INTERACTIVE: The voices of Fukushima
Click below to hear from people affected by Japan’s nuclear crisis.
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PEOPLE
PLACES
Fukushima City
Kawamata
Iitate
Namie
Fukushima Daiichi
Naraha
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Level of radiation (microsieverts per hour)
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> 19.0
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9.5 – 19.0
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3.8 – 9.5
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0.5 – 3.8
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< 0.2
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Click here for an audio explanation of the radiation dangers.
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Click here for the radiation levels key.
Radioactivity
Sachiko Sato
Sachiko Sato left Kawamata for Yamagata City, 80 kilometres to the north, despite assurances from scientists and government officials that her home town was safe. Today, she works as an activist. She still doesn't trust the authorities, who she says are more interested in their own agendas than in the well-being of the people.
Photo credit: Geoff Brumfiel
Sachiko Sato
The Togawas
The five members of the Togawa family live in temporary housing on the edge of Kawamata. Both parents are anxious about the family's future. Yuka (top, centre) says that life in temporary accommodation only increases their sense of uncertainty.
Photo credit: Geoff Brumfiel
Yuka Togawa
Kenji Ookubo
The stress of evacuation led Kenji Ookubo to start drinking heavily. He left temporary housing and moved to Kawamata, close to his old home in Iitate. He often returns to his evacuated village for weeks at a time, practising his golf swing on the empty streets.
Photo credit: Geoff Brumfiel
Kenji Ookubo
Naoko Ito
After the accident, Naoko Ito and her husband stayed behind in Naraha to care for Naoko's elderly mother. They currently live without running water or neighbours, but they are happy and have no plans to leave.
Photo credit: Geoff Brumfiel
Naoko Ito
Hiromi Yamamoto
Hiromi Yamamoto taught English in Namie before the accident. She became bored and depressed after evacuating to a Tokyo suburb. She has since returned to Fukushima prefecture and started a new school from scratch.
Photo credit: Geoff Brumfiel
Hiromi Yamamoto
Fukushima City
The provincial capital, Fukushima City, has served as the centre of the government's response to the nuclear crisis.
Photo credit: Geoff Brumfiel
Kawamata
At the edge of town are temporary houses that are home to nuclear evacuees, including the Togawa family.
Photo credit: Geoff Brumfiel
Iitate
Levels of radioactivity in Iitate are too high for residents to live here permanently, but they are allowed to return for short periods. Many come back during the day to trim hedges and feed pets, which can't be kept in evacuation housing.
Photo credit: Geoff Brumfiel
Namie
The small seaside community of Namie was one of the first to be evacuated after the nuclear accident. Many of its former residents now live in temporary housing elsewhere in Fukushima prefecture.
Photo credit: Noriko Hayashi/Panos
Fukushima Daiichi
On March 11 2011, a tsunami sparked a series of meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Over 210,000 residents were forced to flee, and more than 150,000 remain displaced.
Photo credit: TEPCO
Naraha
Tsunami damage has been cleaned up along most of Japan's east coast, but Naraha's scars are still visible because radioactivity has hindered restoration efforts.
Photo credit: Geoff Brumfiel
The first thing Kenichi Togawa does when he comes home from work is switch on his video-game console. The 39-year-old father of three spends hours each evening playing video games and drinking shochu, a strong Japanese liquor. He often falls asleep in front of the television, then wakes up shivering and crawls into bed with his wife, Yuka.
For nearly two years, Kenichi and his family have been refugees from the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years. On 11 March 2011, a giant earthquake struck off the northeast coast of Japan, sending a 13-metre-high wall of water into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station and triggering meltdowns in three of the six reactors. The next day, just hours before the Unit 1 reactor exploded, the Togawa family fled their home 10 kilometres from the plant. Today, they live in a tiny flat outside the evacuation zone — one of dozens in a series of slate-grey temporary buildings in the northeast section of Fukushima prefecture. The five Togawas are bundled into three rooms totalling just 30 square metres, with windows poorly insulated against the winter winds.
The past 18 months have taken a mental toll on the family. Kenichi, who had worked at the nuclear plant, was once a keen judo fighter who went out often with friends, but the radioactivity has scattered his martial-arts club. These days, he exercises less and rarely socializes. He drinks more and has put on weight.
