Radiation “hotspots” hinder Japan response to nuclear crisis via Yahoo!News

KANAGAWA, Japan (Reuters) – Hisao Nakamura still can’t accept that his crisply cut field of deep green tea bushes south of Tokyo has been turned into a radioactive hazard by a crisis far beyond the horizon.

“I was more than shocked,” said Nakamura, 74, who, like other tea farmers in Kanagawa has been forced to throw away an early harvest because of radiation being released by the Fukushima Daiichi plant 300 kilometers (180 miles) away.

“Throwing way what you’ve grown with great care is like killing your own children.”

More than three months after the Fukushima nuclear plant was hit by a quake and tsunami that triggered the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, Japanese officials are still struggling to understand where and how radiation released in the accident created far-flung “hotspots” of contamination.

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