What’s All This About The World Bank Not Financing Any More Nukes?
Authored by:
Tina Casey
As the cleanup drama continues to unspool around the tsunami-damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, the Internets have been cheering the news that the World Bank will not be financing any more such facilities in the future. That’s nice, really, except that it’s not exactly news. The World Bank has not directly financed any nuclear power plants since it put up $40 million for a 150,000 kilowatt plant in Italy back in 1959, and to date the official tally still stands at a grand total of that one.
The new news is that last week the World Bank announced a comprehensive global plan to finance more renewable energy, which is bound to set hairs on fire among conspiracy theorists everywhere. However, if you take a look back at that 1959 nuclear project, it becomes clear why the World Bank finds renewable energy a far more attractive investment.
No More Nukes For The World Bank, Since 1959
The World Bank has kindly obliged us with a detailed history of its one foray into nuclear energy. It’s well worth a read in full but here are the meaty bits.
The nuclear project was a first for both the World Bank and Italy. The bank’s $40 million loan covered about two-thirds of the overall cost, including the power plant and related works as well as a substation and 60 miles of transmission lines.
Leading up to the selection of Italy as the site of its first nuclear venture, the Bank spent four years analyzing the financial merits of nuclear energy versus conventional energy investments.
The final verdict came out positive for nuclear but only under a strict set of conditions, may of which are relevant today.
First, size matters. In order to be cost competitive, the plant would need to be sited within an existing system that could support a large new facility.
Second, everything is relative. The host country would have to be looking at high-cost fossil fuel as its only other option. In particular, countries with good hydroelectric potential would make poor sites for a new nuclear power plant. Relatedly, the country would need to be able to put up a decent share of financing the plant.
Third, the Bank anticipated that sustaining such a technologically complex project would be beyond the reach of most individual countries. If a country with otherwise good potential lacked sufficient internal resources, the Bank took into consideration a country’s ability to forge intergovernmental agreements.
Fourth, keep your fingers crossed. The Bank looked for countries that could absorb higher-than-anticipated costs if the project failed to perform as expected…in other words, it would have to be populated by ratepayers that could support higher-than-anticipated energy bills (Shoreham, much?).
Fifth, many baskets for those power eggs. Wisely, the Bank decided that “until further operational experience had been obtained,” the host country would need to have other power sources in hand.
Italy fit the bill and the rest is history. The plant went online in 1964 and was shut down 14 years later, in 1978, after an accident knocked out one of its steam generators. By 1982 it was officially declared out of service.
And that was the end of the World Bank’s purpose-driven nuclear energy adventures, although an organization called Nuclear Information and Research Service has tracked down two instances, in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, where general funds for World Bank projects have been funneled into nuclear energy.
Renewable Energy-Palooza For The World Bank
Medical radioactive material truck ‘stolen in Mexico’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25212648
Mexican police are hunting for the truck and its contents
The IAEA did not give details on how much radioactive material was in the vehicle when it was seized, but offered to assist Mexican authorities.
4 December 2013
A truck carrying medical radioactive material has been stolen in Mexico, the UN’s nuclear watchdog says.
Mexico told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that the truck was carrying a “dangerous radioactive source” used for cancer treatments when it was stolen on Monday.
The radiotherapy source was being taken from a hospital in the northern city of Tijuana to a waste storage centre.
It was stolen near the capital, Mexico City.
Mexico’s Nuclear Security Commission said that at the time of the theft, the cobalt-60 teletherapy source was “properly shielded”.
But the commission warned it could be “extremely dangerous to a person if removed from the shielding, or if it was damaged”.
Local media reported that the truck, a 2.5-tonne Volkswagen Worker, was stolen by armed men at a petrol station in Tepojaco, on the outskirts of Mexico City on Monday morning.
The theft took place at a petrol stationBBC world affairs correspondent Rajesh Mirchandani says Cobalt-60 could theoretically be used in a so-called “dirty bomb” – an explosive device that could spread radioactive material over a wide area – although there is no official suggestion this was the purpose of the theft.
