nuclear-news

Uncertainties about radiation in Fukushima region

The disagreements came to the forefront on Friday, when a government adviser on radiation safety quit, calling on Japan to lower the permissible radiation dose of 20 millisieverts per year that the Education Ministry has set for schools for younger children, including elementary and junior high, in affected areas.

Life in Limbo for Japanese Near Nuclear Plant, New York Times, By MARTIN FACKLER and MATTHEW L. WALD,  May 1, 2011 TENEI, Japan — For seven generations, Yoshitoshi Sewa and his ancestors have tilled this farm in a gently curving valley filled with green rice paddies. But now he will not let his young grandchildren play outside their tile-roofed home for fear of an invisible and potentially long-lasting threat, radiation.

“Even if the government says it’s O.K., no one here wants to take the risk of radiation,” said Mr. Sewa, 63, whose farm sits about 40 miles west of Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant — well beyond the zone where residents have been told to leave or remain indoors…….

Japan’s plant has been dispersing radioactive material for nearly two months and counting, far longer than the 10 days during which the Chernobyl plant released a much larger burst of radioactive particles in 1986.

It is difficult for Japanese experts to even agree on clear-cut numerical levels of radiation for deciding which areas are safe to inhabit — decisions that might affect hundreds of thousands of people living in hundreds of square miles of this densely population nation.

“This is an unprecedented situation, to which none of our textbooks apply,” said Shigenobu Nagataki, former chairman of the Nagasaki-based Radiation Effects Research Foundation, which studied victims of the World War II atomic bombings. “Decisions are being made now that will have a huge impact on Japan’s future.”

The disagreements came to the forefront on Friday, when a government adviser on radiation safety quit, calling on Japan to lower the permissible radiation dose of 20 millisieverts per year that the Education Ministry has set for schools for younger children, including elementary and junior high, in affected areas.

Other Japanese critics point out that the figure comes from the International Commission on Radiological Protection, which sets it as the upper limit of radiation exposure in inhabited areas after a nuclear accident, and thus too high for schools because children are more vulnerable……

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/asia/02japan.html?pagewanted=2

May 2, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | - Fukushima 2011