ABOVE, OPPENHEIMER ADMITTED WHAT THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS HAD UNLEASHED...
THE WORLD SHOULD HAVE HEEDED HIS AND OTHER SCIENTISTS' WARNINGS. IN JAPAN THE TRUTH IS BURIED BY THE REGIME. ABE PUTS THE OLYMPICS ABOVE HUMAN HEALTH.
“I am a newscaster, but I couldn't tell the true story on my news program," says Jun Hori, a former anchor for NHK, the Japanese state broadcaster.
There was a media gag order with threatened imprisonment for those who reported anything but what the Abe regime wanted reported.
[SEE HIS SPEECH <HERE>]
ABOVE MAP SHOWS THE PROXIMITY OF EACH VILLAGE/TOWN TO THE LEAKING NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, FUKUSHIMA DAI'ICHI.
REMEMBER THAT THERE IS STILL A 30-KILOMETER (19 MILES) EXCLUSION ZONE AROUND CHERNOBYL, WHICH HAD ONLY ONE AFFECTED REACTOR, AND THINK ABOUT THIS STATEMENT:
"Because of the long-lived radiation in the region surrounding the former Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the area won't be safe for human habitation for at least 20,000 years."
Later in 1986, after updated maps of the contaminated areas were produced, the zone was split into three areas to designate further evacuation areas based on the revised dose limit of 100 mSv.
--the "Black Zone" (over 200 µSv·h−1), to which evacuees were never to return.
--the "Red Zone" (50–200 µSv·h−1) where evacuees might return once radiation levels normalized.
--the "Blue Zone" (30–50 µSv·h−1) where children and pregnant women were evacuated starting in the summer of 1986.
The borders were based on soil deposits of strontium-90, caesium-137 and plutonium as well as the calculated dose rate (sieverts/h) as identified by the National Commission for Radiation Protection of Ukraine.
[SEE Environmental Radiation Monitoring in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone - History and Results 25 Years After. US: Savannah River National Laboratory / Savannah River Nuclear Solutions.]
An area known as 'the Red Forest' was listed as being among the world's most radioactive places; to reduce the hazard, the Red Forest was bulldozed and the highly irradiated wood was buried, though the soil continues to emit SIGNIFICANT radiation. ALMOST 40 YEARS LATER.
JAPAN HAS NOT SHOWN THIS TYPE CONCERN FOR ITS POPULATION, NOR FOR FOREIGN VISITORS WHO ARE COMING TO THE 2020 OLYMPIC GAMES, GAMES WHICH WILL BEGIN IN FUKUSHIMA PREFECTURE, WHERE SOME ATHLETES WILL BE HOUSED.
VISITORS WILL ALSO BE SERVED FOOD PRODUCTS RECENTLY REMOVED FROM A PREVIOUS BAN FROM THAT CONTAMINATED PREFECTURE.
THEY WILL BATHE IN AND DRINK WATER THAT COMES FROM CONTAMINATED GROUNDWATER.
ABE OBVIOUSLY HAS NO CONCERN FOR THE EXPOSURE OF VISITORS OR RESIDENTS TO ONGOING RADIATION LEVELS, LEVELS THAT REMAIN HIGH BECAUSE THE FORESTS AND MOUNTAINS THERE CANNOT BE DECONTAMINATED AND THEY RECONTAMINATE THE AREA EVERY TIME IT RAINS.
LET US REMEMBER ALSO THAT THE HIGHEST READINGS OF RADIATION IN AN AREA TO DATE HAS BEEN BEACHES LOCATED 60 MILES FROM THE CRIPPLED PLANT. IN OCTOBER 2017.
THIS FACT WAS DISCOVERED COMPLETELY BY ACCIDENT.
HOW MANY MORE HIGHLY RADIOACTIVE AREAS ARE THERE YET UNDISCOVERED?