Nuclear Industry Applauds Canada’s Treaty Signing – but only a 1 Billion dollar limit
…..By June of 2012, Tepco had received nearly 50 billion dollars from the government…..
OTTAWA, Dec. 4, 2013 /CNW/ –
SOURCE Canadian Nuclear Association
The Canadian nuclear industry fully supports the federal government’s decision to sign the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage.
The president of the Canadian Nuclear Association, Dr. John Barrett, said, “This treaty is a good step toward an improved nuclear liability regime. It brings us closer to a global set of rules on liability, and aligns Canada with international standards.”
The international convention, already signed by the United States and 15 other countries, enables a consistent international approach to managing nuclear liability. More countries with nuclear electric power generation capability will need to ratify the agreement before it takes effect.
“This treaty, combined with anticipated new legislation on liability, will go a long way toward improving the liability regime for Canadian nuclear operators,” said Dr. Barrett. “We are in full support of the Government of Canada’s nuclear liability initiatives.”
The federal government announced a plan last June to amend the Nuclear Liability Act.
Changes to Nuclear Liability in Canada
“In the recent announcement by the Minister, several proposed changes were described. Primarily, the liability cap of $75 million would be increased to $1 billion. Claims would be permitted through a greater number of categories and an improved procedure for delivering compensation would be designed and implemented. The scope of compensable damage would be broadened to include economic loss and environmental damage and the limitation period for certain claims would be increased to 30 years. The new legislation would also provide for a specialised claims tribunal to, among other things, accelerate claims payments.”
http://www.canadianenergylawblog.com/2013/07/19/changes-to-nuclear-liability-in-canada/
Public Pays for Fukushima Clean Up While Nuclear Industry Profits
“A year after the disaster, Tepco was taken over by the Japanese government because it couldn’t afford the costs to get the damaged reactors under control. By June of 2012, Tepco had received nearly 50 billion dollars from the government.”
Forgotten victims of a man-made catastrophe
More pictures on link
4 December 2013
Cats, dogs and ostriches dying around Fukushima, waiting for owners. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. This rule seems so true if you look into the story of thousands of animals left behind near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. While wild animals can flee when danger threatens, tame ones become loyal to their surroundings or depend heavily on human care. Many Fukushima animals have died while the surviving ones are still – 18 months later – patiently waiting for their owners to return, says photographer, Yasusuke Ota.
The Fukushima disaster didn’t just affect humans. On March 11 2011, the day after a tsunami damaged a nuclear reactor at Fukushima, all inhabitants within 12 miles of the power plant were evacuated. Along with all their personal belongings but they were forced to leave their pets and farm animals behind. On 14 March, there was a hydrogen explosion at the power plant, making it uncertain when the evacuees might return to their homes.
Animal lover and photographer, Yasusuke Ota was one of the volunteers who risked their own lives to carry animal feed and water back to Fukushima, into the “No go” area. He spoke about his experience and his photographic exhibition, “The Abandoned Animals of Fukushima”, to the audience at an anti-nuclear film festival in Taipei this week.
Photo: Yasusuke Ota/huismarseille.nl
Ota said it was his love for cats that first drove him to enter the area to capture images of pets and farm animals left behind but what he observed affected him far more than he had expected, and started him thinking about what he could do to help them. “I felt I needed to inform the world and leave evidence of what really happened. So I started to take photos of this while going inside the zone of rescue”.
“We found them in a hell on earth,” he said. The volunteers found cows on their knees, or stuck in bogs and ditches, emaciated horses and pigs stuck in stalls with dead animals that had died of starvation. Ota said some pets died because they were chained up or kept in cages and some starved because they stayed in their houses as if waiting for their owners to return.
Some animals had survived by eating whatever they could find and 18 months on were still patiently waiting for their owners.
