nuclear-news

As radioactivity lingers, most of Japan’s evacuees not returning home

 “We can’t go home even if we want to, out of consideration for our children,”

More than half of nuclear radiation zone evacuees in Japan have yet to return home, The Australian Eye, By Nigel Shelbourne, December 31, 2011 FUKUSHIMA, Japan _ Fifty-four percent of evacuees from areas between 20 and 30 kilometers (12.5 and 18.6 miles) of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in Japan have yet to return home, three months after the government lifted its emergency evacuation preparation zones.

Due to slow progress in decontamination operations and a lack of job
opportunities in the five municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture,
31,600, or 54 percent, out of a total 59,049 evacuees from the areas
near the crippled generating plant continued to live in shelters
instead of returning home as of last week.

In Minami-Soma City alone, 22,983, or about 50 percent of 46,744
evacuees from the city, still remain outside the city.

Masahiro Igawa, 33, whose house in the city’s Haramachi Ward was swept
away by the March 11 tsunami that followed the major earthquake,
evacuated to Fukushima City with his wife and four children.

“Though decontamination operations have started, areas around schools
still show high radiation levels, and hospitals have not been restored
to original conditions. We can’t go home even if we want to, out of
consideration for our children,” he said……
http://www.theaustralianeye.com/news/more-than-half-of-nuclear-radiation-zone-evacuees-in-japan-have-yet-to-return-home-aoi35813933.html

January 2, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Japan