My very dear friends,

I thank you again for signing the petition and for your sympathy for victims of the natural and nuclear disasters. My deep gratitude goes not only to those who have notified me of their action on the list or privately but also to those who would have signed it silently.

It would be very difficult for the national and local governments to decrease the exposure does of the children in Fukushima and neighboring prefectures considerably and immediately. However, surely your signs to the petition should contribute toward [1] forcing them to make efforts for that and [2] assuming that the submission of the petition will be reported by various Japanese media, a larger part of people in the affected areas will be aware of the dangerousness of living there.

I try to explain the second point. This may sound very strange to you, but, from what I have gathered*, most people residing in highly contaminated areas do not know how risky it is for their children and themselves to stay there without taking any special precaution. For the officials and Japanese media have continued to say 'safe' or 'not immediately injurious to your health' repeatedly and repeatedly. Or rather, they should be somewhat aware of the risk but they do not want to admit it, I guess. For most of those families, it would be practically impossible to move to a safe place because their jobs do not allow them to do so. And it must be materially and mentally very painful for them to live apart from their children and vice versa.

* For example the following blogs in Japanese:
<http://myeyeball.exblog.jp/>
<http://newenergy-hideinu.blogspot.com/2011/04/twitter.html>

So I think it is very important to make them -- and other Japanese people residing in a safe or safer place -- aware of the risk so that they take necessary precautions and appeal to the national and local governments to make their environment cleaner, beginning with the removal of contaminated soil from school grounds and streets frequently used by children.

Of course, those who are able to leave their home town will leave sooner or later. They are fortunate but should not be happy to leave their home, friends, acquaintances, the beautiful surrounding nature, etc. Some ten thousands of people in no-go zones have already been forced to do so. Well, a rather serious nuclear accident means numerous persons' losing their hometown and their past life.

Personally, I have never believed the cleanness and the *absolute* safeness of Japanese nuclear plants advertised by TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) and other electric power companies. However, I had not tried seriously to learn what the nuclear energy is and what it means or involves in reality. Stupidly enough, until the accident, I did not understand the real risk of having over 50 reactors in our small islands whose total size is less than that of California, frequently and severely damage by strong earthquakes.
*<http://www.nucleartourist.com/world/japan.htm>

Sadly and to my great surprise, according to some recent opinion surveys, about the half of Japanese people still seem to believe the nuclear plants to be indispensable, even after seeing the Fukushima accident which has not ended at all. Hopefully, the petition you signed will contribute toward making them see the reality, I hope.

And, as a Japanese citizen, I ask you to receive my deep and sincere apology for the massive contamination of the air and the ocean in our planet, caused by the Fukushima Nuclear Plant accident. I have done nothing to stop the fragile nuclear plants in Japan.

Thanks and sorry again,

Kino

--
Additional notes for those of you who are residing in Japan.

I think what I'm going to write below is well known to all of you but anyway...

1. It is still not totally improbable that one of the crippled reactors in the Fukushima Nuclear Plant No 1 will be destructed by a steam explosion, causing the release of a large amount of radioactive materials.

2. If such an accident occurs to one reactor, it will be impossible for any human being to go near the other reactors to try to control them, which will explase sooner or later.

3. The amount of used nuclear fuels in those reactors is 5 or 10 times larger (now I cannot dig out the documentation) than what existed in the forth reactor of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

4. There are several nuclear plants said to be very fragile here in Japan, e.g. Hamaoka nuclear plant in Shizuoka and Monju in Fukui.

5. IRCC, the Japanese Meteorological Agency said that a very strong aftershock (magnitude 8 or so) is more or less likely to occur somewhere in Japanese country within a year.

6. Go figure.

Then, it is very important to be attentive not only to the state of Fukushima nuclear plant No 1 but also to that of other plants. 

- You can know the radioactivity across the country and other information on the radioactive contamination in Japan at:
<http://atmc.jp/> (in Japanese but translation to many languages is available via Google Translate)

- Perhaps SPEEDI (System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information) may help you in knowing the right direction(s) for escaping.
<http://www.nsc.go.jp/mext_speedi/>

- The most reliable earthquake information is available at:
<http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/quake_local_index.html>

- But AQUA (Accurate and QUick Analysis System for Source Parameters) is the fastest:
<http://www.hinet.bosai.go.jp/>

- You can download QuakeInfoDash widget (free, with English interface) supporting AQUA from:
<http://macwidgets.jpn.org/quakeinfodash/index.html>

For those who understand Japanese language, the web links available in this web page may be useful:
<http://www.cp.cmc.osaka-u.ac.jp/~kikuchi/weblog/index.php?UID=1300643454>