A Day in Fukushima - Gamma Spectroscopy

[Conor Whyte]

Very nice reports Massimo, both of them! Thanks for taking the time to share this experience and the pictures too.
"Fear and misconceptions made far more victims than radiation around here" - this is a really important point and I also hope, that publications like this one, counter fight the radioactivity-related stigma stemming from misinformation and incompetence.

Indeed. There is quite a social phenomenon now in Japan that austricizes survivors and survivor families from Japanese mainstream society due to radio-phobia. Also, to date there is a sizable population still living in temporary shelters (Hinanjo) in Sendai, and greater
Miyagi-ken. The Japanese govt, thinks that by 2020, most of those people will be in new homes. Hard to know...


However, this video shows that there are supported of Fukushima, which is a nice change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhEZ2w_yQjU

Story from survivors in Koriyama. please watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhEZ2w_yQjU

[Go-Figure]

Thanks for your comments guys,
I think sooner or later I am going to go back, and hopefully I will find more people and less red stickers.

Very nice reports Massimo, both of them! Thanks for taking the time to share this experience and the pictures too.
"Fear and misconceptions made far more victims than radiation around here" - this is a really important point and I also hope, that publications like this one, counter fight the radioactivity-related stigma stemming from misinformation and incompetence.

Indeed. There is quite a social phenomenon now in Japan that austricizes survivors and survivor families from Japanese mainstream society due to radio-phobia. Also, to date there is a sizable population still living in temporary shelters (Hinanjo) in Sendai, and greater
Miyagi-ken. The Japanese govt, thinks that by 2020, most of those people will be in new homes. Hard to know...


However, this video shows that there are supported of Fukushima, which is a nice change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhEZ2w_yQjU

Story from survivors in Koriyama. please watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhEZ2w_yQjU

Thank you so much for the video Conor.
A part from the moment (at 5:01) where a woman says that people working on the cleanup of the power plant died because of radiation (which didn't happen except for maybe one single person) it's really good to see how these people answer questions and also how the journalist reacts to it, she seems pretty stunned at times.
They have every right not to trust the government (which certainly hasn't been transparent) but that doesn't mean you have to buy into fear mongering and myths.
I particularly like the guy who says (9:13) he would not buy food from other prefectures because it's not tested and checked.
They know their food is safe, not because the government told them so, but because they tested it themselves.
And also the guy (12:40) who wants to live there heatly for decades to prove you can live a long life in Fukushima.
It resonates with what I saw.

Massimo

[Janni]

Hi Massimo and thanks for the nice and interesting report! I was on a Japan round trip in May and also visited Fukushima area. I can confirm all the facts that you wrote. Since weeks I wanted to make a report here, but there was always so many other things to do... besides I'm a bit lazy writing reports... But one day I will write something and like to share some nice spectrometry!

[Go-Figure]

Hi Massimo and thanks for the nice and interesting report! I was on a Japan round trip in May and also visited Fukushima area. I can confirm all the facts that you wrote. Since weeks I wanted to make a report here, but there was always so many other things to do... besides I'm a bit lazy writing reports... But one day I will write something and like to share some nice spectrometry!

Hi Janni,
Similar itinerary?

Massimo

[gwgw]

Fear and misconceptions made far more victims than radiation around here

This is indeed true. I just remembered when I was a kid, early 90s, there was a comedy show on the national TV and one day they decided to make "The NPP did just explode" joke. I even found an archive video, it has English subtitles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYebqj1Cr3I

I remember watching that on the TV, my parents looked nervous, then in a short time we got lots of phone calls from friends and relatives whether we're OK and if something is happening around (we lived far away from the said NPP). I've heard some people really panicked, which wasn't really the case for our neighbourhood, people around were more like arguing "this can't be true, it doesn't really look serious" - "I am telling you, they don't lie, they blew it off just like in Chernobyl" rather than runing to shelters or something.

After that notorious joke was aired, the government got really angry, they brought the show off the air and I think they were sued and fined at the end. I can't imagine something like that happening nowadays, but the 90s were crazy days.

[Janni]

Hi Massimo and thanks for the nice and interesting report! I was on a Japan round trip in May and also visited Fukushima area. I can confirm all the facts that you wrote. Since weeks I wanted to make a report here, but there was always so many other things to do... besides I'm a bit lazy writing reports... But one day I will write something and like to share some nice spectrometry!

Hi Janni,
Similar itinerary?

Massimo

Hi Massimo!

Yes, more or less the same route. Your pictures are very familiar to me :-)
I stayed also over night in Odaka and J-Village. I think I have maybe even been in the same food area like you, but I'm not sure, I must look at my photos...

[Go-Figure]

One thing I didn't mention.
At Namie Town, behind one of the buildings on the road showed in the first post, there was this big black plastic bag, and there was clearly something radioactive inside, judging by the PDS reading.
Could have been soil, but that didn't look like that kind of plastic bag, besides it was strange to find a plastic bag containing soil in the middle of the town, and, having tested other such bags, the content of that one was clearly "hotter", albeit not superhot.
I had gloves with me and I really wanted to take a look of what was inside, but I was advised against it and I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable so....this is it.

Massimo

[Go-Figure]

And by the way, since I spent 9 nights in Tokyo I also took the chance to record a spectrum in my hotel room.
Radioactivity in Tokyo is extremely low wherever you go, you rarely see a 0.10 μSv/h read, and when it happens it's usually a short-lived fluctuation.

The spectrum shows usual background peaks. It took me 9 hours to accumulate 700,000 counts. Not that I had to work for it, I was sleeping for most of the acquisition time.
Spectrum in Logarithmic scale.
Averagre doserate 0.04 μSv/h.

Massimo

Tokyo Hotel Room 515 - 32580 Secs - 12-13 Nov 2019 - LOG.png (82.2 KiB) Viewed 13043 times