The Atomic Age

Taro Yamamoto of the Liberal Party is a member of the Chamber of Deputies. He is one of the few parliamentary members defending the rights of victims of the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster.

The Association Nos Voisins Lointains 3-11 translated the questions of Taro Yamamoto to the Chamber of Deputies’ Special Commission on Reconstruction on 18 November 2016*.

The content of his questions reveals the inhuman situation faced by the victims in the framework of the Japanese government’s return policy .

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● Taro Yamamoto

Thus, with 40 000Bq / m2, the zone is classified as a “controlled zone of radioactivity”. It is therefore necessary to monitor not only radioactivity in the air but also the surface contamination, ie the ground dose of radioactive substances, ie other elements in the environment, and to manage the area in order to protect workers from radiation-related risks, isn’t it?

A radioactivity controlled area is defined both by the dose rate of the ambient radioactivity and by the surface density of the radioactive substances. The point is that the risk in a situation where the radioactive substances are dispersed is quite different from that in the situation where the radiation sources are well identified and managed.

At present, the evacuation order applied to the evacuation zones following the nuclear power plant accident is lifted when the ambient radioactivity dose rate becomes less than 20mSv / year.

Here is my question. Concerning contamination, apart from the dose rate of ambient radioactivity, are there any conditions to take into account in order to lift the evacuation order? Please answer yes or no.

● Government expert (Takeo Hoshino)

Here is the answer.

Concerning the conditions necessary for the lifting of the evacuation order, as far as the radioactivity measurements are concerned, it is only the certainty that the annual cumulative dose rate of ambient radioactivity is less than 20 mSv.

● Taro Yamamoto

You did not understand. I asked you to answer yes or no. Are there any other conditions other than the dose rate of ambient radioactivity? To lift the order of evacuation below 20mSv / year, what are the conditions regarding the contamination?

The fact is that regarding contamination, there are no other conditions than the dose rate of the radioactivity in the air. This is abnormal. You, who belong to this Commission, certainly understand to what extent this situation is abnormal.

In the definition of a radioactivity controlled zone, apart from the dose rate of radioactivity in the air, account is taken of the substances dispersed and then deposited, that is to say contamination in the soil etc., which means a criterion of 40 000Bq / m2 is established for surface contamination.

However, in the return policy to return populations to territories where the annual cumulative dose rate is less than 20mSv / year, the condition of soil contamination is not considered necessary.

The latter is not an evaluation criterion, the only criterion used is the dose rate of the ambient radioactivity. Politicians and officials who consider this to be a regular situation do not deserve to receive wages paid from tax revenues.

Our job is to protect the life and property of the people. Now, you lighten those conditions. You create, at your discretion, a rule that is less stringent than that applied to workers with a professional knowledge of radioactivity. What are you doing !

Following the Chernobyl accident, laws have been established in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, measuring both the dose rate of radioactivity in the air and the contamination of the soil. Why ?

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This is the map of soil measurements collected and measured in the territories where the decontamination works have been completed. The colors show the levels of contamination. The blue colored area indicates where the contamination measurements are below 40 000Bq / m2, ie below than the level of a radioactivity controlled zone. There is only one, at the right bottom. Apart from this one, at all other places, the colors show corresponding measurements above the measurements of a controlled zone of radioactivity. There is even a colored place in gray where the measurements exceed 1 000 000Bq / m2. There are people living there!

Read more at Defending the Rights of Fukushima Victims, Humanitarian and Environmental Crisis: Debate in Japan’s Parliament

Meet the Japanese farmers and hunters defending their homeland from the ruthless hogs that—by the way—may have wandered over from Fukushima

If you want to strike fear into the heart of a Japanese farmer, just utter these two words: wild boar.

The aggressive, hard-headed animals are some of the most destructive in the world, not only devouring crops, but destroying fields and root systems with their sharp teeth and trowel-like hooves from Kobe to Chiba City.

It wasn’t always like this. Boars are a native species in Japan, but you could go years without seeing one there for most of the 20th century, thanks to diseases like cholera in the 1920s. Then, in the early 2000s, the animals began descending on cities and farmland in an almost plague-like fashion. 

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And sometimes, they’re radioactive. In the contaminated area in and around the site of Fukishima’s 2011 nuclear meltdown, the boars’ voracious appetite and prolific breeding has led to an indeterminate number of animals (thousands? Tens of thousands?) becoming contaminated with  radiation. Many of them are journeying into nearby prefectures. People have even stopped eating a kind of boar stew that used to be a specialty dish in some of these places, for fear of radiation contamination. The impetus for eradication is at red-alert levels.

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Since no set national policy for wild boar control exists, protecting produce from wild boars has become something of a trial-by-error practice—and cottage industry—across the country.

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In the Chiba Prefecture, 5,900 hunting licenses (including firearms, wire traps, and box traps) have been issued to date, while in the more northern Myagi Prefecture, 1,876 licensed hunters brought in a whopping 4,964 boars in 2015. Government officials in Myagi, which borders Fukushima, have seen increasing public support for hunting boars since 2011, but that stance is less popular in the rest of Japan. 

“After hunters bring in the boars, we help them test to see if they are radioactive,” says Mr. Satoshi Kimura, a government official from the adjacent Myagi Prefecture. “If the levels are too high, you can’t eat them.” 

Culinary woes aside, post-capture nuclear pig disposal is much more complicated. Burying boars in mass graves—a common practice in most places—is too risky to the soil and groundwater when they’re radioactive. In response, in March 2016, government officials constructed the first-ever incineration facility specifically for wild boars in Fukushima, just outside the town of Soma. Most of the hogs headed for the fire have at least marginal levels of radiation.

Read more at Attack of the (Radioactive) Wild Boars!