Niigata governor says TEPCO can't be trusted to restart another nuclear plant

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) must give a fuller account of the Fukushima disaster and address its “institutionalised lying” before it can expect to restart another nuclear station, the world’s largest, said a local government official who holds an effective veto over the utility’s revival plan.
“If they don’t do what needs to be done, if they keep skimping on costs and manipulating information, they can never be trusted,” Niigata Gov Hirohiko Izumida told Reuters in an interview.
Izumida must approve the embattled utility’s plans to restart the reactors at Kashiwazaki Kariwa, the world’s biggest nuclear complex on the Japan Sea coast.
A former economy and trade ministry bureaucrat who has emerged as a leading critic of TEPCO, Izumida said he would launch his own commission to investigate the causes and handling of the Fukushima crisis and whether strengthened regulatory safeguards were sufficient to prevent a similar disaster.
Izumida, 51, declined to provide a timetable for completing that review - a process that could force the utility to scrap or abandon one of the key assumptions behind its turnaround plan.
“If Tokyo Electric doesn’t cooperate closely with the prefecture nothing will be solved,” he said.
“Unless we start we won’t know,” he added when asked how long his review could take. “If they cooperate with us, we will be able to proceed smoothly. If not, we won’t.”
Even if Japan’s nuclear safety regulators approve TEPCO’s restart plans for its Niigata reactors, Izumida can effectively block it because of the utility’s need to win backing from local officials. That gives Izumida, a political independent, a platform for calling for a wider reform of Asia’s largest listed electricity utility, which provides power to 29 million homes and businesses in and around Tokyo.
Izumida urged Japan’s government to strip TEPCO of responsibility for decommissioning the wrecked Fukushima reactors, and consider putting it through a taxpayer-funded bankruptcy similar to the process used to restructure Japan Airlines.
Without that kind of sweeping restructuring, Izumida said, TEPCO could be left without the resources needed to ensure the safety of its remaining nuclear plants.
In its current form, the utility threatens to be distracted by how to fund the dismantling of the Fukushima reactors over the next 30 years and the more immediate problem of containing contaminated water at the Fukushima site, Izumida said.
“Unless we create a situation where 80-90% of their thinking is devoted to nuclear safety, I don’t think we can say they have prioritized safety,” he said.
Izumida also called on the government to make more than 6,000 workers involved in decommissioning at Fukushima public employees. A Reuters investigation of working conditions at the plant found widespread abuses, including skimmed wages and the involvement of illegal brokers.
“The workers at the plant are risking their health and giving it their all. They are out in the rain. They are out at night,” Izumida said. “The government needs to respect their efforts and address the situation.”
A TEPCO spokesman said the utility would cooperate with Izumida’s investigation. “Safety is our utmost priority and we are not acting on an assumption of nuclear restarts,” said Yoshimi Hitotsugi. “We want to work on this issue while gaining the understanding of the local population and related parties.”
TEPCO has posted more than 2.7 trillion yen in losses since a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 crippled the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. The disaster knocked out cooling systems, triggered meltdowns in three reactors and a radiation release that forced more than 150,000 people from nearby towns to evacuate.
It is behind schedule on its initial business turnaround plan, which had called for firing up at least one reactor at Kashiwazaki Kariwa by April.
The utility says it can return to profitability in the business year to March without restarting the sprawling complex. But if all seven of the Niigata reactors were operational, TEPCO says it would save $1 billion in monthly fuel costs.
The utility’s admission in July - following months of denials - that the Fukushima plant was leaking radioactive substances into the Pacific Ocean was evidence that TEPCO has not changed, Izumida said, adding the utility developed a culture of “institutionalized lying.”
He said that unless the utility changes its corporate culture he won’t be able to trust it to run the nuclear plant in the prefecture.
“There are three things required of a company that runs nuclear power plants: don’t lie, keep your promises and fulfill your social responsibility,” Izumida said.

Prince Charles regards role of king as 'prison', aide claims

Prince of Wales is in no hurry to become king because he regards the role of monarch as a form of 'prison', one of his aides claims

 

The Prince of Wales is in no hurry to become king because he regards the role of monarch as a form of “prison”, one of his aides has said.

The Prince is often caricatured as a man who is desperate to take over from the Queen, having already become the longest-serving heir in history, but the truth is quite the opposite, according to staff who spoke to Time magazine.

