On September 5, 2017, Minami-soma city made a statement on the city’s radiation levels compared to 3 cities in West Japan, which has been reported in several newspapers. It’s important to comment on this study because the statement is intended to persuade the population to return to live there.
Here are the locations of Minami-soma and the 3 other cities. Here is the article of the Asahi Shimbun
Fukushima city shows radiation level is same as in west Japan
By SHINTARO EGAWA/ Staff Writer
September 5, 2017 at 18:10 JST
MINAMI-SOMA, Fukushima Prefecture–Radiation readings here on the Pacific coast north of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant are almost identical to those of sample cities on the other side of Japan.
The Minami-Soma government initiated the survey and hopes the results of the dosimeter readings, released Sept. 4, will encourage more evacuees to return to their home areas after they fled in the aftermath of the 2011 nuclear disaster.
A total of 100 portable dosimeters were handed out to 25 city employees from each of four cities–Minami-Soma, Tajimi in Gifu Prefecture, Fukuyama in Hiroshima Prefecture and Nanto in Toyama Prefecture. They were asked to take them wherever they went from May 29 through June 11.
The staff members were evenly dispersed with their homes in all corners of the cities they represented.
In addition, only those living in wooden houses were selected as different materials, concrete walls, for example, are more effective in blocking radiation.
In July 2016, evacuation orders for most parts of Minami-Soma were lifted, but not many residents have so far returned.
The city’s committee for health measures against radiation, which is made up of medical experts, analyzed the data.
The median value of the external radiation dosage of the 25 staff of Minami-Soma was 0.80 millisieverts per annum, while the average value was 0.82 mSv per annum, according to Masaharu Tsubokura, the head of the committee and a physician at Minami-Soma general hospital.
No significant difference was found in the three western cities.
Both figures were adjusted to include the natural radiation dose, and are below the 1-mSv per annum mark set by the national government as the acceptable amount of long-term additional radiation dosage, which is apart from natural radiation and medical radiation dosages.
The radiation doses in all cities were at levels that would not cause any health problems, according to Tsubokura.
“Making comparisons with other municipalities is important,” Tsubokura said. “I am intending to leave the survey results as an academic paper.”
Our comments
1) The difference of life style between city employees and local agricultural population
As we see in the article, portable dosimeters were handed out to city employees. Theyspend most of their day time in an office protected by concrete walls which are efficient for blocking radiation as stated in the article. However, in Minami-soma, most of the population spends more time outside, very often working in the fields. Their life style is different and therefore the external radiation dose cannot be similar to those of city employees. The result of the comparison between the external radiation dose of city employees cannot be used as an argument to say that it is safe for the local population to live in Minami-soma.
2) In the article of Fukushima Minyu, it is stated that in Minami-soma the radiation dose has a wider range than in the other three cities. This means that there are hotspots, which leads to higher risks of internal irradiation.
3) The radiation dose expressed in terms of Sieverts is relevant for radioprotection when the source of radiation is fixed and identified. This is the case for most of the nuclear workers. However, in the case of Fukushima after the nuclear accident where the whole environment is radio-contaminated and the radioactive substances are dispersed widely everywhere, it is not a relevant reference for radioprotection. It is important in this case to measure surface contamination density, especially of soil.
4) 6 years and 6 months since the accident, cesium has sunk in the soil. It is thought to be between 6 and 10 cm from the surface. This means the top layer of soil from 0 to 5 cm is blocking the radiation, reducing the measures of the effective dose. However, this does not mean that the population is protected from internal irradiation, since cesium can be re-scattered by many means, by digging or by flooding, for example.
5) The reliability of individual portable dosimeters has already been raised many times. This device is not adequate to capture the full 360° exposure in radio-contaminated environments as described in point 3 above.
6) In the article, it is stated that background radiation is included in the compared values, but it does not mention the actual background radiation measurements in the 4 cities.
The Table of Fukushima Minyu
Radiation dose of the 4 cities
Values include the background radiation dose
To summarize, the sample study group does not represent the overall population. The study doesn’t include the risks of internal radiation, for which the measurement of contaminated soil is indispensible. The dosimeters are not adequate to measure the full load of radio-contaminated environments. So, the research method is not adequate to draw the conclusion to say that it is safe for the population to return to live in Minami-soma.
Members of the European Parliament’s food safety committee will vote on a text on Thursday (7 September), raising the alarm over a European Commission proposal to partly relax controls on food imports from Fukushima, Japan, which suffered a nuclear disaster in 2011.
The draft resolution, seen by EUobserver, said “there are sufficient reasons to believe that this proposal could lead to an increase in exposure to radioactive contaminated food with a corresponding impact on human health”.
The MEPs’ text highlighted that, under the commission’s proposal, rice and derived products from the Fukushima prefecture would no longer be subject to emergency inspections. It stressed that one of those products is “rice used in baby food and food for young children”.
The text criticised that the commission’s proposal did not justify why some foodstuffs were taken off the list.
However, the MEPs’ concerns may already be outdated.
Cautious
Danish centre-left MEP Christel Schaldemose, one of the text’s sponsors, spoke to EUobserver on Tuesday over the phone.
“We are completely relying on data from the Japanese side. … We need to be cautious,” she said.
“I wouldn’t say we can’t trust them, but it is worth checking ourselves,” said Schaldemose.
The resolution is an initiative by French Green MEP Michele Rivasi, who has been working on the text since June 2017.
