nuclear-news

Japan’s displaced people fear to ever return to radiation contaminated areas

In response to a questionnaire sent to Okuma’s evacuees by the town hall in September, only 11 percent of the 3,424 households that responded said they wanted to go back, while 45.6 percent said they had no intention of ever returning, mostly because of radiation fears.

Hopes of Home Fade Among Japan’s Displaced By MARTIN FACKLER NYT, : November 25, 2012 AIZU-WAKAMATSU, Japan — As cold northerly winds sprinkle the first snow on the mountains surrounding this medieval city, those who fled here after last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster are losing hope that they will ever return to their old homes. The mayor of Okuma, a town
near the Fukushima Daiichi plant that was hastily evacuated when a
huge earthquake and tsunami crippled the reactors’ cooling systems on
March 11, 2011, has vowed to lead residents back home as soon as
radiation levels are low enough. But the slow pace of the government’s
cleanup efforts, and the risk of another leak from the plant’s
reactors, forced local officials to admit in September that it might
be at least a decade before the town could be resettled.

A growing number of evacuees from Okuma have become pessimistic about
ever living there again….. Many said they preferred plans that got
them out of temporary housing but helped them maintain the friendships
and communal bonds built over a lifetime, like rebuilding the town
farther away from the plant…..
After first being reassured by the authorities that the accident was
not so bad, then encouraged as the government began its costly
decontamination effort, many evacuees are finally accepting that it
may take decades, perhaps generations, before their town could be
restored to anything like it was before the disaster.

“We all want to go back, but we have to face the obvious,” said Koichi
Soga, 75, a retired carpenter who once worked on reactor buildings at
the plant. “Look at the Soviet Union. They are still not back, right?”

Such sentiments have led to a very public loss of hope by the 11,350
displaced residents of Okuma, one of nine communities within 12 miles
of the stricken plant that were evacuated……
the ministry said this summer that an experimental effort to
decontaminate a 42-acre area in Okuma had failed to reduce radiation
dosages by as much as had been hoped, leading officials to declare
most of the town uninhabitable for at least another five years. That
forced Okuma’s officials to change the target date of their “road map”
for repopulating the town to 2022, instead of 2014…..
In response to a questionnaire sent to Okuma’s evacuees by the town hall in September, only 11 percent of the 3,424 households that responded said they wanted to go back, while 45.6 percent said they had no intention of ever returning, mostly because of radiation fears.
Hopes for a return took another blow in early November, when
Environmental Ministry officials told Mr. Watanabe that they planned
to build as many as nine temporary storage facilities in Okuma for
dirt and other debris from the cleanup. Many evacuees said they did
not want to go back if their town was to be used as a dumping ground
for radioactive refuse.

At the temporary housing site, where prefabricated apartments stood in
rows like barracks on a former soccer field, many evacuees said they
had been allowed to return to their homes in Okuma wearing hazmat
suits and masks on tightly monitored, one-hour visits to retrieve some
belongings. Many said that as the months passed, it was becoming more
difficult emotionally to think about spending the time and energy to
rebuild…… http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/world/asia/hopes-of-home-fade-among-japans-displaced.html

November 27, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, social effects