Japan has a cautionary tale to tell for those who care to listen. It’s all about the unfolding actuarial nightmare that is quietly cutting some of its citizens adrift.
The Wall Street Journal, that bastion of industry indulgence, is reporting that residents of Date, Japan, some 35 miles away from nuclear ground zero at Fukushima Daiichi are being advised not to evacuate unless their own house is specifically identified as a mini “hot spot.”
Under lax exposure standards implemented post Fukushima, only 113 residents of this town of 21,800 are eligible for evacuation and the accompanying compensation.
Residents are understandably bemused by government recommendations on how to stay safe without evacuating:
contamination in Date (pronounced DAH-tay) is deemed low enough to be manageable-as long as residents don’t spend too long outside, and avoid spots such as parks and forests, where radioactive elements tend to gather. Radioactive cesium has a tendency to bind to earth, and flow along with silt in water.
That’s right; instead of wholesale evacuation of the entire radioactive town, most residents are being advised to “decontaminate” their houses and fields (!) and avoid the great outdoors!
In a country where nature has played a singularly important role in the spiritual life of the population, the people of Date are now directed to regard nature as the single specific threat to their health and safety, and to overlook their proximity to the simmering stewpot of lethal emissions that Fukushima Daiichi continues to be.
The Japanese government says the ceiling for what it is calling safe-20 millisieverts of accumulated radiation exposure per year-is one-fifth the level at which scientists see the first solid signs of health risk. A chest X-ray is around 0.05 millisievert. But 20 millisieverts per year is at the top of an internationally set range for safety in long-term exposure situations. Officials say they’re suggesting evacuation at lower levels for pregnant women and children, thought to be the most vulnerable to radiation, though they won’t say precisely what those levels are.
The absurdity of the arrangement is best illustrated by one case in particular.
Lumber-company owner Morio Onami says his house didn’t qualify for evacuation, even though his son’s, just a few steps away, did.
As is common in Japanese extended families, the two households share many functions, including a single bath.
In Date, mini “hot-spots” have been discovered scattered randomly all over the place. One likely reason why only 113 residents have been favored with government-backed evacuation is that radiation measurements were recorded in only two locations at each house, over a period of just two days in June.
At each house the inspectors measured two spots-in the yard and at the front door-at heights of about 20 inches and one yard (one meter). In choosing the spots, the inspectors were warned to stay away from areas such as drains, shrubbery and rainspouts, where radioactive elements tend to gather, potentially skewing results.
This conveniently superficial survey pretty well guarantees that industry and the government keep their own exposure to compensatory losses to a bare minimum.
In the event of a disaster at VY, imagine telling Vermonters not to go outside, don’t hunt, don’t fish, don’t go kayaking, don’t go hiking, don’t grow a garden, don’t buy Vermont milk, stay inside and watch Fox News.
Yeah, VY is full of benefits for Vermont!
I wanted to walk through the empty streets
And feel something constant under my feet,
But all the news reports recommended that I stay indoors
Because the air outside will make
Our cells divide at an alarming rate
Until our shells simply cannot hold
All our insides in,
And that’s when we’ll explode
(And it won’t be a pretty sight)
And we’ll become silhouettes when our bodies finally go.
Just returned this book to Kellogg-Hubbard. I recommend it to everyone who may still ‘wonder’ at the absurdities put forth since this ‘event’ in Japan. Seems our own AEC (now DOE) set some pretty heavy and ghoulish ‘top secret’ standards for nuclear ‘black ops’ out in Nevada in the fifties, including using human subjects as nuclear guinea pigs. Of course, AEC/DOE and our government deny everything, along with all the ‘missing’ files and atrocities still ‘classified’ to this day. Hey, none of us have NEED TO KNOW status. So you can imagine what we haven’t heard yet from Japan.