Andriukaitis included a link to the raw data in a footnote, and said that if MEPs wanted to have a “detailed justification for the proposed changes”, they can get them “by separate mail, upon request”.
According to a commission source, Rivasi will receive this justification after having requested it.
Meanwhile, however, work on the resolution continued, and is now on the agenda for a vote on Thursday.
It received the support from five other MEPs, including two from the two largest political groups in the EU parliament.
Free trade agreement
The parliament’s text, which is non-binding, also mentioned that Japanese exports of rice could increase under the EU-Japan free trade agreement (FTA), which the commission is expected to wrap up this year.
In a briefing which Green MEP Rivasi gave to journalists last July, according to a summary provided by her office, the French politician implied that the proposal on Fukushima was a bargaining chip in the negotiations for the FTA, and called it a “scandal”.
The left-wing Greens are generally critical of FTAs.
Rivasi referred to a remark commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker made following an EU-Japan summit on 6 July.
“I would like to congratulate prime minister Abe on the remarkable progress Japan has made on making products from the Fukushima region safe, following the 2011 accident,” Juncker had said.
“I am confident and I will work into that direction that we will have after the summer break a further lifting of import measures,” he added.
A commission spokeswoman told EUobserver, however, that the proposed changes are based on a thorough analysis.
“The requirement for pre-testing before export is lifted only for food and feed from a prefecture where sufficient data demonstrate that food and feed is compliant in the last growing season with the strict maximum levels applicable in Japan,” she said.
The emergency restrictions were put in place two weeks after the accident happened, and have already been amended five times.
The decision is taken by a so-called implementing act, which only involves the commission and member states, but not the EU parliament.
We are “GO WEST & COME WEST!!! 3.11 Evacuees from Tokyo area”.
Etsuji Watanabe, one of the members of Association for Citizens and Scientists Concerned about Internal Radiation Exposures (ACSIR), estimates that each year at most 180,000 people may develop cancer and 90,000 will be killed by cancer or some other causes.
Radiation Levels in Tokyo Metropolitan Area (Year 2013~2015: µSv/hour)
Estimation of the risk for 10 million people in Tokyo Metropolitan area exposed by radiation (2.4mSv/year).
Data provided by Mr. Kirishima.
* Risk occurrence: 10,000 person-Sv
** According to a book ‘Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment’ by Alexey V. Yablokov, ratio of death caused by cancer and not by cancer is 1 to 1.
Fukushima Radiation is Now Spreading to Tokyo and Eastern Japan
The child thyroid cancer which were commonly seen after Chernobyl accident is being found even around Tokyo area after several years from 3.11 Fukushima accident in 2011.
Severe illness such as various cancers, leukemia, and cardiac infarction are increasing too at alarming rate. For some people, immune system has also weakened due to radiation effects, and the conditions of their chronic disease or common cold are worsening.
Therefore some people from Tokyo have evacuated to safer places.
However Japanese government (and main media) continue to ignore the effects of Fukushima radiation even though the radiation level is still dangerously high. The government have recently lifted evacuation orders for the restricted residence areas and cut housing subsidies for evacuees, forcing them to believe it is safe to return.
Therefore some people think it is nonsense to evacuate from Tokyo area and believe the evacuees are over-reacting. Many of the evacuees are feeling very isolated and are living in poverty after moving to safer locations, forcing some to return to the contaminated area against their will.
About 45 million people still remain in contaminated metropolitan area in Tokyo. But many people are started feeling very ill one after another. In fact many of my friends living in Tokyo or Eastern Japan have collapsed from numerous illnesses over these years.
It has proven that an increase of serious illness was seen four-to-five years after 1986 Chernobyl meltdown and hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives.
Now we are facing the same situation in Tokyo and eastern Japan.
Fukushima radiation problem permits no delay. We need to encourage people in Tokyo and Eastern Japan to evacuate to safer places to protect their lives.
In order to fight against the inhumanity of the Japanese government toward lives of people and uncover the fact of radiation effect in Japan, it is urgently needed to spread the information like this to the public.
SAN DIEGO (CN) – Representing cancer-ridden Navy service members who say they were exposed to radiation on a humanitarian mission in Fukushima, former Sen. John Edwards urged a federal judge Thursday to set a date for trial.
Over a decade after serving as John Kerry’s running mate in the 2004 presidential election, Edwards now represents hundreds of Navy sailors who were aboard the USS Ronald Reagan as part of a humanitarian mission trip to Fukushima, Japan — bringing food and supplies to the city in March 2011 after it was devastated by an earthquake and ensuing tsunami.
“We have all these sailors whose case is now five years old, who have died or are in the process of dying right now,” said Edwards, whose firm Edwards Kirby is based in North Carolina.
Edwards noted that some of his other clients have seen their children born with birth defects. He said he made the trip from Raleigh to San Diego to “try to get this thing moving.”
Japan’s earthquake triggered a nuclear meltdown at the power plant run by Tokyo Electric Power Co., and Edwards’ clients say the radiation exposure has caused them to develop cancer and other illnesses.
The suit is one of two pending against TEPCo and General Electric in the Southern District of California — the first filed in 2012 and an additional lawsuit naming more than 150 sailors filed last month.
Thursday’s hearing before U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino came after the Ninth Circuit ruled in June that the lawsuit could proceed in federal court, rejecting an effort to have the case sent to Japan.
Edwards urged Sammartino to bypass the procedural hurdles, “so we know there’s a deadline over there.”
