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Japans Nuclear Refugees, Still Stuck in Limbo
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times


New York Times, October 2, 2013
Posted: October 8th, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/world/asia/japans-nuclear-...

While the continuing environmental disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has grabbed world headlines with hundreds of tons of contaminated water flowing into the Pacific Ocean daily a human crisis has been quietly unfolding. Two and a half years after the plant belched plumes of radioactive materials over northeast Japan, the almost 83,000 nuclear refugees evacuated from the worst-hit areas are still unable to go home. Some have moved on, reluctantly, but tens of thousands remain in a legal and emotional limbo while the government holds out hope that they can one day return. As they wait, many are growing bitter. Now they suspect the government knows that the unprecedented cleanup will take years, if not decades longer than promised, as a growing chorus of independent experts have warned, but will not admit it for fear of dooming plans to restart Japans other nuclear plants. That has left the people of Namie and many of the 10 other evacuated towns with few good choices. They can continue to live in cramped temporary housing and collect relatively meager monthly compensation from the government. Or they can try to build a new life elsewhere, a near impossibility for many unless the government admits defeat and fully compensates them for their lost homes and livelihoods. For Namies residents, government obfuscation is nothing new. On the day they fled, bureaucrats in Tokyo knew the direction they were taking could be dangerous, based on computer modeling, but did not say so for fear of causing panic. The townspeople headed north, straight into an invisible, radioactive plume.

Note: For more on the devastation caused by nuclear power, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.


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