ABOVE MAP: The Japanese government has announced that it is lifting evacuation orders in the green and orange zones on March 31, 2017. This image is taken from the website of Fukushima Prefecture.
In April 2013, two years after the disaster, the Japanese government changed the limit of radioactive exposure dose from one milli-sievert per year (mSv/yr) or 0.23 micro-sievert per hour (μSv/h) to 20 mSv/yr or 3.8 μSv/h.
This standard was roughly 6 times higher than that for “Radiation Controlled Areas.”
The Labor standards act prohibits those under the age of 18 from working under these conditions.
This new standard has been used only in Fukushima for determining evacuation zones as well as school grounds, buildings, and residential areas. This irrational and hazardous 'zoning policy' left over 260 “spots” in areas such as Minamisōma city, Date city, and Kōzu village whose radiation levels EXCEEDED 20 mSv/yr.
The government initially announced that the new standard would be used as an emergency measure and would soon be lifted. Contrary to this announcement, however, 20 mSv/yr has virtually become the new standard for safety measure and return policies 7 years now after the disaster.
Anyone can see the Abe regime's plan is to keep this high level for the duration of this disaster, which is NOT over, which is ONGOING and likely will remain ongoing for at least 40 to 100 years.
By doing so, the government and TEPCO will not be responsible to any citizens within the high radiation villages for compensation of their loss of homes, livelihood or health and the government will from this period onward REFUSE to provide any assistance to those who REFUSE to voluntarily return to these radioactive villages, villages that cannot possibly be decontaminated due to constant runoff after rains from the highly radioactive mountains and forests behind or near their homes.
Abe also does not address or admit that the fallout continues from the still-leaking crippled Dai'ichi nuclear plant, and has spiked to phenomenal, historically high levels just this year (2018) and from his orders to continue open-air burning of radioactive debris from these hardest-hit areas and materials used by workers in useless decontamination efforts.
On December 28, 2014, just 3 years after the multiple explosions and initial fallout, the Japanese government removed 142 areas from the 'Radiation Controlled Areas' list, noting that annual radiation exposure had fallen below the 20 mSv/yr threshold.
On April 17, 2015, some 530 residents of Minamisōma filed a lawsuit demanding that the government revoke a decision to remove their districts from a list of radiation hot spots. This decision meant the ending of their entitlement to receive support in the form of subsidized medical treatment and “consolation” money.
The plaintiffs argued that by international standards, the upper limit for radiation exposure was 1 mSv/yr, and thus the government’s decision to de-list the hot spots based on a 20 mSv/yr standard betrayed its responsibility for protecting the safety of citizens.
The ICRP’s recommendations and laws such as Japan’s Nuclear Reactor Regulation Law stipulate a public radiation exposure limit of 1 mSv PER YEAR.
The calculation of how much radiation these residents will be exposed to is based on a government approved formula which assumes that people will be exposed to 3.8 μSv per hour only for 8 hours per day when they are outside the house. It is assumed that they will be indoors for 16 hours per day and the screening effect will reduce the exposure rate to 1.52 μSv per hour. On a yearly basis, this calculates to SLIGHTLY less than 20 mSv per year.
The government insisted that its decision was based on sound scientific findings.
The government is now carrying out the return policies based on the same faulty rationale.
Evacuees who have lived in areas that are barely under 20 mSv/yr and expressed concerns about safety are regarded as “voluntary evacuees” and thus will receive very little or no financial support and compensation.
With the lifting of evacuation orders in parts of Namie, Ōkuma, Iitate, and Tomioka at the end of March, 2017, evacuees will not be allowed to stay in temporary housing.
Even those who were originally ordered to evacuate will be considered “voluntary” after March 31, 2017, losing Fukushima prefecture’s financial aid for housing.
Many critics refer to the government’s return policy as “forced return policy” as well as “kimin seisaku” or the “policy of abandoning people.”
