#Radioactive Japan: Village in Gunma Prefecture Recycles Contaminated Soil and Uses It in the Village Soccer Field

There is a short poem ("haiku") by Master Basho Matsuo that goes like this in English:

If I say some things
My words get frozen on my lips
In the autumnal wind

It means, "So what's the point of saying?"

Replace the word "autumnal" with "perpetual" and that's been Japan since March 2011.

The latest idiocy comes from a village in Gunma Prefecture where many have pointed out that the radiation levels are rather high.

Villagers "decontaminated" the public places in the village by removing the contaminated soil. What then did the village do with the contaminated soil? They used it in the soccer field.

From Sankei Shinbun local version for Gunma (6/13/2012):

除染で撤去の土、サッカー場使用　川場村「問題ない」　

Soil removed by decontamination work was used in the soccer field, and Kawaba-mura says "No problem"

川場村の村民有志らが「除染」のため村内で取り除いたセシウムを含む土が、村が造成したサッカー場の盛り土に利用されていたことが１２日、県議会放射能対策特別委員会で明らかになった。

It was revealed during the June 12 meeting of the [Gunma] prefectural assembly special committee on radiation countermeasures that the soil contaminated with radioactive cesium that had been removed by the volunteers in Kawaba-mura was used as filling to raise the ground level of the soccer field that the village was building.

　昨年夏の県の調査では、国の埋め立て基準（１キロ当たり８千ベクレル）を下回る約１３００ベクレルのセシウムが検出され、完成後の周囲の放射線量も低く、同村は「安全上問題はない」と説明している。

According to the survey done by the prefectural government last summer, 1,300 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was detected, which was below the national standard for burying safely in the landfill (8,000 becquerels/kg). Since the soccer field was completed, the [air] radiation levels on the perimeter of the field have been low. The village says, "There is no problem of safety."

　県と同村によると、村民有志らが昨年８月、村内で比較的高い空間放射線量が測定された川場小学校校庭など計４カ所で、地表の土約４０トンを取り除いた。村は土を村有地で一時保管していたが、周辺住民から苦情が寄せられ、同９月、造成していたサッカーグラウンドの盛り土として、約５０センチ地中に埋めた。

According to Gunma Prefecture and the village, volunteers in the village removed about 40 tonnes of surface soil in August last year from 4 locations in the village that were found with relatively high levels of air radiation, including the schoolyard of Kawaba Elementary School. The village was temporarily storing the removed soil on the land owned by the village. However, after the residents living nearby complained, the village buried the soil about 50 centimeter deep in the soccer field it was building in September.

Kawaba-mura's official radiation levels are between 0.1 to 0.5 microsievert/hour. People who actually went there and measure various locations in the village report much higher numbers.　Professor Yukio Hayakawa considers Kawaba-mura as one of the hot spots in Kanto Region. Setagaya-ku in Tokyo continues to send school children to the "summer school" in Kawaba-mura.

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