Gov't to lift some evacuation advisories around nuclear plant

More like guineau pigs ( test subject 001 )

I wouldn`t want to go back. dust particles or wind current can really make things worse.

Officials say most of the radiation in the reactor cores leaked out earlier in the crisis and what’s left inside does not pose much danger. TEPCO has been injecting nitrogen into the reactors as a precaution to prevent further hydrogen explosions, said Osamu Suda, a Cabinet Office official in charge of evacuees.

It is all sweet as now, they cores are all leaked out - what is everyone so worried about? Suda-san will be hosting a little bbq/piss up at the plant when everything is back to normal at the plant in Jan = RSVP.

Officials say most of the radiation in the reactor cores leaked out earlier in the crisis and what’s left inside does not pose much danger.

Officials at Tepco? Why do journalists bother to ask them questions anymore?

Officials said the lifting will allow about 25,000 people covered by the advisories to return home in about a month.

I hope they will still be compensated for their time away from their homes and lives. Do mind the Hotspots since they seem to be popping up here and there. TEPCO just found two serious hotspots right on the Daiichi site last week.

I think the lifting of the evacuation for those people is a BAD idea in the sense of knowing truly if their areas are REALLY safe or just within the elevated levels authorized by J Govt.

I would love to hear the opinions of the Russians.

Not much danger, oh well thats allright,be prepared to move out again quickly if the situation changes, errrr,is that allright, move back ino the recently decontaminated home,no way, stuff that for a game of cowboys

I mean, there is no immediate health risk, right?

They can go back to their homes, article says nothing saying "the area is now safe" or that "radiation is gone"... just you can go back home...

Interesting because the New York Times posted this article a day ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/world/asia/09japan.html?ref=asia

I wonder if they checked the area thoroughly because some of the fallout could still be on some of those peoples homes. The roof could be HOT you know it's weird.

@ JapanGal

The last segment of this documentary [http://bit.ly/mTiWOZ] is about a village near Chernobyl and how they live with the radiation

“We have hoped to let evacuees return to their ordinary lives as soon as possible. It took five months to finally start the process,” said Goshi Hosono, the cabinet minister in charge of the nuclear crisis. “We will carry this out very cautiously.”

Officials say most of the radiation in the reactor cores leaked out earlier in the crisis and what’s left inside does not pose much danger. TEPCO has been injecting nitrogen into the reactors as a precaution to prevent further hydrogen explosions, said Osamu Suda, a Cabinet Office official in charge of evacuees.

I wonder if both Goshi Hosono and Osamu Suda are both prepared to relocate their lives as well as their families into these areas just to show everyone that they are fully certain all is well!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No one is forcing people to move back to these areas. People can now make their own decision whether to move back or not without the government telling them what to do.

And yet more of what the Japanese government is famous for -- doing NOTHING to protect the people and instead just pandering to the media. Letting these people 'back home' is only going to result in them being exposed to higher radiation levels, regardless of the TEPCO official statements or government assurances that it's "not that bad". I hope these people have the brains to realize this and don't actually go home only to hear next week that they must leave again.

Sounds like an attempt to reduce future compensation claims. I bet they say if you refuse to move back, we will only provide compensation up to the point we (TEPCO/Government) declared the area safe. If you choose to stay away, it will be at your own expense....

Until everywhere is 100% safe without a shadow of doubt, they should not allow anyone to return to the affected areas...

@Tokyokawasaki,

That's an interesting angle and seems pretty plausible. Never thought about it that way.

Why not instead have the Tokyo government folks move their and trade homes with the people from there? I thought not. I wonder why?

Read up, peeps. Can you actually trust these people?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/world/asia/09japan.html?pagewanted=3&_r=2

This article is a real eye opener.... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/world/asia/09japan.html?ref=asia Go to the site and reeeeeeeaaaaaaaadddddd.

Critics, as well as the increasingly skeptical public, seem unconvinced. They compare the response to the Minamata case in the 1950s, a national scandal in which bureaucrats and industry officials colluded to protect economic growth by hiding the fact that a chemical factory was releasing mercury into Minamata Bay in western Japan. The mercury led to neurological illnesses in thousands of people living in the region and was captured in wrenching photographs of stricken victims.