[See more details, Hino Kōsuke, Genpatsu Kimin (原発棄民), Tokyo: Mainichi News Press, 2016]
Below is a photo of some of the homes of Namie, showing the closeness of surrounding forests, hills and mountains, all of which cannot possibly be decontaminated.
After every rain the water runs off into the town, re-contaminating streets, homes, wells, everything, over and over again.
Not addressed by Japanese officials in the Abe regime is the fact that fallout still rises from the crippled plant just 7 miles away, that leaks in storage tanks, leaks from enormous piles of an estimated 7.5 million plastic bags with radioactive soil in them that are scattered all across the Fukushima prefecture, and leaks from the three destroyed reactors will not be stopped for decades, if ever.
HOW CAN ANYONE DECONTAMINATE SOMETHING THAT IS RECONTAMINATED EVERY DAY?
HOW DARE ANYONE SAY A HUMAN BEING IS SAFE IN SUCH CONSTANT RADIATION AND FORCE THEM TO LIVE THERE?
In the summer of 2016, a group of researchers from Niigata University measured the radiation level in some backyards and a forest area as ranging from 5~10 microsieverts PER HOUR.
Once radiation falls, it stays put, is taken up by soils and plants so that there is a long-term source and higher direct exposure to people.
Suzuki Yūichi (age 56 at time of interview) was born to a farming family in Namie, Fukushima in 1960.
Namie was one of the areas most devastated by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, as well as the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011.
At the time of the nuclear accident, Mr. Suzuki was working in the Citizens’ Affairs Division of Namie and was immediately assigned to the Disaster Management Division established to assist citizens in finding missing family members, locating temporary housing, and evacuating families.
Suzuki was subsequently responsible for decontamination efforts, return policies, and establishing clinics for prospective returnees.
In the summer and the winter of 2016, Katsuya Hirano, an Associate Professor of History, UCLA. visited Namie with colleagues Professor Yoshihiro Amaya of Niigata University and Yoh Kawano, a PhD candidate at UCLA, and interviewed Mr. Suzuki.
That interview was published in the Asia Pacific Journal <HERE>.
Hirano has done a remarkable job bringing the facts and the hard road that evacuees face into the public eye.
To say that the Tea Room salutes him is an understatement.
FROM THAT INTERVIEW:
Mr. Suzuki contends that the majority of former residents of Namie are unlikely to return to the town even after the Japanese government lifts the restriction on residency in certain areas on March 31, 2017.
As a city official who led decontamination efforts and return policy, Suzuki remains skeptical of Japanese government programs for “reconstruction” or “revival” of the affected areas. He anticipates that the area will become a “no man’s land” after the elderly returnees pass away.
Namie’s population was 21,400 at the time of the nuclear accident. He estimates that 10 percent or less will return. The interview is an important testament to the ongoing rift and dissonance between Tokyo and Fukushima over the policies and slogans of “reconstruction” and “return”.
SUZUKI: Well, I have to say, we can’t decontaminate forest areas. That would require cutting down all the trees and then scraping up all the topsoil. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see any effect. But as far as areas around houses are concerned, all the soil has been stripped away, so the radiation level has dropped significantly. For example, my parents’ house is in a so-called “zone in preparation for lifting the evacuation order.” At first the radiation level was 3.0 microsieverts per hour, but after decontamination, it has dropped to less than 0.5.
HIRANO: I see. But the entire contaminated region in Fukushima is richly forested– it’s all surrounded by forest, not just Namie. If it is impossible to decontaminate forest areas, it means that radioactive material could easily blow in from the forest, causing radiation levels to increase in decontaminated areas. Some residents say that the radiation level has in fact RISEN since the decontamination. So does it mean that decontamination is effective only in urban areas where there are few forests? In other words, there is a gap between places where decontamination has been working well and places where it has not.