“Instead of just staying still and going with the pleadings and the motions to dismiss, is there a way to get us a trial date and a structure,” Edwards asked.
“I hate to see these sailors and say we filed motions, went to the Ninth Circuit, went to Washington, and I hate to say I don’t know when [we’ll get our day in court],” Edwards said.
He asked for a May 2019 trial date.
TEPCo attorney Gregory Stone said the Japanese utility accepts responsibility for the radiation released but maintains the amount Navy service members were exposed to was negligible.
He thanked the service members present at the hearing for their efforts, but said that radiation exposure is not necessarily the cause of 300 to 400 sailors out of 70,000 on the humanitarian trip getting sick.
“It only indicates what epidemiologists tell us: people get sick at different times of their lives for different reasons,” Stone said.
“We don’t think the exposure was at a level sufficient to cause the injuries,” Stone continued, amid muttered comments from the audience. “They don’t agree with us and are probably talking about it now.”
GE attorney Michael Schissel said the length of the case and trial will be significantly impacted if GE remains a defendant in the case. Unlike TEPCo, GE is not admitting liability over the failure of its Boiling Water Reactors. Schissel said this would then require a liability phase at trial, significantly lengthening the process.
Sammartino called the case a “moving target” as the attorneys threw out different ideas for how best to approach setting deadlines and moving forward. She said she would issue an order setting dates.
In an interview with Courthouse News following the hearing, Edwards said they are pleased the case will be tried in America. If the case were in Japan, Edwards said there was a concern that the possibility of traveling across the world would cause his clients to lose hope.
“From the perspective of a lawyer, it’s a wonderful cause,” Edwards said. “Here are these completely innocent people whose lives have been taken away from some of them and they were there trying to help the Japanese people. It was such a just and righteous cause that they were there for and they’ve had their lives changed forever as a result of what happened.”
More sailors are coming forward every week, Edwards added, saying they expect the numbers to continue to go up as the word gets out about the lawsuits.
He said they want to make sure “the truth comes out” and that the “word gets out about the dangers and risks that exist not just in Japan, but in other parts of the world.”
Workers from Tokyo Electric Power Co. travel by bus toward the power plant in April 2011.
Ryuta Idogawa traces the onset of his battle with mental illness to a moment not long after his parents had been relocated to Saitama from their hometown of Futaba, Fukushima Prefecture, in the spring of 2011.
Idogawa recalls with almost claustrophobic clarity how, as he boarded a train to travel to Tokyo, a sense of panic set in when the carriage walls seemed to close in and fellow passengers in the rush-hour squash started to stare — piercing, even accusatory stares, he thought.
“I was sweating, but I felt really cold and my heart was racing, faster and faster,” says Idogawa, 33. “I could hardly breathe. I thought, ‘Oh My God! I’m going to die.’”
Today, Idogawa continues to suffer from such panic attacks, although their frequency has decreased. To mitigate the problem, he has found a job near to his apartment and avoids trains whenever possible. On occasions when rail travel is unavoidable, he steers clear of express trains, as there are fewer opportunities to “escape” should panic set in, he explains. Medication, too, has sometimes helped.
One likely cause of this continuing condition, he believes, is guilt — guilt that in the aftermath of the March 11, 2011, disasters that struck northeastern Japan and claimed 18,455 lives (including 2,561 still listed as missing), he was powerless to prevent the accident that occurred at his place of work, the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
“At the beginning I wasn’t even aware of my condition, or I felt somehow separate from it and from what was happening,” says Idogawa, a former employee at plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. “Looking back, maybe I was hiding it or hiding from it.”
Such mental afflictions are not unusual among Tepco’s Fukushima plant workers, especially in the aftermath of the disasters, experts say. According to a study of some 1,500 workers compiled by Jun Shigemura and others, all had experienced a variety of stressors (see table on page 12) relating to their direct experiences of the disasters, losses of loved ones and the backlash from a disgruntled public, in particular the 160,000 Fukushima residents who were evacuated due to the contamination of their homes and land that resulted from the multiple reactor meltdowns at Fukushima No. 1.
Jun Shigemura, an associate professor at the National Defense Medical College’s department of psychiatry, sits at his office in Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture, on Aug. 15.
According to lead researcher Shigemura, 29.5 percent of workers at the plant subsequently displayed symptoms of high post-traumatic stress responses (PTSR), including flashbacks and avoidance of reminders of the terrifying events they went through.
Around 1 in 5 Tepco workers at neighboring Fukushima No. 2 plant also showed similarly high levels of PSTR, even though there was no serious damage to the four reactors there.
Continued surveys of the workers by Shigemura, an associate professor at the National Defense Medical University’s Department of Psychiatry, and other experts say that while the overall influence of disaster-related experiences on PTSR of workers had decreased since 2011, it remains high.
“For some workers, this is going to continue for a long time, probably years and decades,” says Shigemura, who specializes in the mental health of disaster workers.
This is consistent with previous findings following the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, he says. While scientists then had assumed that cancers and other malignant disorders would be the biggest health risk, mental health issues turned out to be far more prevalent, he says.
Indeed, studies have shown that mental health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and suicide ideation, were still high and remained the most prevalent problem for the Chernobyl cleanup workers even 20 years after the disaster, Shigemura says. “So I think we can say with some confidence that the Fukushima workers also carry a very high risk of developing long-term mental health issues.”
Furthermore, while PTSD is often thought of as the main persisting illness in such disasters, Shigemura says factors such as depression, anxiety and alcohol abuse are also likely to linger for some time.
More than 6½ years on from the Fukushima disasters, former Tepco employee Idogawa knows all about these problems, although how he got there was a gradual, but nonetheless alarming, process.
A graduate of Toden Gakuen, Tepco’s now-defunct training academy, Idogawa had lived and breathed the utility’s doctrine since he was just 15 years old. It centered as much around technical excellence as it did corporate group identity and loyalty, and those who followed it were rewarded with the kind of mouthwatering salaries that placed them very much among the elite of their communities.
Ryuta Idogawa believes that guilt over the nuclear accident that occurred at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant on March 11, 2011, has been a contributor to his continuing struggles with mental illness.
On the day of the disasters, Idogawa was on leave, having worked a night shift the previous day. Even before the Earth’s violent convulsions had subsided, however, he was heading toward the plant from his nearby home, arriving there just before the black waves of the 15-meter mega-tsunami engulfed the facility.
As one of the plant’s operators, his day-to-day duties took place inside the central control room for reactors 1 and 2, where he was charged with scrutinizing the instruments that monitored the plant’s oldest reactor, the outmoded unit 1. By the time he joined the on-duty team of 14 operators, the tsunami had extinguished all available power sources, plunging the control room into complete darkness and disarray.
With monitoring apparatus also dependent on power, there was no way of knowing for certain if coolants were still reaching the reactor cores. Believing that this was unlikely, by midnight Idogawa calculated that the first reactor, and probably the second, were already in meltdown.
This was supported by readings on portable monitoring devices that showed radiation levels inside the control room were climbing. Idogawa joined all the other operators on the reactor 2 side of the windowless room, only venturing over toward the opposite first reactor side, where radiation levels were considerably higher, to make occasional, but futile, checks of the lifeless instruments.
Over the next two days, he remained inside the control room, still in the dark about the safety of his family and friends as meltdowns and explosions began to take their toll.
On March 14, he was ordered aboard a company bus bound for the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power plant, which had fared far better than its older neighbor and had been designated an off-duty recuperation and medical center for workers at Fukushima No. 1. It was during that 10-kilometer journey that his focus slowly shifted to the outside world, which had a distinctly fishbowl appearance through his full-face mask.
“At one point, just past the entrance to Fukushima No. 1 plant, I looked out of the window and saw a man walking his dog like it was just another ordinary day,” Idogawa says. The scene seemed all the more bizarre because while most workers aboard the bus were wearing masks, the man went about his morning stroll completely unprotected. “I wondered, ‘What is he doing out there’ and wanted to shout out to him to get inside away from the high radiation.”
At the Fukushima No. 2 plant there was a noticeably subdued air. There was little food, no cigarettes and no heat to stay warm amid the snowy, wintery cold.
Idogawa had originally tried to make the trip to the Fukushima No. 2 plant via his own car, which was parked near the newly built quake-proof center at Fukushima No. 1 and was highly contaminated, but he couldn’t get it started.
“I wanted to take the car to give me an escape should things get worse. That’s what I was expecting,” he says. “I actually think that’s what (plant chief Masao) Yoshida was thinking, too — that everyone, himself included, should get out of there and go to the Fukushima No. 2 plant.”
Over the following months, the cumulation of these events began to take their toll. Idogawa became part of a team that the foreign media nicknamed the “Fukushima 50,” groups of workers on rotating shifts that split their time between battling the reactor meltdowns and recuperating at the Fukushima No. 2 plant, or at residences to which they had been evacuated.
With his home now off limits inside the 20-kilometer no-go zone, Idogawa had evacuated to an apartment in Koriyama, where time proved to be anything but a healer. With nothing to do but await his next shift, his mind wandered, among other things, to the man walking his dog and the tens of thousands of residents like him who had been forced to flee their homes as invisible radioactive substances fell on their land.
He began to suffer stomach cramps, chronic insomnia and depression, and turned to the only thing he could think of that would help him sleep and wash away the unwelcome images in his head: whisky — and lots of it.
“I felt bad for those people, like it was my fault,” he says. “I couldn’t do anything (to prevent the accident) and as a member of Tepco, I thought I was to blame.”
Takeshi Tanigawa, a professor of public health at Jutendo University’s graduate school of medicine, has been involved in mental health surveys of Fukushima plant workers.
Such self-criticism and guilt have been major contributors to enduring mental illnesses among plant workers, according to Takeshi Tanigawa, a professor of public health at Jutendo University’s graduate school of medicine, who has also been involved in the mental health surveys of Fukushima plant workers.
“We found that those who have experienced such criticism and discrimination have a high degree of psychological distress or PTSR, more than two times higher than control subjects,” he says, adding that with 80 percent of workers being local hires, the bashing, sometimes at the hands of friends and relatives, was even more difficult to take.
Of all the stressors — including the life-threatening experiences, the loss of loved ones and possessions, and so on — this was the “most influential” among those workers with persisting mental health issues, says Tanigawa, who also has worked as a part-time occupational physician at the nuclear plants in Fukushima Prefecture since 1991.
“One thing we can be grateful for is that nobody has committed suicide at the plant,” Tanigawa says. “However, alcohol abuse, increased smoking and obesity are prevalent, and can lead to life-threatening diseases and early mortality.”
