Eight years
after the Fukushima nuclear disaster
and two years after the Japanese government lifted evacuation orders in areas
of Namie and Iitate, radiation levels remain too high for the safe return of
thousands of Japanese evacuees. That is the conclusion of Greenpeace’s latest extensive radiation survey in Namie and Iitate,
Fukushima prefecture.
In these
areas, Greenpeace says ‘contamination will
remain well above international maximum safety recommendations for public
radiation exposure of 1 millisievert per year (mSv/y) for many decades’. Greenpeace
includes projections on dose rates to mid-21st century, which it says ‘show that they will still be well in excess
of the current government’s long-term target levels of 0.23 microsieverts per
hour (μSv/h)’.
Greenpeace
notes that ‘in 2018, the Japanese
government began a process to revise its current long-term decontamination
target of 0.23 μSv/h’. It says ‘The
major problem is that it is not attainable in many areas. It has been suggested
that the new target would be in the1.0 μSv/h range. This is a politically
motivated process with the aim of allowing the government to claim success in
its decontamination program, which in reality has failed and which excludes the
majority of contaminated areas which are forested mountains. Unable to set a
date for when radiation exposure would be a maximum of 1 mSv a year in many
areas, the government is seeking to shift the goal posts. This is a cynical
disregard for public health protection & the human rights of Japanese
citizens’.
It adds
that in the case of radiation levels in the highly contaminated
exclusion zone of Namie ‘it will be at
least many decades for some areas, and well into next century for others,
before radiation levels start to even approach government targets of 0.23 μSv/h. The Japanese government continues
to disregard scientific evidence of cancer and other health risks from low-dose
radiation exposure, including in
the range of 1-5 mSv/y. Yet the
government has not only opened areas of Namie and Iitate where citizens will be
exposed to rates equal to this and higher, but is also moving ahead with plans
to open even higher radiation areas in the six municipalities of Futaba, Okuma, Namie,
Tomioka, Iitate & Katsurao.’
Radiation levels still too high
The results
of Greenpeace’s 2018 extensive survey around houses, farmland and
forest in the Namie exclusion zone reveal radiation levels that far
exceed the government’s long term decontamination target of 0.23 μSv/h. It says
‘ the community of Obori, around 20 km west-northwest
of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, is targeted as a reconstruction hub by
the Japanese government with a target date for lifting evacuation orders in a
small area in March 2023. Yet, in all of the survey work conducted by
Greenpeace in October 2018, it was this area that showed the most extensive and
consistently high radiation levels. In the community of Obori, we took 4,899
measurements with an average of 4.0 μSv/h and a maximum of 24.3 μSv/h. In the
Obori hamlet, along a road and path where workers were operating on 23 October
2018, radiation hot spots were measured at 12 μSv/h at 1 meter, 19 μSv/h at 0.5
meters, and 64.9 at 0.1 meters. To put these figures into context, at this one
location radiation readings at one meter were 300 times higher than the
background level of 0.04 μSv/h in the prefecture before the March 2011
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident’.
None of the
zones, for which Greenpeace has complete data sets of radiation levels, have
evidently seen a significant decline in radiation level during the period from
2016-2018. It says ‘explanations for
these results include re-contamination through migration of radionuclides from
the nearby contaminated forested mountain slopes. The inevitability of
re-contamination from the forested mountains, which represent 70% of Iitate, as
well as an equal proportion of Namie, is further evidence that the government’s
limited decontamination program for thousands of homes has been, and will
continue to be, ineffective in reducing the risks to citizens of Fukushima if
they were to return to their homes’.
Greenpeace
is also concerned about the working conditions of the clean up workers: ‘In areas where some of these
decontamination workers are operating, the radiation levels would be considered
an emergency if they were inside a nuclear facility’. https://storage.googleapis.com/planet4-japan-stateless/2019/03/b12d8f83-frontfksm_en.pdfhttps://storage.googleapis.com/planet4-japan-stateless/2019/03/b12d8f83-frontfksm_en.pdf
Fukushima’s legacy
The debate over nuclear power and, more
recently, over the impacts of Fukushima, has been long running, with a range of
views emerging, for example of the scale of the health risk, including outside
of Japan: www.beachapedia.org/Radiation_From_Fukushima
However, what the new Greenpeace study
reminds us is that, within Japan, the disaster is still happening – still
having an impact. We don’t get to hear much about that any more, just the
occasional snippet as deaths are
admitted: www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-06/first-man-dies-from-radiation-from-fukushima-nuclear-disaster/10208244
Or new radiation hot-spots found: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-05/uom-frp052418.php Or new health impact data emerges: www.cbsnews.com/news/japan-fukushima-disaster-linked-infant-complex-congenital-heart-disease-health/
We do get to hear a bit more about
Japans lackluster approach to developing alternatives to nuclear- the government is dragging its
feet and is apparently more concerned about getting some of the closed nuclear
plant restarted, despite often strong local opposition. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/01/06/national/media-national/japan-spends-scant-energy-renewables/#.XIO-EM_7RYc
The current plan (unlikely to be fulfilled) is to get
nuclear back to 20-22% by 2023, but also to expand the use of renewable sources from the 82GW in
place at the end of 2017 (including 50 GW of hydro), and maybe more like 100 GW
in all now, given the recent PV growth, so that they supply 22-24% of Japan’s
power by 2030. That is quite a low renewables target compared with some other
countries (the UK is already at 33%, Denmark at 54%), but Japan started late in
the push to new renewables, which only really got moving after Fukushima. Arguably
it has not been trying hard enough. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-14/japan-s-renewable-energy-goals-lag-world-foreign-minister-says
The impact of Fukushima evidently
hasn’t been sufficient to overcome corporate and bureaucratic inertia. Perhaps
the fact that renewables are now getting very cheap may change the situation.
But meanwhile the slow, very expensive and maybe hopeless, decontamination
process grinds on in the Fukushima area, while many ex-residents wonder when,
if ever, it will safe to return. And
with it being unclear when all the radioactive debris will go:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/11/fukushima-toxic-soil-disaster-radioactive
The next post in this
series will look at the situation at Chernobyl, with new studies suggesting
that the incidence of cancer may be increasing, 33 years on…. Meanwhile, see
this Chernobyl retrospective: www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00678-w
And also this Fukushima retrospective: https://www.irsn.fr/FR/connaissances/Installations_nucleaires/Les-accidents-nucleaires/accident-fukushima-2011/fukushima-2019/Documents/IRSN-Fukushima-2019-rapport-Shinrai-evacues_201903.pdf
