Latest news with #Fukushima
DW
a day ago
- Politics
- DW
Controversial German-Brazilian nuclear agreement turns 50 – DW – 06/27/2025
On June 27, 1975, Germany and Brazil signed a treaty on cooperation in the field of nuclear energy. Despite Germany's nuclear phase out, it still applies today. The agreement on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, which almost nobody in Germany knows about, will be half a century old at the end of June. It has defied the German anti-nuclear movement, survived the nuclear disasters of Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011, and even the nuclear phase-out in 2023 with the shutdown of Germany's last three nuclear power plants. The treaty aimed to construct eight nuclear power plants, a uranium enrichment plant and a nuclear reprocessing plant in Brazil by Siemens, including training for scientists. The signatories were the German coalition government of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt on the one side, and the Brazilian military dictatorship headed by President Ernesto Geisel on the other. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video "It was celebrated in 1975 as the biggest technology agreement of the century, the enthusiasm was huge on both sides," recalls 73-year-old German-Brazilian sociologist Luiz Ramalho in an interview with DW. Ramalho is chairman of the Latin America Forum in Berlin and has been a critic from the very beginning. He has made terminating the treaty, which is only possible every five years, his life's work. At the end of 2024, he thought he had almost reached his goal with the center-left government the SPD, environmentalist Greens and FDP. There were talks in the ministries at the time, and a termination was examined, especially in view of the notice period on November 18. But then the government fell apart in November 2024. The Green Party has long wanted to end the German-Brazilian nuclear agreement. After all, the Greens are the party that evolved from the anti-nuclear protests in the 1980s. In 2004, the then-Green Federal Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin tried unsuccessfully to convert the nuclear agreement into one for renewable energies. Ten years later, the Greens' urgent motion in opposition to terminate the nuclear agreements with Brazil and India failed due to resistance from the coalition government of the conservative Christian Democrats, its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), and the SPD, under Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU). For Harald Ebner, member of the Bundestag for the Greens, the outcome of the cooperation is sobering. "Even at the drawing board, six of the eight nuclear power plants stipulated in the agreement failed. But the other two are also anything but a success: Angra-3 became a 40-year unfinished construction site, and a single block, Angra-2, was finally connected to the grid in 2000 after 24 years of construction as the world's most expensive nuclear power plant at the time," he wrote to DW. However, Angra-2 is susceptible to earthquakes, landslides and flooding, while more and more hazardous nuclear waste is accumulating on the site, for which there is no solution, says Ebner. In other words, there is nowhere to store the nuclear waste produced there. His conclusion: "Brazil and Germany were both on the wrong track with the agreement, which failed in many respects." For Ebner, nuclear power belongs in the past, but not everyone sees it that way. On the contrary: it is experiencing a renaissance worldwide. According to a study by the International Energy Agency (IEA), more than 40 countries are striving to expand nuclear power in order to meet the growing demand for electricity. In Brazil, nuclear power accounts for just 3% of electricity generation. However, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who used to be rather critical of nuclear energy, expressed great interest in Russia's experience with small nuclear power plants at a meeting in Moscow with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, a few weeks ago. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video And even in Germany, the debate on the use of nuclear energy, which was thought to be dead, has picked up speed again. Although former Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed through the German nuclear phase-out in 2011 shortly after the nuclear reactor disaster in Fukushima, Japan, during the last Bundestag election campaign, Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder, among others, called for the reactivation of three decommissioned nuclear power plants. The new Minister of Economic Affairs, Katharina Reiche from the CDU, also appears to be open to the use of nuclear power. She recently met with colleagues from the so-called European Nuclear Alliance, an association of countries such as France, Sweden and Poland that are committed to greater use of nuclear energy. What does this mean for the German-Brazilian nuclear agreement? Thomas Silberhorn, CDU member of the German Bundestag and long-time member of the German-Brazilian parliamentary group, told DW: "The agreement is an early example of technological partnership and therefore a milestone in our bilateral relations. Today, the focus of cooperation is on hydrogen and renewable energies. But openness to new technologies and energy policy independence remain relevant for Brazil and have also regained importance in Germany and throughout Europe." However, the future of the half-century-old nuclear agreement could depend on the SPD in government. Nina Scheer, energy policy spokesperson for the SPD parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, wrote to DW: "The coalition agreement provides for an intensification of the strategic partnership with Brazil. Due to the importance of the energy transition for strategic and sustainable development potential, this also involves replacing the German-Brazilian nuclear agreement with partnerships in the transition to renewable includes ending the nuclear agreement." Miriam Tornieporth will undoubtedly be happy to hear that. She works for the German anti-nuclear organization "ausgestrahlt e. V.", which was founded in 2008 and has been campaigning for the termination of the German-Brazilian nuclear agreement for years. "This cooperation is simply totally out of date and does not include, for example, any safety aspects that should be included from today's perspective," Tornieporth told DW. The controversial agreement has become particularly explosive due to the latest geopolitical developments, more specifically the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. This is because the French nuclear company Frematome produces fuel rods for nuclear power plants in Lingen, Lower Saxony, in cooperation with Rosatom. The state-owned Russian nuclear industry company has, in turn, concluded an agreement with Brazil for uranium supplies in 2022. "We assume that Russian material is processed both at the Gronau uranium enrichment plant in North Rhine-Westphalia and in Lingen and sent from there to Brazil. In contrast to other forms of energy, the Russian nuclear industry is also exempt from sanctions," says Tornieporth. "As Germany has shut down its nuclear power plants, it would be logical also to shut down the plants in Gronau and Lingen to complete the nuclear phase-out."While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter, Berlin Briefing.
