{"id":36429,"date":"2011-03-31T13:04:23","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T18:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=36429"},"modified":"2011-03-31T13:05:44","modified_gmt":"2011-03-31T18:05:44","slug":"how-to-evacuate-12-million-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/how-to-evacuate-12-million-people\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Evacuate 12 Million People"},"content":{"rendered":"

Japan says no plan to expand nuclear evacuation zone<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Tokyo – The Japanese government said Thursday that it had no immediate plans to expand a 20-kilometre evacuation zone around a damaged nuclear power station that is leaking radiation despite a recommendation to do so by the global nuclear watchdog.<\/p>\n

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Tokyo would instead reinforce radiation monitoring of soil.<\/p>\n

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suggested overnight that the country consider evacuating Iitate village, about 40 kilometres from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, after the agency found amounts of radioactive iodine in the soil there that exceeded its health limits.<\/p>\n

The village is not only outside the evacuation zone around the plant, which was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, but it is also beyond the 30-kilometre zone in which people have been advised to stay indoors.<\/p>\n

In the soil contamination in Iitate, IAEA experts found radioactivity from iodine-131 at 25 megabecquerel per square metre of soil, more than double the agency’s evacuation threshold of 10 megabecquerel, an unnamed IAEA source said.<\/p>\n

‘The first assessment indicates that one of the IAEA operational criteria for evacuation is exceeded,’ senior IAEA official Denis Flory told reporters.<\/p>\n

It was the highest level measured among nine communities located 25 to 60 kilometres away from the reactors, which are located 250 kilometres north-east of Tokyo.<\/p>\n

‘They should really think about evacuating,’ the source said of the village of 7,000 people.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Further contamination of seawater was also reported. The Japanese government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Thursday that radioactive iodine at 4,385 times the legal limit was found in a seawater sample taken near the plant on the previous day.<\/p>\n

But Hidehiko Nishiyama, an agency spokesman, said the radiation-contaminated water posed no immediate threat to human health.<\/p>\n

‘We will do our utmost to stop it from rising,’ he said.<\/p>\n

The agency said Wednesday that radioactive iodine at 3,355 times the legal limit had been detected in a sample also taken a day earlier from the sea near the reactors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m going to get highly speculative here, and ask: why the hesitation? Why the silence? Are the people living just outside the 30\u00a0km “safe” range being written off?\u00a0Or would one exodus of endangered cities and towns lead to another, and then another, all the way to Tokyo?\u00a0 Tokyo’s population is 12 million, or about 14,339 people per square mile — one of the most densely populated cities in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No one in industry or government wants to think about worst case scenarios. Yet, a functioning government must.\u00a0We put our\u00a0trust in\u00a0public services to turn power back on, make sure there is clean running water, working sewage and waste disposal, shelter, and an evacuation\u00a0plan if there is possibility or risk\u00a0of endangerment\u00a0by staying.<\/p>\n

There are worst case scenarios and then there is the unimaginable. \u00a0It may actually be easier for government officials to calculate the costs of damage control at a devastatingly crippled and deteriorating nuclear power plant than it is\u00a0to factor the costs of relocating the bulk of its nation’s population. This may all be a fantastic supposition. In fact, I hope it is. I hope they can contain the damage and seal off this plant with concrete, which in all likelihood they will. The sooner they do it, the better. But it is my fear and lack of scientific information that makes me ask: Will that be enough?<\/p>\n

I’m certain the people of Japan are asking the very same thing.<\/p>\n

Yours & truly,<\/p>\n

Fe Bongolan
\nSan Francisco<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Japan says no plan to expand nuclear evacuation zone Tokyo – The Japanese government said Thursday that it had no immediate plans to expand a 20-kilometre evacuation zone around a damaged nuclear power station that is leaking radiation despite a recommendation to do so by the global nuclear watchdog. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36429"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}