The Tokyo Olympics "belittle the Fukushima crisis"

Tokyo, 10 October, 2015

The Tokyo Olympic Games and the Fukushima Crisis

Mitsuhei Murata

Executive Director, Japan Society for Global System and Ethics

Former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland

Preface

The lack of the sense of crisis over Fukushima is in stark contrast to the gravity of the crisis. Fukushima is now undeniably a global security issue. The unstoppable contamination of the Pacific Ocean and the atmosphere is seriously menacing the West Coast of the United States. Japan should make utmost efforts to cope with the Fukushima crisis by retreating from the Tokyo Olympic Games that disseminate the false impression that Fukushima is under control.

Deteriorating situation in Fukushima

Japan is laboring under the consequences of the Accident never before experienced by humanity. Four and half years after the 3.11 disaster, it has been shown that a severe nuclear accident cannot be brought under control by a single state. The Japanese government is bent on restarting nuclear reactors and exporting nuclear technology without clarifying the causes of the accident.

The majority of the Japanese severely criticize this move as immoral and irresponsible. It is questioned if Japan is in possession of the governability and the capacity needed to cope with the impending crisis.

Units 1, 2 and 3 remain inaccessible because of lethal levels of radiation surrounding the buildings. Their containment vessels need a constant flow of nitrogen to maintain low levels of oxygen in order to prevent hydrogen explosions.

If the molten nuclear fuel rods are exposed through cracks to the atmosphere due to a mega earthquake or the liquidization of the site that causes the collapse or the inclination of a nuclear reactor, Japan’s landmass would become uninhabitable to a large extent.

The problem of workers on the site is very serious. The average number of daily workers is now more than 7.000. This requires numerically more than 2.5 million workers a year. Decommissioning of the reactors on the site will take decades. It makes one shudder.

The restart has taken place without clarifying where the responsibility lies for another accident and without establishing truly reliable systems for evacuating residents.

The whole of Japan is threatened by the worsening situation emanating from the molten fuel rods, suspected to be widely disseminating neutron and tritium radiation. Limitless steam observed at the site evokes the possibility of re-criticalityat the site. The undeniable necessity for international verification of the suspected re-criticality at the site should bring about the indispensable international cooperation to cope effectively with the Accident.

The ongoing radioactive contamination of the sea with no prospect for a solution is dishonoring Japan, being criticized as harming the global environment. In spite of all this, attempts are shamefully being made to hide Fukushima. The Tokyo Olympic Games 2020 was decided with the false assurance that Fukushima had been brought under control.

The United States is menaced by the spreading contamination

Recently, a serious typhoon hit eastern Japan creating flooding that has not occurred for at least 50 years. You can imagine the extraordinary amount of radioactive cesium, strontium, and other isotopes spread hundreds of miles from the nuclear catastrophe site yet to be cleaned up and now displaced by the flood into newly contaminated villages.

The consequences of the radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean from Japan to the West Coast of the United States are drawing increased attention. Some experts now estimate that the wave of radiation from Fukushima will be 10-times bigger than all of the radiation from the entire world’s nuclear tests throughout history combined. There are reports stating that dangerous radiation levels have been detected in snows found in Texas, Colorado and Missouri, warning that the US, indeed, is going to face the severest consequences of the ongoing historic, and seemingly unstoppable, nuclear disaster.

The daily increasing contaminated water has been put in nearly1000 hastily fabricated and often leaking storage tanks. Its total volume surpasses more than 600.000 tons and approaches the limitations possibly to end by being totally released into the sea.

The protection of the health of the residents of the US West Coast will soon become a central political issue for the Obama Administration. It cannot but awaken the whole world to the uncontrollable and spreading consequences of the Fukushima Accident.

The Tokyo Olympic Games belittle the Fukushima crisis

It is undeniable that the Tokyo Olympic Games constitute serious impediments for coping with the consequences of the March 11 Disaster by raising the prices of construction materials and aggravating the serious labor shortage in the region.

My interview article was published in the magazine "Monthly Japan" (September). It is entitled "An honorable retreat from the Tokyo Olympic Games" and is given a central place. Reactions are noteworthy and expanding.

In my recent message addressed to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, I suggested to him to cancel the Tokyo Olympic Games, announcing at the same time the candidature for 2028 or 2032 games.

The estimation of the total cost, 2 trillion yen according to the Organizing Committee, has shocked the public. More than 50 times less funding (34.5 billion yen) has been spent for coping with the contaminated water problem at Fukushima Daiichi!

The Tokyo Olympic Games seems to be being utilized to divert attention from Fukushima and to give the impression to the world that Fukushima no longer poses a threat. Shrewd observers point out that there is ‘the front and the back’ relationship between the Tokyo Olympic Games and nuclear reactors. The two are interrelated. The setback of the one will mean that of the other.

The initial commitments of the Tokyo Olympic Games have now been all broken. The original plan of the National Stadium has been cancelled. The emblem of the Tokyo Olympic Games, suspected of plagiarism, has been abandoned. The editorial of the Asahi News Paper dated 25 September 2015 expresses its amazement at the irresponsibility and the carelessness of the Organizing Committee. The IOC could disqualify Tokyo. Japan is now obliged to choose between an honorable retreat and a shameful disqualification. The future of the Olympic Games is at stake. It is as a believer in the spirit of the Olympic Games and the Olympic Movement that I am pleading for an honorable retreat, and this, in order for Japan to consecrate maximum efforts to control the Fukushima crisis.

__ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _  _ _ _ _

see also these two articles from the Asahi Shimbun:

EDITORIAL: 2020 Tokyo Olympic organizing committee needs major reorganization

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/editorial/AJ201510050019

October 05, 2015

Following a fresh start to design the new National Stadium, the effort to develop a new logo for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics has also been launched.

As a new team to carry out the mission, the Tokyo Games organizing committee has set up the Tokyo 2020 Emblems Selection Committee comprising figures in the sports and academic communities as well as art experts.

With an eye to announcing the official Olympic logo next spring, the new panel will decide by mid-October the requirements for accepting applications such as ages and qualifications along with the screening method.

As it established the emblem selection panel, the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games published the results of its postmortem on the logo debacle. At the request of designer Kenjiro Sano, the organizing committee decided on Sept. 1 against using his emblem design amid accusations of plagiarism.

Toshiro Muto, director general and chief executive officer of the organizing committee, and his two deputies have decided to voluntarily return part of their pay to take responsibility for flawed operations and supervision.

This is a review of the logo selection process made internally, not by independent outsiders. The findings of the inquiry nevertheless highlight the organizing committee’s outrageous sloppiness and irresponsibility.

Unless the committee, which clearly lacks transparency, is transformed into a much improved organization, there remain concerns that similar problems will turn up again.

The report on the investigation fully acknowledges that the selection process was seriously flawed in all aspects, including the requirements for applications for the emblem competition, the selection of the members of the screening panel, the screening method and adjustments made to the original design.

At the beginning, the report argues that basic concepts for the emblem, such as its principal message, were not worked out sufficiently, with no clear idea given about what kind of emblem was suitable for the 2020 event.

Since the most basic ideas about the logo design were not thought out well, it was probably inevitable that the emblem thus selected would have to be scrapped.

This report on the internal probe into the selection process, however, is far from satisfactory.

The original emblem design was modified twice in response to requests by some senior officials of the organizing committee. But the report offers no detailed explanation about how that occurred.

It has yet to be made clear what kind of closed-door discussions were behind the modifications to the design, which had been picked through a public selection process based on an international competition.

At a meeting of the organizing committee’s councilors where the results of the review were reported, there were no references to the responsibility of Yoshiro Mori, the president, and other top committee officers for the emblem fiasco.

The fact that the committee is eschewing the crucial debate over who should be held accountable for the logo debacle--and the stadium snafu for that matter--raises serious doubts about whether it is a healthy organization.

The newly created emblem committee stresses its intention to ensure that the selection will be made through an open process.

“We will try to figure out an approach that gets many people involved in both the application and selection phases,” said Ryohei Miyata, president of the Tokyo University of the Arts, who serves as chairman of the panel.

No matter how the selection committee is revamped, however, it is impossible to win public support for the selection process without a fundamental reform of the organizing committee itself, which supervises the project.

There is still a clear need for an exhaustive third-party investigation into what occurred. The committee should first make clear who are responsible for the blunder and then consider seriously its own reorganization to avoid making the same mistake.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 4

Sports minister, blamed for Olympic debacle, to remain in Cabinet until reshuffle

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201509250081

September 25, 2015

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

Sports minister Hakubun Shimomura took a pay cut for the fiasco over the new National Stadium for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and will be replaced when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffles the Cabinet.

Shimomura said at a news conference on Sept. 25 that he called Abe the previous evening to express his intention to step down.

However, Abe, an ideological soul mate of the conservative politician, asked Shimomura to remain at the post until the Cabinet reshuffle expected in early October. Shimomura said he agreed to that proposal.

Shimomura said he decided to resign hours after a third-party committee released a report on Sept. 24 about the confusion over the construction of the new National Stadium, the main venue of the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo. The initial design was scrapped amid public outrage after the expected construction costs ballooned to more than 250 billion yen ($2.1 billion) from an initially envisaged 130 billion yen.

The report named Shimomura as one of those most responsible for the failed plan, saying he “could not create an appropriate organizational structure” to oversee the planning and construction of the stadium.

Shimomura said he will return about 900,000 yen to central government coffers, a figure including six months’ salary as minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology.

“Although there was no illegal act on my part, I felt I bore political responsibility for not being able to stand in the forefront of a national movement to build up momentum (for the Olympics),” Shimomura said at the Sept. 25 news conference. “I made the decision with the release of the report.”

Other top officials will also return part of their pay.

Shinichi Yamanaka, who stepped down on Aug. 4 as vice education minister, will return 10 percent of two months’ salary, while the same will be done by Ichiro Kono, the president of the Japan Sport Council, which is in charge of the project to build the stadium.

Kono will resign as president on Sept. 30 and be replaced by Kazumi Ohigashi, a former J.League chairman.

Kono was also singled out by the sports ministry’s third-party committee for failing to fulfill his responsibility of overseeing such a difficult and complicated project as building a new National Stadium.

The report also criticized what it called a “top-heavy” decision-making process symbolized by an advisory panel to Kono that consisted of such individuals as former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, representatives of various sports organizations and heavyweights in the cultural sector.

The report said the panel transformed from a simple advisory panel to effectively the ultimate decision-making organ in the process behind the construction of the stadium.

(This article was compiled from reports by Atsushi Akutsu and Akio Harada.)