One member of his household told the US-based weekly that the Prince was worried he would not achieve enough with his various interests before “the prison shades” close.

Time’s editor-at-large Catherine Mayer was given unrivalled access to the Prince and more than 50 of his friends and staff for a profile ahead of his 65th birthday, which falls next month.

After interviewing the Prince at Birkhall, his holiday home on the Balmoral estate, she concluded that: “Far from itching to assume the crown, he is already feeling its weight and worrying about the impact on the job he has been doing.”

The Prince told her: “I’ve had this extraordinary feeling, for years and years, ever since I can remember really, of wanting to heal and make things better.
“I feel more than anything else it’s my duty to worry about everybody and their lives in this country, to try to find a way of improving things if I possibly can.”
Prince George was visiting at the time of the interview, and the Prince said his grandson “is what this is all about”, referring to his campaigns to save rainforests and work towards an environmentally sustainable future.
Last week the Prince warned pension fund managers that their grandchildren faced “an exceptionally miserable future” if they continued to pursue short-term gains rather than investing in long-term projects, and he told Time: “It’s everybody else’s grandchildren I’ve been bothering about, but the trouble is if you take that long a view people don’t always know what you’re on about.”
Ms Mayer said the Prince was “joylessly” taking on more duties from the Queen as he prepared one day to succeed her, and was gradually handing over the running of his charities to other people so that they would be autonomous when he took the full-time role as monarch.
She told The Telegraph: “He is really passionate about the work he is doing, and has been doing, for decades. It is his life’s work, and he just won’t have as much time for those other interests when he becomes king.
“He regards it very much with a dull sense of duty, and one member of his household talked about the prison shades closing, but it was a sentiment which came across from lots of people.
“One of the things that became really obvious is quite how much is going on behind the scenes to prepare for the moment he becomes king. There were day-long meetings with heads of his charities discussing how they could make themselves fit for a future without him, and they have been rationalised and restructured.
“But there is no sense of excitement about that, it’s all done with a leaden sort of duty.”
Ms Mayer said that when she arrived at Birkhall on Sep 26, the Prince was late for his interview with her because he was teaching the Duke of Cambridge how to “dub” knights with a sword when he carried out his first investiture ceremony.
She said: “I didn’t see him doing it, but they told me a sword had been sent up from London specially.”
She realised Prince George was visiting when she saw his Silver Cross pram in the hallway.
During the interview, the Prince defended himself against accusations of meddling in town planning and environmental policy, saying: “I couldn’t bear the physical aspect of destroying town centres and historical places, digging up all the hedgerows, cutting down trees, making terrifying prairies covered in chemicals, all that stuff. I thought this was insanity.”
Turning to his insistence on patching up old clothes rather than throwing them away, he said: “If you chuck away too many things, you end up discovering there was value in them.”
Ms Mayer was invited to a dinner at Dumfries House, the 18th century Scottish mansion the Prince has saved for the nation, where she joined wealthy benefactors, affectionately known as “Bond villains” by his staff, for dinner.
The 22 guests ate risotto, sea bass and plum crumble, accompanied by Puligny-Montrachet, Sarget de Gruaud Larose and pink Champagne, and after dinner “a piper in full ceremonial uniform marches twice around the table, playing a medley of traditional Scottish music”.
Ms Mayer also discovered that the Prince, who suffers from a bad back, gets up early every morning to carry out a “rigorous set of exercises” to alleviate his condition.
Julia Cleverdon, special adviser to the Prince’s charities, told her: “Occasionally in the Royal Train you hear a frightful bump,” as he did his stretching.

Bank acknowledges 'contactless' card problems by changing rules

First Direct has told customers who want to pay with contactless cards that they must remove them from their wallets - in an apparent admission that the technology can go wrong.

The introduction of controversial "contactless" payment cards - where customers make payments of up to £20 by briefly touching their card to a reader and do not enter a Pin number - has caused at least one bank to alter its customers' terms and conditions.

First Direct, the offshoot of HSBC, has written to its customers saying "we have made changes to clarify that if you have a contactless debit card you must remove it from your wallet or purse before using it to make a contactless payment."

This change seems a response to the reported cases of mistaken payments, where money has been taken from peoples' accounts without their knowledge but where they think they brushed against a reader by accident.

First Direct offered no further written explanation to customers. But a spokeswoman for the bank admitted the change was being brought in to prevent payments being made accidentally. She said: "If you don't remove cards from your wallet there is a danger the payment may be taken from the wrong card. It could be a bit of a nightmare if it came from a card where there wasn't enough money."

