Columban Fr Paul McCartin writes a report of his recent visit to the site of the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, which occurred on March 11, 2011 as a result of an earthquake and tsunami. Fr Paul is the Columban 'Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation' Coordinator in Japan.
Recently I joined a small group going to Fukushima to get an update on the situation after the disaster of March 11, 2011. Alighting from the Bullet Train at the town of Kouriyama, 60kms west of Fukushima Number One Nuclear Power Plant, the first surprise was the large radiation monitor in front of the station. Over the next three days I saw similar monitors in cities, beside country roads and along expressways.
We were taken to the National Teachers’ Union Kouriyama office. On the way we saw a fenced off area in front of the City offices where radioactive waste has been buried.
After the accident a Kouriyama resident invited friends to evacuate to Kouriyama, but Kouriyama turned out to be more dangerous. The government did not provide accurate information to people and many fled in the direction the wind was blowing the radiation. Schools had no radiation-measuring equipment. Exams were cancelled and water cut off.
In Kouriyama, roofs of buildings and the ground are being decontaminated, but not the walls of buildings. A trade union counsellor told us about the inquiries and complaints from workers doing the cleaning up of the contaminated area. Brazilians are among the workers.
We were driven around the area for the next two and a half days. I had taken face masks but our guides gave us better ones. We were told to make sure we washed our hands and around our mouths before eating. I was given a small radiation monitor to wear around my neck. Over the two and a half days I was exposed to 8.1 micro Sieverts, an ‘acceptable’ amount. Some roads are closed to ordinary traffic and evacuees are still not allowed to return to the heavily contaminated areas. Properties in these areas are barricaded to prevent looting.
The most dangerous area is the Number One Plant where the nuclear fuel meltdown occurred. The technology to decontaminate the plant doesn’t even exist yet.
Remote-control robots sent in to the plant were destroyed by the radiation. When I mentioned that I do a bit of hiking, I was advised not to hike in Fukushima as there is a lot of radiation in the mountains, especially at the base of mountains as rain washes it down.
What we mostly saw was a massive clean-up still continuing five years after the accident. Buildings and roads are being washed down and contaminated soil and vegetation being removed. Farm topsoil to a depth of five centimetres is being removed and replaced with soil from the many hills being razed for this purpose. There are large collections of industrial waste bags all over the place. There must be hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
Low-level waste is being recycled. Highly contaminated waste is being burned. So far only one percent of high-level waste has been burned. More incinerators are being constructed. Some residents oppose construction of incinerators. Among residents who gave consent to construction of one incinerator are some dead people.
Contaminated waste is being used in the wall being built along the shore to prevent another tsunami hitting the area. In fact, there is so much radioactively contaminated waste that local facilities can’t handle it, so ‘low-level waste’ is being transported to many distant places for disposal.
Contaminated fishing gear, nets, etc, is being disposed of in the town where I live. I attended a meeting to oppose this. In this way radiation is being spread to many parts of the country. It would seem to make sense to keep it where it is and avoid unnecessarily contaminating the rest of the country.
One of our guides has worked as a day labourer doing the clean-up. He told us that the health of the workers is not a priority for some of the employers. Considering the nature of the work, wages aren’t that high. Workers can’t work on rainy days but still have to pay rent. There are deductions for gloves, masks, etc. For workers wearing protective clothing in highly contaminated areas, it might be 30 minutes from the work site to a toilet (a round trip of an hour), so sometimes they can’t go.
Our guides told us that many people in Japan think the radiation problem has been solved, but they don’t know the situation. This is because the media don’t tell the full story. A Catholic in Yokohama told me last year that after his daughter wrote a piece on Fukushima for the newspaper she works for, her boss told her, “No more on Fukushima”. Newspaper and TV reporters don’t go to dangerous areas, only free-lancers do.
Newspapers have carried reports about children from Fukushima being diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Authorities claim that, “it is unlikely that the disease was caused by radiation exposure”. At a public talk at a convent in Tokyo, a woman from Fukushima said that doctors in Fukushima, following government instructions, do not tell parents the results of their children’s tests for thyroid cancer. She had to bring her child to a doctor in Tokyo to find out the result. The situation does not help families stay together. Some men want to stay in or near the contaminated area as that is where their work is. But their wives, worried especially about their children, want to stay in a safe area.
A baby crawling on a contaminated floor could get radiation on its hands and then in its mouth. Internal exposure via air, food, etc, to radiation is said to be more dangerous than external exposure. However, some people decide not to get anything tested to avoid the stress involved. Suzumebachi, a kind of hornet, and flowers have high levels of radiation, so honey is probably contaminated.
My personal conclusion is that the only response to Fukushima is to abandon nuclear power as the Japanese Catholic bishops have called for. I believe that if the government transferred a small fraction of the trillions of dollars it throws at the nuclear industry to the renewable energy industry, the country would be awash in safe energy in a very short time.
Columban Fr Paul McCartin has worked in Japan since 1979.
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