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Beginning of Story Content
TOKYO –
The scars
of Japan’s March 11 disaster are both glaringly evident and
deceptively
hidden.
Six months after a tsunami
turned Japan’s northeast into a tangled mess of
metal, concrete, wood and
dirt, legions of workers have made steady progress
hauling away a good portion of
the more than 20 million tonnes of debris
covering ravaged coastal
areas. The Environment Ministry says it expects to have
it all removed by next March,
and completely disposed of by 2014.
'I think Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO),
as well as the Japanese government, made many mistakes.' —Shoji
Sawada, theoretical particle physicist
But a weightless byproduct of this country’s March 11 disaster is expected to
linger for much longer.
The
Japanese learned a lot about the risks posed by radiation after the
United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in 1945. Now, once
again,
they are facing this invisible killer. This time, the mistake is of
their
own making.
"I’m afraid," says Shoji Sawada, a theoretical
particle physicist who is
opposed to the use of nuclear
energy
.
Sawada
has been carefully monitoring the fallout from the accident at the
Fukushima Daiichi power plant. “I think many
people were exposed to radiation. I
am afraid
[they] will experience delayed effects, such as cancer and
leukemia.”
Evacuation zone
Japan's government maintains a 20-kilometre evacuation zone around the
Fukushima Daiichi plant, with no unauthorized entry allowed.
The government has urged people within a 30-km radius of the plant to leave,
but it's not mandatory.
Some people say the evacuation zone should include Fukushima City, which is
63 km away from the plant. At the moment, the roughly 100,000 local children are
kept indoors, schools have banned soccer and outdoor sports, pools were closed
this summer, and building windows are generally kept closed.
A handful of people argue the government should evacuate all of Fukushima
prefecture, which has a population of about 2 million.
Sawada
dedicated his career to studying the impact radiation has on human
health, particularly among the survivors of
Japan’s atomic bombings. His
interest
is both professional and personal. When he was 13 years old, his mother
urged him to flee their burning home in
Hiroshima. She died, trapped beneath
rubble
.
“I think Tokyo Electric Power Company [TEPCO], as well as the Japanese
government, made many mistakes,” he says.
Those mistakes have been clearly documented since the earthquake and tsunami
triggered meltdowns and explosions at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi, some 220
kilometres northeast of Tokyo. Warnings to build a higher tsunami wall were
ignored; concerns about the safety of aging reactors covered up; and a toothless
nuclear watchdog exposed as being more concerned with promoting atomic energy
than protecting the public