Fukushima Crisis: Caldicott Says Evacuate North-West Japan

Dr Helen Caldicott says radiation many times in excess of that which led to the evacuation of Chernobyl has been reported in North-West Japan — so the area should be evacuated immediately.

The confusing crisis

Last Friday came the alarming news from Japan’s nuclear agency that the amount of radioactive cesium that has so-far leaked from the tsunami ravaged Fukushima nuclear plant is equal to 168 Hiroshima atomic bombs. Apparently, the damaged plant has released 15,000 tera becquerels of cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years and causes cancer, compared with the 89 tera becquerels released by the American World War II bomb.

On the other hand, in the same report, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said the March 11 Fukushima disaster is likely to have released only about 15 per cent of the radiation that went into the air in the 1986 Chernobyl accident, although this equates roughly seven times the amount of radiation produced by Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979. Then, a couple of days ago, rice grown close to the Fukushima power plant was rather surprisingly declared fit for consumption by the Japanese authorities.

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