Humankind created civilization and built the society of today by differentiating itself from other animals through the use of fire. During this process humans have controlled fire to build civilized society, which has also resulted in death, the loss of property, and much suffering. Fire is a threat; even now 25,000 Japanese people die each year because of fires. But because there is great value to using fire, we still continue utilizing it today despite the inherent risks.
　When you think about it, victims result from the usage of all types of energy. Around 3,500 people die each year in coal mining accidents ? especially in China, where the total number of deaths in 2010 was 2,433 people. The largest numbers were from gas explosions and fires caused by petroleum and kerosene.
　According to the World Health Organization, each year 1.3 million people die in accidents caused by automobiles, which run on gasoline and diesel oil. Despite this, we still continue using cars because the convenience is greater than the risks. Humankind has developed civilization in this way up until today.
　CO2 is produced by burning and using wood, coal, gas, and petroleum. The hypothesis that CO2 is one cause of global warming has yet to be proven, but international regulations have been placed on CO2 emissions according to this theory before it is too late to fix this problem. An emissions trading market has even appeared in which emissions are bought and sold for money. Because Japan ? which has already established energy conservation and low CO2 emission technologies ? uses a great deal of energy, it has been subjected to a massive financial burden.
　The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) came to power in 2009. The first prime minister was Yukio Hatoyama, who immediately after assuming office made a promise to the world that by 2020 Japan would cut greenhouse gases by 25% compared to the level in 1990. However, this promise should be temporarily repealed due to the recent Great East Japan Earthquake. Naturally, it was supposed that one method for attaining this reckless 25% reduction would be producing half of Japan’s electric power through nuclear power generation. Another method was to be engaging in emissions trading by providing free technological support to countries like China, which have large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and poor energy efficiency, and counting the amount of emissions reduced as belonging to Japan.
　One year has passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake. Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced that Japan would abandon nuclear power generation, and many media outlets report in a hysterical fashion on the threat of radiation (despite the fact that not one person has died even now). As a result, the government set the standard for performing decontamination as one millisievert per year or greater. Throughout the world there are places such as Ramsar in Iran where the yearly average amount of natural radiation exceeds 10 millisieverts, as well as places with large amounts like Guarapari, Brazil, where the average amount is 5.5 millisieverts per year. Yet people live healthfully in these places, and I have never heard that decontamination was performed at Hiroshima or Nagasaki in the past. Despite the existence of such places, the government’s decontamination standard of one millisievert is much too low and totally ignores considerations of cost or time. In the future it is likely that we will be subjected to astronomical amounts of taxes in order to cover the expense of this decontamination.
　Japan is home to 54 nuclear power plants, but only two of them are currently being operated. If things continue as they are, all of these plants will be shut down in April. We should swiftly re-start operations at reactors that have been inspected. Even when operations are halted, nuclear fission is stopped, and a plant is put into cold shutdown, the decay heat from the atomic fuel lingers for a long period of time and the facilities must be maintained for many years. Furthermore, decommissioning a nuclear reactor requires a great deal of money and dozens of years of time. Running costs are required even when electric power is not being produced, which is borne by the citizens in the end.
　To cover the gap left by these nuclear power plants and control its amount of CO2 emissions, Japan has been forced to re-start operations at thermal power stations that had previously been shut down. Because they are operated by purchasing additional oil from the major oil companies, the involved cost increase is approximately three trillion yen per year. Japan possesses the world’s most advanced nuclear power technologies. If extremely safe, cheap, highly efficient nuclear reactors were built and exported throughout the world to countries like Vietnam and Turkey, demand for crude oil would decrease. Many other factors are also causing decreased demand for crude oil, such as shale gas and efforts to mine methane hydrate from Japan’s coastal waters. In recent years the major oil companies have practically come to possess an oil glut, so to them the accident at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima was a piece of good luck. I can’t help but wondering if the masochistic concept of abandoning nuclear power generation is a strategy to lead public opinion that is being undertaken by the major oil companies and the anti-Japanese media that stirs up fear.

