{"id":21813,"date":"2016-09-24T09:01:21","date_gmt":"2016-09-24T14:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21813"},"modified":"2016-09-24T09:01:21","modified_gmt":"2016-09-24T14:01:21","slug":"in-fukushima-a-bitter-legacy-of-radiation-trauma-and-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21813","title":{"rendered":"In Fukushima, A Bitter Legacy Of Radiation, Trauma and Fear"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Fukushima, A Bitter Legacy\u00a0Of Radiation, Trauma and Fear\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n

Five years after the nuclear power plant meltdown, a journey through the Fukushima evacuation zone reveals some high levels of radiation and an overriding sense of fear. For many, the psychological damage is far more profound than the health effects.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Christopher Furlong\/Getty Images<\/div>\n
A radiation monitoring station alongside a road in Namie, Japan.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Japan\u2019s Highway 114 may not be the most famous road in the world. It doesn\u2019t have the cachet of Route 66 or the Pan-American Highway. But it does have one claim to fame. It passes through what for the past five years has been one of the most radioactive landscapes on the planet \u2013 heading southeast from the Japanese city of Fukushima to the stricken nuclear power plant, Fukushima Daiichi, through the forested mountains where much of the fallout from the meltdown at the plant in March 2011 fell to earth.<\/div>\n

It is a largely empty highway now, winding through abandoned villages and past overgrown rice paddy fields. For two days in August, I traveled its length to assess the aftermath of the nuclear disaster in the company of Baba Isao, an assemblyman who represents the town of Namie, located just three miles from the power plant and one of four major towns that remain evacuated.<\/p>\n

At times, the radiation levels seemed scarily high \u2013 still too high for permanent occupation. But radiation was just the start.<\/p>\n

As we climbed into the mountains, the radiation measurements on the Geiger counter increased.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More worrying, I discovered, was the psychological and political fallout from the accident. While the radiation \u2013 most of it now from caesium-137, a radioactive isotope with a half-life of 30 years \u2013 is decaying, dispersing, or being cleaned up, it is far from clear that this wider trauma has yet peaked. Fukushima is going to be in rehab for decades.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Fukushima, A Bitter Legacy\u00a0Of Radiation, Trauma and Fear\u00a0 Five years after the nuclear power plant meltdown, a journey through the Fukushima evacuation zone reveals some high levels of radiation and an overriding sense of fear. For many, the psychological damage is far more profound than the health effects. Christopher Furlong\/Getty Images A radiation monitoring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[14318,12333,340,395,452,6910,579,580,2142],"class_list":["post-21813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-e360yale","tag-fred-pearce","tag-fukushima","tag-health","tag-japan","tag-meltdown","tag-nuclear-power","tag-nuclear-radiation","tag-radiation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21814,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21813\/revisions\/21814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}