nuclear-news

Japan’s ghost towns , and the plight of the nuclear refugees

INSIGHT – JAPAN’S NUCLEAR CLEAN-UP: COSTLY, COMPLEX AND AT RISK OF FAILING YAHOO 7 NEWS, 15 AUG 13 BY SOPHIE KNIGHT “……Many have given up hope of ever returning to live in the shadow of the Fukushima nuclear plant. A survey in June showed that a third of the former residents of Iitate, a lush village famed for its fresh produce before the disaster, never want to move back. Half of those said they would prefer to be compensated enough to move elsewhere in Japan to farm.

Nuclear evacuees currently receive a living allowance from plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), which is cut off when the government decides they are able to move home again.

“I feel like some people don’t want to go back because they’re happy living off the compensation money from Tepco and they don’t want that to end,” said Hiroaki Inoue, an official from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry spending a year working at the Kawauchi village office to monitor the spending of the reconstruction budget.

But some evacuees say it is unfair to cut off financial support when their previous homes and villages remain unliveable.

“There’s no jobs, no shops open, nothing. It’s become an incredibly difficult place to live and yet they’re saying ‘You can go home now’,” said a single mother evacuated from near Kawauchi, who declined to be named for fear of retribution from the authorities.

“It’s so unfair to say that. It’s not that simple.”

In Tomioka, a coastal ghost town north of the Fukushima plant, ambient radiation remains at 10 times the government’s target. Wild boar wander the streets.

“This could be fixed,” said Yokota on a recent visit. “They could get these levels right down. But the thing is, people didn’t come back quickly enough. That’s fatal.”

(Additional reporting by Antoni Slodkowski; Editing by Kevin Krolicki and Alex Richardson) http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/18506729/insight-japans-nuclear-clean-up-costly-complex-and-at-risk-of-failing/

August 16, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2013, social effects