2017年3月30日 星期四

Huge nuclear cost overruns push Toshiba's Westinghouse into bankruptcy



Huge nuclear cost overruns push Toshiba's Westinghouse into bankruptcy


By Tom HalsMakiko Yamazaki and Tim Kelly | WILMINGTON, DEL./TOKYO
Westinghouse Electric Co, a unit of Japanese conglomerate Toshiba Corp, filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, hit by billions of dollars of cost overruns at four nuclear reactors under construction in the U.S. Southeast.
The bankruptcy casts doubt on the future of the first new U.S. nuclear power plants in three decades, which were scheduled to begin producing power as soon as this week, but are now years behind schedule.
The four reactors are part of two projects known as V.C. Summer in South Carolina, which is majority owned by SCANA Corp, and Vogtle in Georgia, which is owned by a group of utilities led by Southern Co.
Costs for the projects have soared due to increased safety demands by U.S. regulators, and also due to significantly higher-than-anticipated costs for labor, equipment and components.
Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse said it hopes to use bankruptcy to isolate and reorganize around its "very profitable" nuclear fuel and power plant servicing businesses from its money-losing construction operation.
Westinghouse said in a court filing it has secured $800 million in financing from Apollo Investment Corp, an affiliate of Apollo Global Management, to fund its core businesses during its reorganization.
For Toshiba, the filing will help keep the crisis-hit parent company afloat as it lines up buyers for its memory chip business, which could fetch $2 billion. Toshiba said Westinghouse-related liabilities totalled $9.8 billion as of December.
Toshiba said it would guarantee up to $200 million of the financing for Westinghouse. Toshiba shares closed up 2.2 percent but have lost half their value since the nuclear problems surfaced late last year.
The Apollo loan needs court approval and is expected to carry Westinghouse for a year, people familiar with the matter said. The funds would support the company's global operations, including its healthier services and maintenance businesses, and pay for construction workers on site in Georgia and South Carolina, the people said.
However, the money cannot be used to repay the liabilities stemming from cost overruns and delays at the projects, the people said.

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The Vogtle Unit 3 and 4 site, being constructed by primary contactor Westinghouse, a business unit of Toshiba, near Waynesboro, Georgia, U.S. is seen in an aerial photo taken February 2017. Georgia Power/Handout via REUTERS
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SCANA told investors on a conference call on Wednesday that 5,000 workers would continue working on its South Carolina site for 30 days while the company while it weighed options.
"Our preferred option is to finish the plants. The least preferred option is abandonment,” said SCANA CEO Kevin Marsh.
Southern Co said in a statement it would hold Westinghouse and Toshiba accountable for its contract.
States regulators have approved costs of around $14 billion for each project but Morgan Stanley has estimated the final bill of around $22 billion for the South Carolina project and around $19 billion for the Georgia plant.
POSSIBLE SALE
Westinghouse’s nuclear services business is expected to continue to perform profitably over the course of the bankruptcy and eventually be sold by Toshiba, people familiar with the matter said. They cautioned that the sale process will likely be highly complex and litigious.
The bankruptcy could embroil the U.S. and Japanese governments, given the scale of the collapse and the $8.3 billion in U.S. government loan guarantees that were provided to help finance the reactors.
A U.S. Department of Energy spokeswoman said the agency expects the parties to honor their commitments.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it was inspecting the sites to ensure the facilities met the requirements of the licenses that were issued to units of Southern and SCANA.
Shares of SCANA were down 0.8 percent at $65.64 and Southern Co fell 0.4 percent to $49.90 in trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE
When regulators in Georgia and South Carolina approved the construction of Westinghouse's AP1000 reactors in 2009, it was meant to be the start of renewed push to develop U.S. nuclear power.
However, a flood of cheap natural gas from shale, the lack of U.S. legislation to curb carbon emissions and the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan dampened enthusiasm for nuclear power.
Toshiba had acquired Westinghouse in 2006 for $5.4 billion. It expected to build dozens of its new AP1000 reactors - which were hailed as safer, quicker to construct and more compact - creating a pipeline of work for its maintenance division.
NUCLEAR FALLOUT
Toshiba has said it expects to book a net loss of 1 trillion yen ($9 billion) for the fiscal year that ends Friday, one of the biggest annual losses in Japanese corporate history. Toshiba had earlier forecast a loss of 390 billion.
Toshiba will close the first round of bids for its chip business - the world's second-biggest NAND chip producer - on Wednesday. A source with knowledge of the issue said that about 10 potential bidders had shown interest, including Western Digital Corp which operates a Japanese chip plant with Toshiba, rival Micron Technology Inc, South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc and financial investors. Tsunakawa said offers for the unit are likely to allow Toshiba to maintain shareholder equity. Toshiba believes the unit will be worth at least 2 trillion yen ($18 billion), he added.
The government-backed Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, and Development Bank of Japan are expected to enter later bidding rounds as part of a consortium, sources said.
A separate source said that Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer, is expected to place an offer which is likely to be the highest bid. Other sources have said the Japanese government is likely to block a sale to Foxconn due to its deep ties with China.
(Additional reporting by Kentaro Hamada, Yoshiyasu Shida, Taiga Uranaka, Hitoshi Ishida and Sam Nussey in Tokyo, Scott DiSavino and Jessica DiNapoli in New York, Tracy Rucinski in Chicago and Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware)

2017年3月29日 星期三

"Ieji" 家路: Japanese film "Homeland" tiptoes into Fukushima nuclear debate 2014

2017今天才看了此片大部分......感人。人們對福島災難的人為錯失之認識日深......

Homeland (Ieji) - AsianWiki

asianwiki.com/Homeland_(Ieji)
Movie: Homeland (English title) / The Way Home (literal title); Romaji: Ieji; Japanese: 家路 ... Filmingtook place June, 2013 in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.

Japanese film "Homeland" tiptoes into Fukushima nuclear debate

By Ruairidh Villar and Elaine Lies | TOKYO

A Japanese farming family is forced from their home by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, living in cramped temporary housing under stress as they wait for permission to return to land worked by their ancestors for generations.

That is the all-too-real backdrop of "Homeland", the first Japanese mass-market film set in Fukushima since the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years made the area's name infamous.

Shown at the recent Berlin Film Festival, the movie - called "Ieji" ("The Road Home") in Japanese - features some scenes shot in areas once declared no-go zones by the government due to high radiation levels.

Despite an intense debate about whether to restart the rest of Japan's nuclear reactors that were idled after the disaster, director Nao Kubota said he opted to tell a human story.

"I wanted to make a film that would be relevant for a long time to come, that people could watch in 10, 20, 50 or even 100 years and see that this sort of claustrophobic situation came about," he said.

"That's what I want everyone to feel - and it's for that reason that it's not anti-nuclear."

On March 11, 2011, a massive offshore earthquake sent tsunami tearing through villages in northeastern Japan, setting off meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant that irradiated a wide swath of countryside and forced more than 150,000 people from their homes.

"Homeland", released in Japan nearly three years after the disaster, centers on long-estranged son Jiro, who secretly moves into the exclusion zone to reclaim the family farm.

Much is made of the difference between the temporary housing - with families who owned sprawling farmhouses now living in small units in a long line - and the open areas in the exclusion zone where abandoned cows roamed and empty streets were full of weeds.

"The birds were singing and we felt like we were intruding. But despite the beauty, everything was frozen in time," said Kubota, who has a background in documentaries.

"It was beautiful but no one could live there. In a way, there was something menacing. You couldn't smell it, the colors hadn't changed, and you couldn't see or physically feel it. There's that sort of fear."

WALKING A NARROW PATH

This contrast may have helped Kubota get across his message without making it too obvious, said film critic Yuichi Maeda.

"Taking a camera into the no-go zone and filming there really shows the claw marks of the nuclear accident," Maeda said. "He may say he's not anti-nuclear but after seeing the film I think he actually is."

The touchiness of the nuclear issue tends to cause backers to shun anything too critical. Even stronger reasons to tread softly are that film revenues are falling in Japan and viewers are averse to movies with too heavy a political line.

Other directors have faced a similar dilemma in dealing with Fukushima. One, Sion Sono, got around it by setting his 2012 movie "Land of Hope" in an unspecified future and the fictional Nagashima prefecture.

"The moment I told (my usual investors) that this was a film about nuclear power, they told me it was just too taboo," Sono said.

"In the end we just had to cobble together money to make it, including from overseas," he said. "People don't want to think about the nuclear issue."
But Kubota's "Homeland" - however subtle its message - has struck a nerve with at least some viewers.
"Prime Minister Abe is plugging nuclear power as though nothing happened in Fukushima," said Takashi Nakamura, 68. "The movie made me feel there's something wrong with that."
(Writing by Elaine Lies; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

2017年3月26日 星期日

Tokyo: A Biography, by Stephen Mansfield

2017年3月25日 星期六

日本的自殺死亡率


日本居民自殺率居高引發眾多關注,一項調查報告,1998年至2010年,每年平均三萬多日本人選擇了自殺。根據近期的一項日本政府調查顯示,僅20%的自殺者是因為經濟問題,有60%是因身體健康和抑鬱而自殺。天主教機構呼籲給予更多關注。

日本居民自殺率居高引發眾多關注,一項調查報告,1998年至2010年,每年平均三萬多日本人選擇了自殺。根據近期的一項日本政府調查顯示,僅20%的自殺者是因為經濟問題,有60%是因身體健康和抑鬱而自殺。天主教機構呼籲…
TRAD.CN.RFI.FR|作者:RFI 華語 - 法國國際廣播電台






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日本的自殺死亡率
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日本國內的自殺人數2013年約為27,300人,單純計算,每天平均有75名男女老少因某種理由而斷絕自己的生命。雖然近年自殺有減少趨勢,但自殺人數明顯高於其它國家。日本成為「自殺大國」的原因在哪裏呢?
無論何時何處聽到有關自殺的消息,都是非常令人震驚的。最近,「STAP細胞」論文的共著者之一、理化學研究所發生與再生科學綜合研究中心副主任笹井芳樹自殺一事,在國內外引起了強烈震動。此外,服役於海上自衛隊護衛艦的隊員,因受上司欺凌而自殺;東京一所小學的兩名6年級女生一起跳樓自殺等,令人心痛的自殺事件接二連三。但是,它們還只不過是自殺這座冰山之一角而已。

苦於「健康問題」而自殺者,多為老年男性

據內閣府發表的2014年版《自殺對策白皮書》及警察廳的自殺統計,2013年的自殺者總數為27,283人。單純計算,相當於每20分中就有1人自殺。這個數字是同年交通事故死亡人數(4,373人)的6.2倍。在性別上,男性為18,787人,占總數的68.9%。從年齡來看,60歲年齡段最多,為4,716人,占總數的17.3%;隨後依次是40歲年齡段(4,589人,16.8%)、50歲年齡段(4,484人,16.4%)和70歲年齡段(3,785人,13.9%)。
在自殺的原因和動機中,高居首位的是「健康問題(疾病)」,有13,680人,其他依次是「經濟及生活問題(貧困)」(4,636人)、「家庭問題」(3,930人)和「工作問題」(2,323人)。此外還有「男女問題」、「學校問題」等等。這個順序據稱每年都一樣。從這些數據中可以看出,4、50歲以上的男性苦於健康問題而自殺的情況比較多。

自殺,年輕人的最大死因

2013年,自殺人數連續4年繼續減少,特別是因「經濟及生活問題」而自殺的人數減少,警察廳稱,這是「因為經濟狀況改善及各地方政府開展的防止自殺活動所取得的成果」。而另一方面,15~39歲年齡段的最大死因是「自殺」,這個問題依然非常嚴峻。而且,在G7中,15~34歲的年輕人的最大死因為自殺的,只有日本一個國家。
從過去35年自殺者人數變動來看,1978~1997年的20年裏,基本上在20,000~25,000人之間浮動。1998年劇增到32,863人,這是自1897年統計開始後第一次突破30,000人,而2003年則創下歷史最高紀錄,達到34,427人。但是此後,自殺人數呈減少趨勢,2012年,時隔15年首次回落到30,000人以下,為27,858人,2013年又比前一年減少了575人。

