nuclear-news

The central government’s decontamination plan, finalized on Aug. 26, leaves clean-up of any sites emitting 20 millisieverts of radiation annually or less to municipal governments, while also calling on those same governments to create temporary storage areas for contaminated materials. Most of the sites with that level of radiation are in the emergency evacuation standby zone 20-30 kilometers from the stricken nuclear plant.

“It’s very strange that the government would leave decontamination up to municipalities while at the same time seeking to bring down radiation emissions to 1 millisievert annually or less,” said Motohoshi Yamada, mayor of Hirono, Fukushima Prefecture. Yamada apparently lambasted a visiting central government official on Aug. 25 over the plan. Hirono lies within the evacuation standby zone, though some 90 percent of the town’s population has already fled.

“Our town’s recovery will be delayed if we wait for the government’s plan,” Yamada continued, referring to the long list of tasks the municipality must undertake if it must tackle decontamination on its own, including finding a tainted material storage site and gaining support for it from local residents….

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110827p2a00m0na014000c.html