Photo: Yasusuke Ota/huismarseille.nl
While showing a photograph of a sign that read “an area for good living,” Ota added that the place has become “a place to which people never return”.
Photo: Yasusuke Ota/huismarseille.nl
Many of the images captured by Ota are horrific, depicting a mummified cat on the road, a dog’s lower jaw, a pigsty right between the two nuclear reactors, with dozens of dead pigs. Other images border on the comic; pigs trying to cool off in a shallow puddle of water and two escaped ostriches roaming the streets.
Uganda told to speed up nuclear plans by the IAEA whose running out of patience!
Florida PSC Approves Amended Nuclear Cost Recovery Rules
News Release: The Florida Public Service Commission
4 December 2013
TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) today approved amendments to the rule that establishes an alternative cost recovery mechanism for nuclear power plant construction projects. The rule amendments implement changes to Section 366.93, Florida Statutes, enacted by the Legislature during the 2013 session. The Florida Legislature’s statutory change retains the 2006 law’s alternative cost recovery provisions but requires additional levels of PSC review.
The alternative cost recovery mechanism, known as the Nuclear Cost Recovery Clause (NCRC), allows for the recovery of certain plant construction costs as they are incurred, rather than waiting until the plant enters commercial operation. This approach provides incentives for a utility to build nuclear power plants, by decreasing financial risk, while at the same time decreasing the total cost of the project that is ultimately passed on in customer bills.
New provisions of the law and rule limit cost recovery to only those costs related to obtaining site certification and a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, until the certification or license is granted. Utilities must petition the PSC for approval before proceeding with other preconstruction work or commencing the project’s construction phase. To gain approval, the utility must show that the plant remains feasible and that projected costs are reasonable. In addition, project carrying costs (interest costs) were revised to apply the same charge that is applied to other construction projects.
PSC Chairman Ronald A. Brisé said, “The amended rule will allow a greater level of PSC review as a project proceeds from one phase to the next. In addition, revising the carrying cost rate will immediately lower costs and save customers money.”
For additional information, visit http://www.floridapsc.com.
IRP update cuts demand outlook, suggests nuclear decision be delayed in South Africa
…It suggests that the country should not “prematurely” commit to a technology that may become “redundant” if electricity demand expectations do not materialise….
Article by: Terence Creamer
4 December 2013
Link to report
http://us-cdn.creamermedia.co.za/assets/articles/attachments/47275_irp2010_updatea.pdf
The Department of Energy (DoE) has called for public comment on an updated version of the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2010-2030, in which a materially lower demand outlook is projected over the 20-year horizon. In fact, the update anticipates that 6 600 MW less capacity will be required by 2030, which, in turn, could enable government to delay its decision on a new nuclear build programme.
The comment period closes on February 7 and the DoE says the responses will be used to inform a final draft to be submitted to Cabinet by March 2014. Following Cabinet endorsement, the approved document will then be promulgated and published in the Government Gazette.
The 114-page report updates the IRP 2010-3013 promulgated in March 2011 by taking account of changes to South Africa’s economic growth, as well as the electricity market.
A demand projection of between 345 TWh and 416 TWh by 2030 is made, which is considerably lower than the 454 TWh anticipated in the current version. “From a peak demand perspective, this means a reduction from 67 800 MW to 61 200 MW (on the upper end of the range), with the consequence that at least 6 600 MW less capacity is required.”
In addition, the update still uses the National Development Plan’s aspirational economic growth target of 5.4%, against which the economy is currently underperforming. Should the economy’s recovery towards such growth levels fail to materialise, though, the update’s demand projections could be reduced even further.
The update indicates that the nuclear decision should possibly be delayed, owing to the fact that revised demand projections suggest that no new nuclear baseload capacity is required until after 2025.
It suggests that the country should not “prematurely” commit to a technology that may become “redundant” if electricity demand expectations do not materialise. Under low demand growth conditions, the update does not foresee a need for nuclear baseload until after 2035.
