At one point up to 600 of them were living in a building on the grounds of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, without adequate food or sleep. The Fukushima workers – the men and women working round the clock to prevent the reactors deteriorating further – have been at the centre of world media attention, and now a trickle of emails and web postings from them is emerging.
This is incredible. We now have a nuclear zone where people will not be able to live for what must be at least years.
How much land are we talking about? Probably at least the twenty kilometer evacuation zone around the plant. That’s 1,256 square kilometers. Could it include some or all of the ten kilometer zone beyond that? If it does that’s 2,826 square kilometers. What if it keeps spreading? Your guess is as good as mine.
However, the radiation leakage is probably going to decide how much has to be evacuated for how long.
This is the part the advocates of nuclear power never seem to talk about, hundreds of square miles of what was once habitable land off limits to humans save for “safe” exposure times. Essentially a wasteland.
And this crisis is far from over.
James Pilant
From BBC News –
More than 70,000 people have been evacuated from a 20km (12-mile) evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Another 136,000 people who live in a 10km zone beyond that have been encouraged by the authorities to leave or to stay indoors.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the evacuation would be a “long-term” operation.
“So therefore, we are giving instructions on how to proceed with the continuation of children’s’ education, and the employment of people who are unable to work because of the evacuation order,” he said.
Highly radioactive water continues to leak at the plant; for the first time it has been found in groundwater 15m below reactor 1.
From further down –
The authorities are resisting calls from the UN’s atomic agency to expand the exclusion zone around the plant, after it found safe radiation limits had been exceeded at the village of Iitate, 40km away.
In case you are curious, that’s 5024 square kilometers.
Mr. Gunderson has a lot to say about the crisis at the reactors in Japan. I saw one of his videos today for the first time. I am impressed. However, first impressions are not always accurate. If any of my kind readers have any opinion or knowledge about Mr. Gunderson or his organization, Fairewinds Associates, I want you to tell me.
Here are two videos. One is from yesterday and the other is from a network show.
Absolutely, there should be international rules and they should be tough standards as well. A coal fired plant, wind energy, etc. have little change of crossing national borders but a nuclear disaster can travel across nation after nation.
(Another little factoid, advocates of nuclear power leave out. I, for one, believe that endangering lives and land in other nations is irresponsible behavior.)
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for clear international standards on nuclear safety in light of the ongoing crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Speaking in Japan, he proposed that nuclear safety authorities from the G20 countries discuss the issue in May.
Radiation detected in the sea near the stricken plant has again risen steeply.
Meanwhile, the UN has advised Japan to consider expanding the evacuation zone around the reactors.
Mr Sarkozy is the first foreign leader to visit Japan following the earthquake and tsunami that hit the country on 11 March.
From further down in the article.
“The problem is more about establishing safety norms than it is about the choice of nuclear energy, for this there is no alternative right now,” Mr Sarkozy was quoted as saying by Reuters.
“We must address this anomaly that there are no international safety norms for nuclear matters. We want international standards because the world is a village and what happens in Japan can have consequences elsewhere.”
I could speculate that he nuclear crisis was causing this drop off in travel. But there is so much tragedy in Japan right now, there are multiple reasons not to go. Further, there is no way to sort out who isn’t going for what reason.
Nevertheless, this is firm evidence that the crisis continues.
At one point up to 600 of them were living in a building on the grounds of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, without adequate food or sleep. The Fukushima workers – the men and women working round the clock to prevent the reactors deteriorating further – have been at the centre of world media attention, and now a trickle of emails and web postings from them is emerging.
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