Fukushima residents being forced to move back to radioactive wasteland

[wvwvw]

Fukushima residents being forced to move back to radioactive wasteland
Friday, February 24, 2017
by Vicki Batts



Would you want to return home if it meant living in radioactive conditions similar to Chernobyl? Some 6,000 Japanese citizens are being urged by the government to return to their homes in the nuclear wasteland created by the Fukushima disaster. Greenpeace reports that radiation levels in the area are still similar to that of Chernobyl, which to most people, would indicate the area is not ready for human inhabitants.

Government officials are reportedly planning on slashing housing support for the thousands of people that had been evacuated from the village of Iitate on March 31, on which date the evacuation order will end. It will have been just a short six years since the nuclear disaster occurred.

The village is located just 24 miles away from the power plant. According to Fox News, the Japanese government has told the former Iitate inhabitants that they have finished cleaning up the area and have decreased the average radiation level in the air to a mere 0.8 microsieverts per hour – a level that international organizations have recognized as safe for human life. The government announced that it would be discontinuing housing assistance to the affected residents one year after they have returned to their homes in Iitate.

Unsurprisingly, the government’s announcement has been met with skepticism from the locals, and a hefty amount of criticism from environmental groups and radiation experts from around the world. They say that the Japanese government is merely trying to save face — and money — by forcing the residents of Iitate to return to an unsafe environment.

Jans Vande Putte, a radiation specialist with environmental group Greenpeace and one of the authors of a report on the cleanup efforts in Iitate, told Fox News, “The Japanese government just wants to say that we can overcome. It’s like they’re running a PR campaign to say that everything is okay and we can now go back to normal.”

The Fukushima nuclear accident is considered to be the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl meltdown happened in 1986. After a 9.0 earthquake rocked Japan, the tsunami that followed destroyed the backup generators at the Fukushima plant. Without the emergency generators, proper cooling could not take place — and three nuclear meltdowns ensued, along with explosions of hydrogen-air chemicals and the release of radioactive materials into the surrounding environment.

Even though the Japanese government insists that the radiation in and around the homes of Iitate, many experts disagree with their assertion.

Energy campaigner Ai Kashiwagi commented, “The relatively high radiation values, both inside and outside houses, show an unacceptable radiation risk for citizens if they were to return to Iitate.” Kashiwagi likened the exposure levels to getting a chest x-ray once a week, and noted that the level of exposure was “not normal or acceptable.”

Greenpeace has also said that a survey team they sent into the village found the levels of radiation dose rates at the homes were well above long-term radiation goals. According to them, the average radiation level exceeded the yearly 1 millisievert maximum recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection.

At one man’s home, radiation levels outside the home reached values equivalent to 2.5 millisieverts per year. Inside the home, radiation was much higher — reaching equivalents of 5.1 to 10.4 millisieverts per year.

This is not just a little bit over; it is many times more than what is deemed acceptable by international organizations.

Experts agree that radiation levels outside the village and the supposedly-decontaminated area are even more dangerous. Some 75 percent of the 77-square mile area is heavily forested and mountainous, and Greenpeace contends much of the area’s radiation levels are comparable to the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. Even taking a walk through the woods, or eating food grown from the “decontaminated” soil puts people at a greater risk of high amounts of radiation exposure.

“It is still relatively unsafe to live there,” Vande Putte said. “If thousands of people go back it will be a bad situation and it’s just not wise to go back.”

[wvwvw]

Alert: Cancer-causing radioactive particles have been detected across Europe
Thursday, February 23, 2017
by Ethan Huff

Mysterious plumes of radioactive iodine-131 are turning up all throughout Europe, sources say, but authorities are at a loss as to where they’re coming from. Reports indicate that Spain, France, Germany, Poland, Finland, Norway, and the Czech Republic have all detected very low levels of the nuclear substance, but that the source of this exposure remains shrouded in uncertainty.

The earliest detections came out of Norway back in January at an air filter station in the town of Svanhovd, located just a few hundred meters from Norway’s border with Russia’s Kola Peninsula. The Barent Observer says it wasn’t long after that the same radioactive particles were detected at a station in Rovaniemi, Finland. Just a few weeks later, radiation detection equipment in Poland, the Czech Republic, German, France, and Spain all gave a similar reading.

While Norway was the first to detect radioactive iodine-131, France was the first to actually report on it. A press release issued by France’s Institute de Radioprotection et de Süreté Nucléaire (IRSN) stated that the radioactive releases were first picked up during the second week of January in the northern region of Norway, sparking concerns of another potential Fukushima disaster in the making.

“Iodine-131 (131I), a radionuclide of anthropogenic origin, has recently been detected in tiny amounts in the ground-level atmosphere in Europe,” the report states. “Iodine-131 is a radionuclide with a short half-life (T1/2 = 8.04 day). The detection of this radionuclide is proof of a rather recent release.”

Nuclear authorities: nothing to see here; now move along

The report goes on to claim that poor dispersion conditions in the atmosphere during the times of detection could be to blame for the scare, as other radionuclides like lead-210 also showed up. In either case, the report insists, the levels of iodine present in the atmosphere at the time of detection are so low as to “raise no health concerns.”

Norwegian officials are saying the same thing, arguing that they didn’t even think it necessary to report on the radiation levels due to their low concentration, hence this country’s media blackout of the situation. This is why Norway failed to properly notify the public about the findings back in January, and only reluctantly did so later after the IRSN report was issued by France.

“We do measure small amounts of radioactivity in air from time to time because we have very sensitive measuring equipment,” Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority (NRPA) head Astrid Liland told the Barents Observer.

“The measurements at Svanhovd in January were very, very low. So were the measurements made in neighboring countries, like Finland. The levels raise no concern for humans or the environment. Therefore, we believe this had no news value.”

Ironically enough, the two other countries besides Norway that detected radiation early on and reported on it, Finland and France, showed much lower levels than in Norway. These two countries showed radiation levels of between 0.27-0.3 becquerels per cubic meter of air (uBq/m3) and between 0.1-0.31 uBq/m2 of iodine-131, respectively, while in Norway levels were detected at 0.5 uBq/m3 of iodine-131.

NRPA’s Liland says the source of radiation remains elusive because of “rough weather.” She did say, however, that it could be from somewhere in Eastern Europe, possibly from a nuclear reactor somewhere. Iodine-131 is also present in some medical devices, though it is unlikely that the releases came from either these or the facilities that manufacture them because the levels would be too low.

Another theory is that the radiation could have come from Russian nuclear submarines, which have been increasingly mobile over the past several months. According to The Sun (U.K.), the highest radiation levels thus far have been detected in Poland, though even these levels are low enough as to not have to declare a state of public health emergenc