Fukushima evacuees pressured to return to contaminated homes

Residents from the Japanese ghost village of Iitate will be allowed to return to their former homes at the end of March - the first time since they were forced to flee the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. That's the date the Japanese government has set to lift evacuation orders.

But according to environmental organization Greenpeace, it's uncertain whether many will want to. Greenpeace says tests it has carried out on homes in Iitate show that despite decontamination, radiation levels are still dangerously high - but that's not stopping the Japanese governmenment from pressuring evacuees from returning, under threat of losing financial support.

Those who refuse to go back to their former homes, and are dependent on the Japanese government's financial help, are faced with a dilemma. After a year from when an area is declared safe again to live in, evacuated residents will see their compensation payments terminated by the government.

Radiation 'comparable with Chernobyl'

The nuclear disaster led to more than 160,000 people being evacuated and displaced from their homes. Of these, many tens of thousands are still living in temporary accommodation six years on.

The village of Iitate, lying northwest of the destroyed reactors at Fukushima Daiichi power plantand from which 6,000 citizens had to be evacuated, was one of the most heavily contaminated following the nuclear disaster.

Around 75 per cent of Iitate is mountainous forest, an integral part of residents' lives before the nuclear accident.

But according to Greenpeace's report, published on Tuesday, radiation levels in these woods are "comparable to the current levels within the Chernobyl 30km exclusion zone - an area that more than 30 years after the accident remains formally closed to habitation."

Put another way, Greenpeace said that in 2017, there clearly remains a radiological emergency within Iitate - defining emergency thus: "If these radiation levels were measured in a nuclear facility, not Iitate, prompt action would be required by the authorities to mitigate serious adverse consequences for human health and safety, property or the environment."

The environmental organization says decontamination efforts have primarily focused on the areas immediately around peoples' homes, in agricultural fields and in 20-meter strips along public roads.

But these efforts ended up generating millions of tons of nuclear waste - these now lie at thousands of locations across the prefecture, but they haven't reduced the level of radiation in Iitate "to levels that are safe," says Greenpeace.

'Normalizing' nuclear disaster?

The organization has accused the Japanese government of trying "to normalize a nuclear disaster, creating the myth that just years after the widespread radioactive contamination caused by the nuclear accident of 11 March 2011, people's lives and communities can be restored and reclaimed.

"By doing so, it hopes, over time, to overcome public resistance to nuclear power."

Greenpeace also lambasted the government for leaving unanswered what it calls a critical question for those trying to decide whether to return or not: what radiation dose will they be subjected to, not just in one year but over decades or a lifetime?

"Until now the Japanese government has exclusively focused on annual radiation exposure and not the potential radiation dose rates returning citizens could potentially face over their entire lifetime," says Greenpeace.

Greenpeace, which has been monitoring Iitate since 2011, carried out its latest survey in November 2016

It found that the average radiation dose range for Iitate beginning from March 2017 over a 70-year lifetime was between 39 millisieverts (mSv) and 183mSv - and that's not including natural radiation exposure expected over a lifetime, or the exposure received in the days, weeks and months following the March 2011 nuclear disaster.

That exceeds yearly guidelines set by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) when added up over a 70-year period - it puts the maximum recommended radiation exposure at 1mSv annually.

Greenpeace says: "The highly complex radiological emergency situation in Iitate, and with a high degree of uncertainty and unknown risks, means that there is no return to normal in Iitate, Fukushima prefecture."

It has called on the Japanese government to cease its return policy, and to provide full financial support to evacuees, and "allow citizens to decide whether to return or relocate free from duress and financial coercion."

According to Greenpeace, "for the more than 6,000 citizens of Iitate, this is a time of uncertainty and anxiety."

Heinz Smital, nuclear physicist and radiation expert at Greenpeace Germany, and part of the team taking measurements at Iitate, told DW the residents were faced with a very difficult situation.

"If you decide to live elsewhere [and not return to Iitate], then you don't have money, you're sometimes not welcomed in another area so you are forced to leave, because people say, 'you're not going back but you could go back,'" he said. "But for people who go back, they have contaminated land, so how can they use the fields for agriculture?"

He urged the Japanese government to more involve those affected in the decision-making process and not try to give an impression that things are "going back to normal."

"It's a violation of human rights to force people into such a situation because they haven't done anything wrong, it's the operator of the power plant responsible for the damage it caused," said Smital.

"It's very clear that there's very serious damage to the property and the lifestyle of the people but the government doesn't care about this."