PROTEST RESTART OF JAPANESE REACTORS

JOIN NIRS, BEYOND NUCLEAR AT JAPANESE EMBASSY IN WASHINGTON DC

MONDAY, JUNE 18, 2012, NOON

Dear friends in the DC area,

Please join NUCLEAR INFORMATION AND RESOURCE SERVICE and Beyond Nuclear in a lunchtime protest at the Japan Embassy in Washington, DC on Monday, June 18, 2012 at noon. The Embassy is at 2520 Massachusetts Avenue NW, near the Dupont Circle metro station.

We will be hand-delivering a petition signed by thousands of people on NIRS website over the past couple of days asking Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to follow the will of the Japanese people and not restart the two nuclear reactors at Ohi for the summer, as currently planned.

Our colleagues in Japan have asked for this kind of international support, and similar actions will be taking place over the next several days at Japanese embassies and consulates across the world. In addition, major protests are slated to take place in Tokyo on Friday and Sunday.

Public opinion polls show that the people of Japan are resolutely against any restart of nuclear reactors. They have suffered enough because of the Fukushima disaster, but the silver lining is that Japan is now nuclear-free. If the lessons of Fukushima are to have any meaning, Japan should remain nuclear-free.







The petition can be signed here: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5502/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=10938; signatures will be accepted until Monday morning at 9 am. Please let your friends and colleagues know about this petition and protest.







We hope you'll join us on Monday at noon! Email nirsnet@nirs.org and go to www.nirs.org.







Michael Mariotte



Executive Director







http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/11/world/asia/japan-nuclear-complaint/index.html







Fukushima residents call for criminal charges against nuclear officials - CNN.com



By Kyung Lah, CNN



updated 8:44 PM EDT, Mon June 11, 2012

CNN.com













An aerial view of the quake-damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in the town of Futaba, Fukushima prefecture last March.



Tokyo (CNN) -- The executives of the Japanese utility that owns the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and a number of the country's government officials should go to jail, according to a complaint filed by more than 1,000 local residents on Monday.



A total of 1,324 people lodged the unusual criminal complaint with the Fukushima prosecutor's office, naming Tsunehisa Katsumata, the chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) and 32 others.



The complaint argues that the 33 TEPCO executives and government officials are responsible for causing the nuclear disaster that followed the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and exposing the people of Fukushima to radiation.



A spokesman for TEPCO said the company had not received the complaint yet and therefore couldn't immediately comment on the matter.



The Fukushima prosecutor's office will assess the complaint and decide whether it will bring criminal charges against the 33 people it names.



"The Fukushima nuclear accident is the worst corporate crime in Japan's history and caused significant damage to the life, health and assets of the people of Fukushima and the rest of Japan," the group said on its website, dubbed the Plaintiffs Against the Fukushima Nuclear Plant.



The written complaint, filed with the Fukushima District Public Prosecutors Office, also named former TEPCO president Masataka Shimizu



The written complaint says the officials failed to prepare for the disaster, despite the number of earthquakes in Japan and the threat of a tsunami to Fukushima.



They also say the delay of data on the spread of radiation from the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information, or SPEEDI, caused further exposure of the community to radiation. The complaint accuses the executives and government officials of professional negligence resulting in death and injury.

"We lost our homeland, filled with beautiful nature, and our irreplaceable community. We shoulder the heavy burden of a divided local community and we are sitting in the midst of a suffering which shall never end," said the group.

© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs