It is the 12th anniversary of the big earthquake in Tohoku today. It was this time in a day when the quake hit Tohoku and the tsunami killed so many people.
I am reminded of the people victimized. They had to pass away all of sudden. They might have a lot of things to do, dreams and family members left on the earth. Their loss should remain in the hearts of the family members, I believe.
A buddhist monk named Mochizuki has visited the disastered area as soon as it happened. There were so many lives lost and unfound along the coast of the Pacific Ocean. He has visited a number of places praying for the dead. It was very difficult for the people to have funeral and his prayer seemed welcomed by them. I was deeply moved by this photo which showed him walking around in the snowy weather praying for the vicitims. No socks but straw sandals with naked feet. It must be a style of pilgrim monk. He has been to the same area on the anniversary every year praying for those lost in the disaster. Sad enough, he has passed away due to COVID 19 2 years ago.
We have been paying an extra tax for the reconstruction of the disastered area since 2011. No argument against the taxation. The government has decided, however, to divert a part of that tax for the expenditure for military expansion. That military expansion would raise the tension in the Eastern Asia and cause the so called dilemma of military expansion.
It is not comparable with what that monk has done for the people in the disastered area. At least, it is heading to the contrary direction from him.
Still on going disaster is due to the destructed nuclear plants in Fukushima. Over a thousand people were dead from causes related with the accident. More than 40,000 people, being still evacuated from the area, may lose their homeland forever. There have been more than 2000 people indirectly killed by the disaster in Fukushima Prefecture, which is much more than the adjascent prefectures. This high number of disater related death in Fukushima should mean there are lot of dead cases due to the nuclear power plant accident.
The road map for decommissioning nuclear reactors was planned, by the end of 2021, to bring out the nuclear fuel debris melted through the base of each pressure vessel of the nuclear reactor. They could not even reach those debris yet. Underground water is still coming into the reactors producing contaminated water by 150 tons per a day. They will have spent over 20trillion JPY for decommissioning. It is unpredictable by what time the operation is ended and how much it would cost to do that.
The government would re-run the other nuclear plants and even construct new ones to have the base load power. The requirement for the power has been filled with the other ways of power generation since the general population of this country turned to decrease in mid 2000s. The government and power companies are concerned on the expense to maintain the nuclear plants even out of operation, that is, amount up to 1 trillion JPY in a year. They would cut that expense and get venue from the power by the nuclear power plants.
They are even going to protract the operating period, which was originally determined to be 40 years. As you know, there is a serious issue of neutron irradiation to the pressure vessel wall. It aggravates the fragility of the structure at certain rate. At certain time, there could be rupture of the vessel wall and susequently the explosion of the reactor if it is under operation. The risk hightens as the ractor goes on operation. It is hard for anyone to predict that event if they repeat testing it. They say they would run out the test piece for the fragilization.
So the ruling parties' politicians and the people in nepotism to them, while forgetting or neglecting the people in the disastered area, seem to pursue profits for themselves. By no means, I would stand on the side of those profit chasing people. It is not possible for me to do after the monk. But I would behave for the people in the same way as he has done.
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