"Chain reaction prevented at Japan plant" Bloomberg News, February 08, 2012
TOKYO - Tokyo Electric Power Co. was forced to use boric acid at its crippled Fukushima atomic plant to prevent an accidental chain reaction after temperatures rose in a reactor in the past week....
Engineers question whether cold shutdown can apply at Fukushima because it is a process used when reactors are shut for regular maintenance. In Fukushima, three uranium fuel cores have melted down.
Translation: You were -- once again -- lied to by government and the authorities.
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Related: Japanese Test Post Tour
Yeah, the thing hasn't stopped leaking radiation since March as they continue to dump water on it that is then contaminated with radiation and released into the sea.
"Protesters decry nuclear power
TOKYO - Thousands of Japanese people marched against nuclear power yesterday, amid growing fear about restarting reactors idled after the March 11 meltdown disaster in northeastern Japan. Holding “No Nukes’’ signs, people gathered at Yoyogi Park in Tokyo for a rally, including Nobel Prize-winning writer Kenzaburo Oe. The protesters then marched peacefully in the streets demanding Japan abandon atomic power (AP)."
On to more important matters:
"US, Japan move to sidestep impasse over Okinawa airbase; Deal reportedly would cut troops moving to Guam" by Chico Harlan | Washington Post, February 09, 2012
TOKYO - The United States and Japan tweaked a long-stalled military realignment plan yesterday, hoping to streamline the transfer of Marines from Okinawa to Guam by cutting the number of troops to be moved and sidestepping a separate controversy about the future location of the Marines’ Okinawa base.
A joint statement about the agreement provided no specifics about the new deal, but Japanese media reported that the United States is likely to send roughly 4,700 troops - not the original 8,000 - to Guam, signaling a possible scaling back of a planned $23 billion military expansion on the tiny island.
The remaining 3,300 troops will be spread across the Asia-Pacific, rotated through bases in Australia and the Philippines.
See: Obama in Asia
Philippine Hit or Miss?
But the agreement would make it easier for the United States to remove those troops from Okinawa in the first place. Based on the US-Japan deal reached in 2006, Marines were to move to Guam only after Japan resolved one of its thorniest domestic issues, securing new land for an existing US air base that Okinawans do not want on their island - in its current location, or anywhere else.
Hey, who cares what the locals want? We got an empire to run, dammit!
The US and Japanese central governments long ago determined the noisy Futenma Marine base, in the middle of Ginowan City, should be rebuilt in a northern and less populated part of Okinawa.
But local opposition has stymied the project. Okinawans say they carry an inordinate burden by hosting about half the US troops in Japan.
By detaching the Guam move from the Futenma Marine base controversy, the United States eased concerns that both sides of the deals were about to collapse. Gemba said he did not yet know a target date for the Marine transfer to Guam.
But the Futenma relocation remains unresolved, with no clear alternative to the status quo, specialists in Tokyo said.
In 2004, a Marine helicopter crashed into a college campus near the base in Ginowan City; nobody died, but the accident inflamed opposition that had already existed for almost a decade, dating to the 1995 rape of an Okinawa 12-year-old by three US servicemen.
In the agreement announced yesterday, the United States and Japan reaffirmed their hope to relocate the Futenma base to the less-populated coastal area known as Henoko Bay.
But so far, a series of Japanese prime ministers - each of whom survived only a short time in office - have been unable to gather support for that plan among Okinawa’s people and politicians.
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Speaking of Japanese politics:
"Japan’s Cabinet shuffled ahead of tax debate" New York Times, January 14, 2012
TOKYO - Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, removed his gaffe-prone defense minister yesterday as part of a Cabinet reshuffling aimed at winning support for a tax increase to trim his nation’s soaring debt....
Former defense minister, Yasuo Ichikawa had been censured by the opposition after boasting that he knew little about the 1995 rape of a schoolgirl by three US servicemen on Okinawa, a crime that caused a backlash against US bases on the island.
Other crucial posts, such as the ministers of finance and foreign affairs, were left unchanged in the new Cabinet....
Noda wants to pay for all this by raising Japan’s national sales tax from 5 percent to 8 percent in 2013, and then 10 percent in 2014....
Noda’s tax plans have run into stiff resistance from opposition parties, who control the upper house of Japan’s Parliament, as well as from members of his own governing Democratic Party. The ouster of the defense minister appeared to be a conciliatory gesture aimed at the main opposition Liberal Democrats, who had vowed to reject any tax increases until Ichikawa was removed.
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"Bluefin tuna nets record $736,000 at auction" associated press, January 06, 2012
TOKYO - A bluefin tuna caught off northeastern Japan fetched a record $736,000 yesterday in the first auction of the year at Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market. The price for the 593-pound tuna beat last year’s record $421,000....
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Related: Wendy's adds $16 foie gras burger in Japan
Also see: Long-hunted cultist surrenders in Japan
