- 160,000 people evacuated their homes due to the Fukushima accident. Some 70,000 were ordered to leave because they lived inside the government-mandated exclusion zone – a 20 kilometer radius around F. Daiichi plus a 10km-wide corridor northwest of the accident site extending out to roughly 45 km. Another 90,000 evacuated voluntarily from communities outside the exclusion zone. About 89,000 of the total remain in Fukushima Prefecture as refugees – 42,000 from the exclusion zone and 47,000 voluntary evacuees. Some moved to other Prefectures and a few thousand have returned home where the restrictions have been lifted. 80% of the evacuees feel they may never go back to their still-intact homes – some because they believe decontamination will never be good enough and others because they fear another F. Daiichi accident. Many feel the accident is not over and Tepco’s efforts to control the crisis are makeshift and failure-prone. An NHK survey shows that many of the Fukushima refugees have no desire to return home (19%). However, 17% said they would return home now if they were allowed, 10% have returned home to locations where the exclusion ban has been lifted, and 52% say they want to return home but only after decontamination. Three-quarters of those who never want to go home say they don’t trust decontamination efforts, fear radiation, and returning home would result in their families abandoning them.
- The News media is posting some creative, forbidding headlines. Perhaps the most provocative is Japan Today’s “Japan’s ‘long war’ to shut down Fukushima nuclear plant”. All news articles run a summation of the last two years, emphasizing the negative. Japan Today says the “war” to contain Fukushima Daiichi was fought with an “arsenal of weapons” which was “improvised, low-tech and underpowered”. The emergency power cable used to repower the station is called “the world’s longest extension cord”.
- Quotes from Tepco sources have been positive, but tinged with uneasiness about the job ahead. F. Daiichi’s current plant manager, Takeshi Takahashi, says, “It’s going to take a very long time to complete the work, and it’s going to be tough, but we’re committed to completing it.” He says the issue most on his mind is the build-up of decontaminated waters and whether or not they will ever be able to release them to the sea. “The contaminated water is a pressing issue,” said Takahashi. On the other hand, the Press posts that the releases could contaminate ground water and destroy the local fishing businesses which have recovered from the tsunami. Kyoto University professor Akio Koyama, a researcher of radioactive waste, said Tepco will have no choice but to eventually dump the water. On the other hand, a national fisherman’s advocacy group says, “Fishermen have been suffering from the impacts of the Fukushima crisis and trying to regain consumers’ trust. Dumping tainted water will destroy these efforts.”
- Tepco has used arthroscopic probes and robots to try and find the source of the leaks out of the reactor systems of units #1 through 3. The company maintains that the leaks are coming out of the rector vessels, into the surrounding Primary Containments (PCV), and from there to the attached reactor and turbine building basements. So far, none of the “looks” inside the PCVs have found leaks from any of the massive components. In fact, unit #2’s suppression pool (torus) room is completely dry.
- Influential nuclear critics remain concerned about the integrity and stability of the spent fuel pool of unit #4. Tepco is building a massive structure to surround and encase unit #4 reactor building to remove the 1,533 fuel bundles from the pool. This herculean effort, however, is downplayed by the Press calling it a “makeshift” effort. Tepco has tested the structure and found the inner building (PCV) which holds the pool to be robust and safe, and had the work corroborated by independent experts. But, vocal nay-saying critics continue to be disturbed. They fear that another 9-Richter-scale quake could cause a complete collapse and result in a radioactive release many times worse than the three meltdowns.
- Tokyo has allocated enough money to give full-time employment to 1,800 exclusion zone decontamination workers, but only 200 are presently employed. The shortfall is due to two reasons. First, many applicants say they will not work unless they get more money because the job should be considered hazardous. Second, many contractors say their employees fear they will get contamination on them and eventually die of cancer. Local officials bemoan the manpower shortage. However, they say the problem is amplified by too little money, a lack of decontamination technology and inability to find interim storage locations for the radioactive waste.
- Fukushima refugees are deeply depressed due to a combination of reasons: living in strange places, fears of coming down with cancer, forced career changes, and a constant feeling of sickness. One refugee complains of a continual “shortness of breath” and another says that living in a strange land is “stifling”. Many say that Tepco’s $1,000 per month compensation isn’t enough. Those living in free apartments, paid for by Tokyo, sare dissatisfied with what they have been given and want better places to live. Many complain of being discriminated against because people look at them with disdain and/or make disparaging remarks. 51% say things will never be the same for them.
- Estimates of the cost of cleaning up the power station and dismantling the four damaged units run as high as $110 billion. Estimates of the cost of decontaminating the outlying exclusion zone are as high as $600 billion. Some even say the current timetables for recovery are naive and the costs could eventually run in the trillions of dollars. Michio Ishikawa of Japan’s Nuclear Technology Institute calls the current plans a “pipe dream”, adding the current 40-year time-table could actually be decades longer. Some reports stress that the unknown is more important than what is known since the technology to undertake the jobs at hand often do not yet exist in Japan. Other reports allege that the workers at Fukushima are in constant danger of cancer, underpaid, and overworked. In addition, some contractors are having problems finding enough people to get the job done. The Press seeks out those workers most upset, and posts their complaints as if they speak for the entire 3,000-man staffing. One is quoted as saying, “The money is getting worse and worse, and who would want to come and work under these conditions?I get stomach aches. I am constantly stressed. When I’m back in my room, all I can do is worry about the next day. They should give us a medal.” Some mental health experts say the Fukushima workers could experience discrimination as severe as American servicemen following Vietnam. Already, many say they are treated like the “Hibakusha” – those who survived the bombings of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Finally, the Press emphasizes that the future of Fukushima and the refugees is unknown. One Chou University professor said, “Only God knows”. One politician in Fukushima said, “This kind of job has never been done. The technology, the wherewithal, has never been developed. Basically, we are groping in the dark.” Negativity in the Press is literally omnipresent.
- Numerous video documentaries have emerged over the past year; some formal for internet and/or theatrical use, and others on YouTube. In the “formal” category, Japan’s Indy film-makers have flocked to Fukushima to exploit the second anniversary of the accident. The gist of these yet-to-be-released films is summed up by Japan Times, “The unnerving clicks of dosimeters are constant as people wearing white protective gear quickly visit the radiated no-go zones of decayed farms and shuttered stores. Evacuees huddle on blankets on gymnasium floors, waiting futilely for word of compensation and relocation. What’s striking is that many of the works convey a prevailing message: The political, scientific and regulatory establishment is not telling the whole truth about the disaster. And much of the public had been in the past ignorant and uncaring about Fukushima.” The majority of the internet/YouTube variety also focuses on the Fukushima refugees, how they felt during the first weeks of the crisis, their anxieties over possibly never going home again, and how they are being misled by “official” statements about exposures and cancer possibilities. One of the most recent and alarming releases is “A2 – Eighteen months after the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima”. In it, one person being checked for internal contamination says, “We’ve been deceived…We’ve been betrayed” and explains that the government lied about nuclear safety and they are lying about cancers in Fukushima. Another is “Photographing the Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima”, in which the photographer says he is interested in the idea of science being “our Achilles Heel” and uses images of the deserted Fukushima evacuation zone and drowned bodies caused by the tsunami to drive his point home.
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