
Fukushima 8 years on – photo essay - D_Alex
https://www.podniesinski.pl/portal/fukushima-8-years-on/
======
mkesper
Article: Unfortunately, decontamination and cleaning are not enough to revive
the city. Residents are needed, but they do not want to come back. They remain
suspicious of the actions of the government, which assures them that radiation
levels have fallen to safe levels. They remember how, just a few years ago,
this same government unilaterally raised them. Additionally, the newly opened
cities still lack infrastructure — shops, hospitals and restaurants. And,
chiefly, neighbors. As a result, both cities remain practically empty. Eight
years after the disaster and two after their opening, only about 5% of
residents have returned. The vehicles and people seen on the streets only
create the appearance of an inhabited city. The majority are cars belonging to
construction companies and workers here to clean the area and demolish
buildings.

~~~
busymom0
I am honestly surprised even 5% of the people came back. I personally would
not trust a word the government says now considering they were the ones who
caused the whole disaster.

~~~
ptaipale
The "whole disaster" was actually a tsunami caused by an earthquake under the
sea, and problems around the nuclear plant are just a tiny side-issue compared
to the devastation caused by the tsunami.

Perhaps the government - many successive governments - could have changed
zoning, building code etc so that the disaster would have been smaller, but
the nuclear element of the "whole disaster" is just a minor component.

~~~
beders
I'm sure for all the people developing cancer because of this 'minor
component' it ain't a 'minor' component.

You can rebuild houses, you can re-grow crop, but you can't clean up nuclear
waste effectively. (3 Miles Island took 14 years and $1b, there are
radioactive boars roaming the forests of Bavaria, hundreds of miles away from
Chernobyl)

~~~
ptaipale
And when some of my countrymen fled Fukushima area because of radioactivity,
they came back home to Finland, where we have a higher _natural_ background
radiation level than the elevated radioactivity from which they fled.

When doing so, they took an airplane, where the radiation levels are even
higher (though of course only for just a few hours, but certainly everyone who
flies is exposed to the risk of cancer, and for those who get a cancer, it's
also not a minor component).

Risks of radioactivity are blown out of all proportion when dicsussing
application of nuclear power.

~~~
beders
Risks have been carefully measured and assessed for most incidents. You can
read up on the numbers elsewhere.

Doesn't mean you want to be living next to a nuclear power plant. And it gives
no comfort to people who have their health significantly affected because of
the actions or inactions of nuclear power plant operators and governments.

And you are speculating on reasons of your countrymen you probably have no
clue about. Did you talk to any of them ?

~~~
kalleboo
I'd rather live next to a nuclear power plant than a coal one (which is what
Japan is now building to replace lost nuclear capacity)

------
sdrothrock
> [https://www.podniesinski.pl/portal/wp-
> content/uploads/POD139...](https://www.podniesinski.pl/portal/wp-
> content/uploads/POD1398.jpg)

If anyone's curious about why this is set up for a ceremony and was left like
this (that is, why the timing was so coincidental), it's because the
earthquake occurred on the afternoon of March 11, which was a public school
graduation day around Japan.

Graduations occur in the morning, with students leaving soon after, so no
ceremony would have been interrupted. In the afternoon, teachers generally
start unwinding and slowly cleaning up the gym, so the earthquake would have
taken place then and that explains why the graduation ceremony decorations and
a few chairs/tarps are still out.

------
Grue3
Another fearmongering article. EDIT: Google Images finds photos from James
Galbraith who took them in early 2018 or earlier, not "8 years on" in the same
locations. At first I thought the OP author just took his images and put them
on the site with his watermark, but now I think he just took the same tour of
exclusion zone and was shown the same carefully preserved locations. Either
way it's unfair to characterise the entire "Fukushima" by a few locations
specifically preserved to show tsunami/earthquake damage.

How about these pictures from April 2019 instead?
[https://tokuhain.arukikata.co.jp/fukushima/2019/04/post_169....](https://tokuhain.arukikata.co.jp/fukushima/2019/04/post_169.html)

~~~
morsch
_The photographs are stolen and uncredited from James Galbraith who took them
in early 2018 or earlier, not "8 years on"._

That's a _very_ serious claim to make especially considering the author is a
professional photographer. I don't see any indication these are stolen, it's
just the same subject matter[1]. Maybe you shouldn't run around slandering
people without offering proof?

[1] Here are some of the photos credited to James Galbraith
[https://blurp.co.uk/overseas/eerie-pictures-show-the-
desolat...](https://blurp.co.uk/overseas/eerie-pictures-show-the-desolate-
streets-of-fukushima-seven-years-after-nuclear-disaster/)

~~~
Nemo157
In your link there is a photo of what looks to me like a school hall that
could very easily be a cropped and color changed version of a photo included
in the OP (/vice-versa).

~~~
D_Alex
It is amazing that both photographers took the same photos from almost the
same location... but if you look closely the photo in the "photo essay" was
actually taken from a slightly higher position. For example, you can see that
the upper corners of the retracted basketball board overlap with the girders
in one photo, but not in the other.

~~~
mimixco
Millions of people take the same photos from the same location, ie: spots in
Disneyland or the Southernmost Point in Key West.

------
lostlogin
Thanks for this. For those interested in radioactive wastelands, the current
TV series ‘Chernobyl’ seems very good, and so is the book ‘Chernobyl: The
History of a Nuclear Catastrophe’ by Serhii Plokhy

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_(miniseries)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_\(miniseries\))

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36204894](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36204894)

~~~
erikstarck
Sure, watch it but also read this article for balance:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/03/11...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/03/11/it-
sounds-crazy-but-fukushima-chernobyl-and-three-mile-island-show-why-nuclear-
is-inherently-safe/) "It Sounds Crazy, But Fukushima, Chernobyl, And Three
Mile Island Show Why Nuclear Is Inherently Safe"

~~~
onli
Written by the president of an openly pro-nuclear organization. Do you really
think reading propaganda is the way to get a balanced viewpoint?

~~~
lstodd
Can you maybe show us false statements in the article?

Dismissing anything as "propaganda" gets us nowhere.

~~~
onli
I'm happy to see you already got an answer :) _Edit:_ Oh, it's gone now? It
was a comment disputing the Colorado reference. There are more comments above.

For what it's worth, I smelled what's up right when he talked about chernobyl
right below the The Shocking Truth subheadline. The way the deaths are
calculated is highly disputed, and he does not reflect that properly, instead
presenting the pro-nuclear viewpoint as truth.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19927377](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19927377)
links an article that covers that in a way more balanced way.

~~~
BorRagnarok
I'm afraid the link to the article has died or isn't available otherwise,
here's the archive.org version
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180430120502/http://time.com/5...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180430120502/http://time.com/5255663/chernobyl-
disaster-book-anniversary/)

------
axelfontaine
The irony of having the XBox360 games "biohazard" and "fallout" still on
display is simply incredible!

------
D_Alex
The other photo essays on the site are well worth checking out also.
Especially the one on Buran shuttle!

------
Jedi72
For some reason its the ones with all the expensive equipment that get me. The
MRI machine, rows of motorcycles - all presumably instant scrap. Obviously the
human loss is greater, but that's not really the focus of these photos.

------
mimixco
Great comments in this thread. Let's also not forget Fukushima is still
_pouring radiation into the ocean,_ and that the melted core is _unreachable_
for cleanup.

------
teoteo
The half-life of uranium is thousands years so i never go back there