Yuka is prone to public outbursts of anger, unusual among Japanese women in the relatively traditional Fukushima prefecture. She is happy when she thinks about day-to-day life, but when her mind turns to the long term, as it inevitably does, she feels depressed. “This is temporary,” she says. “We leave our house in the morning and we come home and it’s temporary. It’s like floating in the air.”
Other people they know are struggling even more. Many of their current neighbours are out of work and stay at home all day. Some of Kenichi’s former colleagues sent their wives and children away, from fear of radioactive contamination, while they stayed to work.
In the immediate aftermath of the nuclear accident, public-health experts worried about the possible risk from radiation. Subsequent analyses have shown that the prompt, if frantic, evacuation of areas around the reactors probably limited the public’s exposure to a relatively safe level (see ‘The evacuation zones’). But uncertainty, isolation and fears about radioactivity’s invisible threat are jeopardizing the mental health of the 210,000 residents who fled from the nuclear disaster.
Researchers and clinicians are trying to assess and mitigate the problems, but it is unclear whether the Japanese government has the will, or the money, to provide the necessary support. Nor is it certain that the evacuees will accept any help, given their distrust of the government and their reluctance to discuss mental problems. This combination, researchers fear, could drive up rates of anxiety, substance abuse and depression.
The nuclear evacuees face a more difficult future than the survivors of the tsunami, which left nearly 20,000 dead or missing and caused billions of dollars in damage. “The tsunami-area people seem to be improving; they have more positive attitudes about the future,” says Hirooki Yabe, a neuropsychiatrist at Fukushima Medical University, who has been working with both groups. Nuclear evacuees “are becoming more depressed day by day”.
Escape
Fukushima prefecture is a patchwork of orchards, rice paddies and fishing villages. In the 1970s and 80s, coastal residents welcomed nuclear power and two plants were built to supply electricity to Tokyo. Kenichi started working at Fukushima Daiichi in 1994, and at the time of the accident was a contract maintenance engineer. Yuka worked as a hospital nurse. The Togawas and their children, now aged 9, 12 and 15, lived in a four-room flat in Namie, a small, close-knit seaside town.
The family’s life was upended at 14:46 on 11 March 2011. Kenichi was in the smoking room at the plant when he felt the ground shudder for several minutes. He ran back to his office, weaving around scattered desks and downed ceiling panels, and grabbed his driving licence and car keys. But he quickly found that traffic had clogged the routes out of the plant because the quake and tsunami had destroyed bridges and roads. Kenichi ditched his car and walked the remaining 8 kilometres home.
There he found that all his family members were safe, but he worried about the plant. In his job, he had overseen maintenance of the systems meant to cool the reactor in an emergency. If those had failed, he knew that a meltdown would soon follow, spreading radiation to nearby towns. That night, as aftershocks rocked the house, his family slept fitfully with the lights and television on.
Kenichi was right to be alarmed. The tsunami had knocked out the generators that pumped cooling water into the reactor cores. As temperatures rose, the slender fuel rods full of uranium pellets began to warp. The meltdowns had begun.
Early the next morning, a siren wailed across Namie, signalling an evacuation. The Togawas were told to move to Tsushima, 30 kilometres to the northwest. After retrieving their car, the family set out, but the roads were choked with panicked residents and the Togawas ended up at a different evacuation centre. When Kenichi learned that the emergency diesel generators at the plant had also failed, he bundled the family into the car once more, hoping to reach Tsushima. “We have to run away,” he remembers thinking in a panic.
On the way, Kenichi received a text message from a friend who worked at the power company’s offices in Tokyo. Unit 1 had exploded, and radioactivity was spreading across Fukushima. The family drove from one full evacuation centre to the next, until they reached a dark, cramped gymnasium in Kawamata, around 40 kilometres northwest of the plant. There they were given a small patch of hardwood floor to call home. But they were still deeply worried about the radiation. “We didn’t know much about radiation’s effects, and we didn’t know if Kawamata was safe or not,” says Yuka.