USA – Two nuclear-waste-disposal reports raise doubts this problem can be solved
…Frankly, I assumed — with many others — that the disposal problem would be solved simply because it had to be solved, whether the nation’s reactor fleet grows larger or not.
Now I’m not so sure….
By Ron Meador
4 December 2013
Two enterprising views of America’s nuclear waste problem turned up in recent days, and may put to rest any lingering notions that solutions are near — or even likely.
And this matters — a lot — because without disposal, the accelerating campaigns for a “nuclear renaissance” as replacement for our globe-warming, fossil-fuel-consuming energy systems are just so many smoke rings.
To hear the new-nukes advocates talk about it, waste disposal is merely another technical problem and thus susceptible to technical solution. But reports from Politico.com on Saturday and the Los Angeles Times on Friday suggest precisely the opposite:
Even where technical solutions have been more or less agreed upon, political and other barriers have proved insurmountable and are showing no signs of erosion.
Also, that this is true not only in the electric power sector but also at a former nuclear-weapons facility, where the federal government is in charge of all parts of the process, and money presumably is no object.
Politico’s report is focused on the civilian side and the decades-long effort to create a national repository for spent fuel assemblies from the nation’s power plants, now stored in holding pools and dry casks across 38 states, including Minnesota.
Arguably, the Obama administration’s decision to abandon the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada means essentially no progress has been made toward creation of a national repository, because Yucca was not only the first choice of successive administrations but also, in practical terms, the only choice.
Ratepayers and taxpayers alike have financed this fruitless pursuit to the tune of $15 billion in direct project costs, but that’s only the beginning of what Politico terms “The $38 billion nuclear waste fiasco.”
Ratepayers pay; taxpayers, too
According to Department of Energy figures, an additional $23 billion will be returned to electric utilities that were forced to pay into the national Nuclear Waste Fund, which would provide operating funds for a repository. This money was collected from customers at a rate of one-tenth cent per kilowatt hour.
Since 1998, which the government set and then missed as the deadline for taking waste off their hands, utility after utility has brought legal action for damages — essentially, reimbursement of their outlays for extended onsite storage and waste management arising from this broken pledge. If that’s not bad enough:
- The official $23 billion estimate could be low by more than half, according to “industry experts” who told Politico’s Darius Dixon that the real figure is more like $50 billion.
- Damages paid to utilities don’t come out of the Nuclear Waste Fund but out of general Treasury revenues — meaning that taxpayers who happen to also be ratepayers of a utility with a nuclear plant are paying for these problems twice. Furthermore:
The costs of inaction don’t just include dollars. The lack of a final resting place for the waste means that each nuclear plant has to stockpile its own. Thousands of tons of waste are stranded at sites around the country, including at plants that have shut down.
“I’m trying to think of some fancy words, but at the end of the day it’s just a massive consumer rip-off,” said Greg White, a regulator on the Michigan Public Service Commission who also heads the nuclear waste panel for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. NARUC, which represents state-level regulators, won a legal victory this month when the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered DOE to stop collecting the fee.
Salo Zelermyer, a former George W. Bush-era DOE attorney who works at the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, said the waste program has “plainly broken down” and that the government had made “no discernible progress towards its commitments.”
Xcel’s payments and recoveries
UK offers loan guarantee to Hitachi for new nuclear plant in Wales
LONDON
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/04/uk-britain-nuclear-guarantee-idUKBRE9B300Z20131204
(Reuters) – Britain said it agreed to provide a loan guarantee to Japan’s Hitachi to help it finance a new multi-billion pound nuclear plant in Wales.
The finance ministry on Wednesday said it would offer the UK guarantee to Hitachi to help finance its planned 2,600 megawatt Wylfa station in north Wales, “subject to final due diligence and ministerial approval”.
Britain has an ambitious target to replace its ageing nuclear fleet by the middle of the next decade, and Hitachi is one of a handful of firms ready to take on high upfront costs to build new reactors.
