Sunday May 27, 2012

JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION

No-man's land attests to Japan's nuclear nightmare

By David Guttenfelder

National Jan. 03, 2012 - 07:00AM JST ( 24 )

No-man's land attests to Japan's nuclear nightmare — Children's desks, backpacks, and school supplies lie abandoned inside an earthquake-rattled primary school classroom in Namie. It is uncertain when, or if ever the children will be able to return or reclaim their possessions. AP/David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine

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24 Comments

6

Samuel MikengaJan. 03, 2012 - 08:00AM JST

and after all this, we still insist nuclear power is the only viable solution to japan's power needs...madness!!!!
1

CrickyJan. 03, 2012 - 08:02AM JST

believed to have fallen to the bottom of the core or even down to the bottom of the larger, beaker-shaped containment vessel, a process that is expected to begin in 10 years.

All told, decommissioning the plant will likely take 40 years.

Mmmmmm some say it has breached and has travelled up to 12 meters below the containment vessel.... But they do not know??? Best guess is 40 years, so N-power is actually not so cheep due to clean up costs and relocation costs and the complete destruction of people's lives, who have to relocate and begin new lives constantly overshadowed with the social stigma of being TEPCO refugees. A corrupt system that will accept no responsibility at all for the results of their duplicity. G8 country G20...standards and care are well below these standards.
2

mitoguitarmanJan. 03, 2012 - 08:37AM JST

The photo is too poignantly sad.
2

Elbuda MexicanoJan. 03, 2012 - 09:13AM JST

I agree, this is just crazy, madness!! 40 years? How about 400 years? Maybe 4,000 years?? Time for Japan and the rest of the world to change to CLEAN, recyclable forms of energy ASAP!!
3

smithinjapanJan. 03, 2012 - 10:00AM JST

That scientists and the Japan Nuclear Agency (which it has come to light accepted bribes from electric companies and other interests related to nuclear power) continue to downplay the disaster, as does the government, and it's heart-breaking. The worst part of it all is that they continue to give these people hope that they may let them go back some day when they should be telling them in many places it will NEVER be possible. That, and the image of people still huddled in tiny spaces and having to listen to the snoring while money that could help them is being wasted on MASSIVE scales. I hope their situation improves soon in the new year.
8

zichiJan. 03, 2012 - 10:14AM JST

The most miserable New Year for these 100,000+ people. People from the earthquake and tsunami were offered temporary accommodation but this does not seem to be happening with the nuclear evacuees.

Is that because technically they are not homeless and still have homes even though they can no longer use them? Have these people still not received compensation from TEPCO, now 9 months after 3/11?

The government is thinking some people will be able to return to their homes if the rad level is less than 20 millisieverts per year. But in many places the rad level at ground level is more than 25 mircosieverts per hour.

All these people deserve much better treatment than what they seem to be getting at the moment.
1

Heda_MadnessJan. 03, 2012 - 11:04AM JST

I can't speak for the other areas but in Minami Soma you are eligible for a temporary house if you lost your house in the tsunami or if you were living in the mandatory exclusion zone. I am surprised that this article is inferring that is not the case for all victims. Also, I thought that all temporary shelters had closed in Fukushima (Zichi - do you have the correct info?).
3

Heda_MadnessJan. 03, 2012 - 11:17AM JST

I've just googled it and discovered that all primary shelters in Fukudhima prefecture have in fact been closed but there are still 600 people who were evacuated from Kazo who are living in Saitama but it doesn't say whether they are in shelters or temporary housing.

I would suggest that the authors claims that 10's of thousands are now huddled in schools, cars etc means that either this article was written weeks ago or the author is misrepresenting the facts.
0

Star-vikingJan. 03, 2012 - 11:20AM JST

And yet still we get information without context:

According to a study led by Andreas Stohl the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, twice as much radioactive cesium-137—a cancer-causing agent—was pumped into the atmosphere than Japan had announced, reaching 40 percent of the total from Chernobyl.

From the horse's mouth:

Stohl believes that the discrepancy between the team's results and those of the Japanese government can be partly explained by the larger data set used. Japanese estimates rely primarily on data from monitoring posts inside Japan3, which never recorded the large quantities of radioactivity that blew out over the Pacific Ocean, and eventually reached North America and Europe.

So the J-Gov estimate was good for Japan - which was what we needed at the time.

Stohl adds that he is sympathetic to the Japanese teams responsible for the official estimate. "They wanted to get something out quickly," he says. The differences between the two studies may seem large, notes Yukio Hayakawa, a volcanologist at Gunma University who has also modelled the accident, but uncertainties in the models mean that the estimates are actually quite similar.

So the choice was a timely report or a very-accurate one. The Japanese teams were in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

And also:

Stohl cautions that the resulting model is far from perfect.

Reference: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111025/full/478435a.html
-1

FadamorJan. 03, 2012 - 11:43AM JST

and after all this, we still insist nuclear power is the only viable solution to japan's power needs...madness!!!!

Not sure who "we" are, but even BEFORE the accident nobody was saying nuclear power was the ONLY viable solution for Japan. What nuclear power provided was a cost-per-kilowatt advantage over every other alternative out there. Now that confidence in the relative safety of the plants has been shown to be "a bit" optimistic, they are going to have to re-calculate their cost-per-kilowatt figures to include the damage and costs associated with failures like Fukushima Daiichi. I've mentioned fusion power before. It will be a very safe alternative to fission reactors... once they work out the bugs. I doubt Japan will be returning to nuclear reactor-generated power as the method of choice until science has managed to sustain a fusion reactor for power-generating purposes.

