The government began delivering 700 dosimeters to the Fukushima Prefectural Government and all 59 municipalities in the prefecture on Nov. 8 to help them track radioactive contamination released in the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology is lending the devices to the local governments free of charge. It expects to pass out 6,000 dosimeters by February next year, with the prefecture slated for about 1,000 and the rest — in lots of between three and 855 — delivered to municipalities based on their pre-Great East Japan Earthquake populations. The program is expected to cost the science ministry some 1.3 billion yen.
Until the Nov. 8 distribution, there was an “overwhelming lack” of the radiation meters for municipalities, according to Fukushima Prefecture’s disaster response headquarters, with only a few hundred being shared among the prefecture and its cities, towns and villages plus some bought by local bodies after the start of the nuclear crisis. Using the new supply of dosimeters, the municipalities will begin taking measurements to create radiation distribution maps, which will then be publicly released.
Continue reading at Gov’t loans Fukushima Prefecture, municipalities 700 radiation meters
