Raise your voices - Fukushima nuclear disaster

It's been a while since I posted about the ongoing situation in Fukushima after the Daiichi Nuclear plant disaster (here's a link to my first post in a series on the disaster 1 year later).

Today I wanted to post this video I found on the wonderful blog, EXSKF, a blog dedicated to covering the events of the nuclear incident. This video shows a woman interrupting a stress test meeting held on January 18th to discuss if it was safe to restart the Ooi Nuclear Power Plant in the Kansai area, a plan that has recently been all but approved by Prime Minister Noda.

Her cries for help are the cries of someone who is without hope living in a terrible situation. Clean up work and stabilization measures have been done at the Daiichi plant, but the prefecture itself? Not so much. Yes, much work has been done cleaning school grounds to get background radiation levels down to normal, but it's an enormous job, and there's a huge area that needs cleaning.

When I went to Fukushima last year in the fall I got readings above 1 microSievert/hour right around the train station, with people out and about shopping, eating and going about their lives. If you look around just a little you can find places with a lot higher readings all over the area.

Is it safe? None of the doses I've seen recorded would lead to immediate death or cancers. In order to get that kind of stuff you have to have doses thousands or millions of times higher.

But that doesn't answer the question. Is it safe to live in such a place? We can't really know yet, but data exists about areas with similar levels of radiation post-Chernobyl that all show increased rates of cancer, leukemia, heart conditions and birth defects. I hope somehow Fukushima can miraculously avoid the same fate by better screening of foods and cleanup. But that's all it is, hope.

If I was in Fukushima like this woman, living with family, neighbors and loved ones in elevated radiation areas I would demand immediate action.

It strikes me as almost painfully absurd that Japan's now thinking of restarting the Ooi reactors. Maybe it has been properly tested. Maybe it's safer than Fukushima or is situated in a place that couldn't have the same kind of disaster. But if that's true, if it is safe they need to explain that to us, make sure we understand, because as of now it feels more like the PM said we're restarting it and that's that, like an angry father telling his kids to eat their dinner without any reason why.

This post is kind of rambling but it matches my feelings about the situation exactly. And my heart goes out to people like this woman. I wish them strength and safety, and hope the government and (better yet) the people of Japan and the world can act to clean things up and make sure it doesn't get worse.