"It's invisible substances," said Sumiko Goto, a manager of a hotel filled with engineers, officials and construction workers who've been there for months cleaning up the wreckage that inundated everything within a kilometer of the shoreline. "It's in the air, in the river, on the walls," she said. "People are very anxious about the situation. Radioactive substances come from the ground, from the river bottom."
Uncertain reports daily fuel the fears. One day people hear of a leak through which radioactive water is pouring into the sea, poisoning the fish that are a staple of everyone's diet. Next, there are stories of emissions of radioactive xenon gas and then a reading of radioactive cesium in powdered milk - enough for the Meiji Company to recall 400,000 cans of it this week "so people can feel their infants are safe".
All the while officials talk of an imminent "cold shutdown" of the reactors, the stage at which at last the water for cooling the nuclear fuel rods is no longer boiling - and therefore not capable of reheating the fuel.
It's all very confusing, so much so that only 40,000 of the 70,000 people who once inhabited this city have returned. About 13,000 of them lived in a ward within the 20-kilometer zone, meaning they can't stay in their old homes and need permission to go back and retrieve their belongings.
No comments:
Post a Comment