Tune in to Canada AM tomorrow morning (March 11) to hear Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility interviewed on the 3rd anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Our Committee received this email tonight from Gordon; please share widely: Hello Friends: Tomorrow is the third anniversary of the Fukushima triple meltdown disaster. For those within striking distance, I will be interviewed briefly on CTVs Canada AM around 7:10 am tomorrow. Here is a graphic showing the original evacuation zone (within 20 km of the plant) and the area between 20km and 30km where people were ordered to be evacuation ready. However, the town of Iitate -- a bit more than 30km away, NW -- also had to be evacuated and remains evacuated to this day. The most heavily contaminated areas include the original 20km evacuation zone and some irregular areas northwest and a bit south of that. The yellow area, below, shows radiation levels are HIGHER than the MAXIMUM exposure allowed for atomic workers in the EU (20 millisieverts per year). The above graphic was modified from a September 2013 video by the Japanese Ministry of Environment -- a link to that video is given below in the post-script. Most of the other graphics in this e-mail are also adapted from that video, In the next graphic, the Special Decontamination Area (identified above) appears as a green patch inside a yellow area where the radiation levels are BELOW the 20 millisievert/year limit for atomic workers but ABOVE the 1 millisievert/year limit for members of the general public. These spotty yellow areas come right up to the outskirts of Tokyo, about 240 km to the south (SSW). In all these towns and villages, huge volumes of contaminated soil are dug up and bagged as radioactive waste, including parts of the forest floor within 200 metres of a residence. The following caption is taken directly from the government video: Decontaminating a single home takes several days to a few weeks. Contaminated garden soil is dug up and bagged, and replaced with uncontaminated topsoil. House walls and even garden rocks are scrubbed to try to decontaminate these surfaces, with only partial success. The radioactivity is extremely difficult to dislodge from the surfaces to which it has bonded. Tokyo has also been affected by the fallout from Fukushima but the Japanese government does not want to admit this. Gordon Edwards. ------------------------------------------- Post-Script: This 40 minute video comes from the Ministry of the Environment in Japan. It was put together in September 2013, about 6 months ago. Video: josen-plaza.env.go.jp/materials_links/index.html#movie131007en It talks about radioactive decontamination efforts in places such as Fukushima City and the town of Koori, some 65 kilometres away from the reactors in a northwest direction. Map: [In this Google map, Koori is located at the red marker, a little north and a bit east of Fukushima City; the Fukushima Daiichi reactors are located at the purple marker.] As you can see in the video, extensive decontamination efforts are deemed necessary on a house-by-house basis to reduce the radioactivity levels. All of this is reasonable and helpful, but only partially effective. I know of several examples where people were told (e.g. by US government officials or Canadian nuclear authorities) that they could safely return to live in or work in areas that had been successfully decontaminated, without any need for protective clothing or equipment -- only to find out later on that the authorities had been wrong, and the areas were in fact not safe for the people to re-inhabit or to work without protection. The Japanese Government web site where this video was posted is entitled Measure for Decontamination of Radioactive Materials Discharged by TEPCOs Fukushima Daiichi NPS Accident Here is the link: josen.env.go.jp/en/ G.E.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 03:45:41 +0000
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