原発に頼らない社会を。市民から世界へ37年の情報発信を継続したい

Providing expert information on nuclear energy in Japan to the world ~Empowering global citizens for 37 years: Nuke Info Tokyo

The latest information on nuclear power in Japan

 

 

Crowdfunding to secure funding to continue publishing Nuke Info Tokyo

When NIT began in 1987, it was printed and posted out to readers in Japan and around the world. At this time a subscription fee was charged to readers in Japan, although readers outside Japan were not charged. However, as digital technology progressed and the internet became more widespread, we decided to end the printed version and shift NIT to our website. This was in 2009. Now, when a new edition is uploaded, we send email notifications to all our readers. Of course, anyone looking for information online can also access our articles.

 

We stopped charging subscription fees when NIT moved online. This was also when we decided that the translation team, even though they were all friends of CNIC and happy to contribute to our mission to realize a nuclear-free world, deserved to be paid for their highly professional and specialized work translating articles for NIT. Although it is half or less than the market rate, our translation team still now receive payment for their work.

 

Aims of our crowdfunding project

Our main aim is to secure funding to continue publishing Nuke Info Tokyo on our website.

 

Costs to produce NIT for one year:

Translator wages: 500,000 yen (approx. $3,500)                  

Staff wages: 1,000,000 yen (approx. $7,000)

 

TOTAL: 1.5 million yen (approx. $10,400)

 

If this target is exceeded, we will be able to

  - improve the website to make it easier to search for information

  - increase the volume of information we upload in each edition of NIT

  - upload information in a more timely way

 

Thanks to the generous support from friends of Nuke Info Tokyo, our previous crowdfunding campaign in 2021 raised 2,080,000yen which covered the production costs of Nuke Info Tokyo for more than one year. Also, since our last campaign, we have been publishing English translations of CNIC statements as soon as possible after issuing the statement in Japanese.

 

Dr. Takagi Jinzabro and the History of Nuke Info Tokyo

One of the founders of CNIC was Dr. Takagi Jinzaburo (1938-2000), a nuclear chemist who started his career in the Japanese nuclear industry when it was believed nuclear energy would be the answer for Japan’s lack of resources and would power the country’s rapidly expanding economy.

 

But Dr. Takagi saw the dangers of nuclear energy, both to human health and to our democratic societies. Citizens were excluded from policy decisions on nuclear energy because it was believed to be ‘too difficult’ for the average person to understand, but by leaving all the decisions on what was a potentially catastrophic technology, to the so-called experts, citizens were putting their own lives and the lives of future generations in danger. The answer was to provide information on the risks of nuclear energy so that citizens could understand and make informed decisions about their energy future, the ‘Citizen Science’ approach.

 

This photo of Dr. Takagi hangs on the CNIC office wall. We feel as though he is still watching over us!

 

 

Nuke Info Tokyo (NIT) is the English bi-monthly publication of CNIC. It began when CNIC’s director at the time, Dr. Takagi, attended the Anti Atom International Conference in Vienna in 1986 and was shocked at how little was known about Japan’s nuclear industry and even less about Japan’s anti-nuke movement. Always a strong advocate of international solidarity against the global nuclear industry, Dr. Takagi was determined to publish an English newsletter despite problems of securing financial support and working staff. “Let’s just try 5 or 6 issues and then think again whether to continue” was how NIT started. The latest issue of NIT is our 222^nd, thanks to, as Dr. Takagi acknowledged on NIT’s 10th anniversary, “the continuing encouragement and support of international readers.” In the very first edition Dr. Takagi also expressed the “determination” of CNIC to continue publishing NIT into the foreseeable future. It is this determination, as well as the encouragement and support of international readers that has sustained us until today.

 

 

Why is this information so important?

 

We saw during the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, started on March 11, 2011, how important independent, expert information is. Governments and industry tend to withhold information at the best of times and during this catastrophic accident, they simply could not be depended upon to provide accurate and detailed information. So there was a need to get vital information about what was happening inside the nuclear plant and the implications of this, to people around the world who could be affected.

