Reuter's Report: Returning to Fukushima's nuclear zone
Reuter's Report: Returning to Fukushima's nuclear zone
2 min • Health & Science • 2021

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About 30 km (19 miles) southeast, still in the restricted zone, Hisae Unuma is also surveying the state of her home, which withstood the earthquake a decade ago but is now close to collapsing after years of being battered by wind, rain and snow. Unuma fled as the cooling system at Tokyo Electric Power Co's nuclear plant 2.5 km away failed and its reactors began to melt down. The government, which has adopted Fukushima as a symbol of national revival amid preparations for Tokyo Olympic Games, is encouraging residents to return to decontaminated land. Lingering fears about the nuclear plant, jobs and poor infrastructure are keeping many away, though. Unuma, now a vegetable farmer in Saitama prefecture near Tokyo, where her husband died three years ago, won't return even if the government scrapes the radioactive soil off her fields. Radiation levels around her house are around 20 times the background level in Tokyo, according to a dosimeter reading carried out by Reuters. Only the removal of Fukushima's radioactive cores will make her feel safe, a task that will take decades to complete. Before making the four-hour drive back to her new home, Unuma visits the Ranch of Hope, a cattle farm owned by Masami Yoshizawa, who defied an order to cull his irradiated livestock in protest against the government and Tokyo Electric Power. Among the 233 bullocks still there is the last surviving bullock from the 50-strong herd Unuma used to tend, and one of her last living links to the life she had before the disaster. Her bullock ignores her when she tries to lure him over, so Yoshizawa gives her a handful of cabbage to try to tempt him. (c) Reuters

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