"ABC Australia reports that 3 years after the Fukushima disaster, hundreds of Fukushima evacuees will return home for the first time. The government is saying it's safe, but most of the evacuees don't want to go back.
In the centre of the hillside town of Tamura is a temporary housing centre for Fukushima's evacuees. About 370 have been living in small demountables since the Fukushima disaster three years ago. The residents here will be the first to be allowed to return to their homes around the crippled nuclear plant. But they're not excited by the prospect. Reuters publishes a report showing what effect the fear of radiation has had over the counties in the Fukushima neighborhood: 'Some of the smallest children in Koriyama, a short drive from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, barely know what it's like to play outside fear of radiation has kept them in doors for much of their short lives. Even if the strict safety limits for outdoor activity set after multiple meltdowns have now been eased, parental worries and ingrained habit mean many children still stay inside. And the impact is now starting to show, with children experiencing falling strength, lack of coordination, some cannot even ride a bicycle, and emotional issues like shorter tempers, officials and educators say.'
The loss of nuclear power has meant importing extra oil, coal and gas and that has hurt the Japan economy. The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is setting its sights on restarting some of the country's 48 mothballed reactors, amid protests of thousands in Tokyo. The silver lining of the cloud, Japan may be seeing an opportunity in Fukushima cleanup: 'There is decommissioning business here beyond Fukushima and it's a worldwide business," said Lake Barrett, a former U.S. nuclear regulator. "I think it's an exciting new area, Japan can be a world leader again.'
Japan created the government-funded International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning, or IRID, last year. It brings together nuclear plant operators, construction companies and organizations of nuclear experts to promote research and development of nuclear decommissioning technologies. Japanese companies including Toshiba Corp., Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Hitachi have been developing robots that can monitor radiation, decontaminate, remove contaminated debris or repair damage, and some of them have been mobilized at the plant."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mojo chan on Monday March 10 2014, @04:18PM
Anyone who worked near Fukushima or had a business there has probably moved on and started a job elsewhere. Those who would like to return will face a town with too few people, not enough local services and so forth. Plus everything in those towns is massively devalued, especially property. If they move back and create a viable community TEPCO will use that as an excuse to pay less compensation. Plus, can anyone really trust that it is now safe, after everything that has happened?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Monday March 10 2014, @04:34PM
"Plus everything in those towns is massively devalued"
In the USA its not understood that there was a flood killing 100K people as the cause of the meltdown.
So you've been living somewhere else for 3 years rebuilding your life after a bunch of people you know were suddenly drowned and all the jobs are gone and lots of the infrastructure and buildings and roads are now at the bottom of the ocean. Also there's a nuclear plant accident site that hasn't been cleaned up yet, won't be for a long time, and is only marginally stable as per endless media reports. Wisely no one trusts the plant operator because they acted pretty sketchy after the accident. Why would anyone want to move back?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bucc5062 on Monday March 10 2014, @04:39PM
And why is the government so keen to have them move back. Perhaps this is a good time to rethink land use around the place. Perhaps the better approach is to tear down these towns/homes that remain unoccupied and turn then land into crops, forests, usable land. Like you said, after three years people have moved on.
If the "land" is so safe then there could not be a reason why to not use it for farming. This creates a buffer zone around the plant, continues to help the land heal, and helps people to heal as well.
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 4, Insightful) by morgauxo on Monday March 10 2014, @05:45PM
Farming?? WTF???!!!
You have it all backwards. Even if the land is safe for occupying that doesn't mean it is safe for farming. If it isn't safe for occupation then it certainly is NOT safe to farm. It isn't like you normally eat the dirt around your house. Plants do! Ever hear of bioaccumulation or biomagnification? The LAST thing you want to do is use this land for farming.
Now, if the place isn't suitable for living your forest idea has merit. Just look at the area around Chernobyl.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bucc5062 on Monday March 10 2014, @06:06PM
That is an interesting point. Now, first, from the transscript
So I got this from wiki [nucleonica.net] which explains both the level value and where 20 mSv came from. What is not clear is how much of that is transferred into the food supply. Also, farming could be done for items not meant for the general public direct. The idea is that options could be explored to use the land instead of letting it grow fallow. If the dosage is too high for the general public then why are they being allows to go back? In the end, planting trees may be the best option for it helps the carbon footprint (long term by sucking up CO2) and perhaps helps clean up the radiation by a slow method of grow, harvest, even bury till the land is clean again.