However, both Tanigawa and Shigemura believe that the enduring impact of the various “complex stressors” is the main reason why other contract workers and early respondents to the disasters will not display similar long-term mental health problems. This includes personnel from Tepco’s various subcontracting companies and members of Tokyo Fire Department’s Hyper Rescue brigade, who entered the plant on March 17, 2011, in an attempt to pump water onto the overheating reactor 3.
Yukio Takayama, former deputy superintendent and chief of the 8th district Hyper Rescue battalion, revisits his former workplace in Tachikawa on July 13.
One of the leaders of that Tokyo Fire Department team, Yukio Takayama, who was at the time deputy superintendent of the 8th district Hyper Rescue battalion based in the city of Tachikawa, says a number of firefighters had been deeply affected by the thought of entering such a highly irradiated part of the plant, which offered an invisible fear factor quite different from that to which they were accustomed.
Indeed, Takayama fell sick during the operations and while they left an indelible impression, the 48-hour encounter with the radiation-spewing plant was unlikely to leave any long-term mental scars, he says. “It was stressful, but there were others who were up there for much, much longer,” he says.
A former subcontractor employee, who was working at the Fukushima No. 1 plant at the time of the 2011 disasters, says he had not heard of any mental health issues among subcontractor workers. However, as they made up almost 90 percent of the total plant workforce, he couldn’t discount the possibility.
“One thing that was different for us was that we were never forced, or obliged, to return to the plant,” the worker says in an interview, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Like many others, I evacuated from the plant and never went back, but if I had, I suppose it’s perfectly possible I may have succumbed to mental illness.”
One other group that reportedly has been afflicted by mental health problems comes from an unusual quarter, and one that has not been a factor in previous nuclear accidents. American sailors who were taking part in the U.S. military’s “Operation Tomodachi” relief mission at the time of the Tohoku disasters were inadvertently exposed to a plume of radiation that passed over their ships, which were anchored off the Pacific coast north of Fukushima.
Several hundred have since developed life-changing illnesses, including leukemia and other cancers — a result, they claim, of the radioactive plume. Many have also suffered persisting mental health issues, either due to concerns of physical illnesses that have resulted from the exposure or extreme stress brought about by concerns for potential future illnesses, including cancers.
Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan scrub the flight deck to decontaminate it while the ship is operating off the coast of Japan providing humanitarian assistance on March 23, 2011.
“Unlike the nuclear plant workers, these sailors had no protective clothing. In fact, some of them literally had no shirts on their backs because they had given all their clothing away to people they saved from the tsunami waves,” says Charles Bonner, a lawyer representing some 400 sailors who have filed a lawsuit against Tepco and U.S. nuclear reactor manufacturer General Electric. “And because they had given away all their bottled water to tsunami survivors, they were drinking desalinated water that had also been contaminated. I do not doubt the psychological impact of the disasters on the plant workers, but at least they had masks and other protective clothing, as required by law. The sailors, however, knew nothing of their exposure and were literally marinated in the radiation.”
Idogawa’s exposure levels were also in excess of acceptable levels by the time he quit Tepco in January 2012 to protest the utility’s poor treatment of workers — who were, in most cases, also victims — and the government’s announcement the previous month that the plant had been brought “under control,” which was completely at odds with what he saw.
“Whether you take the viewpoint of a Tepco employee or a local resident, the outcome was far from satisfactory,” Idogawa says. “As a plant operator we caused a huge accident — the worst kind. Technicians train over and over, and are charged with ensuring this kind of thing doesn’t happen. That the accident did happen makes us the lowest of the low. From the viewpoint of a resident, the disaster meant they couldn’t go home. That we destroyed entire communities was bad enough. However, they were our communities as well.”
Despite his disgruntlement, Idogawa is hopeful that his former employer will implement measures to monitor and treat mental health issues that he believes continue to persist among many workers.
When asked to comment on post-accident care of its workers for this article, Tepco says it was unable to provide details due to privacy issues. It did, however, continue to hand out “health check” questionnaires, the nationalized utility says. The utility also would not comment on its policy regarding on-site care, which came into question following rumors that an on-site psychiatrist fled the Fukushima No. 1 plant following the 2011 disasters.
An employee from Tepco apologizes to a Tomioka resident during a meeting in the city of Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture, on Feb. 11, 2013.
Shigemura, whose surveys and subsequent treatment of plant workers was brought to an abrupt halt by Tepco in 2015, believes continued “surveillance” of workers is imperative. One reason is due to the possibility of “delayed onset” mental illnesses, which sometimes occur among “survivors” following a variety of situations, from disasters and conflicts to car accidents and familial loss. Some Vietnam War veterans, for example, only developed mental illnesses following the start of the Gulf War 20 years later, he explains.
During his research, Shigemura came across one plant worker, who was also an evacuee, who had experienced such a phenomenon. Three years later, after the evacuation order had been lifted, he re-visited his hometown, which was overgrown and deserted.
“When he evacuated, he hadn’t fully accepted the burden of the disaster,” Shigemura says. “It was only when he returned home that he felt the gravity of the disaster and was forced to confront it. And that’s when he experienced late-onset PTSD.”
Shigemura also believes there is a need for a major reconsideration of disaster management measures, especially those that can mitigate the psychological havoc a nuclear accident can wreak.
“We need multiple layers of support in preparation for these disasters because when they happen people tend to act in ways they might not usually act, especially following a disaster you cannot easily perceive, such as a nuclear accident,” he said. “They might run away and you can’t blame them for that, because they also have roles as fathers, mothers and so on. There needs to be measures to respond effectively to such eventualities and to provide effective care for those most affected.”
