More beef cattle fed irradiated straw

More beef cattle fed irradiated straw

Fukushima and Niigata prefectures have identified more farms that shipped beef cattle that had been fed straw containing radioactive cesium in amounts above the government standard.

Fukushima Prefecture says 7 farms in 6 municipalities fed their cattle straw left outdoors after the March nuclear accident in the prefecture. The straw was found to contain radioactive cesium in amounts up to 520 times the standard.

The farms shipped 411 head of cattle to meat-processing facilities in 5 prefectures including Tokyo from late March to early July.
Fukushima asked local authorities to trace the meat and carry out radiation checks if any was found...

...Investigators have found that a total of 578 head of cattle have been shipped after being fed contaminated straw. The amount of contaminated meat found to have been distributed to markets across the country is expected to rise.

Monday, July 18, 2011 23:24 +0900 (JST)

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/18_25.html




Key players got nuclear ball rolling

Cash paved the way even amid safety doubts on high, ineptitude

By ERIC JOHNSTON
Staff writer

OSAKA — How did earthquake-prone Japan, where two atomic bombs were dropped at the end of World War II creating a strong antinuclear weapons culture, come to embrace nuclear power just a few decades later?

Therein lies a tale whose main characters include two former prime ministers, a suspected war criminal, CIA agent and postwar media baron, and "Japan's Charles Lindbergh," a flamboyant pilot who encouraged people to search for uranium in their backyards.

It also involves thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, engineers and the pronuclear media collectively known as Japan's "nuclear power village."

At the same time it's the story of those who opposed nuclear power from the beginning, warning of the potential dangers and arguing for decades that nuclear power wasn't as safe as advertised, and reactors could be seriously damaged by an earthquake...

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110716f1.html




Rejecting ¥160 million offer from J-Power, Aomori family left with view of nuclear plant

By CHISAKI WATANABE and STUART BIGGS

Bloomberg

OMA, Aomori Pref. — Atsuko Ogasawara's family rejected offers of some ¥160 million for their property on the northern tip of Honshu during a two-decade bid to prevent construction of a nuclear plant. The result: Their fenced-in house is little more than a stone's throw from a facility that opens in 2014.

The family's protest illustrates the challenges facing opponents when they go up against the nuclear industry, a pillar of Japanese energy policy since the late 1960s.

Ogasawara says her mother faced harassment that included letters from local authorities and neighbors pressuring her to sell, unidentified men following her and anonymous phone calls that included a threat to sabotage the family's fishing boat.

"The calls were so frequent my mother hated answering the phone," Ogasawara said in an interview last month in her living room, where a photo of her mother with a freshly caught tuna hangs on the wall. Her mother died in 2006...

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110715f1.html