Japan is used to natural disasters, and immediately after the tsunami hit, the country’s emergency services sprang into action. Groups of doctors and emergency workers from around the nation struck out for the northeast coast to begin search and rescue operations and to administer care. The medical university in Fukushima City became a hub. In the days and weeks after the accident, the university hospital took in seriously ill patients from the coast. It also found itself on the front line of the nuclear emergency: doctors used Geiger counters to screen evacuees’ thyroid glands, which are particularly sensitive to radiation, and treated several workers from the nuclear plant, who had suffered high radiation exposures.
First responders
Mental-health experts were among the first responders, reflecting an ongoing change in Japan’s attitudes towards mental health. For many years, Japan’s modest but modern mental health services were geared to help only the most severely mentally ill. The society has traditionally paid little attention to more routine disorders such as depression. In recent years, however, the Japan Medical Association has started educating doctors about depression and suicide, and the national government has conducted public suicide-prevention campaigns.
Still, the quality of care remains patchy, and even before the accident, Fukushima prefecture was not a bright spot. Mental health was a not a priority for the rural, conservative region or its taciturn citizens. As a result, the tsunami and nuclear disaster strained the region’s mental-health services to near breaking, says Yabe.
TORU YAMANAKA/AFP/Getty
A woman prepares lunch in her little partitioned unit at an evacuation centre, Miyako April 2011.
In the wake of the accident, most of the prefecture’s resources were devoted to helping those with established mental disorders. Yabe, for example, packed his car with antipsychotic and anticonvulsive medication and made runs to Soma City, where many evacuees had ended up. Mental-health professionals visited the cramped shelters elsewhere, but they tended to treat only the most severe cases of delirium and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Togawas were among thousands of people left to their own devices by the overwhelmed doctors and counsellors. The family’s first days in the cramped shelter are difficult to recall now, says Yuka, but what she can remember isn’t pleasant: ill and elderly patients lying on the floor; ongoing fear about radiation; evacuees jumping queues and snatching food. “We were like dogs and cats without chains,” she says.
With little guidance from the outside, the shelter’s residents tried to organize themselves. Yuka volunteered her nursing skills, but after working for three days, she was filled with anger: why should she, a victim, have to spend all her time helping others, she wondered. Yuka locked herself in the family’s car outside the shelter, “and just exploded and screamed and shouted and cried”.
Subtle damage
As the evacuees struggled to adjust, so too did the doctors and psychologists at Fukushima Medical University. By May, the emergency response was mostly over and the hospital had a new job — to assess the public’s radiation dose. The task has proved tricky, says Shunichi Yamashita, a radiation health expert at Nagasaki University, who was brought in to head the Fukushima Health Management Survey. The radiation monitors around Daiichi were damaged or destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami, and the chaotic nature of the evacuation makes it difficult to assess how long and severely each person was exposed.
The few attempts made so far, however, have generally shown minimal risk. The health survey’s latest assessment suggests that the dose for nearly all the evacuees was very low, with a maximum of only 25 millisieverts (mSv), well below the 100-mSv exposure that has been linked to an increased risk of cancer in survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The World Health Organization also issued a reassuring report in May, saying that most evacuees from places like Namie received estimated doses between 10 and 50 mSv. It did note, however, that infants might have received a dose that could increase the risk of cancer in their still-developing thyroids.
Radiation specialists say that it is difficult to predict the health effects from such low doses. “I think it’s likely that there will be increased cancer risks, but they will be very, very small,” says Dale Preston, an independent statistician who has studied atomic-bomb survivors. “If you did a large study, I think your chance of observing a statistically significant radiation-associated risk would be pretty low.”
With that in mind, the health survey decided against following a fixed cohort to study the incidence of disease. Instead, it provides thyroid screening and other health checks to any evacuees who desire them. The hope is that the screenings themselves, along with the data collected, will help to reassure the public that the risks are low, says Yamashita.
Mental health has been a major component of the survey. In January 2012, researchers sent out questionnaires to all 210,000 evacuees to assess their stress and anxiety. The levels tabulated among the more than 91,000 respondents were “quite high”, says Yuriko Suzuki, a psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health in Tokyo. Roughly 15% of adults showed signs of extreme stress, five times the normal rate, and one in five showed signs of mental trauma — a rate similar to that in first responders to the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States. A survey of children, filled out by their parents, showed stress levels about double the Japanese average.
