Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Japan's Prime Minister Kan: "Evacuation Zone Will Be Uninhabitable"

(For more on this insensitive comment, read the latest "But Wait, There's More" post.)
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According to Yomiuri, that's what Kan said to one of his special advisors Kenichi Matsumoto:

Talking about the evacuation zone around the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, Kan said "It will be uninhabitable for a while. For 10 years, maybe 20 years," Matsumoto disclosed to the press.

福島第一原子力発電所周辺の避難対象の区域について「当面住めないだろう。10年住めないのか、20年住めないのかということになってくる」と述べた。

松本氏が記者団に明らかにした。

So it's not safe after all? So who was the one spreading the baseless rumor, 風評, that was safe even within the zone?

4 comments:

netudiant said...

Well, that explains the high profile move to INES 7.
Once the emissions start wafting steadily inland this summer so the land is lost for some centuries because cesium 137 lasts that long, the government can say that this was in line with the scale of the disaster.

Anonymous said...

Are they going to ban all agriculture production in the exclusion zone? The way the USSR dealt with contaminated food was they mixed it in with food from parts of the country that weren't contaminated. They did discard the most highly contaminated produce the first year but they couldn't afford to keep that up for decades. (Dilution is the solution, if you don't mind pollution).

What I want to know is how are they going to find homes for all the people they need to move? After Katrina the US government put evacuees up in hotels and cruise ships but many of these people were forced to move out before their FEMA trailer cities were finished. These unfortunate people had to make do on the kindness of relatives and friends some had to resort to camping for months.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

No one will be allowed inside the exclusion zone, so that means no ag in the area. The problem is how to regulate ag in the areas far away from the plant but ended up with significant contamination. Mixing and matching seems already happening, and the measurement rely on the city workers who are doing it for the first time in their lives.

Where do they move? Oh the government already has a grand plan to create totally new towns with "eco" features. Japan is one of the most corrupt countries when it comes to big construction projects (I know it from my personal experience). A 102-year-old man killed himself because he didn't want to move from his village that has existed for probably 1,000 years or more.

M. Simon said...

Nice exclusion zone map.

The early exclusion zone contained 200,000 people according to a link in the above post. If they are now out to 40 km it will be a lot more than that.

The people problem is now on the order of the problem from the tsunami. And if the winds change while the reactors are still spewing? Godzilla couldn't do worse.

wv: persist - is that an omen?

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