Marin officials eye Japanese nuclear plant plume
…But even experts do not know what, exactly, to expect when ocean waters carrying nuclear contaminants reach the West Coast in two or three years. How much of a threat will it pose? Will waves contaminated with cesium and strontium pollute the coast?…
By Nels Johnson
Marin Independent Journal
Posted: 12/03/2013
http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_24648027/marin-officials-eye-japanese-nuclear-plant-plume
Concern that a radioactive plume is headed for the West Coast from the crippled Japanese Fukushima nuclear plant has prompted Marin County officials to monitor the situation.
Although no one knows for sure what perils if any may be in store, fears about toxic pollution have prompted supervisors Susan Adams and Steve Kinsey to ask that public safety, health and coastal staff track the issue.
Adams has asked county emergency services, fire and health officials “how they would respond”….if there was an incident” involving the plant, and Kinsey, a state coastal commissioner, has asked the state staff to be on alert for more information as well.
“Monitoring reports to date have not identified any current threats to the health of our community, so there is no need for panic,” Adams said. “Obviously, from a public health and environmental perspective, the risks to Californians from radioactive contamination if the Fukushima facility is not repaired to the highest standards remains of concern.”
Adams, a maternity nurse who heads the county’s Disaster Council, said she directed health and emergency services officials “to provide an update” to the council later this month. “I will also be contacting our state and federal representatives to learn more about what is being done to ensure the health and safety of our people and our resources from any future nuclear incident at the Fukushima plant,” she said.
Kinsey said testing of state coastal waters is underway by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He added he has asked state coastal staffers to review the situation. A Coastal Commission report is expected by next spring.
France’s 58 Nuclear Fuel Pools Must Be Safer, Watchdog Says
…When asked about the prospect of extensive work on EDF’s existing spent-fuel ponds, Chief Executive Officer Henri Proglio said he wasn’t aware of the “specifics.”
“It’s nothing serious in any case”…
Tara Patel
At each of Electricite de France SA (EDF)’s 58 nuclear reactors, there’s a water tank that stores spent atomic fuel rods, keeping them cool and trapping deadly radiation. The country’s atomic watchdog is concerned they aren’t safe enough.
“Significant safety improvements have to be made,” Thomas Houdre, director of reactors at Autorite de Surete Nucleaire, said in an interview, making the regulator’s strongest comments on the issue so far. “There is no way of managing an accident in a spent-fuel pool. We want the possibility of this happening to be practically eliminated.”
Since Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011, many countries have scrambled to reassess dangers posed by earthquakes, terrorists or worker mistakes. Electricite de France, or EDF, is being asked to review its cooling facilities and the world’s biggest atomic operator must resolve concerns of regulators in order to win permission to extend the lives of its reactors.
France’s pools are similar to those in any atomic nation: after searing hot rods are removed from the reactor, they’re submerged in water for as long as two years to cool their temperature and provide a shield from release of dangerous radiation emissions. Should their cooling systems falter and pools overheat, as happened in a Fukushima reactor pool, an unprecedented accident is possible.
“Regulators have focused on fuel ponds as part of the Fukushima follow-up,” according to Tony Roulstone, an atomic engineer who directs the University of Cambridge’s nuclear energy masters program in the U.K. “It’s not a bigger issue than before, it’s just getting more attention.”
Improve Safety
Measures to improve safety include more water supplies, better power supplies, more stored water and improved external protection, he said.
Safety concerns at spent-fuel ponds come amid debate about whether Paris-based EDF should be allowed to operate existing French reactors for as long as six decades.
