Fukushima

Well, that name always gets everyone's attention these days. In Japanese it means "Fortunate Island" ...we should be so lucky already. It's a prefecture dear to our hearts and of course much in the news.  It is also very large and has at it's mountainous center the marvellous city of Aizu-Awakamatsu which I'll talk about in a separate post.

We are back i n Japan for three months and I am going to do another stint at language school. For the last two days Tomono and I went on a road trip North to see first hand what is going on up North. To put you in the geographic picture the nuclear power plant is about 200 km away from our house to the North and the capital city of Fukushima Prefecture, Fukushima, about 250 km barreling up the autoroute it takes about 2 1/2 to 3 hours to get there.

We went to the town of Minamisoma about 30 kms from the plant, so outside the 20km exclusion zone but severely hit by the tsunami. These are photos of what is left of the seaside part of the town. 400 dead, 1,000 missing and totally upsetting and strange. Streets but no houses, just the odd plate and cup and a bit of a bike or something sticking out of the mud. It is but one of hundreds of towns like this along the coast.

Two houses right on the edge of the wave caught a slap but are still standing, sort of.

Then a few meters away, where the wave stopped, the rest of the town looks completely normal.

Although there is a lot of very small and very cramped looking temporary housing built in parking lots etc.One family to a room.

We then drove back over the hills and mountains away from the trouble towards the center of the prefecture... but, totally unplanned and about 60km from the plant we suddenly came across a "hot spot" there were no warning signs but I started to notice that the rice fields were untended and unplanted and the greenhouses empty and falling apart, from uncleared snow I suppose. Then three towns, the biggest Iitate, completely empty except for a few guards. Like one of the worst scenes from "The Day of the Triffids" or some  other cheery film. Obviously a spot where the luck of the draw and the prevailing winds or a rain shower dumped a concentration of radioactive material on these poor citizens and their farms and livestock.

Everything just left and abandoned. No cars, no washing hanging out, dead pot plants on the verandahs, overgrown gardens, empty shops, empty schools, empty livestock barns. Think neutron bomb. It was totally appalling you can only think of those poor people whose families have probably lived in the area for a 500 years or so and seemingly can never go back.

We did not stop to take photos for fairly obvious reasons. But then around the bend and down the road a bit you see this: Which is what it's meant to look like. Fukushima is/was famous for it's unspoilt agriculture and small scale farmers who take incredible pride in their produce. Even the ones who survived everything are finding it hard to sell their goods due to the stigma. Tourism was also the major industry and that has dried up almost completely.

And then there's this: The scientists amongst you will well recognise this one. Unhappy with the data you're getting? Doesn't fit the hypothesis?  Simply change the method of recording and/or remove a few annoying variables...easy.

On July 17, 2012, the Japanese TV morning news show “Tokudane” reported that 31 out of 38 monitoring posts in 6 cities in Fukushima showed far lower radiation levels than the general actual levels for the areas where the monitoring posts are in. They measured the radiation levels with Professor Kato of Tokyo Metropolitan University. When they use a survey meter and walk a few steps away from the monitoring posts, the radiation levels shoot sharply up. One post measured 0.24uSv while a measurement showed 0.41uSv only one meter away. A monitoring post in South Iitate indicated 4.51uSv, but a survey meter read 9.5uSv. Professor Kato says that such monitoring posts have been set up on decontaminated spots. Citizens have been skeptical of their measurements for a long time.
TEPCO made a document for public release on April 20, 2012 explaining that they have “improved” the area surrounding monitoring posts by cutting trees within 20 to 30m, replacing soil and placing shielding walls, so that readings remain below 10uSv/h. It details the case of 8 monitoring posts, and they cite an example where the radiation dose went down from 83.6uSv to 9.7uSv.

P.S. How do you decontaminate a forest or a mountain?