Fukushima’s neighbors may not return ‘in decades’
Residents who lived near the damaged nuclear plant of Fukushima may can not return to their homes in “several decades”, according to currently Japanese media reports.
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, is going to visit the area this week and there will explain to the evacuees that they may not return to their homes, although operations to stabilize the reactors at the plant affected in January are carried out correctly.
Satellite image on 16 March of the four damaged reactor buildings.
It will be the first time that the Japanese Government publicly acknowledged that the radiation damage in the areas close to the plant is too dangerous to live there, at least for a generation. It means, in practice, that some residents will never return to their homes.
New data have revealed dangerous levels of radiation outside the exclusion zone, which was established in 12 miles, thereby increasing the likelihood that whole villages are being declared not habitable.
The exclusion zone was imposed after a lot of hydrogen explosions on the floor after the earthquake and tsunami in March.
The Government had planned to lift the order of evacuation and allow 80,000 people to return to their homes inside the exclusion zone once the reactors were placed under control.
However, according to a report published this weekend by the Ministry of Science, it is expected that the accumulated radiation over a year in 22 of the 50 sites, where several tests were taken inside the exclusion zone, easily exceeds 100 mSv, five times higher than the safety level suggested by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP).
“We can not exclude the possibility that there will be some areas where it will be difficult for residents to return to their homes for a long time,” Yukio Edano said, the Chief of Staff of the Government during the disaster.
Edano refused to say which areas were on the list or by how long would remain uninhabitable, and added that this is a decision that would have to be taken after further testing of radiation.
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