When the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster occurred follow an seism in Japan in 2011,over 150,000 peoplefrom Fukushima and the surrounding areas were evacuated due to fears of actinotherapy and contamination . The political science then continued to supervise the area using airborne observation to ensure radiation degree .
But for the city of Date , matter were a footling different . Despite being just 60 kilometer 37 mile ) from the nuclear power plant , when many neighboring towns were being evacuate , Date was not . So the city manager and the metropolis ’s 65,000 citizens took things into their own men , and part evaluate their own radiation photo . What their event show , astonishingly , is that the government ’s predictions of irradiation taken from the zephyr overestimated the levels of radiation on the ground by a element of four . The results have been publish in theJournal of Radiological Protection .
By doing the study themselves , the resident were capable to give an incredibly rare insight into an individual ’s radiotherapy exposure immediately come a nuclear disaster . Obviously , most of the fourth dimension , multitude are evacuate , and getting personal sensors to those that have n’t been is both costly and difficult . That is why most government activity will bank on the aerial monitoring of realm straight following nuclear disaster , which they then habituate to judge the radiation syndrome at solid ground stage , and then predict the sum of money that would be experienced if people were still living there .
“ We decided that we should not bet on the home government activity and that we had to take our own independent actions , ” the mayor of Date , Shoji Nishida , saidthree long time after the event . The city first issued personal monitoring kits that measure out Vasco da Gamma rays , known as dosimeters , to children under the geezerhood of 16 , as well as significant mothers .
As residents voluntarily started to help in the decontamination of the city , and more money from urban center funds was made uncommitted , the dosimeter were rolled out to all 65,000 citizenry still living in Date , producing a massive information place on individual citizen ’s photo grade for the yr right away follow the calamity . This has now been compare to the official government monitoring from the air , and the conclusion was not what was expected .
It seems that the real world data of pic story is four times miserable than the figure ace derived from the flybys . This , the researchers suggest , means that extreme measure taken adopt the Fukushima disaster , such as take out polluted surface soil and strip trees of bark , may have been unnecessary . It also puts into enquiry the standard way of monitoring radiation therapy level , which might need to be revise . /