NHK
a day ago
- NHK
Victim's father reacts to serial killer's execution
The father of a victim of the 2017 serial murders in Zama City, south of Tokyo, has reacted to Shiraishi Takahiro's execution. The victim was a 17-year-old high school student who lived in Fukushima Prefecture in northeastern Japan. Her father told NHK on Friday that the execution changes nothing. He said he believes it might have been better for Shiraishi to have lived so that he could repent for what he did.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
Breaking good: the yakuza gangster who became a lawyer
Yoshitomo Morohashi is every inch the lawyer, from his three-piece suit and designer glasses to the sunflower lapel badge identifying him as a member of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations. Then, with little encouragement, he removes his shirt and turns away to reveal a tattoo of an ancient warrior, a samurai sword clenched between his teeth, covering his entire back. Morohashi's readiness to expose his body art is relatively recent: there was a time when he did everything possible to conceal it and the dark past it represented. His life story is an extreme example of poacher-turned-gamekeeper. For more than two decades, Morohashi lived a life of crime as a member of a yakuza organisation before he addressed his drug addiction, with a mental health crisis on a busy Tokyo street setting him on a path of professional and personal redemption. 'The thing is, I had a very happy, normal childhood,' Morohashi says in an interview at his office in Tokyo. 'I was a very good student and always came top of my class, but I found it hard to settle … I was disruptive and drove my teachers crazy.' Morohashi was just 14 when his father, a noodle maker, died, leaving his mother to raise their only child in Iwaki, a large town in Fukushima prefecture. 'I really struggled after my father's death, and I had no brothers or sisters to turn to,' he says. Morohashi's descent into delinquency drowned out his clear academic talent. After failing his university entrance exams, he was sent to Tokyo to attend a cram school and, his mother hoped, gain a degree and start a career. Two years later, he was accepted by Seikei University, but by then he had also found drugs, along with a circle of friends who shared his fondness for aburi – inhaling the smoke from heated methamphetamine. Time that should have been devoted to his studies was spent playing mahjong and hanging out with young men with links to Japan's network of organised crime syndicates. 'I had been swept up in that kind of lifestyle … basically drugs and antisocial behaviour,' he says. His knowledge of narcotics – and his imposing physique – made Morohashi, now a university dropout, a natural recruit for the Inagawa-kai, Japan's third-biggest yakuza group, which employed him as a dealer and debt collector. 'I never shot or stabbed anyone, but I did rough people up with a baseball bat if they didn't repay their loans … but I never targeted the head,' he says. 'The yakuza became my family. I had lost my father, and I finally felt like I belonged. They accepted me. I knew they did awful things to people, but I pretended that it had nothing to do with me.' However, his drug addiction worsened, culminating in 2005 in a public meltdown, stripped to the waist, on the famous 'scramble' crossing in Shibuya – a humiliation that would change the course of his life. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital for six months and expelled from his gang. 'I had embarrassed them,' he explains. His mother, with whom he had not spoken for seven years, rushed to his side, 'even though I knew she was in pain over my drug addiction and yakuza membership'. After being discharged, Morohashi was arrested on drug charges and sentenced to 18 months in prison, suspended for three years. His mother aside, two other people would have a profound effect on Morohashi: the judge at his trial who said he believed in him when he said he wanted to become a lawyer, and Mitsuyo Ōhira, a woman with a similarly chaotic past who wrote about her transformation from yakuza wife to respected lawyer in her 2000 autobiography Dakara, anata mo ikinuite (That's why you too can survive). 'My mother gave me a copy of the book, and I immediately understood how [Ōhira] felt,' says Morohashi, the book now taking pride of place in his office. 'I knew I had made a mess of my life and wanted to be like her.' Over the next seven years, Morohashi rediscovered his scholastic instincts, becoming a qualified estate agent before passing exams to become a judicial scrivener. He then enrolled at law school in Osaka and passed the bar exam – which has a pass rate of 45% – in 2013. 'My identity as a former yakuza weakened,' the 48-year-old says. 'Sometimes I would catch sight of my tattoo in the shower and could barely believe what I had been.' On Ōhira's advice, he did not talk about his old life to his contemporaries at law school or to colleagues at the offices in Osaka and Tokyo where he cut his legal teeth working mainly on criminal cases. Morohashi finally revealed his past in a 2022 YouTube interview, convinced it would make it easier for him to help other men and women whose lives had been turned upside down by their yakuza membership. Today, two years after he opened his own office and released an autobiography – Motoyakuza bengōshi (The Ex-Yakuza Lawyer) – the defence attorney counts gang members among his clients, all united by a desire to escape the yakuza's clutches and rejoin mainstream Japanese society. 