Life in the dead land in Japan

Iitate used to be a village, where people ride bicycles to work, children play in the park and the elderly read newspapers on the porch. But Iitate now has nothing. The only sound is crows and barking dogs.

Surrounded by the towering Abukuma mountain, 30 km from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, this small village in Japan has been filled with houses, offices, two gas stations and three grocery stores. chemical.

But after March 11, 2011, houses, offices, gas stations and grocery stores were gone. Now, in a quiet setting, the snow is full on the road for cars and pedestrian sidewalks. Weeds are overgrown in the fields. Cattle farms are empty, cows die clean.

This is the dead land - the land of nuclear radiation.

Reactor No. 3 of the Japanese nuclear power plant Fukushima Daiichi
Beginning last week. The oven was damaged in an explosion after a tsunami. (Photo: AFP)

The earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richte scale and the tsunami shortly afterwards not only claimed the lives of 18,000 people but also brought a third disaster. It was three Fukushima nuclear reactors that melted and exploded in a nuclear reactor. This is the worst nuclear explosion in world history since the Chernobyl plant disaster occurred a quarter of a century ago. When the nuclear crisis occurred, thousands of people fled. More than 70,000 people have been evacuated.

A year after the disaster, the factory still leaked radiation to the sea. Temporary cooling systems are still at risk of destructive earthquakes and remediation takes many more years.

The area of ​​radioactivity is larger than that of the atomic bomb explosion in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Some scientists say it is impossible to completely clean the area and perhaps life will not You can always start here.

There are at least more than a dozen towns and villages affected by nuclear power around the reactor. In some towns, evacuation orders are required, while in some other places, people leave themselves when the radiation levels rise.

But there are still some people who continue to stay on this dead land.

They are people working in nursing homes, hotels and banks. There are also some farmers who cannot now cultivate anything on their land. Other retired people and the rest are mostly men, they work at the reactor.

There are people, such as the Kenji Miyamoto family, who live only a few kilometers from the nuclear plant. They have never left this place. Even when the explosion occurred in the first reactor, then a fire in another. Even if the people around have left, leave all the food in the fridge, leaving the house with the door unlocked.

'I'm also afraid of getting sick, but I feel more comfortable when I stay in my house ,' Miyamoto said. There are others like him who stay in the forbidden area, refusing the government's evacuation request. .

Their daily lives are like science fiction stories. They almost always wear poison masks. Many of their conversations revolved around the state of the reactors or readings from Geiger. They heard updates about daily radioactivity indicators in their neighborhoods. But they still didn't leave.

0.11 microsievert per hour

It is the readable index from Masami Sanpei's Geiger black gauge on a beautiful sunny Monday morning at Iitate. Sanpei always carries this measuring device with me. If the indicator is too high, he wears a mask immediately.

Microsievert quantifies the amount of radiation absorbed by human body tissues. The average level of radiation in Japan's natural environment is 0.11 microsievert an hour or 1 millisievert a year. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) says that the average level of radiation exposure to people worldwide is about 2.4 millisevert a year.

But this level of radiation in Iitate up and down is unstable, many times the index exceeds the highest allowable level. One evening in February, Sanpei's Geiger gauge headlined in a nursing home's parking lot: the indicator was 5.8 microsievert per hour.

Iitate 35 kilometers northwest of Fukushima Dai-ichi. On the day of the nuclear reactor explosion, the beautiful village once printed in these postcards inspired the wind to carry radioactive particles, including plutonium, higher than any initial estimate. which organ

But there is no one to expect that these radioactive particles existed until the beginning of April, which is nearly four weeks after the nuclear explosion. One person at a village office was curious to buy a Geiger measuring device. When he saw the indicators from this device immediately alerted all.

At Iitate, some points show that the radiation level is even higher than measured at the main complexes of the nuclear reactor. Although these points have been cleaned up, the villagers are afraid, there are still other radioactive points they do not know.

It took the government several weeks to start work to evacuate people and take at least a month to declare that the village was uninhabited.

Watanabe, 39, lives alone in the village
contamination. His wife and daughter were evacuated away from the area
dead land. "I don't want to die," he said. (Photo: Toronton Star)

Sanpei is one of those who still work in the village.

He was born and grew up at Iitate. By March last year the number of people in the village was 6,000. He had lived here all his life and had managed a nursing home here for 11 years. He said that he could not leave the patients. Up to 99% of patients do not want to leave this place, Sanpei said.'They are very determined . I don't blame them. The average age of patients is 85 and they do not want to visit a new place ".

