BE BRAVE : SAY NO TO NUKES Ruling banning nuclear reactor restarts translated into English, Korean, Chinese July 13, 2014 By HIDEKI MUROYA/ Staff Writer An anti-nuclear citizens’ network has translated a Japanese court’s ruling blocking the restarts of two reactors into English, Korean and Chinese to spread the “universal values” of the judgment. Aileen Mioko Smith, the 64-year-old leader of the Kyoto-based anti-nuclear group Green Action, said she received a number of inquiries from nongovernmental groups in the United States and European embassies in Tokyo about the implications of the Fukui District Court’s landmark ruling on May 21. The court ordered Kansai Electric Power Co. not to restart the two reactors at its Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture, saying that local residents can seek a halt to reactor operations because it is impossible for modern science to predict the scale of possible earthquakes. Smith said she was asked if the ruling could effectively stop the resumption of the Oi nuclear plant and how it would affect the safety screenings of nuclear plants by the Nuclear Regulation Authority. She said she was convinced that the ruling could be a “good wake-up call” for operators of nuclear power plants around the world, so she decided to post an English translation of the ruling on the Internet. Smith contacted Shaun Burnie, a 51-year-old nuclear adviser to Greenpeace Germany, and they commissioned an Australian to translate the ruling into English. Part of the translated ruling says: “… this court considers national wealth to be the rich land and the people’s livelihoods that have taken root there, and that being unable to recover these is the true loss of national wealth.” The ruling also says, “… the operation of nuclear power plants as one means of producing electricity is legally associated with freedom of economic activity and has a lower ranking in the Constitution than the central tenet of personal rights.” After the translation was posted on Greenpeace Japan’s website in June, it collected 2,420 “likes” on Facebook within 10 days. On the night of May 21, Kiyoko Mito, a 78-year-old plaintiff in the lawsuit, asked her Korean and Chinese friends to translate the Fukui District Court’s ruling. Mito wanted the ruling read by as many people as possible in East Asia, which is becoming increasing reliant on nuclear energy. According to Japan Atomic Industrial Forum Inc., 42 of the 81 nuclear power plants under construction around the world were located in Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan at the beginning of this year. Mito asked Kim Bok-nyeo, a 51-year-old translator based in Seoul, to translate the Fukui court ruling. Lawyers representing plaintiffs in lawsuits demanding a suspension of nuclear reactors in South Korea also requested a translation. It took Kim 10 days to work out the Korean version. The ruling said plaintiffs who live within 250 kilometers of the Oi nuclear plant face real risks, and if that standard is applied to nuclear plants in South Korea, “there is no nuclear plant in South Korea that can operate,” Kim said. Mito, who once worked as a Japanese language teacher in China, asked a former colleague in the country for a Chinese translation of the ruling. After reading the ruling in Chinese, Taiwanese lawyer Cai Yaying, who represents plaintiffs demanding a suspension of nuclear plant operations, said Taiwanese courts must also take into account the potential risks to the lives of local residents. Lawyer Hiroyuki Kawai, who heads a network of plaintiff groups demanding the abolishment of nuclear energy, said it is “extremely rare” for a Japanese court ruling other than in patent cases to be translated into foreign languages. “The ruling has resonated with people around the world because it declared universal values by placing priority on the lives of people over the merits of nuclear energy,” Kawai said. ajw.asahi/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201407130025 The translated versions of the ruling are available at Green Action’s website (greenaction-japan.org/).
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 00:37:08 +0000
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