Impact of Fukushima ‘only now being seen’
Print Edition
CONSERVATION group Greenpeace said yesterday that the environmental impact of the Fukushima nuclear crisis five years ago on nearby forests is just beginning to be seen and will remain a source of contamination for years to come.
The March 11, 2011, magnitude-9 undersea quake off Japan’s northeastern coast sparked a massive tsunami that swamped cooling systems and triggered reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Radiation spread over a wide area and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes in the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.
As the fifth anniversary of the disaster approaches, Greenpeace said signs of mutations in trees and DNA-damaged worms were beginning to appear, while “vast stocks of radiation” mean that forests cannot be decontaminated.
In its report, Greenpeace also cited “apparent increases in growth mutations of fir trees ... heritable mutations in pale blue grass butterfly populations.”
The report came as the government intends to lift many evacuation orders in villages around the Fukushima plant by March next year, if its massive decontamination effort progresses as it hopes.
For now, only residential areas are being cleaned, and the worst-hit parts of the countryside are being omitted, a recommendation made by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
However, such selective efforts will confine returnees to a relatively small area of their old hometowns, while the strategy could lead to re-contamination as woodlands will act as a radiation reservoir, Greenpeace said.
But “most of the findings in it have never been covered outside of the close circles of academia,” report author Kendra Ulrich said.
Scientists, including a researcher who found mutations of Fukushima butterflies, have said, however, that more data are needed to determine the ultimate impact of the Fukushima accident on animals.
Researchers and medical doctors have so far denied that the accident at Fukushima would cause an elevated incidence of cancer or leukemia, diseases that are often associated with radiation exposure.
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