though Japan had experienced two atomic bombs used over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
People in general, like myself, didn’t know what the nuclear technology really was until the accident in Fukushima.
We were simply ignorant, and the government and electric power companies kept the truth of nuclear technology away from us.
This cannot be the case after the Fukushima nuclear accident.
Now people in Japan know that the nuclear power is not ‘safe, clean and economical’ as the government and electric companies had been telling us over the last decades.
It is deadly dangerous, contaminating the environment and incalculably expensive.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is showing it all to us.
The accident is not over yet at all.
It is still going on at this very moment, and in fact, will continue for the next coming decades at the very least. Many people in Fukushima had to fled their lands and for some of them they would not see the day to return to their home again. Or even worse, in some areas in Fukushima people, including children, are forced to live in the high radioactivity, which would be set as the Exclusion zone in the case of the Chernobyl accident.
The reactors at Fukushima Daiichi are badly damaged and the workers cannot get any close to the core of the reactors as the measurement of radioactivity are far too high for living organism to survive. Even a robot cannot operate in there.
On the top of the reactor No.4 building there are still about 1500 fuel rods, which over 1300 are the used fuel that are immensely radioactive, are just laying in a water pool and if they get exposed in the air due to another big earthquake or something, they will spread 10 to 85 times radiation of Chernobyl. This will certainly become a global devastation.
Why there are such things just laying in a power plant?
That is because there is no other place to store the radioactive waste.
Nuclear wastes are very dangerous material and they can’t be just put anywhere, as they contaminate the environment with their radioactivity. They need special protection around them to be stored in special storing facilities that are almost all full already, therefore, some have to be placed in the reactor buildings themselves.
There are many nuclear power plants like that all over the world.
Moreover, they take some hundreds and thousands years or even much longer to be safe enough.
To build a nuclear power plant is like building a house without toilet in a city where it has no capacity for storing bodily wastes which keep the smell at least for some hundreds and thousands years. Would you like to live in a place like that?
And yet, some governments in the world are still in favour of nuclear power dependence, including the Japanese government.
While we are facing such a critical situation, it simply is incomprehensive that, even after the Fukushima accident, the Japanese government is keeping its pro nuclear policy and decided to restart the 2 reactors at Ohi nuclear power plant just after 57 days of shutting down all the nuclear power plants in Japan, without ensuring the reliable safety measure they promised to set.
Against the government’s forceful act up on restarting the Ohi nuclear power plant, many Japanese people stood for stopping the nuclear power plant. There were more than 50 thousands people, and now the number of people are still growing over 100 thousands people.
Although such a great number of people are gathering in front of the Prime Minister’s Official Residence in Tokyo every week on Fridays, to raise a public objection to the situation, citizen’s voice does not seem to reach the government.
Under this circumstance, the Metropolitan Coalition Against Nukes in Tokyo called for an international pressure to make the government hear the voice of people wishing the nuclear free world.
Some people who work in the frame of Hope Step Japan! felt the need to unite and create a coordinated international pressure on the Japanese government that would be essential to bring on real and substantial change there.
Those who are involved have worked in collaboration with WISE Amsterdam and LAKA foundation to bring about this action today.
We believe that the Japanese government and the Japanese public react very sensitively to international pressure, as it has been the strong tendency of Japanese society for many years. This could make the Japanese government realise their significant responsibility towards people in Japan and the rest of the world to secure the safety needed, if we are to live in the future.
Today at this very moment in Tokyo, many people in Japan gather to the Japanese Parliament and making a Human Chain. They surround the parliament building holding candles in their hands to illuminate the circle, to pray for the better world.
We think that nuclear issue is not only Japan’s critical subject but also concerning the entire world. Now international pressure on the Japanese government is absolutely vital to prevent the same tragedy that happened and is still taking place in Fukushima, and to protect the coming generations from the burden of today’s society.
Let’s make our first step together to promise the future generations that we will never repeat the same mistake after Fukushima.
Enough is enough.