'They realise that it's important to take responsibility by serving their time, apologise, and then rebuild their lives. I know that too because of my time in the yakuza.' Demand for Morohashi's services is likely to grow. Japan's fast-ageing society, coupled with the introduction of stricter anti-yakuza laws mean membership is at an all-time low. Even those who leave are forbidden from opening a bank account for five years, making it almost impossible to rent a flat or find a job. A depleted yakuza is now ceding ground to tokuryū – ad hoc groups whose members often don't know each other and which have been accused of crimes ranging from robberies and frauds to assaults and murders. 'I tell the men I represent that they are not leaving the yakuza for the good of society – they are doing it for themselves and their families. When they think of it that way it can work out for them,' he says. 'That's the most important part of what I do as a lawyer, convincing people that they can make things right, no matter what they have done. Giving people hope is what keeps me going.' Now married with a young daughter, Morohashi has reconciled with his mother. 'That's the thing I'm most proud of … I finally made my mum happy.'
Malay Mail
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Malay Mail
J-pop megaband Tokio ends 30-year run after member's alleged misconduct, says trust lost
TOKYO, June 26 — A popular Japanese pop group hired to be the poster boy of disaster-hit Fukushima has announced it is disbanding following the latest scandal to hit the country's embattled entertainment sector. Five-member Tokio emerged in 1994 from Japan's now notorious boyband empire Johnny and Associates, which unravelled in 2023 following revelations about its late founder's decades-long sexual abuse of young boys. Recent years have seen Tokio trimmed to a trio, and in a final death blow, it declared itself defunct yesterday after it emerged that one of its members had engaged in unspecified misconduct. Details surrounding the alleged misbehaviour of Taichi Kokubun, 50, are scarce, with official statements vaguely describing it as a 'violation of compliance protocols'. A few mainstream media outlets in Japan, including Kyodo News, cited 'behaviour that could be considered sexual harassment,' quoting unnamed sources. 'We have decided it's no longer possible for Tokio to regain the trust and support of everyone', the group's statement, released Wednesday, said. Aside from its music success, Tokio for long had another face: the ambassador for Japan's Fukushima region, hit in 2011 by a huge earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. Tokio's relationship with Fukushima predates the disaster, but afterwards it deepened even more with its members tapped to promote the region's reconstruction efforts and food safety. Fukushima's prefectural government even has the 'Tokio Department', a division tasked with collaborating with the musicians to communicate the region's attractiveness. 'For many years, Taichi Kokubun has aligned himself close to us and spread word' of Fukushima, its local government said in a statement, describing Tokio's disbandment as 'extremely regrettable'. 'Tokio's contributions to our prefecture's reconstruction are significant', it added. Kokubun's fall in disgrace is just the latest in a recent series of bombshell scandals to rock Japan's showbiz industry. Johnny & Associates, which has since changed its name, admitted in 2023 that its late founder Johnny Kitagawa had sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men for decades. More recently, high-profile celebrities have found themselves entangled in sexual assault allegations, including J-pop megastar-turned-TV host Masahiro Nakai, who announced his retirement earlier this year. The Nakai saga shed the spotlight on the toxic culture of young women being pressed into attending dinners and drinking parties with powerful industry figures. — AFP
NHK
3 days ago
- Automotive
- NHK
JR East: Shinkansen train power supply systems had damaged chips
East Japan Railway says some of its newest Shinkansen trains that suffered a string of problems last week were found to have damaged semiconductor chips in their electricity supply systems. On June 17, four Yamagata Shinkansen E8 series trains running in Tochigi and Fukushima prefectures experienced problems caused by power supply malfunctions. Each train has two power supply system units. JR East and the system's maker found that six of the eight units were faulty and had damaged semiconductor parts. JR East said chip damage was also reported on June 16 and May 21. No cause has been determined. Such chips may suffer damage when power voltage and current become too high and components get too hot. JR East says it will keep investigating the problem, including whether rising air temperature was a factor.
