Tokyo, August 28: The Japanese government has warned that areas near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant could remain uninhabitable for decades due to high radiation leaked into the environment.
In a meeting with local officials on Saturday, the Tokyo government estimated that it could take more than 20 years before residents could safely return to areas with current radiation readings of 200 millisieverts per year, and a decade for areas at 100 millisieverts per year, Reuters reported.
The report comes as Japan’s nuclear scientists say the amount of radioactive cesium-137 released from the Fukushima Daiichi plant is 168 times that of the United States’ nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.
According to a government calculation published in the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper, the levels of cesium-137 leaked from the crisis-stricken plant has been estimated at 15,000 terabecquerels.
The Tokyo government, however, argued that the comparison was not valid since there is no logical comparison between the Hiroshima bombing and the Fukushima disaster.
“An atomic bomb is designed to enable mass-killing and mass-destruction by causing blast waves and heat rays and releasing neutron radiation,” the daily quoted an unnamed government official as saying.
The Fukushima plant has leaked radiation into air, soil and the Pacific Ocean ever since it was hit by a 9-magnitude earthquake and a devastating tsunami in March.
The tremor triggered a nuclear crisis by knocking out power to cooling systems and the reactor meltdowns at the nuclear power plant on Japan’s northeast coast.
The number of the dead and missing from Japan’s March 11 quake and tsunami stands at over 28,000, according to the Japanese National Police Agency. The crisis has also displaced thousands of residents from around the plant as well.
——Agencies