　　During the nuclear accident at Chernobyl control of the nuclear reactor was lost, and it exploded while it was being operated. For that reason, a great deal of radioactive material including atomic fuel was dispersed in neighboring countries. In contrast, during the accident in Fukushima the nuclear reactors were automatically stopped when they detected the P-waves from the earthquake. However, it became impossible to provide water to the reactors to cool the decay heat produced from shutting them down. The zirconium fuel cladding on the fuel rods reacted with the high-temperature water vapor, producing hydrogen. The reactors should have been immediately vented at this stage, which would have released the hydrogen to the outside of the nuclear reactor building. But because some radiation would have been released at the same time, this judgment was made too late. Consequently, hydrogen explosions occurred and large amounts of radioactive materials were dispersed.
　The distance at which radioactive materials caused by the Fukushima nuclear accident have been confirmed is 1/8th that of the Chernobyl accident, while the area is only 1/64th the size. For that reason, it’s extremely odd to judge the accident at Fukushima as a Level 7 event ? the same as the Chernobyl accident and the highest level. I feel that this was a masochistic measure undertaken by the Japanese bureaucrats, who were afraid of being criticized if they raised the level in small increments.
　There is no need for excessive worry about radiation. Radiation exists in the natural world, and things like radon and radium spas are thought to be beneficial for health. People are also exposed to radiation for the purpose of medical care, such as for CT scans and X-rays. Too much attention is being paid to internal exposure stemming by foods produced in Fukushima. After all, positron emission tomography (PET) scans are performed by injecting people with radioactive medicine to conduct the test, thereby subjecting them to internal exposure. Furthermore, the United States, Soviet Union, England, France, and China competed with each other to carry out nuclear bomb experiments throughout the world during the 1960s. The entire world was contaminated by radiation, and even people in Tokyo were unknowingly exposed to several times more radiation than that resulting from the Fukushima accident. Not one person has died or been injured by the nuclear accident in Fukushima, so the attempt to shut down all nuclear power plants in Japan is a truly extreme reaction.
　The Great East Japan Earthquake was of a scale that happens once every 1,000 years. The number of people who died or went missing because of the earthquake and resulting tsunami is around 19,000 people. Over 90% of these drowned during the tsunami; at most, 1,000 passed away because of collapsed buildings and fires. This was very different from the Great Hanshin Earthquake, when many people died because they were on the first floor of two-story wooden buildings and because of the resulting fires.
　Since the earthquake, plans are underway to prevent tsunami damage by building higher embankments or moving residents to higher ground. But as a direct result of these existing counter-measures, it will become harder for fishermen and marine product processors to carry out their work on high ground. Existing communities will also be destroyed, and regions will suffer decline. For these reasons, the national government should designate all affected areas as special wards, construct “disaster prevention condominiums,” provide them in exchange for land affected by the disaster, and invite industries to come to the leftover land. There the government should halve the corporate income tax for the next ten years and exempt these businesses from real estate taxes for ten years as well. The value of this land would increase, which would create benefits and provide relief to the disaster-struck areas.
　Directly after the earthquake, I advocated building these disaster prevention condominiums in the June 2011 issue of this magazine. I will quote from my essay below.

　I wrote:
The Great East Japan Earthquake occurred in Japan on March 11. This earthquake was of a scale that is said to only happen once every thousand years, and resulted in many deaths and major damage centered in the Tohoku Region. I pray that the people who lost their lives will rest in peace, and hope that the areas affected by the disaster are rebuilt as soon as possible.
Major earthquakes have happened in many places all over the world up until now, but more people die in tsunamis than in the destruction caused by earthquakes. Almost 20,000 people lost their lives in the tsunami caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake. Urgent countermeasures are needed to prevent this tragedy from being repeated in the future.
Watching the situation in the affected areas on the television news, most of the homes made of wood have been swept away by the tsunami. This earthquake caused a tsunami that inundated the lowlands for five to six kilometers. Some locations had absolutely no high ground, which resulted in significant damages. These areas affected by the disaster will be rebuilt, but if the same sorts of wooden houses are built they will face the same type of damages. In the Great Hanshin Earthquake many people on the first floor died when their two-story wooden residences collapsed, but the majority of the victims of this earthquake were in their detached homes when the tsunami came.
Traditionally, it has been thought that the construction of breakwaters was an effective measure against tsunamis. For example, a breakwater with a total length of around 2.5 kilometers and a height of 10 meters was built over dozens of years in Miyako City, Iwate Prefecture. For this reason, people thought they were completely prepared for tsunamis. However, the recent tsunami went right over the breakwater, caused it to collapse, and caused devastating damage throughout the entire area.
What I would like to propose is the construction of six-story “disaster prevention condominiums” ? which can be built in a period of ten months ? made from reinforced concrete with parking areas on the first and second floors at intervals of 200 meters perpendicular to the coast. In the Great Hanshin Earthquake (which was a near-field earthquake) as well, the reinforced concrete buildings that were made in accordance with the new Building Standards Act suffered little damage. The recent earthquake proved that they are strong against tsunamis as well.
Considering that few tsunamis up until now have been over 18 meters tall, these disaster prevention condominiums should be six stories or taller. If a tsunami warning is given, local residents could head to the roof of a nearby disaster prevention condominium. Building these condominiums at intervals of 200 meters as part of an urban plan with abundant greenery would ensure that anyone, at any location, could take refuge in a condominium within 100 meters in one minute. Because they are so close, people could escape from a tsunami even if it were right before their eyes. Each disaster prevention condominium would be equipped with water and emergency food rations so that many people, even in a situation like the recent one, could calmly wait for rescue.
Now that this great disaster has occurred, land in the affected areas that has been possessed up until now for town planning could be exchanged for these disaster prevention condominiums and provided at no cost. Certainly this would make more people happy than temporary dwellings that must be destroyed after some time. Disaster prevention condominiums could be created at significantly lower costs than super embankments that cost a great deal of money and time to build.
However, this plan is not being undertaken anywhere in the affected areas. In fact, the opposite is taking place.