In the meantime, the reactors that ARE already in place and online are going to need to certify that another tsunami isn't going to do the same thing it did to Daiichi. (hint: Get your emergency power generators off the ground and put them on top of the reactor buildings)

And I'm giving a thumb's-up to Star-Viking's comment. I seem to remember those quotes appearing here when the article about the study first came out. The author of this article probably felt mentioning that would lessen the impact of his article. A 'strategic" omission to make his article seem more hard-hitting.
3

zichiJan. 03, 2012 - 11:56AM JST

Heda_Maddness,

sorry I was asking more questions than giving answers and will accept what you have said about emergency shelters and in which case this post is useless and well out of date.
-1

CrickyJan. 03, 2012 - 12:02PM JST

Have to remember that the news story's have historically down played this whole disaster, so if this story says one thing eventually it transpires to be10 times more. And I know people who are living in a car and have done for 9 months, they have no address so fall off the system, throw away Japanese...they call themselves.
0

Heda_MadnessJan. 03, 2012 - 12:07PM JST

Hi Zichi, I know about Minami Soma but I genuinely didn't know about the rest of Fukushima before I Googled it. I only asked you because I know that you're very good at finding info.
1

Blair HerronJan. 03, 2012 - 01:05PM JST

zichi

People from the earthquake and tsunami were offered temporary accommodation but this does not seem to be happening with the nuclear evacuees.

157,000 people (7.8% of total Fukushima population) have evacuated. 61,659 people are outside Fukushima prefecture. 70% of them are voluntary evacuees from non-evacuation zone. The number of evacuees to other prefectures has been increasing from 45,242 (June 30) to 61,659 (Dec.15) Among those evacuees within Fukushima prefecture (95,899), 31,265 people live in temporary houses, 63,223 people live in leased (by government) houses, 1,411 people live in public housing.

　 http://www.kahoku.co.jp/spe/spe_sys1071/20111230_01.htm

Have these people still not received compensation from TEPCO, now 9 months after 3/11?

Temporary compensation from TEPCO to evacuees from evacuation zone is 1million yen/household, 750,000 yen/single person household.

Voluntary evacuees asked TEPCO for 3million yen/household for compensation. TEPCO said (temporary compensation): 80,000yen/person (aged 18 and older), 400,000yen/person (18 or younger, pregnant woman)

http://blog.babycome.ne.jp/blog/x61i8qq6/1220691/
2

WilliBJan. 03, 2012 - 01:50PM JST

" They are now huddling in gymnasiums, elementary school classrooms, "

When was this article written? In other news we read now that the last refugees have been settled in permanet or temporary housing.

So either the writer is making up things out of thin air, or the article is dated.
-2

Heda_MadnessJan. 03, 2012 - 02:01PM JST

The article was published om the AP website on December 27, the day before the last temporary shelter closed in Fukushima, so unless those that moved to other prefectures have been forced to live in such conditions (which would be news to me) then the article is grossly exaggerated. Which is pretty much how most of the Western Media reported the earthquake and tsunami in March.
1

UtrackJan. 03, 2012 - 02:46PM JST

My bad I just google the headline and it's all over the web. Published and Updated Dec. 27th, But at least one of the 31 Photos from this article is from July 08, 2011. So I can only conclude that this article started around that time.
0

Darren BrannanJan. 03, 2012 - 06:02PM JST

Weren't those in Saitama living in a derelict school? I seem to remember something like that. I just came from Iwate and I pity anyone without proper heat and insulation. It was numbingly cold.
2

Yvonne SummerfieldJan. 03, 2012 - 08:43PM JST

Nuke power is madness, there have been 99 accidents since 1950. It has proven itself, dangerous. I made a website/resource center to help people get the tools to fight nuclear, shut them all down. http://nukepimp.blogspot.com/
-1

whiskeysourJan. 03, 2012 - 10:51PM JST

Recent studies also suggest Japan continues to significantly underestimate the scale of the disaster—which could have health and safety implications far into the future.

This statement is very scary and very sound. Removal of radioactive top soil and relocate it to where ? Transport it in plastic containers to where ? Every time it rains where is water run off going ? Where is the millions of ton of contaminated soil going to ?

I would want to swim on the east coast of japan for 80 years. Seriously.
0

Star-vikingJan. 03, 2012 - 11:25PM JST

I'd love to know what the rest of these "recent studies" are. As I've shown earlier - even Dr Stohl doesn't see much difference between his work and the earlier J-Gov reports - but it's hard to comment on unreferenced studies.
2

zichiJan. 04, 2012 - 02:38AM JST

Blair Herron,

thanks for the info, with the links I don't read Japanese???
0

Blair HerronJan. 04, 2012 - 08:40AM JST

Sorry, zichi, I tried to find English site, but I couldn't. I just put the links so some people wouldn't say I was making things up.
1

ElvensilvanJan. 04, 2012 - 02:37PM JST

Dead chickens rot in their coops.

Oh, this is the kicker. The chicken are still rotting in their coops after 9 months? Seriously?

I do believe that the article may just be a belated posting of an old write-up with some touch-ups for a "recent story" look.