Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Japan's Nuclear Refugees, Still Stuck In Limbo

Posted by Soulskill on from the moving-at-the-speed-of-bureaucracy dept.

mdsolar tips this story at the NY Times: "Every month, Hiroko Watabe, 74, returns for a few hours to her abandoned house near the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant to engage in her own small act of defiance against fate. She dons a surgical mask, hangs two radiation-measuring devices around her neck and crouches down to pull weeds. She is desperate to keep her small yard clean to prove she has not given up on her home, which she and her family evacuated two years ago after a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami devastated the plant five miles away. Not all her neighbors are willing to take the risk; chest-high weeds now block the doorways of their once-tidy homes. 'In my heart, I know we can never live here again,' said Ms. Watabe, who drove here with her husband from Koriyama, the city an hour away where they have lived since the disaster. 'But doing this gives us a purpose. We are saying that this is still our home.' While the continuing environmental disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has grabbed world headlines — with hundreds of tons of contaminated water flowing into the Pacific Ocean daily — a human crisis has been quietly unfolding. Two and a half years after the plant belched plumes of radioactive materials over northeast Japan, the almost 83,000 nuclear refugees evacuated from the worst-hit areas are still unable to go home."

8 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. How about.... by durrr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That you give us actual fucking measurement numbers in millisievert per unit of time instead of scaremongering with ambigious definitions.

    If I were 74 years old and my home had an annual 5mSv radiation dose(technically in excess of 2x civilian limits). I would live there, whole fucking year. And if I die of cancer, I'd have done so anyway.

    1. Re:How about.... by dunkelfalke · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And also don't breathe. Because dust can be radioactive.
      Maybe the people aren't as stupid as you think they are. Maybe you are not as clever as you think you are.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    2. Re:How about.... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, a 74 year old woman is going live like a fucking frontier pioneer.

      I don't think you understand what those people even miss. It's not the building or their land, it's the home they had and the community it existed in. Both are gone now and can never come back - even if they finished decontamination tomorrow half the people have moved on with their lives and won't come back.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:How about.... by TapeCutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Wildlife is thriving because of the lack of humans, the contamination affects their health but nowhere near as much as living amongst humans does. Wildlife also thrives in the Korean DMZ, to them a carpet of land mines is safer than living with humans.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  2. Re:A challenge. by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Umm, just exactly what problem are you asking them to solve?

    I thought the subject was Fukushima, which is NOT "a threat to all life on our planet".

    --

    "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  3. Re:Retirement colonies? by a.d.trick · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Old people usually need younger people to take care of them.

  4. Re:Confused about radiation levels by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The radioactive material from Fukushima Daiichi accumulates in the soil and in the plants. Digging and pulling plants out of the ground is pretty much one of the most dangerous things you can do around there.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  5. Re:Holding Pattern by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The problem is that compensation for property isn't enough, not by a long shot. Those communities are gone. People's jobs, whole companies are gone. They money will never be enough.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC