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New Year's resolution

January 16, 2012

KEK Director General  Atsuto SUZUKI

Happy New Year to everyone. I would like to say a few words at the beginning of the year.

We had the big disaster last year which caused us to work extremely hard to recover. But the disaster was not all bad in some way. One month after the disaster, we announced a plan for recovery that was considered to be too optimistic by many people. However, as we worked so hard, we reached each milestone point in the plan earlier than announced. Because of this, KEK did get a high praise by many and I was flooded by e-mails of admiration. We earned the trust of our worldwide users. This must have reached the government and we did receive additional funding. I thank you for your hard working.

People outside of our research community recognized our contributions. What we did to name a few were:

Real-time on-line announcement of radiation level in the air measured at KEK site that started almost immediately after the nuclear accident. This was done in collaboration with the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba. Our web site on the radiation monitoring was extremely popular to Kanto area residents. We not only measured the radiation level in KEK. Some of the KEK members went to Fukushima and other prefectures to measure (or to teach how to measure) radiation level of water, soil, vegetable, fish and so on, collaborating with MEXT. We provided many lectures on radiation to general public, supported and participated various Tsukuba City committees on how to respond to the radiation problems in Tsukuba. We also helped the nuclear power company and government on nuclear fuel related matter.

I should say I was rather disappointed because people in charge on the nuclear power generation or nuclear power policy making admitted their part of responsibility took no actions accordingly. This reminded me a novel by Ruth Benedict "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" which analyzes the strong points and weak points of Japanese mind. In particular it is pointed out that the difference between Japanese and Western societies is the concept of “Punishment” and “Crime”. The applied punishment in the case of the nuclear accident was overly gentle to the responsible communities, called “Mura-community”. I should say that Japan should be a society where responsibility of each person is fully recognized and acted upon if we should be respectable. KEK should stay to be a good example for it.

Now about the future plans. We would be starting new phase of research, such as Super KEKB, New Photon Factory light source, starting of compact-ERL construction, follow up of the neutrino oscillation phenomena study of T2K, Higgs discovery at the LHC and more new particles to be discovered. We need to get more funding from the government by presenting good proposals.

I shall be working on improving KEK on research capability, collaboration with other institutions, collaboration with industries, contributing to the society including education. We should improve the KEK organization structure as well which is the pillar action plan for my final 3 year DG term.

As this is the year of dragon, the only imaginary animal in calendar, I should say that we would like to stay as powerful as a dragon for a long time to come. On the other hand, we don’t forget the proverb “Dragon-head and snake-tail” which means a bright beginning and a dull ending. We should also be sensitive, thoughtful even if we could be very powerful.

Let’s make this year a very fruitful one together.