Osakabe Yasuo/Demotix/Corbis
Empty streets: In the aftermath of the nuclear disaster, 210,000 people had to evacuate Tomioka and other towns in Fukushima prefecture. Nearly 156,000 remain displaced from their homes.
The stress has pushed some evacuees to breaking point. On a crisp day last November, Kenji Ookubo wandered through Iitate, a village 40 kilometres northwest of the plant, practising his golf swings in the empty streets. The town had been evacuated after the accident because it lay in the path of the plume of radiation blowing away from the plant. But Ookubo couldn’t stand the temporary housing, where he had started drinking and suffered from stomach aches. After renting a room in Kawamata, he began squatting in his parents’ abandoned home. “I came back just to run away from the stress,” he says. With no job, and no prospects, “I can’t see the future,” he says.
It is a pattern seen frequently after major catastrophes, says Ronald Kessler, a professor of health-care policy at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. “In the short term, people get energized,” he says. But when extensive damage or health problems prevent them from getting back to their old lives, depression and anxiety set in. “When something this big happens, it’s just ridiculously daunting,” he says. “At a certain point you just get worn down.”
His own surveys of people evacuated after Hurricane Katrina, which struck the United States in 2005, show1 that property loss and health concerns were the main causes of anxiety. Whereas many survivors of the Japanese tsunami have seen their homes rebuilt and lives restored, nuclear refugees are still dealing with both of those problems. Above all, the fear of radioactivity takes a unique toll. “It’s something you don’t feel; you don’t notice what happened, and yet you understand that there are these long-term risks,” says Preston. “It’s scary.”
Little is known about the long-term effects of that fear, in part because nuclear accidents are so rare. But the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine suggests that fear of radiation can cause lasting psychological harm. Two decades after the accident, those who had evacuated as children complained of physical ailments more often than their peers, even though there was no difference in health2. And the mothers of those children suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder at about twice the rate of the general population, says Evelyn Bromet, a psychiatrist at the State University of New York in Stony Brook. Other studies of Chernobyl’s aftermath found that evacuees had elevated rates of depression3 and that a subset of clean-up workers committed suicide at a rate about 1.5 times that of the general population4.
For Fukushima evacuees, says Bromet, “There’s going to be a tremendous amount of health-related anxiety and it’s not going to go away easily.”
Fear factor
Yabe says that “radiophobia” remains a major problem among the Japanese refugees. A poll published last year by the Pew Research Center in Washington DC, for example, found that 76% of Japanese people believed that food from Fukushima was not safe, despite government and scientific assurances to the contrary. And many do not trust the government health surveys that found very few cases of significant radiation exposure among evacuees.
Yuka shares some of those concerns. She and Kenichi have educated themselves, and they have gained some reassurance from regular health checks and thyroid screenings. The children carry dosimeters provided by the health survey to collect radiation data and to calm public concerns. But Yuka wonders whether they will one day develop cancer.
At the moment, however, the family is preoccupied with practical concerns. The government has said that the Togawas can remain in their small flat until August 2014, but after that, Yuka says, they don’t know what will happen. “The government officials say that they are working on it and that they are trying to construct public housing for those people who had to evacuate. But where? Nothing is clear.” Whenever she and Kenichi think about the long term, they start to feel depressed.
Mai Nishiyama
The Togawas: After nearly two years in temporary housing, the family worries about the future but is happy to be together. From left, Shoichiro, Kenichi, Rina, Yuka (back) and Kae (front).
The scientists involved with the Fukushima Health Management Survey have assigned a team of psychiatrists and nurses to make follow-up phone calls to individuals who had high scores for distress on the mental-health questionnaire. But only about 40% of adults responded to the questionnaires, and the researchers suspect thatthe most severely affected people did not participate. Even when the psychiatrists can connect, the evacuees usually don’t stay on the phone for more than five to ten minutes. “Northern people are a very closed people, they don’t really talk about their personal things, especially to somebody they’ve never met before,” says Yabe.
Even when the psychiatrists identify problems, it is unclear what to do about them. Most evacuees, like the Togawas, are suffering from sub-clinical problems — mental anxiety and stress that affects their everyday life but does not require hospitalization or extensive therapy. There is no established treatment regime for such survivors from large disasters, says Suzuki.