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday March 11 2014, @09:03AM
Because if they go back TEPCO and the government have to pay less compensation.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Monday March 10 2014, @10:16PM
Actually, farming makes an awful lot of sense, just don't farm stuff intended for consumption but rather set up a major research station for different crops and for biofuels (it would most likely still have less radiation in its exhaust* and waste* than a normal coal-plant anyway) and similar, not to mention ornamental trees for shipping to other places.
It would actually be hard to find a better area for an agricultural research-station, I mean, it will increase in the landvalue, lower the (concentration of) radiation in the soil, and also be at a place where noone wants to develop the land.
Also, I think many corporations would see a value in being able to test different plants for bioplastics (from hemp and similar), or for that matter one could also grow wood for (outdoor)construction at that place...
So, as long as you avoid edibles (and construction timber for indoor use) starting to farm the land actually makes an awful lot of sense - and before anything writes "it is a horrible idea to spread the radiation everywhere" do take a look at just how much radioactivity a normal active vulcano (or magma flow) spew into the air - dilution is the most sensible option.
* = and if you really want to go the distance with it one could simply check the exhaust and waste for radiation and ship everything safe away and downblend the rest with waste from other powerstations.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mojo chan on Monday March 10 2014, @06:17PM
The current death toll stands at around 19,000, nowhere near 100,000.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1) by Alphatool on Tuesday March 11 2014, @03:48AM
Very true. We also need to remember that all of these deaths were from the earthquake and tsunami. So far nobody had died due to radiation exposure and this is unlikely to change.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @11:28AM
there was a flood killing 100K people as the cause of the meltdown
The first part of that is largely true but the second part is bullshit.
The tsunami did make a bigger mess, but by the time it arrived 90 minutes later, the shock wave from the earthquake had already destroyed all the reactors that were in operation. Their fate had been sealed more than an hour earlier [google.com] says Kenichi Ohmae [wikipedia.org], who was NOT in the ring of propagandists and CYA types.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MrGuy on Monday March 10 2014, @05:56PM
There are a not insignificant number of things that went wrong for local residents that have nothing to do with the Fukushima meltdown. There's a lot of "what does 'safe' mean?" questions.
But if the question is "is the radiation level safe for humans?" then that's one with an objective answer. Radiation levels are measurable. There are international standards on exposure safety that are well published and pre-date the disaster, so you don't have to worry about them being "bent" to give the illusion of safety. If you don't trust the government's assertions on the radiation levels, you can buy a geiger counter or even make your own. [makezine.com]
I can understand fear and mistrust of the government and TEPCO after all their demonstrably false statements. But we're somewhere around superstition now, where we're validating people living their lives in fear of a threat whose existence can be objectively proven or disproven. I feel bad for those children who aren't allowed outside for what we really should be able to quickly determine is either a very valid reason or a provably wrong one.
Now, if you want to talk about risks other than current radiation levels (What if the spent fuel pools or contained water leak? What are reasonable expectations on the safety of fish caught nearby? What's happened to the groundwater?) then you've potentially got a different assessment to make, and a fear that those risks might not be competently and transparently handled is potentially reasonable.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @07:38PM
One of the difficulties in assessing the dangers of radiation is that the only reliable data we have is from rather large exposures. It's not clear how to extrapolate that down to low-level exposures. The typical assumption is "linear no-threshold [wikipedia.org]": i.e. we assume that there is no dose of radiation that isn't without risk. It is instead assumed that every exposure to radiation slightly increases your lifetime risk of cancer. This model is almost certainly wrong in some way (the fundamental biology isn't really settled). But, in general it's assumed that this model is conservative: i.e. the true risk is probably even lower than the model suggests. On the other hand it's possible that the scaling to low-dose might be supra-linear (e.g. 10 exposures to a flux of 0.1 might be worse than 1 exposure to a flux of 1.0). Even if this is true, the effect must be relatively small, since we cannot detect any measurable health effects from low doses of radiation.
So, one way to think about this is that there is no dose that is without risk. One could interpret this to mean "there is no level of radiation that is safe". I, however, would argue that to be a fundamentally erroneous way to do risk management.
We can certainly set some threshold on the risk. E.g. we could say that if a dose is much lower than the lowest dose ever conclusively linked to cancer risk (100 mSv), then the risk is acceptably low. Or, we could say a dose that is only slightly more than background (4 mSv) is acceptably low.
More importantly, we should be asking "risk compared to what?" For instance, for people at the edge of the exclusion zone, the increased risk to their life from moving (e.g. even just driving a car) was probably greater than the radiation risk from staying. And that's what's generally bothersome about people worrying about the risks of radiation. The risks are indeed real. But they are not being compared in context to other risks that we accept (driving, getting lung cancer due to the exhaust from coal plants, etc.). By those metrics, the Fukushima zone is probably already safe enough (e.g. no worse than living beside some other kind of power plant).