A Japanese local magazine gives the list of prefectures where Cesium 134 and Cesium 137 have been detected in their tap water !
The left column gives the name of the prefecture. The central column gives the Cesium 134 detected and the right column the Cesium 137 : in white with three Chinese characters reads “not detected” while in black the white figures indicates the level of bq detected.
The third line from the bottom is Tokyo. Cesium 134 and Cesium 137 have both been detected in its tap water at high levels!
Workers wearing protective suits and masks work on the No. 2 reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
TOKYO – A state-backed entity tasked with supporting the decommissioning of the Fukushima nuclear power station proposed Thursday that melted fuel be removed from the side of three of the crippled reactors as part of the process to scrap the complex.
Based on a formal proposal, the government and the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc (TEPCO) will determine specific approaches to carry out the process on each reactor next month and update the plant decommissioning road map.
Under its strategic plan for 2017, the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corp called for the removal of the fuel by partially filling the three reactors with water to cover some of the nuclear debris while allowing access to carry out the work.
The entity also pointed out that the decommissioning work requires phased efforts while maintaining flexibility, as the project still faces many uncertainties.
The extraction work from the Nos. 1-3 reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, which suffered meltdowns following the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster, is seen as the most difficult step toward the ultimate goal of decommissioning the entire complex, set to take at least 30 to 40 years to complete.
The government and TEPCO are currently aiming to start the extraction work from 2021.
Under the plan, the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation body proposed using a remotely controlled apparatus to shave debris from the underside of the lower section of the reactors’ containment vessel while controlling the level of water.
Debris remains not only in the reactors’ pressure vessel but also piled and scattered at the bottom of the containment vessel that houses the reactor vessel.
As for debris left in the reactors’ pressure vessel, the entity will consider removing it from the upper part of the reactors, it said.
The decommissioning body had previously considered a strategy to fill the containment vessel with water as water is effective in containing radiation, but it has shelved the idea as the reactor containers are believed to have been damaged and would leak.
Following a magnitude-9.0 earthquake in March 2011, tsunami inundated the six-reactor plant, located on ground 10 meters above sea level, and flooded power supply facilities.
Reactor cooling systems were crippled and the three reactors suffered fuel meltdowns, while hydrogen explosions damaged the buildings housing the Nos. 1, 3 and 4 reactors.
The Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation entity was established after the Fukushima crisis, the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, to help the utility pay damages. The state-backed entity holds a majority stake in the operator.
I’ve heard that the video reveals the information that has never been disclosed before and it’s ONE and ONLY video that documented the true reality of the current Fukushima kids situation presented by a Japanese medical scientist in an academic conference internationally.
Mr. Suzuki, the lecturer in this video, is the one who have operated 125 child thyroid cancer patients in Fukushima. He had been trying to voice the plight situation but he was muted by some political intention.
Here’s the story I’ve heard: He has been verbally and attacked and insulted by Mr. Shibuya of Fukushima Health Committee during its committee assembly, and his false accusation made Mr. Suzuki leave his position of committee member. The conscientious one always has to leave.
I don’t get it. Shibuya malevolently accused Mr. Shuzuki that the doctor must have even operated the case of trifling and unnecessary cases, padding the number of operations and disguising the figures LARGE and GRAVE.
Mr. Sukuzki, with his shaky voice in anger, insisted that serious cases of metastasis to lymph and lung as well as deeper infiltration were seen in the children under the surgery, but his voice was spurned by Shibuya and his friends in the committee. … so this video is probably the only one official evidence Dr. Suzuki left.
This woman in her 30s lives in Tokyo with her young children after fleeing her home in Fukushima Prefecture following the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011. Her husband remains in Fukushima Prefecture for his job.
The central government has made a large number of people who voluntarily fled the Fukushima area after the 2011 nuclear disaster disappear by cutting them from official lists of evacuees.
Critics are now condemning the move, which went into effect last April, saying it prevents government officials from fully grasping the picture of all who remain displaced to evaluate their future needs.
“Accurate data on Fukushima evacuees is essential in gaining a better understanding of their current circumstances and crafting measures to address their problems,” said Shun Harada, a sociology researcher at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, who contributes as an editor for an information publication for evacuees living in Saitama Prefecture.
“When only smaller than the real numbers are made available, difficulties facing evacuees could be underestimated and could result in terminating support programs for them,” he complained.
As of July, 89,751 evacuees were living across Japan after fleeing from the nuclear disaster, down by 29,412 from the March tally.
In April, the central government opted to cut “voluntary” evacuees who fled their homes due to fears of radiation despite being from outside the evacuation zone.
It came after the official program to provide free housing to the voluntary evacuees was stopped at the end of March, which was designed to facilitate a prompt return to their hometowns in Fukushima Prefecture. People from the evacuation zone are still eligible to the free housing program.
The central government’s Reconstruction Agency, set up to oversee rebuilding efforts in Japan’s northeastern region after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, releases the number of evacuees each month, based on figures compiled by local authorities.
The 29,412 drop in the number of official evacuees between March and July includes 15,709 in Fukushima Prefecture, 6,873 in Miyagi Prefecture, 2,798 in Iwate Prefecture, 780 in Tokyo, 772 in Kanagawa Prefecture and 577 in Saitama Prefecture.