SUZUKI: It is okay in areas where the soil has been properly stripped away, but nobody has done anything in mountain areas behind homes（urayama, 裏山）. We town officials have been asking the Ministry of the Environment to decontaminate such areas properly as well, since they are not just nameless wooded hills. Rather, they are Satoyama (里山), wooded areas surrounding people’s homes that are a part of their everyday lives. We’ve said that if we don’t decontaminate those areas we wouldn’t be able to bring people back home.
HIRANO: What the media has been saying is that for Namie, in particular, after lifting its evacuation orders, full-scale reconstruction can begin. I feel that what the Japanese government is trying to do is to send the message that the nuclear crisis in Fukushima has been finally settled.
The government believes that it is necessary to do so in order to create an image of Japan rising like a phoenix from the ashes at the Tokyo Olympics of 2020. That’s what it hopes to achieve by putting aside the thorny predicament of more than 100,000 evacuees and the difficulty of rebuilding communities.
I don’t feel that the Japanese government is looking at reality from the standpoint of the locals. That’s why they simply can’t accept how much the pre-accident life in Namie has fundamentally been destroyed, as you described earlier, and that, even for residents wishing to return, the current situation here is far from ready for them to come back and that there is no way to fix the situation.
Mr. Suzuki, how do you feel about this sense that the government has conveyed that the situation in Fukushima is now under control, that reconstruction has been going well, and the return policy has been successful?
SUZUKI: Well, I don’t think it will be possible for the reconstruction to be completely finished even 100 years from now. We can say the reconstruction is 100% complete only when everything has been restored to the way it used to be before the evacuation.
But of course, there is no way to really restore the life we had before.
If it is really true that it is now safe to return and restart life, as the central government has said, the Japanese government should build national facilities in the evacuation areas, in Namie and elsewhere. Then former residents will be assured that the government decision to build indicates the safety of the area. But in reality there no government facilities have been built in this town. Since the accident, not a single facility has been built here. That leads residents to think that it is still not safe to live here, especially with Fukushima Daiichi not yet decommissioned. They feel that the absence of government facilities confirms this.
HIRANO: It makes sense. If the central government insists that it is safe to return, if Prime Minister Abe’s pledge that Fukushima is under control is true, they need to take the initiative to show people that in fact it is now a safe place to live. Otherwise residents won’t be convinced.
SUZUKI: Exactly. They should buy land from the town and actively start building government facilities to conduct research or to work on developmental plans. They should build housing for national government employees. Residents would then be reassured.
Their attitude is “we’ve heard you enough, and we’ve dealt with you enough during the concentrated reconstruction period. (2011~2015) What else do you want? More money?”
You might remember a cabinet member (Ishihara Nobuteru) saying, “the bottom line is they want money.”
Also I feel that people who haven’t been the victim of a disaster, including politicians and bureaucrats, won’t be able to understand the predicament of the evacuees who were forced to flee. Here we thought that victims of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995 must have resumed normal lives after a few years of living in temporary housing.7 To me that was just something that happened far away in the Kansai area. Unless you experience it yourself, it’s difficult to understand what it’s really like."
HIRANO, IN HIS NOTES:
The so-called “damages created by rumors” have become a major point of political contention since the nuclear disaster. Many farmers and businesses, not only in relatively unaffected areas of Fukushima but in other prefectures in northeastern Japan, have suffered substantial financial loss due to widespread concerns about being exposed to radiation. On the other hand, Liberal Democratic Party politicians and conservative media outlets have used the “rumor-caused damage” charge to silence criticism, warning against discussion of the real danger of external and internal radioactive exposure. Residents of Fukushima continue to live under the pressure of being accused of encouraging rumor-caused damage even though their concerns are legitimate and their efforts to raise awareness about radiation should be taken very seriously. Some right-wing internet bloggers call those who raise concerns about radiation “unpatriotic” or “anti-Japanese.
