Postcards From Fukushima

Fourteen and a half years ago, in March 2011, a triple disaster struck off the East Coast of Japan — an earthquake measuring over 9 on the Richter scale, a massive tsunami whose waves rose to 40m (131 feet), and a nuclear accident that destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. This was a complex accident brought about by the loss of electricity supply to the plant, submergence of the plant’s emergency diesel generators when the tsunami waves surged over the seawall, and ultimately the loss of cooling of the reactor fuel, and hydrogen explosions. In many ways, the accident is not over. It is still unfolding. 

Radiation is part of daily life in Fukushima. Here, the presence of radioactivity — particularly in areas that have not been decontaminated — in the soil, in the grass and plants, even in insects, shapes where people can live (or in most cases, where they can no longer live), where they go (or not and for how long), where and how they work (and what they do for work), and who they can be. Radiation detectors appear next to traffic lights, showing the dose in microsieverts per hour. 

A radiation detector in a school yard shows a reading of 2.2 microsieverts per hour. The school was evacuated soon after the earthquake. A clock on a school tower tells the time — 2:46 pm — when the earthquake struck and the school ceased to be a place of learning. It is now a memorial. Rather than demolish it, it has been left intact, frozen in time as a reminder of what was lost. 

I visited on a hot day in July, protected in a hard hat, face mask, and gloves. I peered through glass windows into a day at school fourteen and a half years ago. Books and school supplies were left hastily behind on tables. Bookbags and games were stored in shelves never to be retrieved. Clay-based art projects were left to dry on a windowsill. A Yamaha keyboard stood silent and dusty. In the teacher’s lounge, the furniture was collapsed. Sneakers were diligently stored on shelves. Things have moved, shifted, fallen out, but are largely still precisely where they were abandoned. The students who went to this school were all evacuated safely. Many have probably recently graduated from college, the trajectories of their lives altered by the disaster and the enduring presence of radiation in their hometown.

“Bringing back Fukushima”, is a mantra in the town, but it is a difficult endeavour. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant traverses two towns in the Fukushima prefecture — Okuma and Futaba. Within the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant sit three damaged reactors (units 1, 2, and 3) with melted and resolidified fuel. That fuel is now waste and is challenging to handle. It is still highly radioactive and can only be maneuvered remotely. Efforts to plan the disposal of this fuel have led to significant advances in robotics. Airborne drones are used to survey the land for radiation dose rates. Robots are being used to remove small samples of the fuel from the damaged reactors for testing. Also inside the plant are millions of gallons of contaminated water that are being slowly purified, diluted, and released into the ocean. 

But even these tasks, daunting though they are, feel more contained than the work outside the plant, decontaminating Fukushima. This involves removing decontaminated soil and plants, reducing the volume where possible (through incineration), and storing that soil in heavy sealed bags, for now, in what is called an interim storage facility, on land “sacrificed” by the residents. The people of Fukushima have been promised that this facility is temporary and that the contaminated soil will be relocated to a different prefecture. But few believe the radioactive soil will be removed by March 2045 as promised by the government. 

But who are the people of Fukushima now? Most families who evacuated immediately after the accident have not returned. Those who had young children sought stability, and in some cases, moved to distant cities. Others evacuated to the nearest city, Iwaki, and still periodically return to visit homes they cannot inhabit. They have been coming for years to oversee the rebuilding of Fukushima, to revive agriculture, to “bring back Fukushima”. 

But new families who were not here before are arriving now too, encouraged by economic stimuli meant to revive the region. They have young children and pets. At a community barbecue, there were babies in strollers, two young girls handing out desserts to visitors, and others racing each other in the open space outside the summer school building. As I watched them play, I wondered: Do these children understand what radioactivity is? How do they navigate where they go? Do their parents tell them to stay away from areas that might still be contaminated? 

As I drove around, I saw green in every direction. The plants and trees have taken over. Grass grows through concrete. Vines wrap around electric poles, engulfing them. In many places, the grass is dense and looks to be several feet high. Plants are cut and incinerated before contaminated soil is removed, but they grow back, and very quickly, too. “Kuma” in Japanese means bear — the mascot of the town. When the residents of Okuma first returned after the accident to visit the town, they described it as having become a zoo. There were bears, wild boar, and ostriches all over town. 