 

Even today, after 13 years, this accident is far from over. On January 1 of this year, the Shika Nuclear Power Plant in Ishikawa Prefecture was damaged by the Noto Peninsula earthquake. Nevertheless, there are 33 nuclear power plants are in operation in this earthquake-prone country Japan.

 

We must continue to monitor, on a global level, the nuclear plants and facilities, and the decisions made by authorities, which could affect large numbers of people around the world, and together raise our voices to protect our planet and our future.

 

The voices of the people of Fukushima must also be heard. 160,000 people evacuated their homes due to the accident and 25,798 people (as of August 1^st 2024) have still not returned. Many feel as though their homes and lives, their culture and history have been stolen. They face discrimination, financial, psychological and health problems, yet many want to tell their stories, as painful as they are, so that this will never happen again—to anyone. Just as the hibakusha of Nagasaki and Hiroshima raise their voices so that no one in the world will have to go through the horrors that they experienced, the hibakusha of Fukushima have a message that the world should hear. 

 

NIT/Website Contents

Our specialty is providing information and data regarding nuclear power generation from independent experts. This information covers a number of areas, including:

・TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

https://cnic.jp/english/?cat=24

・technical and safety aspects of nuclear reactors

https://cnic.jp/english/?cat=36

・exposure to radiation and health implications

https://cnic.jp/english/?cat=78

・the human and social costs of nuclear power

https://cnic.jp/english/?cat=89

・economic aspects

https://cnic.jp/english/?cat=90

・legal challenges to nuclear power

https://cnic.jp/english/?cat=41

・introducing our readers to individual activists and anti-nuke groups in Japan

https://cnic.jp/english/?cat=14

 

Message from OurTranslation Team

Tony Boys

I have been proofreading and translating materials for CNIC (mostly NIT articles) since the 1980s. Not only is this work quite (sometimes very) technical, I believe it is part of the legacy of Dr. Jinzaburo Takagi that this work is performed at the highest standard possible in terms of both correctness of factual content and ease of reading for non-technical readers, which is not always an easy ideal to achieve. NIT therefore provides international readers who are concerned about the state of nuclear issues in Japan with high-quality articles on all aspects of Japan’s nuclear scene, including, for example, human rights and other problems faced by evacuees from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.

My role for NIT is to translate one or two articles for each issue and to proofread the entire issue. I firstly proofread all translations as soon as they are complete and hand them over to CNIC, where all the English articles are read by the editor, the author of the article and other CNIC staff. “Proofreading” here means checking the accuracy of the English translation, the factual content, as well as the readability and, of course, the correctness of the English. I then do a final proofreading of all the content immediately before publication.

I am very happy to say that I feel we are faithfully maintaining Dr. Jinzaburo Takagi’s original concept of providing accurate information on the nuclear industry and anti-nuclear movement in Japan to international readers at a high standard that Dr. Takagi would be proud of. This is all due to the dedication and professionalism of everyone involved in producing each issue of NIT. As Dr. Takagi realized in 1986, it is crucial to have a source of reliable and independent information about the Japanese nuclear industry in English to act as a balance to materials and statements published by the Japanese government and power industry. This role is performed solely by NIT, and hopefully, with your help, we will continue to provide the world with this important information. Thank you!

 

Patricia Ormsby

 

Acquainted with environmental issues since childhood as a member of the Wasatch Mountain Club in Salt Lake City, Utah, and especially aware of nuclear issues as a down-winder who as a small child witnessed a nighttime atomic bomb test from southern Utah, which lit up a town over 100 km away like daylight, I have been a passionate advocate for environmental conservation and the Precautionary Principle. In volunteer work in the late 1990s, I presented a dosimeter to scientists in Siberia and met refugee children from Chernobyl there. When offered a chance to help the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center publish Nuke Info Tokyo, I was thrilled to oblige. I think this is a great team of dedicated people who have earned praise from heroes like Arnie Gundersen. It is critically important to keep an eye on the nuclear industry and keep the public informed, as they are the ones that wind up facing the disastrous consequences of poorly considered economizing, as we saw in Fukushima, or human error as we saw at Chernobyl, or haste under pressure as we saw in Tokaimura. As resource constraints put further economic pressure on governments and industries, we must anticipate further shortcuts and more underhanded attempts to transfer the burden to future generations, and call them out whenever we see this.