Sanpei sent his wife, Katsuko, to an evacuation center in Fukushima City, an hour's drive from Iitate. Their traditional Japanese house of three bedrooms is empty. Their two children moved to another city a few years ago and occasionally visited their parents. Their neighbors have gone. He did not know whether he would see them again.

From Fukushima City, Sanpei daily drove into Iitate. However, the late days of his work often leave him overnight. At night he heard the barking of dogs. They were left behind when their owners evacuated. He dreamed of the angry cry of cows. He said, hundreds of cows in the village were killed because of fear of radioactivity.

"Everything has changed," he said. "It will never be possible to return to what it was before March 11."

At the nursing home, there was a 92-year-old grandmother who was visited by her niece from Tokyo on her birthday. Last year, she visited three times. Miki Kawamura, 34, brought her presents including a bag full of instant noodles, fresh fruits and two books.

Kawamura tried to convince her to move to live with her in an apartment in Tokyo.'My grandmother refused. She's going to die . A little radioactivity doesn't bother you. "

She stayed there with her for about half an hour, talking and having lunch with her. Lunch was something she bought from Tokyo because she didn't believe in the food in the area. Then she returned to Tokyo. It was a long drive, taking about four hours, but nothing could make her stay the night Iitate.

'I'm scared. I don't know how much pollution is around , " she said while wearing a mask and walking out of the nursing home.

According to reports from Japanese newspapers, the environment ministry acknowledged that at least 2,400 square kilometers around nuclear plants should be decontaminated. Japan will also have to remove enough radioactive soil to fill 23 baseball stadiums.

Jin Wantanbe remained in the polluted area. He works at the reactor.'No, I don't want to die ,' he said in a sour voice.

Wantanbe, 39, grew up in the mountain village of Kawauchi where he could see six imposing reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

They always stood there, he said: 'Like mountains, like milestones' . Six majestic towers surrounded by smaller buildings. Smoke comes from high chimneys.

Wantanabe, who owns a construction company of 30 employees, has experienced many kinds of work in the reactor for years. He built small sections outside buildings, repairing drainage pipes. Sometimes, for months, he only works here without any other customers.

The reactor was the place to feed him, bringing him and his family a full life. Then he took everything from him.

Kawaiuchi Village is also in the mountains, about 28 kilometers from the nuclear furnace. When the earthquake struck, Wantanabe is doing paperwork at home. When electricity was cut, he quickly took the whole family out. They were out for about an hour. Soon he heard about a tsunami that could reach as high as 40 meters.

He prayed, hoping for the best.

But he had no thought of the reactor.'Every time the news of an earthquake happens, everyone there says that Fukushima Daiichi cannot be shaken. That is the place that cannot collapse ".

The next day he heard the trouble that occurred at the reactor.

On March 13, two days after the earthquake, he and his wife, 10-year-old daughter, his parents and an uncle in the Range Rover car ran to Nagano. This city is 500 kilometers from his house. Here, his family owns a house.

Watanabe returned to Kawauchi during the day but he did not let his family return.

'Look at this number ,' he said, pointing at the black Geiger measuring device, which shows up to 0.18 microsievert per hour. 'I don't know what this indicator means. But I know it. I don't think I'll ever let my family come back.

But you still stay here. He said there were a dozen men still staying in Kawauchi village. Most houses are uninhabited. Some houses are gone.

Watanabe and the staff work six days a week to clean up the wreckage of the reactor. He said the tsunami caused so much damage that it took them several years to clean it up. Everything broke, crumbled and scattered everywhere.

The area around the Fukushima plant may be a no-go zone for decades. The reactor will be encased in a safe area of ​​concrete and steel. And then contaminated agricultural land will not be allowed to be planted, or houses will not be allowed to build.

However all that happened only after the reactor was cleaned up. But the cleanup alone, according to experts' warnings, takes ten years or even more.

Watanabe worked long hours and he was worried about being affected by radiation. This is also what makes him think for many months. It was also the cause of much controversy with his wife and daughter. They wanted him to move to Nagano but he refused.

Sometimes the couple did not talk to each other for a few days.

'I cannot abandon my employees . They need to work and earn money. Me too, " he said in a responsible manner. " By the time everything was at Fukushima Daiichi, it gave us all we wanted . houses, cars, a full life. "Now we can't leave. Now someone has to clean up."