These people will be tricked out of compensation. They will try to restart their lives exporting radioactive food and products to the rest of Japan, who will foolishly consume as the government said it's safe. Even though there are no tests done for strontium or plutonium. The amount of radioactive waste is actually increasing, explosions are feared and the reactors are not under control. Another serious earthquake could also collapse the fuel rod pool that has 10 times more plutonium that all of Chenybl. Good news is TEPCOs profits will slowly return to normal since compensation will be cut.

This is a further abuse of the Japanese people, they whine about being picked on but as this story says they are more then happy to to be killed deformed abused if the government says so. Got to the point where I have thrown up my hands I can't save these people they will die and it's up to them to save themselves.

This is done to block government liability for these people. They just lost their official refugee status. From now they are ordinary private citizens who must fend for themselves. If they want to move, it's their own decision and cost. This is the way it's always done. Get ready for a lot more.

This is also why the government doesn't do massive mapping and recording of radiation levels. In addition to costing a lot of money and manpower today, if they would actually do it, it would only create a set of official data that could be used to substantiate myriad future claims for compensation. Or even to bring criminal/negligence cases against various entities, bodies or (gasp!) individual people.

Nope. Never happen. Remember: it's all the same as taking an international flight. Even better, the problem has been handled. Eat those veggies and drink that milk, and don't hold your geiger counter to the ground because that's not a reliable reading.

badmigraine: "This is done to block government liability for these people."

It's amazing, isn't it? This is so clear, and yet you have the majority of Japanese instead focussing on how international media claim how 'stoic' they are. These people, if they choose to go home, are choosing to go home and die. You are absolutely right that the government is only allowing them to do so to avoid responsibility, as they have been trying to do from the start. It's disgusting. More disgusting still is that people will continue to say "Shouga nai ne!" because their children won't die for another ten years from this, and when they decide to stand up when their kids are dying, it'll be too late.

The advisories warned residents to be prepared to leave in case of worsening conditions at the plant. Although only a warning, many people fled their homes out of fear for their safety or because mandatory evacuation orders in nearby areas deprived them of city services.

These people were not 'official' refugees in the first place (whether or not they should have been is another matter).

Saving money, wasting human lives again? Can anyone hurt Japan more then they do to themselves?

This is a really good link I got from a post by Osakadaz, it gives loads of information including contamination levels.

http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/saigaijohou/syousai/1305495.htm

does not pose much danger

Gee, that's real comforting! Go home, it's kinda safe!

Although only a warning, many people fled their homes out of fear for their safety or because mandatory evacuation orders in nearby areas deprived them of city services.

That must have really put their minds at ease too! The town next to ours has a mandatory evacuation and we are still lacking many services but we can go home. GREAT!

This is lunacy. They don't yet know where the hotspots are and they blithely send people back? They're essentially saying "Here's a paper mask and some cotton gloves mate, good luck to you and the kids!" As people said, they've had hundreds, no thousands of blokes crawling around the plants with dosimeters for months and they just the other day found two zones off the scale of any monitoring equipment they've got. (Why, after 5 months they don't have the highest capacity monitoring equipment in the world at hand, is beyond me. With apologies to (Chairman) Mao, a nuclear disaster is not a tea party. But I digress.) So how do they know that the residential areas are safe? They don't know and they don't care. By the way, the MEXT site only gives readings the government is posting. That is to say, they are readings the government cares to post of locations the government cares to check. Civilians who check by themselves in Tokyo often find higher numbers. One of my mates checked his area and it was twice what the government said. Have a look at Shūkan gendai 週刊現代 magazine if you want a second opinion on radiation levels. Which is more trustworthy? I don't know. But I do know that MEXT sat on the SPEEDI data showing high levels of radiation flows whilst children were playing outside for a number of days.

@tokyokawasaki - EXACTLY! That was my first instinct too - reduce the number of claims as far as possible. Just because the reactors no longer pose so much danger doesnt mean the ground around them isnt permanently destroyed. I hope and pray someone has actually checked these areas before allowing people to return.