Lastly, I'll note that paradoxically one of the reasons radiation is so often a source of fear is that it is so measurable. We can detect down to background levels, or even tiny increases above the background level. Which is why statements like "detectable levels of radiation found at X" in the media are infuriating: it says next to nothing about what the actual dose was, or what the actual danger might be.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Monday March 10 2014, @11:04PM
A Geiger counter or dosimeter isn't that helpful for residents considering returning. The problem is that there are different radioactive materials in the area, and these instruments can't distinguish them and warn you where the dangerous ones are. There is also the problem of hot spots and covered material. If you kids go back and start playing football, kick up some dirt and release some contaminated particles into their air... Well, at best their dosimeters count the event, maybe your Geiger counter starts to click, but it's a bit late.
Individuals can't easily test the quality of the clean-up operation. Some organizations have though, and found it lacking. Even if you convince yourself that it is safe your property is basically worthless and maybe your kids have to travel a long way to school because the local one doesn't have enough teachers. Jobs are mostly gone, communities decimated as half the people are established elsewhere now.
Food products near by have been failing tests since the accident. The Japanese government raised the limits but naturally others didn't, so exports from the region have dried up. In any case if the French government doesn't think fish caught in the are are safe why would you trust the Japanese government when it says that they are? One has a very clear vested interest and increased the legal limit 20x after the accident.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Aiwendil on Monday March 10 2014, @11:09PM
While a nice idea in practice to let people decide for itself it has a few nasty things to think about.
For starters the LNT (Linear - no threshold) model has since the accident gone from recommended to not recommended to use to determine safety (this model was in question long before the accident)
Secondly - japan is a place with very low natural background radiation (1.5mSv/yr), compare this to finland (7mSv/yr avg) and sweden (6mSv/yr avg) (world avg 2.4mSv/yr).
Thirdly - to quote wikipedia "sizeable population groups receive 10-20 mSv", so 20mSv/yr is a sane and acceptable level, but most people in japan consider this to be high (after all, to them it is up to 13 times as much as natural, but to a finn it would only be 3times as much as natural)
And to quote nuclearfaq.ca: "...the following common items contain enough potassium-40 (a naturally radioactive form of potassium, found in concentrations of 1-part-in-10,000 within natural potassium) to require a license from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), had that same quantity of potassium-40 been isolated within a regulated nuclear industrial or laboratory setting: 9 kg of granite, 600 g of sodium-free table salt (KCl), 5 kg of all-purpose lawn fertilizer (7-7-7), 42 kg of cement, 112 kg of dry wallboard, 50 kg of Brazil nuts, 60 kg of lima beans, 80 kg of bananas, 80 kg of white potatoes, 80 kg of carrots, 80 kg of wood, 90 kg of red meat, 700 litres of beer, 250 litres of milk, or 3 average human adults."
So allowing people to decide for themselves might not be a good idea since what seems to be "high above normal" is quite often perfectly safe and downright common.
(Score: 1) by Alphatool on Tuesday March 11 2014, @04:17AM
You need to look at the context of the situation in more detail. Don't forget that huge areas were destroyed by the tsunami, which means that there is an entire coast to rebuild, not just the small area around the reactors that was evacuated. Plus, evacuees from near the reactor received much larger compensation packages than people from other areas that suffered the same level of disruption from the tsunami alone. Then when you also factor in the incredible amount that the government is spending on the clean up, creating thousands of jobs in the area, you can see that you were far better off to be near the reactor than in any other part of the devastated area.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @05:21AM
maybe my english is bad, but why use the word "was" in the sentence "fuckupy was the greatest nuclear disaster"? is it over? no. has it been superseded? no. ... oops .. I mean north korea does.
so I think it would be correct to say:"fuckupy is the greatest nuclear disaster so far and ongoing."
anyways the "nuclear bomb threat protected "lay" person" of any country with a nuclear deterrence arsenal will never have/get enough public information to make an informed democratic decision.
very simply because this information needs to be keep classified.
else anybody could start having a deterrence and make threats to the world like the usa
there's no use in debating the dangers simply because we will never have enough actionable information. ionizing radiation is bad.
it is portrait as a newtonian "falling apart of matter" when it should be more adeptly discribed as a side-effect of a localized crack in space-time. : )
(Score: 0) by Fry on Tuesday March 11 2014, @05:39AM
"fuckupy is the greatest nuclear disaster to date." is the phrase you're looking for.
Example: "Re The Great Gatsby (2013) - as of 2014, it is Baz Lurhmann's highest grossing film to date, earning over $350 million."