よほどの事情がない限り、自分の家に帰りたくないと思っている人はいない。
だからといって、簡単に警戒区域をころころ変えてよいものなのだろうか。原発災害後、菅政権より、３キロ圏内からの退避が示されて以来、一体何回立ち入り制限区域が塗り替えられてきたことだろうか。
「家に帰らせることはいいことだ」と言わんばかりの政府やメディアの姿勢は、いかがなものか。
本当ならば日本の大型メディアがきちんと取材をし、声を大にして報道し続けなければならないことであるが、日本では、住民への賠償金や帰村、復興、がれき処理の問題ばかりが焦点化されている。
３．２９のNew York Times ウェブサイトでは、日本政府が行なったフクシマ原発の冷温停止状態や安全宣言に対して、大きな疑問を呈している。ここでは、京大の小出裕章氏がこれまでに主張して来られた事柄と同様のこと、すなわち冷却水の漏れによる地下水や海洋への放射能汚染の問題が深刻であることや、昨今の余震による目下半壊状態にあるフクイチの使用済み燃料プールなどの建造物への影響や、さらなる大地震によって齎されるかもしれない大量放射能漏れの危険性についての指摘がなされている。
「フクシマ」を差別用語だと言い立て、カタカナ書きを廃して「福島」に戻すべきであると、とんちんかんな主張をする声の大きなジャーナリストがいる。
薔薇っ子は福島で出会った欲もなく、優しく心ばえの美しい人たちを、智恵子がこよなく愛した阿多多羅山や、阿多多羅山の上の青い空を、決してフクシマなんて呼びはしない。
強欲で無力で厚顔無恥な電力会社とその利権に群がる企業家と官僚と政治家と御用学者と、ジャーナリストと地元自治体のせいで、世界の科学史上例を見ない未曽有の原子力災害を引き起こし、全国各地に放射能を撒き散らし、国民を不安に陥れたフクシマ原発とその災害は、断じてその「福島」と分かち書きして、示し続ける必要がある。
フクシマを福島に矯正させ、済んでしまった過去の出来事として何事もなかったかのように風化させようとする圧力にこそ、良心のあるジャーナリストは、断固として抵抗すべきではないのか。
http://news24.jp/nnn/news89033465.html
福島・川内村と田村市の「警戒区域」解除
（福島県）
福島第一原発事故で立ち入りが制限されていた福島県の川内村や田村市の「警戒区域」は、１日午前０時に解除された。住民らは早速、自宅の様子を見に帰っている。 川内村の警戒区域は「居住制限区域」と「避難指示解除準備区域」に再編され、寝泊まりはできないが、自宅などへの行き来ができるようになった。避難生活を続け、朝から自宅に帰った横田香苗さんは「ゲートがなくなったというだけでいい。掃除して、それから戻りたい。（自宅は）安堵感っていうか、安心します」と話していた。 人が自由に出入りできる分、防犯態勢の強化が求められている。
Japan Nuclear Plant May Be Worse Off Than Thought
TEPCO, via European Pressphoto Agency
A handout image supplied Thursday by Tokyo Electric Power Company shows conditions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
By HIROKO TABUCHI
Published: March 29, 2012
TOKYO — The damage to one of three stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant could be worse than previously thought, a recent internal investigation has shown, raising new concerns over the plant’s stability and complicating the post-disaster cleanup.
The government has said that the plant’s three badly damaged reactors have been in a relatively stable state, called a cold shutdown, for months, and officials say that continues. But new tests suggest that the plant — which was ravaged last March when a powerful earthquake and tsunami hit the area — might not be as stable as the government or the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, had hoped.
The key to keeping the reactors stable is keeping their fuel rods cool with water.
The company announced this week that an examination of one reactor, No. 2, showed that the water level in an outer containment vessel was far lower than estimated, which could indicate that the already badly damaged uranium fuel might not be completely submerged and, therefore, is in danger of heating up.
Cooling water in that vessel, called the drywell, was just two feet deep, rather than the 33-foot level estimated by Tepco officials when the government declared the plant stable in December. That is probably not a problem for the fuel that the company says has leaked into the drywell from an inner containment vessel because Tepco says that melted fuel is unlikely to be higher than two feet.
But Tepco officials said the low water in the drywell left open the possibility that the water level in the leaking inner containment vessel, where most of the fuel is thought to be, was also low. Experts say that could leave the fuel there exposed and lead to more damage. The fuel would likely then leach more radioactive materials into the water that is flowing through the reactor to cool it.
That scenario would be particularly problematic since the company has long feared that some of the tons of water it is using to cool the reactors is escaping into the ground or into the ocean at the seaside plant.
Throughout the nuclear crisis, both Tepco and the government were accused of playing down the dangers posed by the meltdowns at the plant. Subsequent disclosures that the event was indeed far more severe than they let on have badly damaged their credibility.
Fukushima Daiichi’s vital cooling systems were knocked out in the early stages of the crisis last year. The cooling systems there now were put in place months after the accident. Although they are designed to be closed loops, circulating water in and out of the reactors, the reactors themselves were damaged when operators lost control of the plant and are likely leaking.
The internal investigation also found current radiation levels of 72.0 sieverts inside the drywell, enough to kill a person in a matter of minutes, as well as for electronic equipment to malfunction. The high readings could be a reflection of the low water level, since the water acts as a shield against radiation.
The high levels of radiation would complicate work to locate and remove the damaged fuel and decommission the plant’s six reactors — a process that is expected to take decades.
Cleanup will probably require flooding the inner reactor vessel and lowering tools into it to scoop up parts of the radioactive rubble. That strategy worked well at Three Mile Island after the 1979 accident there. But at Fukushima, the reactor vessels are known to have cracked, because they were overpressurized. Filling them with water would be difficult, unless the surrounding drywell can also be filled.
The fact that the drywell at No. 2 has so little water could mean that technicians will need to develop a new technique. “With levels of radiation extremely high, we would need to develop equipment that can tolerate high radiation,” Junichi Matsumoto, an executive at Tepco, said Tuesday.
To gauge water levels inside the drywell at reactor No. 2, workers in hazmat suits inserted an endoscope equipped with a tiny video camera, a thermometer, a dosimeter for measuring radiation and a water gauge.
It is unclear if they will be able to perform the same test at the other badly damaged reactors — No. 1 and No. 3 — because nearby radiation levels are higher there.
Experts also worry about a fourth reactor that was not operating at the time of the tsunami, but nevertheless poses a risk because of the large number of spent nuclear fuel rods stored in a pool there.
The spent fuel rods pose a particular threat, experts say, because they lie outside the unit’s containment vessels. Experts have become especially worried in recent weeks, as earthquakes continue to hit the area, that the damaged reactor building could collapse, draining the pool and possibly leading to another large leak of radioactive materials.
Tepco has been working to fortify the crumpled outer shell of the building of that reactor, No. 4.
“The plant is still in a precarious state,” said Kazuhiko Kudo, a professor of nuclear engineering at Kyushu University in southwestern Japan. “Unfortunately, all we can do is to keep pumping water inside the reactors,” he said, “and hope we don’t have another big earthquake.”
Chester Dawson/The Wall Street Journal
Chester Dawson/The Wall Street Journal
