Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-03-12-Speech-1-032-000"
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"en.20120312.16.1-032-000"2
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".
Mr President, I would like to thank my fellow Members for arranging this debate, this look back at the events in Japan a year ago. I found what took place in many countries around the world at the weekend very impressive, as was the strength of the signal that we sent Japan, through which we showed that we will also continue to share the grief and dismay of the entire Japanese people even as we go on from last weekend. I also believe, however, that, one year on from this disaster, we need to give closer attention to this matter.
Over the last week, I have had visitors from Japan with me in Brussels who I got to know a few weeks ago during a journey through Japan and to Fukushima. The delegation was headed by Eisaku Sato, who was governor of Fukushima Prefecture for 18 years. The entire delegation from the Fukushima Prefecture made insistent calls on, demands of and requests to the people of Europe that we cannot ignore. The people of the Fukushima Prefecture still feel abandoned in the very difficult and highly dangerous situation in which they live. They do not feel that the Japanese Government is actually taking serious pains to protect them, apart from anything else because the limit values for the ordinary population living in the region around Fukushima have been raised to such an extent that they now correspond to those normally applied to workers in the most heavily contaminated control areas of nuclear power plants. In other words, the Japanese authorities are very consciously accepting an increase in cases of cancer, other diseases and genetic damage in the Fukushima Prefecture in the years, decades and generations to come.
Europe cannot look the other way here, and we must finally force the World Health Organisation to act responsibility in such disaster situations. It must not allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to force it to turn a blind eye to so much irresponsible behaviour.
The IAEA should also be facing criticism from Euratom, the European Commission and the Member States for claiming that the Fukushima nuclear power station was under control and for failing to retract that claim on the anniversary of the disaster. As things stand, the Japanese experts do not agree about the status of the situation in the ruins of Fukushima. Nobody can say how much reactor fuel is still smouldering there; the ruins have not even stabilised as yet. At any time, a tremor could cause these ruins to collapse, an event that would trigger the next disaster for the local population.
It is an objective of the IAEA to spread nuclear power throughout the world. We must not leave it, in this situation, with the responsibility for the entire world. Politicians, experts, farmers and citizens from Japan and the region are begging and demanding that they should be sent an international task force. The experiences gained in Europe from the Chernobyl disaster could save lives in Japan and could perhaps even help stabilise the power station.
The strongest criticism in Japan is aimed at the European stress test, which is now also being applied there. Of the 54 reactors, only two are currently operating. All the others are being inspected under stress test criteria. Toshiba engineers, which is to say people who are very much part of Japan’s ‘nuclear village’, the committed community that champions nuclear power, have told me that the Fukushima nuclear power station passed this stress test with flying colours a year before the disaster.
Ladies and gentlemen, this stress test is truly dubious. The claim that we are improving safety by applying this stress test will be reviewed, in case of doubt, after the next nuclear disaster. It sends a shiver down my spine to think of a European-tested nuclear power station in Japan failing to withstand the next disaster.
I call on the representative of the Commission to carefully consider what Europe has to offer. Our know-how in relation to the energy switch-over and our experiences from Chernobyl are what is needed in Japan – certainly not the European stress test."@en1
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