Fukushima Phoenix Project "How much radiation now ?"
On 3.11.2011, unprecedented triple-fold disasters—a magnitude 9 earthquake, a 40-meter-high tsunami, a nuclear meltdown and its subsequent radioactive pollution—struck, swept away, and contaminated much of Northeastern Japan. Some 20,000 people were killed or reported missing; over 4,000 houses were lost. 561 square kilometers of land were salinized and left completely non-arable. To the Japanese nation, this was a second defeat after WWII. It was a metaphysical disaster.
Still, and perhaps most surprising, has been the Japanese people's robust ability to restore themselves and their land in silence and order. There were neither riots nor vandalism following 3.11. Lost purses, lost safes were recovered. Three months after the disaster, almost all of the region's roads and railways had been re-opened. Six months after the disaster, the Shinkansen bullet railway—product of Japan's national pride—returned to full service, and the washed-out airport was cleaned and opened once again. And, the local fishermen themselves salvaged nearly all of the 200-years-worth of underwater debris from the bays. Now three years passed since then. The area is physically restored (at least scares are invisible to foreigner's eyes) and even economically started re-bouncing, but still lots of people lives in shelters or disaster housings with broken heart and broken family. Those are invisible and intangible kind of scares; silent threat of radiation. Informations are still under control by the name of social stability. Nobody can access to real and over all and moment by moment, place by place radiation info. It can be in food. It can be in water, on the ground or in the air. Followings are very limited but local and first hand information we got at the citizen's conference at the Science Cafe of Onahama ( fishermen's village town, some fifty kilometer away from the Fukushima Daiichi) in the Fukushima prefecture, plus our own research. (Map of Japan indicating the location of Onahama and Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant)
Mr. Junichi Kamiyama, Senior Researcher, Fukushima Prefecture Fisheries Experiment Station, reported his research result since the disaster in detail, combining with government information inside the Fukushima Daiichi Plant Port. Surprising finding was that no radiation was detected in the sea water out-side the nuke plant port after September, 2011. If no data manipulation by government, it is a great news for Japanese, but might be diffused in larger area and might be accumulated in some fish or some plants. As to fish and other sea livings, they found heavier radiation above 50m deep but below 50m it was reduced proportionally. It is natural they found heavier radiation from fishes of near sea such as a flat fish and a flounder, still containing 1000 Becquerel per Kilogram or less as to 2013, but infant sardines which are quickly reproduced, fishes circulating in the larger sea such as bonito, or living in deep are safe. No radiation is detected these days. So are Crabs, clams squids, octopus, Mr. Kamiyama reported.
In the Business (Radiation Fuhyo):
Mr. Toshihito Ono, Head of Onahama Marine Product Union, emphasized the need of close association of fishing, production industries and sales sector to overcome Radiation Fuhyo ( baseless negative reputation).
He insisted they never sent any radiated fish or related products into the market since disaster, but kept suffered from negative reputation by negative behaviors of adjacent industries including agriculture and livestock industry. They survived through their own effort and traditional surviving business wisdom since the Edo period, but still couldn't over come Fuhyo damage. Even though detected radiation from their fish and products were zero or near zero, consumer kept relying on Fuhyo. He begged citizen by saying " I'm not asking you to eat our fish and product, but just beg your belief with us"
We measured radiation in air with GPS tool in iPhone and Geiger counter which we did same technic and pass in 2011. The detected DATA has micro millimeter Sieverts for each point, degrees of latitude, longitude, altitude and time. We will visualize the DATA in 3D landscape.
