Thursday
October 10, 2013
(Source)
http://www.skynews.com.au/world/article.aspx?id=913978
Japan's
efforts to scour areas around Fukushima have been insufficient,
pressure group Greenpeace said Thursday, as the government considers
letting some residents return to homes near the crippled nuclear
plant.The environmental group said tests it had carried out inside
the original 20-kilometre no-go zone around the plant showed that
high levels of radiation remain.Local and national officials are
mulling lifting the exclusion order in parts of Tamura city, allowing
people to return to homes they abandoned more than two and a half
years ago. They cite lowered pollution levels in the wake of large
cleaning operations.
A
recent Greenpeace survey found that decontamination programmes have
been effective for houses and many parts of major routes in the city.
But
some lesser-used public roads, large areas of farmland and mountain
areas still have high contamination levels, said Jan Vande Putte,
Greenpeace radiation protection adviser.
He
said the cleaned houses and roads were like 'islands' and 'corridors'
in an otherwise polluted region.
It
would be 'unrealistic' to ask residents to stay off contaminated
roads and farmland, he said.
'They
can be exposed to high levels of radiation' if they returned home, he
said.
Decontamination
'is a sticky problem. It is very difficult', he told a press
briefing.
'It
requires enormous dedication to reduce radiation levels on roads, on
houses and farmland,' he said.
But
Vande Putte added that radiation levels around houses have been
'significantly lowered' after decontamination work.
Residents
should be given adequate information before deciding whether to
return to their homes, he said, and government financial assistance
should continue regardless of their decision on going back.
Tens
of thousands of people were evacuated in the days and weeks after
malfunctioning reactors, whose cooling systems had been incapacitated
by the March 2011 tsunami, began emitting radiation.
Many
are still unable to return to areas within 20 kilometres of the power
station, where workers are grappling with the clean-up of the worst
nuclear accident in a generation.
Greenpeace's
comments came as the plant operator TEPCO said radiation levels in
seawater just outside one of the broken reactors had surged to their
highest level since August 2011.
A
spokesman said the spike had been caused by construction work that
had flushed radioactive particles out of the ground and into the sea.
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