Before the change in housing policy, agency statistics showed a monthly decrease in evacuee numbers of between 3,000 and 4,000 in the several months leading up to the end of March.
But the drop in numbers increased dramatically to 9,493 between March and April and 12,412 between April and May.
Kanagawa and Saitama prefectural officials say voluntary evacuees were responsible for most of the declines in their jurisdictions.
A large number of them are believed to be living in the same housing as before but are now paying their own rent.
A 43-year-old woman who has been evacuating in Saitama Prefecture since fleeing from Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, with three other family members said she is angered by the central government’s treatment.
“We cannot return to Fukushima Prefecture due to fears of the effects of radiation,” she said. “I feel like I have been abandoned by the state by being denied evacuee status.”
An official with the Tokyo-based Japan Civil Network for Disaster Relief in East Japan, a private entity that functions as a liaison unit for a nationwide network of groups supporting victims of the disaster six years ago stressed the need for local authorities to have an accurate understanding of the circumstances surrounding evacuees.
“Of the evacuees, the elderly and single-parent households tend to be left in isolation and many of them are likely to become qualified to receive public assistance in the near future,” the official said. “Local officials need to know they are evacuees (from Fukushima).”
The official added that it will become difficult for support groups to extend their help if voluntary evacuees are taken out of the official tally.
But the Reconstruction Agency said it will not reconsider the definition of evacuees.
Hitachi-GE testing variety of simply structured, radiation-resistant equipment
The Unit 1 reactor building at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, June 21, 2017.
TOKYO — A joint venture between Japanese and American high-technology power houses Hitachi and General Electric is developing special robots for removing nuclear debris from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the most difficult task in decommissioning the plant’s six reactors, three of which suffered core meltdowns in the March 2011 accident.
The machines under development by Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy are called “muscle robots,” as their hydraulic springs operate like human muscles. The company, based in Hitachi, Ibaraki Prefecture, is stepping up efforts to complete the development project in time for the start of debris removal in 2021.
Hitachi-GE is testing the arms of the robots at a plant of Chugai Technos, a Hiroshima-based engineering service company, located a 30-minute drive from the center of the city. The testing is taking place in a structure with a life-size model of the primary containment vessel of the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima plant. The robots awkwardly move about, picking up concrete lumps standing in for fuel debris.
“The robots are based on a concept completely different from those of conventional robots,” said Koichi Kurosawa, a senior Hitachi-GE engineer heading the development project. Hydraulics are being used because electronics cannot survive in the extreme environment inside the reactors.
“Asked if the robots are applicable to other nuclear power plants, I would say the possibility is low,” Kurosawa said, noting that the robots are designed to work amid intense radiation.
New challenges
While Hitachi-GE has built many nuclear reactors, it is encountering a variety of new challenges in developing the muscle robots simply because of the tough work required to retrieve fuel debris.
In the nuclear accident caused by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, cooling the fuel rods became impossible, and melted uranium fuel dropped from them. Some of the fuel broke through nuclear reactor pressure vessels and solidified as fuel debris containing uranium and plutonium.
The debris is estimated to weigh more than 800 tons in total. The insides of the PCVs at the Fukushima plant are directly exposed to the debris and are emitting radioactivity strong enough to kill a human within a few minutes.
The International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning, a Tokyo-based research institute for decommissioning nuclear plants, and three reactor makers — Hitachi-GE, Toshiba and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries — have been attempting to ascertain conditions inside the reactor buildings at the Fukushima plant by means of camera- and dosimeter-equipped equipment.
Buddhist monks offer prayers for victims of the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami in Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, in March 2014.
In Fukushima, 3/11 fallout forcing remains to be stored at temples, ancestral gravesites to be moved
FUKUSHIMA – The remains of Fukushima’s deceased evacuees are being left in limbo because radiation is preventing them from being buried.
In municipalities that remain off-limits because of the fallout from the triple core meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant in March 2011, the inability of residents to return has put burials for their loved ones on hold.
Instead, many relatives are opting to leave remains in the hands of temples or moved their family graves out of their hometowns.
Choanji, a temple in a no-go zone in the town of Namie, is keeping the remains of about 100 people at a branch facility that was set up in the prefectural capital after the nuclear crisis began.
At the branch, a swordsmanship training room was renovated to enshrine remains that should have been buried in Namie.
“Evacuees don’t want to bury the remains of family members in places with high radiation levels,” said the branch’s chief priest, Shuho Yokoyama, 76.
A 66-year-old resident of Minamisoma visited the temple branch on Aug. 12 for the Bon holidays to pray for her elder sister, who died after evacuating the area.
Her remains are kept there because her family’s grave is located in a no-go zone in Namie; the remains of her sister’s husband, who died before the disaster, are already in the family grave.
“I am sorry that she is separated from her husband. I want their remains to be buried together,” the woman said.
To enter the no-go zone, residents need to submit applications to the municipal government in question.
The woman is unhappy with the system as she wants permission to enter the areas freely, at least during Bon, the traditional period for commemorating one’s ancestors. Since the disaster began, she has been unable to visit the grave of her brother-in-law.
At Choanji, 20 percent of some 500 families in the congregation have moved their ancestors’ graves to other areas.
Isao Kanno, 50, who hails from Namie but now lives in Tokyo, was in the area just before the remains of his father, who died two months before the meltdowns, were scheduled to be interred.
“I can’t be evacuated alone and bury the remains in the grave” in a no-go zone, Kanno said. “I’m considering moving the grave somewhere else.”
Some, however, worry their hometown ties could fade if they move their graves.
“Despite being designated a no-go zone, it is my hometown,” said a 57-year-old Tokyo resident who left the remains of one of his relatives at the temple branch.
“It is the land of my ancestors, so I’ve never considered moving the grave,” he said.
If we are to believe the Japanese government and the Fukushima local government all Fukushima produce are deliciously safe for consumption and safe to be exported, all having passed the strictest controls for the foreign consumers 100% safety…..There is no left radiation, nor contamination in Fukushima Prefecture…. Smile and you will remain safe and healthy!!!
Fukushima food exports to Malaysia rise as radiation stigma fades
KUALA LUMPUR – Fukushima Prefecture aims to export 100 tons of rice and 15 tons of peaches to Malaysia by next year, its governor said Wednesday, evidence of fading concern over the safety of food products from the site of the 2011 nuclear disaster.
“In the aftermath of the earthquake and the nuclear plant incident, the agriculture sector suffered very much. We have to deal with negative rumor. But things are slowly recovering,” Gov. Masao Uchibori said at a press conference in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.
“We inspect 100 percent of the rice and are working hard to bridge the gap between perception and reality.”
Malaysia began importing rice from Fukushima in May, and has brought in 29 tons so far, Ajwad Abu Hassan, the managing director of Malaysia rice importer Edaran Komachi Sdn., said at the same press conference.
Ajwad said his company aims to import another 48 tons by year-end, and even greater amounts eventually.
“Fukushima produces the best quality rice in Japan. We are proud to sell this rice,” said Ajwad. “We are targeting 100 metric tons a year hopefully. In fact, we are trying to increase from not only 100 metric tons but a container full every month.”
A full shipping container holds about 12 tons.
Akumul Abu Hassan, the managing director of another rice trading company, MHC Co. Ltd, said Malaysia currently consumes about 350 tons of Japonica rice a month imported from various parts of the world including South Korea, Vietnam and China. Only 20 to 30 tons comes from Japan, and that from other prefectures such as Akita, Niigata, Hokkaido and Hiroshima.
But Akumul said when it comes to quality, nothing beats rice from Japan.
“Compare to rice from Japan, that from Vietnam, 5 percent will contain broken grains. You don’t find that in rice from Japan,” Akumul said.
Malaysia began importing Fukushima peaches a year after the disaster, and Takashi Kanno, appearing at the same press conference as a representative of the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives, said “Malaysia was one of the first countries to accept and give us an opportunity.”
From almost zero in 2012, Fukushima exported 1.2 tons of peaches to Malaysia in 2013, increasing to 7.3 tons last year and 9.5 tons so far this year.
Fukushima is the second-largest peach producing prefecture in Japan after Yamanashi.
Uchibori said after meeting with trading companies involved in exporting peaches, the federation has set a goal of selling 15 tons a year to Malaysia, as peaches are now being sent by ship instead of by air, which will lower the cost.
Fukushima Prefecture also exports broccoli, shiitake mushrooms and persimmons to Malaysia.
Barrier will block only a fraction of groundwater contamination
Work has begun on the final 7 meters of an “ice wall” at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
TOKYO — Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings began Tuesday the final phase of an underground “ice wall” around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant intended to reduce groundwater contamination, though experts warn the bold project could be much less effective than once hoped.
At 9 a.m., workers began activating a refrigeration system that will create the last 7 meters of a roughly 1.5km barrier of frozen earth around the plant’s reactor buildings, which were devastated by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns of March 2011. Masato Kino, an official from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry supervising the cleanup, spoke cautiously at the occasion, noting that “producing results is more important than the simple act of freezing” that particular segment of soil.
Tepco estimates that roughly 580 tons of water now pass through the ice wall on the reactor buildings’ landward side each day, down from some 760 tons before freezing of soil commenced in March 2016. About 130 tons daily enter the reactor buildings themselves, and Tepco hopes completing the wall will bring that figure below 100 tons.
By this math, the near-complete wall blocks only a little over 20% of groundwater coming toward it. But, as Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority said Aug. 15 when approving the wall’s final stage, the barrier is “ultimately only a supporting measure” to other systems preventing contamination. The main line of defense is a so-called subdrain system of 41 wells around the reactor buildings that pump up 400 to 500 tons of water daily, preventing clean water from entering the site and contaminated water from leaving it.
Slow going
Freezing of earth around the facility has been conducted gradually, amid concerns that highly contaminated water inside could rush out should the water level inside the reactor buildings drop. “Working carefully while keeping control of the water level is a must,” said Yuzuru Ito, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Setsunan University.
It is unclear precisely when the wall will be complete. The plan is to freeze soil 30 meters deep over the course of two or three months, completing the barrier as soon as this fall. But as the gap in the wall narrows, water flows through it more quickly, making soil there more difficult to freeze. “Water is flowing quickly now, and so it is difficult to proceed as we have so far,” a Tepco representative said.
Japan has spent some 34.5 billion yen ($315 million) in taxpayer funds on the wall, expecting the icy barrier to put a decisive end to groundwater contamination at the Fukushima plant. It now appears that a dramatic improvement is not likely, though the wall will still require more than 1 billion yen per year in upkeep. “The frozen-earth barrier is a temporary measure,” said Kunio Watanabe, a professor of resource science at Mie University. “Some other type of wall should be considered as well.”
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