nuclear-news

12 years on, Fukushima’s citizen-scientists continue to test local fish for radioactive substances.

2 In a white coat and gloves, Ai Kimura is cutting up a fish sample at the
Tarachine lab, about an hour’s drive from the now-crippled Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan’s eastern coast.

Four times a year, Ms Kimura and her team of volunteers collect samples of fish from the waters around the plant. They have been doing this since the lab was founded in
2011, just months after a devastating tsunami flooded the reactors, causing
a radiation leak. Except Ms Kimura is not a scientist – and neither are any
of the women who run the non-profit lab, whose name Tarachine is derived
from the term for “mother” in old Japanese.

Shaken after the tsunami, Ms Kimura says locals started the lab to find out what was safe to feed their children because it was hard to come by information on the risks of
radiation. So they asked technical experts to train them on how to test for
radioactive substances and log the readings, raised funds and began
educating themselves. It was the decision of a shattered community that
never thought an accident at the nuclear power plant was possible.

Now, 12 years on, they again find themselves struggling to trust the Japanese
government as it insists it’s safe to release treated radioactive water
from the plant into the Pacific Ocean.

BBC 13th July 2023

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-66173431

July 16, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, radiation