Vivid memories of a surreal landscape　

The city of Yonezawa in Yamagata prefecture lies just over 90 km from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, on the border with the northwest corner of Fukushima prefecture. The city is surrounded by high mountains, which protected the area from heavy contamination. Many of the evacuees who fled Fukushima prefecture therefore gathered in the relative safety of Yonezawa. The international survey team also based themselves here, crossing the border into Fukushima prefecture to carry out measurements over a period of several days.

The team focused primarily on the area to the northwest of Fukushima Daiichi. Teule remembers holding a gamma ray spectrometer in her hands as they crossed the mountains and drove toward Fukushima city. She saw the reading on the device starting to creep upward even before they reached the city proper. Although Fukushima city is approximately 60 km west of the plant, the team’s equipment was already showing significantly elevated radiation levels. The implications of this alarmed Teule.

“As we were seeing clear evidence of increased radioactivity even as far as Fukushima city, we were very concerned about what we might encounter in areas closer to the plant. Our worries were twofold, both for the immediate level of contamination, but also the potential long-term impacts. I immediately suspected that we would find levels of contamination high enough to render swathes of land unfit for human habitation, comparable to the situation around the Chernobyl plant.”

In Fukushima prefecture’s major inland urban areas of Koriyama and Fukushima city, radiation levels were high enough to warrant extra protective measures in daily life. However, the streets and shops were busy with people going about their lives as normal, and the towns seemed to be functioning as if nothing had happened. This only made the atmosphere in the cities feel all the more surreal, remembers Teule.

“I don’t think most of the residents had any idea about the increased radioactivity in their town. Even if they had their suspicions, they had no access to equipment capable of measuring it. I remember taking measurements around schools and on playgrounds where the children were still being allowed to play outside. We identified accumulated radioactive contamination that would have been potentially harmful to children. When we reported these findings, the authorities closed off some of the affected areas and sent in workers to clean up.”

In the village of Iitate, located on high ground approximately 45 km from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, no evacuation order had been issued as of the end of March 2011. However, the Greenpeace radiation experts discovered that the area had been particularly badly affected by radioactive fallout, and radiation levels in the village called for urgent evacuation.

The high radiation levels found over 40 km from Fukushima Daiichi were well outside the government-mandated evacuation zone, which extended to a radius of 30 km from the plant. With their survey findings as evidence, Greenpeace put pressure on the Japanese government to announce additional evacuation areas outside the previous range, with evacuation of children and pregnant women prioritised. Greenpeace also urged the government to improve its information sharing and provide further support for the residents of the affected areas.

Some damage requires imagination to be seen

As Teule explains, such a major nuclear accident in Japan, regarded as a world leader in technology, came as a shock to the nuclear industry worldwide.

At the time of the Chernobyl accident in 1986, European experts who continued to promote nuclear as an energy source attempted to downplay the implications of the disaster, stressing that the accident had occurred within what was then the Soviet Union, where they claimed safety standards were often poor. They painted the accident as a product of the sociopolitical situation. By contrast, Japanese technology had an image (whatever the reality might be) of being the best in its field. The Fukushima Daiichi accident thus prompted a reassessment of nuclear safety. If not even Japan was able to prevent such an accident, the reasoning went, then the same thing could happen anywhere.

Of course, this shock was not limited to the nuclear industry. The years immediately after the Fukushima Daiichi accident saw a major shift in public sentiment away from nuclear power, not only in Japan but around the world, most notably in Europe. The German government went as far as announcing it would now pursue a policy of complete denuclearisation, a significant change in direction.

However, as the years passed, the anti-nuclear movement began to fade once again into the background. Teule considers this to be symptomatic of a more fundamental issue in modern society. In her opinion, in today’s information-driven world there is an appetite for snappy, easily digestible explanations that can actually become an obstacle to the careful exploration of complex issues. The damage caused by radioactive contamination is a case in point. By its nature difficult to see, for this reason it can also be easy to forget.

