JAPAN’S GOVERNMENT is preparing to declare the 20km irradiated zone around the ruined Fukushima power plant off limits, in effect banning evacuees from returning to their houses. The move would give the police power to force anyone in the zone to leave, and to punish violators.
Homeowners in nearby towns and villages have been returning to check on their properties. Farmers have been spotted tending to crops or livestock and a small number of the 70,000-80,000 people who lived in the zone before the March 11th disaster have refused to leave or have moved back permanently.
“We have been asking people not to enter the 20km area to protect their health and safety,” the government’s top spokesman, Yukio Edano, said yesterday. “Unfortunately . . . there have been some people who have entered the off-limits area. So . . . we are talking with local officials about making it a legally binding caution area.”
The government directed thousands of people to leave the zone in the immediate aftermath of last month’s huge earthquake and tsunami, which triggered the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi complex. Those living 20-30km away were advised to stay indoors. Greenpeace and other critics called the evacuation order inadequate and arbitrary.
Radioactive materials have been leaking from the plant since. Experts believe the worst discharges may have peaked, but engineers inside the plant say it could take nine months to bring four damaged reactors completely under control. Work to decontaminate and remove about 70,000 tonnes of highly radioactive water from on site is continuing.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) has promised about 50,000 households provisional compensation of up to a million yen (€8,358). Nuclear evacuees from Fukushima, who are scattered in homes and refugee centres throughout Japan, say the offer is inadequate.
Refugees have been further angered this week by revelations that Tepco faced a similar crisis last year at the Fukushima plant and ignored warnings that a disaster was possible. Former Fukushima governor Eisaku Sato said that pumps stopped sending water to reactor 2 after the power supply failed on June 17th, 2010. Left unattended, the reactor’s fuel rods would have become exposed and melted. “Tepco experienced a test run of what would happen in an electric blackout,” Mr Sato said during a speech to journalists in Tokyo.
“This was a malfunction which should have led them to naturally worry about what could happen if the emergency diesel generators had also failed. This current disaster could have been averted.”
Last month’s crisis began when the plant’s electricity plant was knocked out by the earthquake and back-up diesel generators were swamped by the tsunami, an event that Tepco described as “beyond our expectations”. Mr Sato and other experts say the meltdown could have been averted had the utility simply made the diesel generators tsunami-proof.
Japanese news sources say the government is also considering allowing evacuees in the zone to temporarily return home to pick up belongings or pets abandoned in the panic after March 11th.