Fukushima Fallout- Video Media

This short film, called "Blind," imagines whatwould happen if the gas masks that so many Japanese bought after Fukushima had ended up being necessary in Tokyo. It shows the mundane realities of a radioactive life — the blinged-out schoolgirl respirators are a particularly nice touch — but also touches on the bigger issues of what a nuclear accident can do to lives and families.

 

Experts warn that the possibility of evacuating parts of Tokyo can no longer be ignored. Further, they say that the total amount of radiation leaked will exceed amounts released from Chernobyl, making Fukushima the worst nuclear disaster in history. Al Jazeera’s Steve Chao reports from the Japanese capital.

 

Photos Tell Tale of Two Ghost Towns…

Evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima  Prefecture, northeastern Japan.

“Twenty-five years after a reactor at Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded and melted down, its surroundings are well-explored territory, including the abandoned workers’ town of Pripyat, two kilometers (about a mile) from the plant. The guides who take visitors through the area know exactly where to go and, more important, what to avoid.

The people who fled Futaba, the town nearest to the Fukushima plant, need only look to Pripyat, some 8,000 kms (5,000 miles) away, for a hint of what it will probably turn into: a ghost town forever looking as though it expects its 7,000-plus people to return any minute.
In Futaba, unlike in Pripyat, you are in uncharted territory. There are no guides. The radioactive hot spots are uncharted, and behind every corner, danger may lurk that will not turn malignant for years, even decades. Radiation cannot be sensed like a hum or a smell. The sun shines and the wind blows, and only the beeping of your Geiger counter tells you something is wrong.” ~ The Arab Times

 

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