Evacuation advisory lifted for part of town near Fukushima nuclear plant — Japan Today

” FUKUSHIMA — The government on Wednesday lifted its evacuation advisory for part of the town of Kawauchi which lies within 20 kilometers of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Environment Ministry officials said that radiation cleanup has concluded in the eastern part of the town, NTV reported.

Prior to the March 11, 2011 nuclear disaster, Kawauchi’s population was 3,000.

The Environment Ministry has designated 11 municipalities as no-go zones since the disaster. Nobody has been allowed to live in the zones again yet, though the government has allowed day visits to homes and businesses in some areas after initial decontamination efforts.

The decontamination work for most of the towns has fallen behind schedule due to the government’s failure to secure space for waste disposal.

The government hopes to restore lost communities in some areas around the plant, but challenges remain in ensuring food safety and job security.

So far, only about 48 people out of 274 registered residents have indicated they are planning to return to live in the village, officials said. ”

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One in five Japanese cautious about Fukushima food — The Wall Street Journal

” The proportion of consumers saying they hesitate to buy food products from Fukushima prefecture because of radiation fears reached 20%, up from 15% in February, according to a twice-yearly survey by the Consumer Affairs Agency released this week.

The percentage was the highest since February 2013, when the agency began issuing reports on how misinformation and harmful rumors were affecting consumer views of food and radioactive contamination.

The latest study was conducted online in August, and surveyed 5,176 adults in 11 prefectures including Tokyo and Osaka as well as the Tohoku region where the 2011 earthquake and tsunami hit hardest.

Of those surveyed, 22.5% said the government should impose stricter regulations concerning radiation and food, and 47% said that they would like to avoid intake of food with radioactive substances even if the radiation level is below government-set safety limits.

The government has said it took comprehensive measures to monitor foods produced in Japan and restricted distribution of contaminated food following the March 2011 earthquake and accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant. Any exposure to radioactive cesium in food is tiny, according to the ministry of health.

The Consumer Affairs Agency said it couldn’t identify a single reason for the slight rise in concern about radiation from food. “The increasing number of media reports on radiation and health effects may have had an effect on consumers’ awareness,” the agency said.

Only 31% of respondents said that safety of food, including the level of additives and radioactive contamination, is a factor when they purchase food, compared to 71% who said they focus on price.

Approximately half of those surveyed said they understood the terms becquerel, which measures how much radioactive energy is released per second, and sievert, which measures the size of impact of the radiation when humans are exposed to it. Both words were widely used in the Japanese media after the Fukushima accident. Nearly 21% were aware that Japan imposes stricter radiation standards on food than the U.S. or Europe. ” [Radiation standards on U.S. food are 12 times higher than Japanese food, and those on Canadian food are 10 times higher.]

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