Thom Hartman on study showing radiation contamination spreading around Fukushima – Video
Video on link
https://www.freespeech.org/video/thom-hartmann-news-dec-3-2013
Typhoons are spreading the nuclear fallout from Fukushima. Recent storms that brought high winds and heavy rains have pushed more radiation out to sea, and spread soil containing dangerous levels of cesium. A joint study by Tsukuba University and France’s Climate and Environmental Science Laboratory found that typhoons washed away contaminated soil and deposited it in rivers and stream. Those waterways then transported radiation into the ocean. Although scientists have conducted various studies on Fukushima since the 2011 tsunami, this is the first study to consider how strong weather events effect the spread of radiation. The results of this study underline the ongoing problems at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and the overall danger of nuclear energy. There is no way to completely contain the fallout from this ongoing disaster. The only way to prevent more disasters is to eliminate nuclear power. No nukes!
Nuclear waste pipe removed from Hollywood star Helena Bonham Carter’s property
3 December 2013
WORKMEN are removing a pipe into the Thames for radioactive waste from the garden of Hollywood star Helena Bonham Carter.
The four-mile-long underground pipe had been discharging treated water from the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell into the river since the 1940s until March this year.
For the past few weeks workmen have been removing the section through the garden of the £2.9m home of actress Helena Bonham Carter and partner Tim Burton, which backs on to the Thames in Sutton Courtenay.
The pipe runs through her garden for a length of around 100 metres.
Research Sites Restoration Ltd, which is carrying out the work on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, says it only expects to find “very low levels of radioactivity” in the scale and silt which have built up in the pipe.
It is using airborne radiation detectors to make sure the pipe does not release contamination.
Michael Jenkins, chairman of Sutton Courtenay parish council, said: “Some people are more concerned about the risks than others, that is certainly true.
“I do understand those people who are concerned, and there have been one or two occasions when the pipe has leaked but it was dealt with at the time.”
More here…
Limited Internal Radiation Exposure Associated with Resettlements to a Radiation-Contaminated Homeland after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster
….There are a few limitations to this study. Firstly, subject screening was conducted soon after the villagers’ return; therefore, more time may have been needed for radionuclides to accumulate in the body. Secondly, there is a high probability of sample selection bias because the sample size was small, mainly owing to the small size of the whole village population, and it is possible that individuals more concerned with the radiation contamination came to the screening program.
Conclusion
The present study concludes that the risks for internal radiation exposure could be limited after the resettlement of the villagers to their village with a strict food control intervention…..
- Published: Dec 02, 2013
- DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0081909
[ABSTRACT]
Resettlement to their radiation-contaminated hometown could be an option for people displaced at the time of a nuclear disaster; however, little information is available on the safety implications of these resettlement programs. Kawauchi village, located 12–30 km southwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, was one of the 11 municipalities where mandatory evacuation was ordered by the central government. This village was also the first municipality to organize the return of the villagers. To assess the validity of the Kawauchi villagers’ resettlement program, the levels of internal Cesium (Cs) exposures were comparatively measured in returnees, commuters, and non-returnees among the Kawauchi villagers using a whole body counter. Of 149 individuals, 5 villagers had traceable levels of Cs exposure; the median detected level was 333 Bq/body (range, 309–1050 Bq/kg), and 5.3 Bq/kg (range, 5.1–18.2 Bq/kg). Median annual effective doses of villagers with traceable Cs were 1.1 x 10-2 mSv/y (range, 1.0 x 10-2-4.1 x 10-2 mSv/y). Although returnees had higher chances of consuming locally produced vegetables, Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel test showed that their level of internal radiation exposure was not significantly higher than that in the other 2 groups (p=0.643). The present findings in Kawauchi village imply that it is possible to maintain internal radiation exposure at very low levels even in a highly radiation-contaminated region at the time of a nuclear disaster. Moreover, the risks for internal radiation exposure could be limited with a strict food control intervention after resettlement to the radiation-contaminated village. It is crucial to establish an adequate number of radio-contaminated testing sites within the village, to provide immediate test result feedback to the villagers, and to provide education regarding the importance of re-testing in reducing the risk of high internal radiation exposure.
