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This is Japan Desk Scotland’s 12th Fukushima documentary.
In July 2023, 12 years after the Fukushima nuclear accident of March 2011, Japan Desk Scotland visited Fukushima.
Since April 2012, Kenji Nanba of Fukushima University and his team have monitored radio caesium in Abukuma River water regularly, inspired by a long-term monitoring of environmental radiation after the Chernobyl nuclear accident of April 1986. In 2013, Fukushima University established the Institute of Environmental Radioactivity (IER), and, among others, researchers with research experience in Chernobyl joined IER from Ukraine and Russia. In 2017, IER started a Fukushima-Chernobyl joint research project, together with other research institutions in Ukraine and Japan. The joint research project was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and was ended in 2023. If research findings on environmental radiation in Chernobyl and Fukushima are combined together, this would be a useful resource for a future nuclear accident.
In Chernobyl, the exclusion zone is said to have remained the same since immediately after the accident. In Fukushima, on the contrary, the government of Japan has tried to lift the evacuation order as soon as possible through decontamination work of removing top layers of radioactive soil. With the progress of decontamination work, air dose rates declined to some extent, and the evacuation order has been lifted in various areas in Fukushima. The exclusion zone has shrunk. Decontamination work, however, produced a massive amount of removed radioactive soil stored in the ‘Interim Storage’ site. As the soil needs to be moved to the ‘Final Disposal’ site by 2045, the government has tried to bury low-level radioactive soil under roads or farm lands? Is this safe for plants, people, and the environment?
There are contaminated areas in Fukushima where decontamination work won’t be carried out. Forests. It would be ecologically harmful and economically costly to remove top layers of the surface ground inside forests. Radio caesium will remain there for years to come. Some fish in rivers eat insects from the forests. A wider, complicated system of forests, rivers, fish, or the environment, is the target for analysis, such as the relationship among flowers, honey bees and honey.
Another issue is the nuclear fuels inside the troubled reactors. They still emit radioactivity, and water is poured in to cool them down, resulting in a massive amount of radioactive water stored in tents. And the radioactive water, after removing radionuclides except tritium, has been discharged into the Pacific ocean. Is it safe for fish, people, and the environment? Inside the reactors there are a massive amount of highly radioactive debris. How can they be removed?
Interviewed guests in order of appearance: Kenji Nanba, Yasunori Igarashi, Alexei Konoplev, Mark Zheleznyak, Kencho Kawatsu, Ryo Sugimoto, Norihiro Harada, Kazuya Sanpei, Shuhei Iwasaki, Kenji Watanabe, Hirofumi Tsukada, Kimiaki Saito, Yoshitaka Takagai, Toshihiro Wada, Takayuki Takahashi, Miyuki Sasaki, Vasyl Yoschenko, Yoshifumi Eakiyama, Suguru Konto, Tatsuya Kubo, Gakuto Yamamoto, Sho Hoshi, and Honoka Kurosawa
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Camera: Fumi Nakabachi
Music: Oli Jan
Directed and edited by: Yushin Toda
Producer:Fumi Nakabachi and Yushin Toda, Japan Desk Scotland
65 minutes
In Japanese and English with English subtitles.
©2024 Japan Desk Scotland
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This is part of Japan Desk Scotland’s Documentary films production.
This video has been screened:
(1) on Sunday 23 June 2024 at Wellington Church, Glasgow, Scotland (a shorter version).