Chilling Fukushima photos by Arkadiusz Podniesinski

Four years after nuclear incident, chilling Fukushima photos show healing is still not complete, Rocket News 24 chilling Fukushima photos by Arkadiusz Podniesinski Casey Basee, 10 Oct 15

“………..More than four years later, access to much of Fukushima is still restricted due to dangerous amounts of radiation, but Podniesinski recently traveled to the affected area and brought back haunting images that drive home how abruptly the end of life as residents knew it came, and how many sings of the devastation still remain.

Access to contaminated areas is still restricted, however, and in the case of the towns with the highest radiation levels, separate government-issued passes must be obtained for each one. Podniesinski says that these passes are difficult to come by, with the authorities reluctant to grant them even to journalists. Through his network of contacts, though, and also the reputation he’s earned through his Chernobl projects, he was eventually able to obtain the permissions he needed, although not until after arriving in Japan.

As part of the ongoing clean-up process in Fukushima, workers are removing the top, most irradiated layer of soil from the earth in contaminated areas. The soil is then placed in sacks, stacked one atop another and awaiting transportation to a yet-to-be-determined storage area.

However, no one in Japan wants the contaminated soil to be stored in the part of the country in which they live, so with nowhere else to go, Podniesinski saw sights such as this.

Even more concerning is that large-scale soil removal is difficult to carry out in heavily wooded or mountainous areas. Podniesinski points out the potential danger of contaminated soil, left on hillsides and the forest floor, eroding to city lowlands during storms.

▼ Along with bags of contaminated soil, abandoned vehicles were a common sight on Podniesinski’s trip. The photographer says many cannot be removed without first obtaining the owner’s permission.

Podniesinski quotes a survey stating that only 10 percent of the approximately 120,000 still-displaced residents of the disaster area have a firm desire to return to it someday. Some 65 percent said they have no intention of coming back. In light of some of the conditions he saw, Podniesinski can understand why they came to that decision……….

These are just a sample of Podniesinski’s Fukushima photographs, and there are many more, along with additional stories from his trip, on his website here. As he did with Chernobyl, Podniesinski intends to return to Fukushima again to continue to document the damage and recovery, and also to remind us all of the dangers of taking the issue of nuclear power lightly.