Citation: Tsubokura M, Kato S, Nihei M, Sakuma Y, Furutani T, et al. (2013) Limited Internal Radiation Exposure Associated with Resettlements to a Radiation-Contaminated Homeland after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster. PLoS ONE 8(12): e81909. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0081909
Editor: Suminori Akiba, Kagoshima University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Japan
Received: July 30, 2013; Accepted: October 17, 2013; Published: December 2, 2013
Copyright: © 2013 Tsubokura et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: The authors have no support or funding to report.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Introduction
Radiation exposure can generate long-term risks for disorders such as tumors depending on personal exposure doses[1]. Health threats have emerged in radiation-contaminated areas. Cumulative radiation exposure is a serious public concern in Fukushima, particularly among children, who face greater health risks than adults.
Evacuation from radiation-contaminated areas at the time of a nuclear disaster is an effective strategy to reduce the risks of radiation exposure[2], although there is a risk-benefit trade-off between the long-term effects of low-dose radiation and the serious short-term health effects an evacuation may cause[3]. For instance, the blanket evacuation technique caused a dramatically acute increase in mortality among residents of elderly nursing homes in the Fukushima area[4]. Moreover, evacuation could have long-term adverse health effects; prolonged life as evacuees could represent physical, mental and socioeconomic burdens[5].
Thus, an option for displaced people, who generally have strong affective ties with their place of birth, is resettlement to their radiation-contaminated hometown, as was the case after the Chernobyl disaster[6]. However, little information is available regarding the safety of such resettlement programs to the radiation-contaminated hometowns.
Under such circumstances, the case of Kawauchi village, Fukushima Prefecture, provides useful information concerning the validity of the resettlement program. Kawauchi village is located 12–30 km southwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This village was one of the 11 municipalities that were evacuated by central government mandate on March 15, 2011, and it was the first municipality to issue the return of its villagers after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster[7]. The deposition density of Cesium (Cs)-137 was 43-860 kBq/m2 on November 11, 2011 in the Kawauchi area (Figure 1), which was comparable to zone II (555 kBq/m2) as of 1988 after the Chernobyl disaster[8,9]. Approximately half a year after the disaster, the central government lifted the emergency evacuation preparation zone in a 20-30 km radius from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on September 30, 2011. Taken toghether with the low risk of hydrogen explosion and failure of the cooling system, and the low levels of external radiation exposure measured among the Fukushima residents, the mayor of Kawauchi village issued a declaration for all the former villagers to return home on January 31, 2012[10].
Figure 1. Cesium-137 deposition of soil around Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as of November 5, 2011.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0081909.g001
However, many people hesitated to return home, partly owing to the lack of the information on the safety after the resettlement. Elevated air dose levels evoked a feeling of fear of potential irradiation. In addition, primarily because of consumption of potentially radiation-contaminated locally grown food products, a higher level of internal radiation exposure was expected among returnees after their resettlement to Kawauchi village. While the main industry of the region was agriculture, which had a working population share of 55%, the estimated annual effective doses from internal radiation exposure among returnees to the Kawauchi village using the results of the radio-contaminant food testing ranged between 0.37–7.0 mSv/y.[11] High doses from internal radiation exposure happened to be estimated in case of continuous ingestion of highly radio-contaminant food such as mushrooms.
To assess the validity of the Kawauchi villagers’ resettlement program, the levels of internal Cs-137 exposure, known to be representative of total internal radiation exposure[12], were comparatively measured in the returnees and non-returnees among the Kawauchi villagers. In this report, we started off with the presumption that the risk for internal radiation exposure would be limited to returnees. While returnees had higher chances of consuming locally produced vegetables, their level of internal radiation exposure was not significantly higher than that of non-returnees. Based on our findings, we also present and discuss the effective countermeasures to avoid internal contamination among residents after the resettlement, which could be useful for nuclear incidents in the future.
1 This Month
petition to oppose the rapid increase of space-military industry threatening Jeju Island and the region.
[Petition by April 19th (KST)] Stop the joint military-Hanwha Systems-Jeju Provincial Government Sea Launch!
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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