In 2016, the Abe administration has decided to use taxpayer money for decontaminating affected areas in Fukushima. The decision marks a fundamental shift from the current policy that obliges TEPCO to pay for the decontamination work. The 2017 decontamination work is estimated to cost 30 billion yen. Behind the adminstration’s decision for the use of taxpayer money is the rapidly expanding expense of decontamination, with the latest estimate rising from the original 2.5 trillion yen to 4 trillion. This estimate does not include the no-return zones. The government expects the planned work in those areas to cost roughly 300 billion yen over five years. The Abe administration’s decision not only increase people’s financial burden but also blur TEPCO’s responsibility for the irretrievable damages it caused."
IN JAPAN, AS IN ALL NATIONS WITH NUCLEAR FACILITIES, YOU WON'T FIND NATIONAL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS LIVING ANYWHERE NEAR NUCLEAR REACTORS, NOR WILL YOU FIND THE RICH LIVING IN THOSE AREAS. THEIR CHILDREN WILL NOT ATTEND SCHOOLS IN THOSE AREAS NOR WILL THEY WORK NEAR THEM.
THOSE WHO OWN SUCH FACILITIES ALSO LIVE FAR AWAY AND DON'T EVEN DIGNIFY THE SITUATION BY ISSUING "VENTING" SCHEDULES SO LOCAL RESIDENTS CAN AT LEAST STAY INSIDE WHILE EACH PLANT EMITS RADIOACTIVE STEAM OR COOLING WATER.
WHY DON'T THESE FACTS ALONE DEMONSTRATE TO THE WORLD THAT NUCLEAR ENERGY IS NOT AT ALL SAFE?
THE FUTURE OF THE CHILDREN IS GRIM.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) study, girls exposed as infants to radioactivity in the most contaminated regions of Fukushima Prefecture, where estimated doses ranged from 12 to 25 millisieverts for the first year, faced a 70% higher risk of developing thyroid cancer than what would normally be expected.
Well, children born there today, next year, a decade from now will still face radiation doses of barely under 20 millisieverts per year in zones where the forests and mountains remain.
No one can decontaminate a rock, the trees, the rain.
NO ONE CAN STOP RADIATION, PERIOD.
ONCE RELEASED,IT IS WITH US FOR UP TO BILLIONS OF YEARS AND CIRCULATES ACROSS THE GLOBE, OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
SHINZO ABE AND ALL INVOLVED IN THIS MAN-MADE DISASTER CAN NOW SAY WITH OPPENHEIMER,
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
____________________________
FURTHER READING, SOURCES:
~ SEE the JAPAN TIMES brave article from 2011 about the deception the Abe regime has been guilty of,
"This tradition of lying has a long history. Government omerta and omission kept the nation ignorant about the most basic facts — including reactor meltdowns — for months!
Post-Fukushima Japan must realize that public acceptance of lying got us into this radioactive mess in the first place.
For radiation has no media cycle. It lingers and poisons the land and food chain. Statistics may be obfuscated or suppressed as usual. But radiation’s half-life is longer than the typical attention span or sustainable degree of public outrage.
As the public — possibly worldwide — sickens over time, the truth will leak out."
~ SEE 'THE ECOLOGIST' article,
"Japan and IAEA risk Fukushima victims' lives with forced return"
~ SEE ALSO NUCLEAR NEWS' TAKE ON THIS ALONG WITH SEVERAL OTHER RELATED ARTICLES <HERE>.
~ An interesting PDF titled “No Return to Normal”, 2017
~ The Guardian, UK, article "
Thousands who fled 2011 disaster must choose between financial hardship or return to homes they believe are unsafe
~ SEE "Japanese journalists are revolting."
"Japanese journalists did what Yasuhiko Tajima, a professor of media studies at Tokyo's Sophia University, calls "announcement journalism" in reporting on the crisis. He says they were reporting the press releases of big companies and the people in power. And he's not the only one who thinks so.
Former NHK anchor Jun Hori speaks at a TEDx event in Kyoto, Japan, about opening Japanese journalism to non-traditional sources.
//WW
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