　　The peak in Japan for traffic accidents was in 1970, when 16,765 people died. Despite the fact that the number of cars has increased by 400% since then, the number of deaths has dropped to 4,611 people. The major reasons for this include requiring people to wear seatbelts; the installation of air bags; anti-lock braking systems, equipment to prevent skidding, and other devices; and road safety measures. All technologies involve risks. However, when accidents occur we do not simply abandon these technologies ? instead we improve them to make them safer. We must not forget this fact.
　On March 10 the morning edition of the Sankei Shimbun newspaper included an article entitled “For 14 years in a row, last year’s number of suicides was over 30,000 people.” It read:
The total number of people who committed suicide was 30,651 people. Looking at this total by age, the largest percentage was people in their 60’s with a total of 5,547 people, followed by people in their 50s and 40s.
In cases when the cause or motive for the suicide was clearly indicated by suicide notes or other sources (a total of 22,581 people; multiple causes were calculated for one person), the greatest number (14,621 people) committed suicide because of health problems. The next largest reason was economic or lifestyle-related issues (6,406 people).
　The issue of suicide is a great tragedy for contemporary Japan. Increasing numbers of middle-aged and elderly men are committing suicide, and men make up 70% of the total number of suicides. The problem is the government, which doesn’t lend a helping hand to the people who are truly weak. I think that we could reduce the number of suicides to 1/3rd of the current number if we only dedicated 1/100th of the money spent to reduce traffic accidents to 1/3rd of their original level.
　The absurd nature of the government is also demonstrated by the unemployment rate. Because the amount of money provided for livelihood protection is less than the minimum wage, increasing numbers of people are receiving these livelihood subsidies. At the same time there are still many homeless people who receive nothing. If we don’t take care of the homeless and lower the unemployment rate, society will not be stable. The Jasmine Revolution that occurred in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya last year was supposedly inspired by the widespread usage of Internet services like WikiLeaks, Twitter, and Facebook. However, the background cause that all these countries shared was their high unemployment rates.

　We should create emergency legislation during times of emergency, since we can’t accomplish anything if we are bound to the laws of normal times. No one is accepting the debris from the tsunami, so an attempt is being made to process it over a wide area through a formal request from the prime minister. If we used these waste landfills to build artificial islands like Yumenoshima that are enclosed by tetrapods in the ocean near the affected areas, they would become Japanese territory. In addition, the cost would probably be several hundreds of times less than wide-area processing.
　The government has set the standard for decontamination as one millisievert per year. However, if we ignored radiation of this level, we could mostly solve the problem of exposure in places with five or more millisieverts by taking measures for radioactive decontamination. These measures could include removing surface dirt and replacing it with dirt from two or three meters below ground. This would also cost several thousands of times less money.
　If we continue in this way, China and Korea will lure Japan’s nuclear power technicians away and export nuclear power plants throughout the entire world. These countries will also build nuclear power plants of a lower technical standard than Japan’s along the coast of the Sea of Japan. If one accident occurred at such plants, Japan would be damaged by the radioactivity that would be spread on the westerlies. To prevent this, Japan should use what it learned in Fukushima to develop and export safer nuclear power plants, and also to accomplish reconstruction as a science- and technology-oriented country.
　We need to reflect on how much damage has been caused by the unfounded rumors created by the Japanese media about issues that resulted in little real harm and few victims such as mad cow disease, SARS, avian influenza, and new strains of pandemic influenza. Even now, three to six people die each year from eating fugu (puffer fish). As many as two to three people die each year from consuming poisonous mushrooms, and around 1,000 people die each year from colds and influenza. It’s also safe to say that the largest number of accidents ? tens of thousands of people a year ? are probably the people who fall down the stairs of their homes each year, resulting in injury or death.
　To create a stable, prosperous nation, Japan should gather up its homeless people and give them jobs. It should also use tax money to reduce the unemployment rate and number of suicides. Furthermore, it should feel correct concern and take measures based on statistical probability and scientific evidence. The mass media is a commercial enterprise that profits from stirring up fear, so we need to acquire correct knowledge in order to avoid damage created by the unfounded rumors started by the media.

0:22 a.m., March 24