Group items tagged

Lilliemark says she learned a lot about the risks of not dealing with the used fuel. And it changed her thinking. "I can't just close my eyes and imagine that the fuel is not here, because it is," she says.

"I couldn't see anything that was positive," she says. But then local government officials asked her to lead a community advisory group. She says they told her: "We think you could contribute to the work — we need to open all the questions and be clear and transparent, and we want you to participate if you want to." And she did.

Oskarshamn was one of two communities in eastern Sweden that stepped forward after nuclear waste officials asked for volunteers willing to let them start geologic testing. Charlotte Lilliemark, who lives about 12 miles north of the town, was just the kind of person a nuclear power executive would want to avoid. The former Stockholmer moved to the country to raise dressage horses and didn't want a waste dump anywhere near her

This spring, Swedish nuclear officials applied for a licensing application to build a geologic vault in the municipality of Osthammar, about a two-hour drive north of Stockholm. If they get it, the facility could open in 2025. "We believe that it will not create a stigma, but on the other hand create an interest in how to solve this very difficult issue that people in Japan and California and Germany must solve in one way or another," says Jacob Spangenberg, the mayor of Osthammar.

The community will see some financial benefits: Besides new jobs and infrastructure, Osthammar negotiated a deal with the company to receive approximately $80 million for long-term economic development if the repository is approved

Already the community gets money from a national waste fund to help it chart an independent course. It has retained technical consultants and hired five full-time employees. Spangenberg says Osthammar learned how to ask tough questions, press for conditions and also to keep cool.

A government panel investigating Tepco's finances estimated the cost of compensation to people affected by the nuclear disaster will exceed ¥4 trillion.

The bulk of radioactive contamination cuts a 5- to 10-km-wide swath of land running as far as 30 km northwest of the nuclear plant, surveys of radiation hot spots by the science ministry show. The government extended evacuations beyond the 20-km zone in April to cover this corridor, which includes parts of Iitate.

No formal evacuation zone was set up in Hiroshima after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city on Aug. 6, 1945, though as the city rebuilt relatively few people lived within 1 km of the hypocenter, according to the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Museum. Food shortages forced a partial evacuation of the city in summer 1946.

On April 26, 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl reactor hurled 180 metric tons of nuclear fuel into the atmosphere, creating the world's first exclusion zone of 30 km around a nuclear plant. A quarter of a century later, the zone is still classed as uninhabitable. About 300 residents have returned despite government restrictions.

Tepco's decision in the 1960s to name its atomic plant Fukushima No. 1 has today associated a prefecture of about 2 million people that's almost half the size of Belgium with radiation contamination. In contrast, Chernobyl is the name of a small town near the namesake plant in what today is Ukraine.

Some people believed A-bomb survivors could emit radiation and others feared radiation caused genetic mutations, said Evan Douple, associate chief of research at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima. An examination of more than 77,000 first-generation children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings found no evidence of mutations, he said.

While radiation readings are lower in Fukushima than Hiroshima, Abel Gonzales, the vice chairman of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, said similar prejudices may emerge. "Stigma. I have the feeling that in Fukushima this will be a very big problem," Gonzales said during a symposium held in the city of Fukushima on the six-month anniversary of the disaster. Some children who fled Fukushima are finding out what Gonzales means. Fukushima schoolchildren were being bullied at their new school in Chiba Prefecture for "carrying radiation," the Sankei Shimbun reported in April, citing complaints made to education authorities. An 11-year-old Fukushima boy was hospitalized in Niigata Prefecture after being bullied at his new school, Kyodo News reported April 23.

Radiation risks in the 20-km zone forced the evacuation of about 8 percent, or 160,000, of some 2 million people who live in Fukushima. Almost 56,000 were sent to areas outside Fukushima, prefecture spokesman Masato Abe said. More than 8,000 left on their own accord because of radiation fears, Abe said

side the evacuation areas, levels of radiation higher than the government's criteria for evacuation have been recorded at 89 of 210 monitoring posts. At 24 of the sites, the reading was higher than the level at which the International Atomic Energy Agency says increases the risk of cancer. Japan Atomic Energy Institute researcher Toshimitsu Homma used science ministry data to compare the geographic scale of the contamination in Fukushima with Chernobyl.

He estimates the no-go zone in Fukushima will cover 132 sq. km, surrounded by a permanent monitoring area of 264 sq. km, assuming Japan follows the criteria set by the Soviet Union in 1986. The two areas combined equal about half the size of the five boroughs that comprise New York City. In the case of Chernobyl, the two zones cover a land mass 25 times greater, according to Homma's figures.

"Contradiction in some official statements, and the appearance of nonscientifically based 'expert' voices, confused and added stress to the local populations in each case," said Evelyn Bromet, a distinguished professor in the department of psychiatry at State University of New York, Stony Brook. "Lies got told, contradictions got told. In the end it's easier to believe nobody," Bromet said in an interview, citing mental health studies she did on people in the areas.

What radiation hasn't ruined, the earthquake and tsunami devastated. Fukushima Prefecture welcomed 56 million domestic and overseas visitors in 2009, equal to 44 percent of Japan's population.

The coastal town of Minamisoma this year canceled its annual qualifying stage for the world surfing championship, part of a waterfront that lured 84,000 beachgoers in July and August last year, said Hiroshi Tadano, head of the town's economic division. This year, nobody visited the beaches in the two months. "Most of the beaches are destroyed," Tadano said. "And of course, radiation played its part."

The area's biggest festival, Soma Nomaoi, a re-enactment of samurai battles, attracted 200,000 visitors last year. This year 37,000 came. Of the 300 horses typically used in the event, 100 were drowned in the tsunami and another 100 were evacuated due to radiation, Tajino said. Minamisoma resident Miyaguchi, 54, lost his home and parents in the tsunami. He quit his job at Tepco, leaving him unemployed and housed in an evacuation center

Iitate’s experience suggests the government may be underestimating the task. Villagers have removed 5cm of topsoil from one patch of land, but because radioactive particles continue to blow from the surrounding trees, the level of radiation remains high—about one microsievert an hour—even if lower than in nearby areas. Without cutting down the forests, Mr Sato reckons there will be a permanent risk of contamination. So far, nobody has any idea where any contaminated soil will be dumped.

And even if people return, Mr Sato worries how they will make a living. These are farming villages, but it will take years to remove the stigma attached to food grown in Fukushima, he reckons. He is furious with Tokyo Electric Power, operator of the plant, for failing to acknowledge the long-term impacts of the disaster. He says it is a way of scrimping on compensation payouts.

One way to help overcome these problems would be to persuade people to accept relaxed safety standards. A government panel is due to propose lifting the advisory dose limit above one millisievert per year. This week in Tokyo, Wade Allison, a physics professor at Oxford University, argued that Japan’s dose limit could safely be raised to 100 millisieverts, based on current health statistics. Outside Mr Sato’s house, however, a reading of the equivalent of 150 millisieverts a year left your correspondent strangely reluctant to inhale.