In the nearly decade and a half that humans have largely been away from Fukushima, nature has reclaimed it. To me, this raises questions about who the radiation harmed — humans or nature? And when we think about and work on removing the presence of radiation, who are we centering — people or the environment? 

Locals puzzle over the order in which different areas are being decontaminated. The process seems at once transparent and opaque. Requests made by residents can be sent to the local government, and then on to the national government offices, where determinations about decontamination priorities are made. It is clear that agricultural and residential lands are being prioritized. Woods and forests are low priority, and only minimal work has been done, in part because these areas are so tricky to decontaminate. Difficult decisions must be made about preserving trees or not, and about disturbing natural habitats or not. These decisions seem to have largely been deferred. In what I see around me, it feels as if the approach to “bringing back Fukushima” is human-centered. What would an equally human and nature-centered approach to decontamination be? What would it look like if we thought of both humans and nature when we planned for such disasters? Who speaks for nature?

An abiding puzzle that Fukushima poses is about safety. When is a land safe? When are people safe? When are plants and animals safe? There are no easy answers. Myths and local knowledge about radiation and plants have emerged. Some believe that sunflower plants remove radioactivity from the soil. I see large sunflower gardens everywhere. 

What would an equally human and nature-centered approach to decontamination be? What would it look like if we thought of both humans and nature when we planned for such disasters? Who speaks for nature?

Researchers in Fukushima have been building their own knowledge about the presence of radiation in plants and trees. We are told that radioactive cesium selectively concentrates in the youngest parts of plants and trees — in young shoots and leaves. It may also concentrate in seeds and is known to concentrate in mushrooms. There are local traditions around how and when fruits and vegetables are consumed seasonally. I wonder, have these been altered? And I ask myself again, when is a land safe? What does it mean to be safe? In answering these questions, we confront big gaps in our knowledge about the effects of low doses of radiation. In the absence of definite knowledge, is it better to take on a possible risk or a certain disconnection from one’s homeland? 

Families return to Fukushima even as decontamination work remains ongoing and scattered hotspots of radioactivity remain. The Fukushima prefecture wishes to encourage tourism. It has reopened the Ono train station and is creating visitor centers where people can learn about the history of the region, including the very recent history of disaster and ongoing recovery. 

The nuclear reactors that once powered Tokyo will never be restarted. In their place, vast solar installations can be found throughout the region. They have been built on decontaminated land. The locals have mixed feelings about them. They provide safe electricity but take up so much valuable agricultural land to provide a mere fraction of what the reactors once produced. One group of community members, the Fukushima grandpas, who volunteered to work in areas of Fukushima pre-decontamination when radiation levels were much higher, have a surprising take on nuclear energy. They regret that the accident ever happened, but believe that nuclear energy was good for the region. To hear this sentiment in a region so deeply devastated by the impacts of a nuclear accident is astonishing to me. 

On our penultimate day, we awoke to the news that an earthquake had struck off the east coast of Japan (a predecessor to the massive earthquake in Kamchatka, Russia). Some of us felt the tremors in the night. Seated in the classroom the next day, our dozens of phones rang with tsunami warnings. Our hotel had been evacuated. We returned later that day, navigating closed roads, a little perturbed, but also intensely aware of how this experience utterly paled in comparison to what the people of Fukushima endured fourteen and a half years ago. 

In a time when there is growing interest in nuclear energy, with even local communities calling for the construction of small reactors in some parts of the world, what does Fukushima tell us, beyond the obvious, which is to do everything in our power to prevent another large accident? I think it tells us about the long time scales of engineering responsibilities. I think it tells us that serious accidents have no clear endpoint. I think it also tells us that engineering design and decisions should not be disconnected from the realities of being on the ground and of living the consequences of engineering failures. Different fuel forms, a higher sea wall, better placement of emergency diesel generators, building the plant on higher ground — any of these things could have prevented the accident that still unfolds today. Attention to local knowledge could have led to different decisions. We did not pay heed to this local knowledge then, but we should now.