Yabe suggests that walk-in clinics specializing in mental health could be set up throughout Fukushima prefecture to engage communities and help families. Suzuki says that involving large segments of the population in group-therapy sessions might be the way forward. Many say that it would help for evacuees to develop a sense of community — but the government has not fostered that. Temporary houses are “strung out like a railroad”, says Bromet. The government could have built them “in a circle with a playground in the middle, or some obvious place for people to meet, but they didn’t”, she says.
Kessler says that unlike the tsunami survivors, whose grief will lessen over time, the nuclear evacuees could experience growing anxiety, particularly about radiation. “When everything has settled down, that will be a huge, rife issue,” he predicts. Now is the best time to try to get ahead of these problems, he says. “There’s a window of opportunity.”
But the health survey lacks the funding for a more ambitious programme. The national government has given it just ¥3 billion (US$34 million) a year, but it is currently consuming about twice that amount, so the survey is under enormous financial pressure, says Seiji Yasumura, one of its leaders and an epidemiologist at Fukushima Medical University. So far, only 100 of the 210,000 evacuees have been interviewed face-to-face by mental-health experts.
Little by little, things are getting better for the Togawas. The children seem happy in their new school, and in September 2011 Kenichi found a job with the local government, clearing contaminated soil from the homes of neighbours. “He’s worked so much overtime that his company is saying he has to have a break,” boasts Yuka. She has found part-time work as a nurse in a local clinic. Her occasional outbursts sometimes cause tension with co-workers, but she enjoys speaking her mind: “I say what I want to say.”
After filling out one of the health-survey questionnaires last year, Yuka got a flyer in the post inviting her to talk to someone over the phone. She thought about it but decided not to. “I don’t feel like phoning. It’s been nearly two years,” she says. “I don’t know what to say.”
- Journal name:
- Nature
- Volume:
- 493,
- Pages:
- 290–293
- Date published:
- ()
- DOI:
- doi:10.1038/493290a
- See Editorial page 271
Phobias are defined as irrational, disproportional fears. The fears of evacuees from the evacuation zone surrounding the severely damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station seem neither irrational nor disproportional.
No resident around the power station wore a dosimeter while the accident unfolded. Therefore, the radiation experts had to use computational models to estimate effective absorbed dose averages for the populace extrapolated from recordings of a small number of monitoring stations. The contribution of human activity to individual effective absorbed doses could not be accounted for. The doses may depend profoundly on whether people were indoors or outdoors during the releases of radioactivity, whether their residences were well insulated from the outside air, what produce residents consumed in the days and weeks after the accident, i.e. fresh home-grown groceries or prepackaged food. Moreover, medical condition, gender and age may impact how much radioactive material was incorporated and remains in the body. Comprehensive whole body counts covering the affected populace were not performed early enough after the accident to capture the exposure to short-lived radionuclides. Cesium-137 with a half-life of 30 years concentrates in plants, mushrooms and animals, threatening the human food chain. Ever changing regional hot spots of cesium contamination may pose new health risks, requiring tedious clean up, for decades to come.
The health effects of ionizing radiation may take more time to manifest themselves than two years. Studies by Dr. Yamashita mentioned in this article and others showed that thyroid cancer rates began to noticeably increase in Soviet children as early as three years after the Chernobyl reactor accident, though the cancers were attributable to reactor-produced iodine-131 with a half-life of only eight days. Moreover, yet unrecognized long-latency effects of the chronic exposure to low-level ionizing radiation may attain prevalence. Rampant viral infections have been observed to afflict cats and dogs abandoned in the exclusion zone of Fukushima. Though the observations remain anecdotal at present, increased infections may suggest compromised immune responses.
In sum, it is too early to ascertain that the ionizing radiation released from the Fukushima reactors will not impact public health. Therefore, the anxieties the evacuees face seem well grounded and will not be alleviated by official assertions, proclaiming the risk to health exists only in the mind.
People's fears may dissipate only when government action effects actual change. Alas, after two years of strenuous effort not a single used or spent nuclear fuel rod has been removed from the damaged reactor buildings and nobody knows where the molten fuel precisely resides.