11個國家,自殺者超萬人

雖然近年自殺者減少傾向可喜,但從世界範圍看,日本的自殺人數依然處在一個較高水準。根據世界衛生組織(WHO)有關防止自殺的報告,2012年全世界的自殺者人數(推算值)總計超過80萬人。其中,自殺人數過萬的國家有11個。最多的是印度,258,000人;第2是中國,120,730人;第3是美國,43,300人。第4至第7依次是俄國,32,000人;日本,29,400人;韓國,17,900人;巴基斯坦,13,300人。
從每10萬人口中的自殺者數(自殺率)來比較,那麼南美的圭亞那是44人,位居第1;其次是北韓,38.5人,第3是韓國,28.9人。而總數最多的印度,則為21.1人,日本是18.5人。印度的人口約是日本的10倍,從這一點來考慮,可以看出日本的自殺率是極其高的。

老年人和年輕人的自殺率,高居不下

另外,經濟合作暨發展組織(OECD)發布的自殺率統計顯示,成員國的自殺率高居第1的是韓國,其次是匈牙利,第3是日本。日本和韓國的共同特點,是15~34歲的年輕人的死因以自殺為最多,以及中老年男性的自殺率較高。作為下一代接班人的年輕人,其自殺率在歐美各國均傾向於下降,而日韓兩國卻在上升,這一點尤其令人擔憂。
對國內的自殺原因,專家們進行了各種各樣的分析,他們指出,經濟蕭條導致經營不佳和失業,勞動條件惡化,工作過於繁重,以及工作單位中複雜的人際關係等,年富力強的一代人中自殺者的增加,與這些都不無關係。而中老年中的自殺,還牽涉到健康問題、生活窘困、長年看護老弱病人帶來的身心疲勞、孤獨等因素。此外,少年兒童的自殺背後,則多存在著「 校園欺凌」的問題。

「自殺對策」, 需進一步加強

另外還有因震災失去親人和財產而把人逼上絕路的事例。東日本大地震後的自殺人數,2011年是55人、2012年是24人、2013年是38人,而且每個年份都以男性自殺者為多,震災的創傷至今依然難以癒合。
2007年6月,政府根據前一年實施的《自殺對策基本法》,制定了自殺對策方針《自殺綜合對策大綱》。它把人們按年齡分成三代,即青少年(30歲以下)、中壯年(30~64歲)和老年(65歲以上),明示了各代人的自殺特徵和應致力於採取的對策方向。此後已有7年時間過去了,為了進一步減少自殺,還需要全國上下繼續努力。
標題圖片:為健康問題而煩惱的中老年人,自殺率高居不下

2017年3月23日 星期四

英科学雑誌Nature別冊 日本の科学研究の失速を指摘

最新刊行之Nature別冊,探討日本科學研究力下滑。
量的觀察
1.全世界68本聖經級科学雑誌掲載日本研究團隊的論文数觀之,從2012年的5212篇,下降至2016年的4779篇,5年內減少433篇。換算成比例,2012年日本論文占9.2%,2016年降為8.6%。
2.根據荷蘭出版社統計全世界約22000本科学雑誌發表的論文総数,從2005年至2015年,10年間全球平均增加80%,日本只増加14%。其中特別值得注意的是,日本一向自豪的「材料科学」與「工学」,論文数也下滑10%以上。
3.留美學生數大減。根據美國「国際教育研究所」資料,日本留美学生數在1994年至1997年間位居第一,97年鼎盛期達47073人。2005年降至38712人,突破4万人大關後繼續大幅減少,2015年只剩1万9060人,留學生數落居第9位,遠在中国、德國、沙烏地阿拉伯,韓国(,甚至台灣)之後。
可能原因
政府的科研經費減少,科學投資停滯
短期僱用之研究者增加,青年學者處於嚴峻的研究環境中。
但少子化,留學生數自然減少亦不可小覷。
世界のハイレベルな科学雑誌に占める日本の研究論文の割合がこの5年間で低くなり、世界のさまざまな科学雑誌に投稿される論文の総数も日本は世…
WWW3.NHK.OR.JP

Principal of scandal-hit Osaka school says he got donation from Akie Abe

Principal of scandal-hit Osaka school says he got donation from Akie Abe

BY  AND 
The embattled head of an Osaka school operator at the center of a murky real estate deal gave sworn testimony in the Diet on Thursday that he received a ¥1 ...



Nikkei Asian Review
Testimony under oath: "She told her aide to leave and when we were alone, she handed me an envelope with 1 million yen"
TOKYO -- In a sworn testimony to the Japanese Diet on Thursday, Yasunori Kagoike described in colorful detail how he received cash.
ASIA.NIKKEI.COM