nuclear-news

Report on a tour of Fukushima

Into Fukushima’s no-man’s land Calgary Herald, Agence France-Presse February 21, 2012 FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI – Every two minutes on the bus ride through the ghost towns surrounding Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, a company guide in a white protective suit holds up a display showing the radiation level. And it is rising.

Passing through the disaster exclusion zone visitors catch sight of
houses that look like they could be anywhere in Japan, except for the
odd sign that there is no-one to look after them; that no-one has
lived here for nearly a year.

Occasionally an animal appears in a garden, left to fend for itself by
owners who fled when the plant’s nuclear reactors began spewing their
poison last March.

Still the radiation level is rising.

The small delegation of visitors, including an AFP journalist, sit
quietly on the bus, covered head to toe in suits designed to keep
radioactive particles off their skin, their clothes and out of their
hair.

A row of pine trees stands at the entrance to Fukushima Daiichi, a
name that has become etched into public consciousness over the past 12
months as the world watched the worst nuclear accident in a generation
unfold.

Still the radiation level is rising………

Back on the bus, the minister and his entourage remove their masks again.

The company guide shows them the radiation reading.

Passengers stare out of the window as they pass back through the gates
of the plant and back into the no-man’s land of the exclusion zone,
where tens of thousands of people were forced from their homes.

In parts of this zone, people will be allowed back some time in the
next year or so.

Other areas will be uninhabitable for 30 years.

The bus winds its way back through empty villages, past the deserted houses.

And the radiation reading begins to fall….. http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Into+Fukushima+land/6184316/story.html#ixzz1nFNS4EoR

February 23, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Japan