Forgive me for adding on thing, neither pro nor con any position on nuclear power, but relevant to the question of the biological risk. The public health research on the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, now perhaps the longest running epidemiological project ever, conducted by the world's leading radiation biologists for more than six decades, has followed roughly 100,000 people who were within 2 kilometers of ground zero of the explosions. These people received gamma radiation – emitted at the moment of the explosion but not emitted by nuclear power plant disasters (gamma is the most penetrating form of ionizing radiation and therefore among the most potentially harmful) - as well as various doses of various isotopes. Dosages have been carefully reconstructed based not only on physical soil/water/air samples but on the physics of the bombs themselves. The doses the survivors received were, in most cases, orders of magnitude greater than those received by those near Fukushima or Chernobyl. Of that cohort (known in Japan as HIBAKUSHA), 67 years later, roughly 680 of those survivors, about half of one percent, have died prematurely of cancer. Among those estimated to have received <100 milliseiverts, there is no evidence of physical health effects. (This merely means that, if there were indeed health effects, they were so few that they don't register as a change against normal rates) There has been an increase in cataracts, and there was significant in utero damage to fetal development among children born to women pregnant when exposed, leading to many birth defects, But two and a half/three generations later, this research has found no evidence of multi-generational genetic damage. See the Radiation Effects Research Institute for more.
The report by Geoff Brumfiel and the comments in response to it, stir up the troublesome subject of identifying the effects of radiation in a dispersed population. The comment by David Ropeik ... that psychological and physical health damage from fear ... did FAR more damage at Chernobyl than the radiation itself ... makes interesting reading.
I am far from being an expert on the effects of radiation. But I am quite knowledgeable about the "holographic nature" of our Universe. Which is the same universal principle known to the ancient civilisations (of Egypt) by the simple phrase: "As above, so below". The moment we look at our work with nuclear power in the context of this overarching principle, many things change.
Radiation, for instance, can be seen as an expression of the enormous pain and hurt that now lives on in the fissioned particles: and they are hurting because fission destroys their natural family and community systems, which are what we know as the atoms.
I can not develop in this comment all the insights about our nuclear work that come with this holographic perception. I've a freshly made web site: www.nuclearlookdeeper.com which enlarges on this whole way of seeing the Atomic World and the nuclear subject.
In the context of the disaster at Fukushima and the massive evacuation of the population from the surrounding area, the holographic principle suggests that the anxiety and distress exhibited by the displaced population is itself a form of radiation. This reading of the situation is a classic example of the parallel processes that get triggered, or that we can expect to find, in this our inter-connected "worlds-within-worlds" holographic Universe.
I think this model is well-worth considering. It has the potential to transform our understanding of radiation. So that we have the choice to be sympathetic or compassionate for the fissioned particles themselves. This radical shift of awareness then opens the door for us to begin thinking that we might yet be able to heal this troublesome phenomena. All of which makes the whole perception worth investigating.
I worked for a while at Dounreay, the reactor site up here in northern Scotland. I was already thinking along these lines, and went out of my way to experience what radiation felt like, in the laboratory where used fuel rods were being cut up for metallurgical tests. Always, it felt like a great sadness. Like sitting in waves of slow moving hot sadness. I think we have gone overboard with our non-stop single-minded focus on the physics of the atom. And I'm advocating we explore a more balanced, dualistic, objective and subjective curiosity of the particle world: and see what this brings us.
Thanks for the opportunity to post on this profound subject.
Ian Turnbull. Findhorn. Scotland.
The national govt. of Japan started early trying to play down the situation. When then-Chief Cabinet Minister Yukio Edano announced that there was no harm to children due to radioactive iodine, he was referring to results of initial screenings taken with instruments that were not capable of measuring radioactive iodine 131.
There was a team, independent of the national govt., headed by Hirosaki Univ. Professor Shinji Tokonami that was able to do some limited screening of adults with the proper equipment. The levels he measured in adults would have been extremely harmful to children.
The team trying to recreate the level and plume pathways of radioactive iodine contamination consists of Masayuki Takikawa of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Haruo Tsuruta of Tokyo University, and Masaharu Okano, an 84-year-old retired leading authority on environmental radiation.