The banking industry has previously downplayed such fears. Around 40million contactless cards are in issue and an estimated 100million payments will be made using them this year. Almost all banks are rolling the technology out automatically, as and when customers' cards are renewed. Cards with the "wave" logo pictured above are enabled for these types of "one-touch" transactions.

Fears of the safety of the technology surfaced in May this year when customers of Marks & Spencer claimed payments were taken without their knowledge. M&S was one of the first large chains to deploy the technology en masse at its checkouts. Many others have followed suit including sandwich chains and restaurants.
There were also fears the cards were vulnerable to fraudsters carrying readers which, if placed near enough to the cardholder's wallet or pocket, could capture data.
UK Cards Association, the trade body for the payments industry, said: "Problems are exceptionally rare, with only a handful of cases reported where the wrong card has been debited when accidentally placed very close to a contactless card reader."
The spokesman added: "The technology is extremely robust, has been thoroughly tested and is working as expected. Payments can only take place where the card is placed within 5 cm (2 inches) of the terminal.

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new series

A new series captures what life is like at frozen food retailer Iceland, but are some of us a little bit snooty in our attitude to frozen food?

Google it and you'll see there have been dozens of attempts to establish whether fresh or frozen vegetables are better for you.

Many cite a US Food and Drug Administration report from 1998 that established frozen was better than fresh. Advocates of frozen say the process prevents nutrient loss occurring in transport. Even those who plump for fresh admit that frozen vegetables are still a healthy option.

And yet there's a marked degree of antipathy towards frozen food.

"Iceland is a classic British institution that half the country loves and half the country hates. Half of the population absolutely hate it without ever having, in most cases, been in a shop or bought a product," says Keith Hann, PR consultant for Iceland Foods. "In a word, snobbery."

For some, frozen food conjures up images of Mike Leigh's 1977 drama Abigail's Party, with kitsch dishes such as defrosted prawn cocktail, vol-au-vents and black forest gateau, not forgetting the staple of any 70s dinner party - the Arctic roll.
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Iceland Foods: Life in the Freezer Cabinet was first broadcast on Monday 21 October at 21:00 BST on BBC Two
Catch up later on BBC iPlayer

Brian Young, director general of the British Frozen Food Federation (BFFF), says he senses a chill in the air when it comes to the British public's opinion of

Venezuela shoots down two 'hostile' planes

Venezuela says two light aircraft have been shot down after entering the country's airspace over the weekend.

These were the first mid-air attacks by fighter jets since a bill authorising such action against illegal planes was approved earlier this month, the Bolivarian Armed Forces said.

The aircraft were allegedly smuggling drugs from Central America and refused to follow the military pilots' orders.

Another 11 unauthorised planes have been disabled on the ground this year.

Venezuelan security forces say more than 35 tonnes of drugs have been found this year.

The head of Venezuela's Strategic Operational Centre, General Vladimir Padrino Lopez, told the country's state television that a plane had been targeted after "all other means of persuasion had been exhausted" in the early hours of Saturday.

"This was the first plane shot mid-air in the country since the approval of the Law and Control Regulation for the Integral Defence of the National Airspace, following the orders of our commander-in-chief, President Nicolas Maduro," Gen Padrino said.
'Narco-traffickers'

Another plane allegedly tried to evade the authorities by trying to land on an illegal airstrip in the jungle and was also shot down.

"These are drug trafficking mafias which intend to use our country as a platform for drug distribution, trespassing our airspace," the head of the National Anti-Drugs Agency, Alejandro Keleris Bucarito said, after posting a photo of the destroyed plane on Twitter.

The two incidents suggest the Venezuelan government is stepping up its efforts to prevent drug-trafficking flights over its airspace, particularly since President Maduro issued a public warning to drug smugglers, the BBC's Will Grant says.

After the approval of the airspace bill, earlier in October, Mr Maduro threatened "international narco-traffickers".

"Any plane entering Venezuela is going to be obliged to land in peace. If not, it will be brought down by our Sukhoi jets, our F-16s and by all of the Venezuelan military aviation," he said.

During the late President Hugo Chavez's period in power, the US Drug Enforcement Administration was expelled from the country provoking criticism from Washington that the Venezuelan authorities weren't doing enough to tackle drug cartels operating in the country.
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