 

Nishioka Mayumi

Thirteen years have passed since the Fukushima Daiichi reactor explosions. It is still unknown when the “cleanup” of the melted down reactors will be completed, whatever the word cleanup refers to. However, the Japanese government and industry have not given up on nuclear power. In 2023, the Kishida administration decided on a Basic Policy for the Realization of a Green Transformation (coined “GX”), which seeks the possibility of replacing old reactors with “innovated” ones and enabling the unjustified extension of aged reactors’ lives. Citizens against nuclear power in Japan are making the utmost efforts to halt this policy change.

To my knowledge, Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center is the only organization that periodically reports the latest news on Japan’s anti-nuclear movement in English. We would be very grateful if you could help the organization continue issuing the Nuke Info Tokyo by supporting this crowdfunding project.

 

Introducing some of our expert writers

 

Hasegawa Koichi

Environmental Sociologist, Auditor of Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, Professor Emeritus of Tohoku University, Professor of Shokei Gakuin University

 

Hasegawa Koichi was a moderator of the international conference held by Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center. He has also given a lecture at one of our seminars. For 600^th commemorative issue of CNIC’s monthly newsletter “Tsushin”, he contributed an article on the importance of social watchdog under current situation in Japan where a return to nuclear power policy is promoted, despite the fact that there are still many problems left even 13 years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, and the roles of “Tsushin” which have been giving voice to civil society.

https://cnic.jp/english/?p=7492

 

Goto Masashi
Former nuclear reactor design engineer, member of the Citizens’ Commission on Nuclear Energy

Goto Masashi worked at Toshiba, a major nuclear power plant manufacturer, as a containment vessel design engineer on the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, Hamaoka and Onagawa nuclear plants. He provided updates during the Fukushima Daiichi disaster and was one of the first nuclear engineers to say publicly that he believed there had been meltdowns. He has written for NIT focusing on design flaws that became apparent at Fukushima Daiichi.
https://cnic.jp/english/?p=4255
 

Sakiyama Hisako 
Director Representative, 
3/11 Fund for Children with Thyroid Cancer
 

Sakiyama Hisako is a medical doctor and after working as a researcher at MIT she was a senior researcher at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Japan. She served as a member of the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC). She has written for NIT on thyroid cancer in children since the Fukushima Daiichi accident.
https://cnic.jp/english/?p=3610
 

Matsukubo Hajime
CNIC Bureau Chief
 

Matsukubo Hajime is the CNIC bureau chief but worked in a financial institution until 2012. He writes many articles for NIT, on a range of topics, including the economics of nuclear power, giving detailed analysis of how governments and industry try to trick us in to believing that nuclear power is cheap.
https://cnic.jp/47001　
https://cnic.jp/47439　
https://cnic.jp/51404　
https://cnic.jp/50004

 

Kaido Yuichi is one of Japan’s most well-known lawyers who has been involved in many anti-nuke cases. He has written for NIT on some of these cases, including the criminal trial of three TEPCO executives.
https://cnic.jp/english/?p=4580
 

Seto Daisaku
Secretary General, Incorporated Association Anti-Poverty Network,

Secretary General, Evacuation Cooperation Center
 

Seto Daisaku is the Secretary General of the Evacuation Cooperation Center which assists Fukushima evacuees. His article in NIT reports on the ground reality, cases where Fukushima evacuees are facing extreme difficulties and how his organization supports them. 
https://cnic.jp/english/?p=4331
 

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