Mois : novembre 2017

No way to find hot spots with dosimeter at 1m from the ground

We have published several articles in this blog saying that to protect the population the Japanese goverment should take into account the soil contamination as well as the radiation dose in the air.  The policy to open the evacuation zones and encourage the population to return to live there (with the end of financial compensation and relocation aid) is based only on the airborn radiation dose measurements (the evacuation order is lifted when the radiation dose is under 20mSv/year).  We have been saying that this is very dangerous, even  criminal, for the air radiation dose rate (indicating the amount of radioactive dose received by a person within a certin period time) is useful with a well-identfied fixed source of radiation, but is not adequate to reveal the overall environmental contamination after a nuclear accident. It doesn’t account for the internal radiation exposure induced health hazards (note 1).

Now we would like to point out another problem related to hotspots: it is nearly impossible to find hotspots by the usual measuring practice of the airborn radiation dose rate (in sieverts per unit of time).  To illustrate this difficulty, we are translating here a Facebook post of Mr Yoichi Ozawa of the citizen’s measurement group named the « Fukuichi Area Environmental Radiation Monitoring Project« .

私たちはこのブログで何度か日本政府は、日本の住民を護るために空間線量率だけでなく土壌汚染も考慮に入れるべきだと書いてきました。避難指示を解除し、住民をそこに戻そうとする帰還政策（賠償打ち切りと住宅支援停止を伴う）は、空間線量率のみに基づいています（年間20ミリシーベルト以下であれば避難指示解除）。私たちはこれは大変危険で、国家の犯罪だと言ってきました。なぜならば、線源が明確で、固定されている場合に有効な空間線量率だけをみることは、原発事故後の環境の全体的放射能汚染の実態を把握するには不適切で、内部被ばくによる健康被害リスクを隠蔽することになるからです（注1）。

今回はホットスポットに関する問題を指摘したいと考えます。通常の空間線量率（分、時間、年あたりのシーベルト）の測定ではホットスポットを発見するのはほぼ不可能なのです。
この難しさがよくわかる、ふくいち周辺環境放射線モニタリングプロジェクトの小澤洋一さんのフェイスブックの投稿を訳させていただきます。

Continuer à lire … « No way to find hot spots with dosimeter at 1m from the ground »

Testimony of a mother who evacuated from Tokyo

Listen to her testimony (in English).
She evacuated from Tokyo to Kobe in west Japan to protect her daughter.
The contamination does not stop at the Fukushima department border. Tokyo is also contaminated.

Transcription (note 1):

I am standing here to tell you that the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe is not over.
I evacuated to Kansai (note2), three years after the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident.

Where do you think I evacuated from?
I evacuated from Tokyo!

Do you know that Tokyo has serious radioactive contamination？
Tens of millions of people in east Japan live with radioactive contamination now.

I have a daughter who was 5 years old at the time of the accident.
She became very sick one year after the accident.
In fact, my daughter became so sick that she could not live a normal life at all.
However, when she stayed in a place where there was no radioactive contamination, my daughter became so well. But when we returned to Tokyo, my daughter became sick again.
We did not have the option to stay in Tokyo, we just fled from Tokyo and came here.

Continuer à lire … « Testimony of a mother who evacuated from Tokyo »