nuclear-news

Today’s Fukushima Nuclear Evacuees Real Situation

For your information, as Abe’s government has tightened its grip on most of Japanese the media, the Fukushima nuclear evacuees situation is presented quite differently in the various Japanese media.

Abe’s regime has more or less gagged Asahi, has put more control on Japan Times, while Yomiuri is the Japanese equivalent of the Soviet era Pravda. The only major media who has managed somehow to keep some degree of independance and impartiality is the Mainichi.

As you may see the Japan Times article while having  an added positive spin, leaves out many things untold:

Fukushima nuclear evacuees fall below 100,000. As the fifth anniversary of the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis approaches, the number of residents of the northeastern prefecture who are still living as evacuees has fallen below 100,000, a survey by the prefectural government revealed Friday.
According to the survey, 56,463 evacuees were staying within Fukushima Prefecture as of the end of December, while 43,497 were outside the prefecture as of Dec. 10. The whereabouts of 31 were unknown.
The total came to 99,991 in the December survey, down from 121,585 last January.
The total peaked at 164,865 in May 2011, two months after Japan’s worst nuclear accident occurred at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s tsunami-crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station.
The survey covered those staying in temporary housing facilities or taking shelter at relatives’ houses and other places. It excluded those who have bought houses in the areas they fled to or settled in public housing for disaster victims.
“Many people have started new lives where they were evacuated to, while others have returned to their homes,” a prefectural official said.

Source: Japan Times http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/01/09/national/fukushima-nuclear-evacuees-fall-100000/#.VpDnE1LzN_l

Whereas the Mainichi’s article has a much better in depth look at the evolving problems for evacuees.

Fukushima evacuees are Denied housing, and pushed back to the Contaminated zone
Nuclear evacuees surveyed about living in public housing later became non-eligible
Fukushima Prefecture included more people in surveys for 2013 estimates on demand for new public housing after the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant meltdowns than it ended up allowing into the housing, and the estimates based on those surveys were never publically released, it has been learned.
The estimates were reported in a document obtained by the Mainichi Shimbun. This document was created in May 2013 by a Tokyo consulting company paid around 30 million yen by the Fukushima Prefectural Government for the work. The estimates were based on fiscal 2012 surveys by the Reconstruction Agency and the Fukushima Prefectural Government of evacuees from 11 municipalities near the crippled plant.
The estimates were made based on three types of evacuees seeking a place in the housing: people wanting to live there until evacuation orders for their home municipalities were lifted; people wanting to live there after evacuation orders for their home municipalities were lifted but until a livable environment had been established; and people wanting to live in the housing permanently.
The estimated numbers of residences required for the three types of evacuees were between 3,136 and 5,663 for the first group; between 2,743 and 4,172 for the second group; and between 3,366 and 4,837 for the third group. Only the first category, however, matches up with the standards for “long-term evacuees” — the only type of evacuee allowed to apply for the residences. Additionally, two of the 11 municipalities covered by the estimates, the city of Tamura and the town of Naraha, had their evacuation orders lifted in April 2014 and September 2015, respectively, making their residents ineligible for the housing.
The units were first proposed during the Democratic Party of Japan administration, and in September 2012 the Fukushima Prefectural Government announced preparations to build the first 500 residences. At this point, the project was being funded from reconstruction funds, and which evacuees would be eligible for a place had not yet been decided. At the end of that year, however, the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito took over the government, and at a January 2013 meeting on disaster recovery, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the creation of a plan to allow evacuees to return home quickly, and to secure homes for long-term evacuees. The Act on Special Measures for the Reconstruction and Revitalization of Fukushima was revised in April 2013 to allow special government funding for the new housing, and to restrict eligibility to long-term evacuees.
The unreleased documents obtained by the Mainichi state explicitly that “under the current system to restrict entry into publically-managed housing to long-term evacuees,” others hoping to keep living in the units after their evacuation orders have been lifted “may not be included.”
A representative for the Fukushima Prefectural Government said, “It’s not good to say that the national government ‘toyed with us’ by its policy shift, but the survey on evacuees’ wishes and the establishment of the new fund (with its eligibility restrictions) happened in parallel.” The official added that prefectural staff had to start applying the restrictions “in a hurry” to keep in line with national government policy.
The Fukushima Prefectural Government has announced 4,890 planned public housing units for nuclear disaster evacuees, but even when combined with around 2,800 such residences for tsunami survivors, the number of residences covers only 17 percent of the around 43,700 Fukushima households that remained without a permanent home as of the end of last year.

Source: Mainichi http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20151205/p2a/00m/0na/013000c

While the Yomiuri Shimbun is currently promoting the government plan to use the evacuation zone as a nuclear waste cite as part of “reconstruction”. There is pressure on evacuated communities to accept waste storage and also for communities outside Fukushima to allow radioactive waste to be stored in their communities.

While the government has claimed it would treat all evacuees fairly, the actions behind the scenes show they never intended to do so.
The government collected surveys from evacuees to estimate how many people needed public housing in order to build enough units. Mainichi’s investigation and leaked documents show the government only allowed those from “difficult to return” areas to apply for the public housing. They built the number of units based on this decision. Now anyone from an area that has been reopened or that was a voluntary evacuees has been shut out of the housing availability.
This was the doing of the LDP and Shinzo Abe. When they took power in 2013 they rewrote the current laws dealing with the disaster to bar anyone but long term evacuees from accessing this housing.
“The unreleased documents obtained by the Mainichi state explicitly that “under the current system to restrict entry into publically-managed housing to long-term evacuees,” others hoping to keep living in the units after their evacuation orders have been lifted “may not be included.”
The prefectural government feels duped and there is now a drastic housing shortage five years after the disaster. 2016 also includes looming deadlines for people’s evacuee aid to run out.

Living restrictions for nearly 55,000 mandated evacuees will be lifted by March, 2017. This will affect nearly 75% of those currently subject to the Tokyo evacuation order of 2011. The plan also calls for continuing the ~$1,000 per month (per person) mental anguish stipend until March 2017, regardless of whether or not restrictions are lifted and/or residents return home before that date. In addition, the goverment”s free rent stipend for voluntary evacuees living outside Fukushima Prefecture will end in March 2017. Tokyo and Fukushima Prefecture say there will be some support for the voluntary evacuees living in a state of poverty, to be determined on a case-by-case basis.

January 9, 2016 Posted by dunrenard | Fukushima 2016 | Nuclear Evacuees | 3 Comments