Finally, no to nuclear power.

• Author: Tashiro, Akira
• Position: JAPAN

In the wake of simultaneous meltdowns in three nuclear reactors at Fukushima, a first in nuclear power history, public anger and anxiety rose quickly in Japan.

The national government ordered residents of Fukushima Prefecture within twenty kilometers of the nuclear station to evacuate. In some areas, even forty kilometers from the plant, residents had to evacuate due to high levels of radiation. Residents living in the vicinity of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant had always been led to believe that the facilities were completely safe. They never dreamed that they would be forced to flee the land where they had built farms, factories, homes, and lives.

A month after the Fukushima crisis began, I meta group of evacuees from the town of Futaba at an evacuation center in Saitama Prefecture near Tokyo. Every one of them told me, "If I could go home today, I would." Their town sits near the nuclear

plant and is highly contaminated. Meanwhile, the Japanese government and the power company were refusing to report publicly the levels of contamination found in the soil of that town.

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At the end of August, almost six months after the accident, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology finally released a map showing concentrations of radioactive cesium in the soil within a 100-kilometer radius from the nuclear plant. The residents' desperate hopes of returning to their homes in Futaba and Okuma have been cruelly dashed. When these people are told that they might be able to go home in twenty or thirty years, they hear, "Give it up. You are never going home."

If you include families with small children and other voluntary evacuees, about 70,000 people are now living away from their homes. They are profoundly worried about their internal and external exposure to radioactive fallout. Those who remain in Fukushima Prefecture are also frightened. The potential damage to human bodies from invisible radiation is now a growing concern among millions.

In October, the release of radiation from the plant was still continuing. Radioactive contamination has spread across a vast area of farmland, forests, and sea. Rice, vegetables, milk, fruits, and flowers have all been contaminated or are not being allowed to grow.

Japan has long had an anti-nuclear power movement, especially among residents near the sites selected for nuclear power plants. And yet, the voices of caution have never been strong enough to affect...