Japanese reaction to Fukushima nuclear accident
Some locations near the crippled nuclear power plant are estimated to be contaminated with accumulated radiation doses of more than 500 millisieverts a year, diminishing residents' hopes of returning home anytime soon.
[52] In 2012, ex-prime minister Naoto Kan was interviewed about the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and has said that at one point Japan faced a situation where there was a chance that people might not be able to live in the capital zone including Tokyo and would have to evacuate.
Seriously exposed workers may be at increased risk of cancers for the rest of their lives...[69] On March 24, 2011, Japanese officials announced that "radioactive iodine-131 exceeding safety limits for infants had been detected at 18 water-purification plants in Tokyo and five other prefectures".
The report says the "inadequate" basic reactor design — the Mark-1 model developed by General Electric — included "the venting system for the containment vessels and the location of spent fuel cooling pools high in the buildings, which resulted in leaks of radioactive water that hampered repair work".
[72][73] As of August 2011, the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is still leaking low levels of radioactive material and areas surrounding it could remain uninhabitable for decades due to high radiation.
A French independent radioactivity-measuring lab announced recently that it identified up to 700,000 becquerel of cesium per square meter on grass in a primary school in Fukushima City, over 60 kilometers from the Daiichi plant.
Contaminations levels "as high as those inside Fukushima's no-go zone have been detected, with officials speculating that the hotspot was created after radioactive caesium carried in rain water became concentrated because of a broken gutter".
[80] Reports in the Yomiuri Shimbun portray Prime Minister Naoto Kan repeatedly ordering TEPCO to take actions such as opening steam valves with little response from the utility.
[83][84] TEPCO could face 2 trillion yen ($23.6 bln) in special losses in the current business year to March 2012 to compensate communities near its crippled Fukushima I nuclear plant, according to JPMorgan Chase.
[88] Due to frustration with TEPCO and the Japanese government "providing differing, confusing, and at times contradictory, information on critical health issues"[89] a citizen's group called "Safecast" recorded detailed radiation level data in Japan[90][91] using off-the-shelf Geiger counter equipment.
[110] Protesters have typically been polite and restrained, but the government is "acutely aware that public anger against nuclear power is growing", and that is forcing Japan's leaders to rethink the country's energy policies.
[111] On March 26 two dozen Diet members signed a letter calling on the government to "immediately get young children and pregnant women out of the 30-km danger zone around the heavily damaged Fukushima No.
"[115] The ongoing Fukushima crisis may spell the end of nuclear power in Japan, as "citizen opposition grows and local authorities refuse permission to restart reactors that have undergone safety checks".
[119] Sumiteru Taniguchi, director of the Nagasaki Council of A-Bomb Sufferers, has linked the Fukushima disaster to the atomic bombings of Japan:[120] Nuclear power and mankind cannot coexist.
[124] On 23 March 2011, ten days after the hydrogen explosions, the recommendations of the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan to protect the people living near the exploded Fukushima reactors were put aside by the Japanese government.
[125] Prime Minister Naoto Kan's ruling party suffered embarrassing losses in April local elections after the Japanese leader came under fire over the nuclear disaster, further weakening his influence and bolstering rivals who want him to quit once the crisis ends.
[116] The ongoing Fukushima crisis may spell the end of nuclear power in Japan, as "citizen opposition grows and local authorities refuse permission to restart reactors that have undergone safety checks".
[8] In March 2012, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda acknowledged that the government shared the blame for the Fukushima disaster, saying that officials had been blinded by a false belief in the country's "technological infallibility", and were all too steeped in a "safety myth".
[139] In October 2011, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said the government will spend at least 1 trillion yen ($13 billion) to clean up vast areas contaminated by radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Japan "faces the prospect of removing and disposing 29 million cubic meters of soil from a sprawling area in Fukushima, located 240 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, and four nearby prefectures".
Canned fish products produced in the prefectures Aomori, Iwate, Ibaraki and Chiba, certified and controlled for radioactive contamination – would be sent to Cambodia and developing countries, to be used to feed schoolchildren.
[159] On 4 November 2011 in the city of Hamamatsu, Goshi Hosono, minister in charge of the nuclear crisis, made a remark about plans to set up a study regarding the health consequences of radiation levels of about 20 millisieverts per year.
[175] At the same time, a study by Nakamura "found a continued willingness to participate in social learning processes and in citizen deliberations that may have been triggered by the 2011 disaster" and which "apparently contradicts the evidence of a decaying psychological half-life of Fukushima memories observed in TV programmes.
[178] Researchers from King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry and the Behavioural Science team at the Health Protection Agency (HPA) found that a third of people experienced high levels of anger, anxiety, and distress.
As a result, many people were exposed to radiation, patients dies because they needed to flee from their hospital, The group considered to accuse the officials of imposing health hazards through the spread of massive amounts of radioactive substances.
Facing a dearth of reliable information on radiation levels, citizens armed themselves with dosimeters, pooled data, and together produced radiological contamination maps far more detailed than anything the government or official scientific sources ever provided.
[194] On 9 November 2011 the ministry of Finance reported that since the disaster in March 2011, due to rising energy costs, high oil-prices, and the need to replace the loss of nuclear power the current account surplus had fallen 21.4 percent to 20.4 billion dollars compared with the year 2010.
[195] Even though Japan saw a fall in manufacturing output for 2011, there was an increased use of fossil fuels for power generation, and this was the main driving force behind a rise in Japanese greenhouse gas emissions.
At a press-conference in Tokyo Nishizawa made the following remarks: "We would like to properly conduct compensation by receiving financial assistance, while also taking rationalization measures to turn around management and keep on going as a private company, I think it's the best option for all to avoid capital injection as much as possible."
In response, some legal analysts have suggested that new categories of compensation including "the ‘loss of home and hometown’ (furusato sōshitsu) and the ‘fear of being contaminated by radiation’ (hōshasen hibaku no kyōfu)" should be recognized.