In the wake of the disaster, 23 monitoring posts in Fukushima were believed to be damaged or disabled due to the earthquake and tsunami. Recently, it has been discovered that 5 of those posts had some monitoring records, taken with instruments running on back-up batteries. Those records have finally found their way into the hands of the Takikawa-Tsuruta-Okano team, which is working on the scenario now. (Please ask the central govt. why it took so long to find--or release--this extremely crucial data.) The team has discovered that on the 15th, the plume switched courses, and traveled southwest.
Mobile units were dispatched by Fukushima Pref. to carry out dust-sampling. They were able to work 3/11-3/12, and sampled 15 places, until the national government ordered them to leave the area. They left against their will. They were unable to resume work until 3/18, leaving a critical blank in data-gathering when the plume was peaking.
These notes are from an NHK special that aired on Jan. 12. http://www.nhk.or.jp/special/detail/2013/0112/
Mr. Russell,
I did mention Helen Caldicott, but she is not my only source of information. As a concerned parent, I have been following this disaster since its inception in both Japanese and English.
Much of what I refer to in my comments comes from Japanese sources, such as the Tokyo Shimbun, Kyoto Univ. scholar Hiroaki Koide, journalist Takashi Hirose, etc. The "over 40%" figure comes from the FMU's own screenings. The U.N. report was in the news recently. Anand Grover was responsible, if you want to check it out. The other research I am referring to regarding more recent work on iodine contamination is three scientists who study wind patterns, and are trying to piece together a simulation of iodine contamination with as much data as they have been able to scrape together since the disaster. They are nothing short of heroes in my book.
Also, Ms. Caldicott's conference in New York will feature respected groups such as the Physicians for Social Responsibility. However, I suspect you would feel that they are all quacks anyway, so it would not interest you.
As it reads, Mr. Brumfiel's article is exactly what the Japanese government (which is being pushed by the U.S. Dept. of State) would like to see, and has promoted in press conferences by the FMU at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Japan. To me, it is incomplete, and needs to include sources that counter the propaganda being spread if we are to get a balanced picture of the situation.
Believe me, just like you, but for different reasons, I would like to see this whole disaster situation disappear so we can go back to our comfortable pre-Fukushima complacency.
People who make decisions about the dangers of radiation on the basis of claims by Dr Caldicott need to check her claims ... every sentence should be checked. For example, in a press conference at Montreal a week after the Fukushima failures she tells people to beware of Turkish food because of contamination from Chernobyl:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV7Rn06j_cY
But if you go and check cancer rates in Turkey (http://globocan.iarc.fr) you will find cancer rates in Turkey are about half those in non-nuclear Australia. Caldicott also claims that:
"When zirconium is exposed to air it burns, it ignites" ... she is talking about the fuel rods. People who treat what Caldicott says as reliable might like to buy a zirconium watch or perhaps view this clip of people heating fuel rods to 2000 degrees with blow torches ... they don't ignite and don't burn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x__2yWx9zGY
Caldicott became famous for books in an era when her claims were not so easily checked. That era has gone and people need to check her claims ... every single sentence.
I will no longer contribute or spend any time with this site. The information presented in this article is absolutely incorrect.
What has the writer of this article been smoking? Or rather, in whose pay does he find himself? Radiation's impact on the human body is delayed, so it's easy to ignore the consequences in the short term and blame emotions. But the impact is significant, sustained and unavoidable. Of course, in Japan, doctors and hospitals are ordered to ignore any complaints related to radiation, tell people if they just "don't worry, be happy" they'll have no health impacts. Meanwhile the Governor of Fukushima Prefecture is hospitalized for bleeding from the rectum – a sign of exposure to radiation – as are some of the Navy seamen who have sued TEPCO for lying about radiation exposure during their humanitarian efforts after the nuclear disaster started. Over 40% of Fukushima children tested have nodules on their thyroid glands. People from the area are regularly experiencing diarrhea, skin rashes, joint pains and other symptoms consistent with exposure to radiation. For Nature to have run this propaganda unchallenged is shameful and journalistically inappropriate. Time to publish another article, one from say Dr. Helen Caldicott. She is producing a two-day International Symposium on the Medical and Ecological Consequences of Fukushima, to take place in New York March 11-12, 2013. http://nuclearfreeplanet.org/articles/symposium-the-medical-and-ecological-consequences-of-fukushima-march-11-12-2013.html If you want to know the truth of what is happening as a result of Fukushima from the world's top scientists, doctors and researchers, cover THAT and report on its findings in your magazine.
As someone with first-hand experience on the emotional rollercoaster Fukushima has caused in Japan, I do not dispute that the evacuees and many, many more people have suffered dire psychological consequences as a result of the disaster.
However, Mr. Brumfiel, your reporting on this topic is very incomplete. You have based much of your view on the ideas of Fukushima Medical University, and "Dr." Shunichi Yamashita, who is widely discredited as assisting the government in downplaying the effects of Fukushima.
First, there is a glaring lack of records regarding initial iodine contamination. As you noted, it was difficult in the wake of the disaster to monitor the situation due to confusion and damaged equipment. Additionally, victims were being screened upon arrival at evacuation facilities, but the government put a stop to that. As the half-life of radioactive iodine is only eight days, a valuable source of scientific data was essentially obliterated.
Later, Fukushima Medical University, in research headed by "Dr." Yamashita, embarked on a series of thyroid screenings for children. Over 40% of children screened have shown abnormalities in their thyroids, which is highly unusual, according to Dr. Helen Caldicott. There is also evidence that children as far away as Tokyo are showing thyroid abnormalities.
"Dr." Yamashita is notorious for appearing in Fukushima and telling victims that if they smile, radiation won't hurt them, and that the people of Fukushima should be proud that they will even be more famous than the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (This is recorded on a widely distributed video). He has also waged a campaign through the Japanese Medical Association to prevent other doctors from providing second opinions and advice for victims who have shown abnormalities through screening.
The United Nations recently issued a report, indicting the Japanese government for trying to minimize the situation, and putting children's health in grave danger.
There are other scholars who are now trying to piece together what happened after the accident, so I would hardly say the jury is in on the subject. You need to do your research and seek out these people, if you are going to give Yamashita a forum like Nature to spread his skewed version of the effects of Fukushima.
The way I see it, what has been occurring is an obvious attempt to cover up just how bad the situation has become. It's a perfect recipe to try to control the populace and ease the way for the continuation of the nuclear industry:
1. Prevent crucial initial post-disaster data collection.
2. Show concern by conducting thyroid screenings after the fact.
3. Prevent second opinions, treatment and peer review of academic "research," all while maintaining tight control of what data has been gathered. (This is easy in Japan, as much of the funding for research comes from the government. Also, those whose who come to different academic conclusions are stigmatized and marginalized.)
4. Tell people that its all in their heads, sow seeds of uncertainty and doubt.
5. Offer the bandage of psychological treatment as a way of showing that the government cares.
PRESTO--in a few years, we'll grow tired of hearing the crazy victims of Fukushima complain about their imagined cancers and ruined lives.
Mr. Brumfiel, I would recommend that you try to attend Helen Caldicott's symposium on The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident in New York, on the second anniversary of the disaster. You might meet some people there to help balance your story.
I also respectfully encourage you consider learning a bit more about Japanese culture and society before writing any more on this topic.
Please, mr. Brumfiel, if you find it so healty gives us the good example and be so kind to go to live (said as a figure of speech...) in Japan, gorging yourself with all the wonderful Fukushima food.
PS: Radiophobia means "fear of radiations". As you can try to pass a natural reaction to a real health risk as a mental problem is beyond the lowest level of common sense imaginable...
Congratulations on a wonderful, insightful, important report. We are already seeing in Fukushima what a 20-year meta analysis of the health studies of Chernobyl found, that the psychological and physical health damage from fear, especially because of the uniquely frightening feelings people have about radiation, did FAR more damage than the radiation itself. And this only exemplifies a much more profound risk; the risk of getting risk wrong, or worrying more than the evidence warrants or less than the evidence warns. This phenomenon, which I label the Risk Perception Gap, is well-explained by several fields of research summarized in "Risk Perception", a piece I wrote for nature online <http://blogs.nature.com/soapboxscience/2011/05/11/risk-perception> and in greater detail in "How Risky Is it, Really? Why Our Fears Match the Facts", which I wrote in the hope that understanding WHY we sometimes get risk wrong can help us avoid precisely the sorts of dangers about which you insightfully report. Again, congratulations.