“The whole format of social media demands eye-catching presentations that allow the viewer to understand the gist of a story within seconds. The invisible spread of nuclear radiation and the creeping impacts that manifest over long timescales do not lend themselves to this format in the same way as a flood or explosion at an industrial facility. There are no dramatic scenes of debris flying through the air. Maybe people expect to see graphic images of mutated animals and sick people that recall the disaster at Chernobyl. The thing to understand is that damage takes many forms, and not all of them are easily visible.”

“Some people whose homes and towns were contaminated in the Fukushima Daiichi disaster have remained in or returned to the area, picking up the pieces and doing their best to carry on with their lives, whilst others relocated and began building a new life for themselves. But in either case, I think there is a deep lack of understanding about the impact of the accident on people’s lives. A common phrase heard from the nuclear lobby was that ‘nobody had died because of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi’, but that is far too dismissive. Only when you stop to really consider the impact the accident has had on so many lives can you start to understand how insensitive this attitude is.”

How well did we understand the impact on people’s lives after the accident, and how well do we really understand it now, ten years on? Even people living in the Fukushima region or those living further afield with first-hand experience of the accident may have differing understandings of the situation. And what about people living outside Japan, or those who were born after the accident? In the end, whoever and wherever you are, the key to understanding is to take the information you have available and then use your imagination to try and put yourself into someone else’s shoes.

Providing citizens with the tools to protect themselves

Most people in the general population do not have a thorough understanding of what radioactivity is or how it behaves. If you are suddenly faced with the reality of radioactive contamination in your own life, it is important to study and find out what you can do to protect yourself. Of course, the people living around Fukushima Daiichi were no exception.

“In my experience, the average Japanese citizen is very keen to learn, and many people went to great lengths to educate themselves about radiation, ultimately becoming very knowledgeable on the subject. I find those people’s resilience incredibly admirable. I met people who went from knowing virtually nothing to becoming radiation experts in their own right, even to the point of taking their own measurements and interpreting data. Seeing such a proactive attitude really gave me hope.”

Prior to visiting Fukushima, Teule’s experiences included surveys in areas that have suffered shocking levels of radioactive contamination, including in Iraq in the aftermath of the Iraq war, and at a uranium mining site in Niger. When she saw how Japanese people engaged with the subject of contamination she was impressed, whereas in some other parts of the world, in similar situations, the people had been left confused and frustrated.

The villagers living around Niger’s uranium mines are extremely poor, and most people are oblivious to the dangers of radioactive material. When told about the risks of the contamination where they lived, although they were worried, but did not have the resources to take any sort of measures to protect themselves. Likewise, after the end of the Iraq war, Teule discovered dangerous levels of radioactivity in villages surrounding a nuclear installation. The Greenpeace team urged people to remove contaminated objects from their homes. When the team discovered dangerous levels of radiation right next to people’s homes, they put up fences and signs in an attempt to discourage people from coming close to the contamination. However, they returned the following day to find that the local residents had dismantled the fences and taken down the signs.

“These people were afraid to be stigmatised when contamination was found close to their homes. In small village communities, this could be a major embarrassment or worse.”

“In Fukushima, after some time I observed people going out of their way to find more information, to learn about the risks and how to minimize them. Of course each situation is different, and people’s responses are influenced by many factors including the level of economic development, cultural values and education. The fact that we’re now living in an era when the internet has become so widespread is also an important factor. When I compare that with the situation in Iraq or Niger… even if the infrastructure had been in place I don’t know whether the impoverished communities we visited would have had access.”

Although the various countries that Teule has worked in have very different individual circumstances, the endless anxiety of the people affected and the negligence of the governments and industries that allowed the contamination to occur are familiar stories. Time and again, wherever communities are affected by radioactive contamination, it seems they are left to fend for themselves, and survive the best they can.

“I’m always amazed by how resilient people are, but it’s not enough to rely on that resilience. We all have a responsibility to continue supporting those affected, even if we are far away.”