nuclear-news

Its charm offensive is also tied up with efforts to restart the country’s nuclear-power industry, one of the world’s most extensive networks of atomic power generation.

But in Namie, much closer to the ill-fated nuclear plant, the celebration rings hollow……….

Just 873 people, or under 5 per cent, of an original population of 17,613 have returned. Many are scared – with some obvious justification – that their homes and surroundings are still unsafe. Most of the returnees are elderly. Only six children are enrolled at the gleaming new primary school. This is not a place for young families.

Four-fifths of Namie’s geographical area is mountain and forest, impossible to decontaminate, still deemed unsafe to return. When it rains, the radioactive cesium in the mountains flows into rivers and underground water sources close to the town.

Greenpeace has been taking thousands of radiation readings for years in the towns around the Fukushima nuclear plant. It says radiation levels in parts of Namie where evacuation orders have been lifted will remain well above international maximum safety recommendations for many decades, raising the risks of leukaemia and other cancers to “unjustifiable levels”, especially for children.

In the rural areas around the town, radiation levels are much higher and could remain unsafe for people to live beyond the end of this century, Greenpeace concluded in a 2018 report.

“The scale of the problem is clearly not something the government wants to communicate to the Japanese people, and that’s driving the whole issue of the return of evacuees,” said Shaun Burnie, senior nuclear specialist with Greenpeace.

“The idea that an industrial accident closes off an area of Japan, with its limited habitable land, for generations and longer – that would just remind the public why they are right to be opposed to nuclear power.”

………..many residents say the central government is being heavy handed in its attempts to convince people to return, failing to support residents’ efforts to build new communities in places like Nihonmatsu, and then ending compensation payments within a year of evacuation orders being lifted…….. https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/we-were-driven-out-fukushima-s-radioactive-legacy-20190204-p50vgd.html