Environment & Energy

theHandpuppet

(19,964 posts) Tue Apr 1, 2014, 08:18 PM Apr 2014

First Fukushima evacuees return to exclusion-zone homes

I'm sorry, but there's no one in charge there who could convince me that it's safe!

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26830492
BBC News
1 April 2014
First Fukushima evacuees return to exclusion-zone homes

The first group of Fukushima evacuees have returned to their homes, three years after the disaster at the nuclear power plant.

About 350 residents have been allowed to return to Miyakoji district in Tamura city, which lies inside the 20km-radius exclusion zone.

The authorities say radiation levels in the area are low enough for habitation - but many residents remain hesitant.

Some 80,000 people were evacuated after the nuclear crisis at the plant.... MORE

3 replies

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First Fukushima evacuees return to exclusion-zone homes (Original Post) theHandpuppet Apr 2014 OP

Me neither. Demeter Apr 2014 #1

Almost every industrialized country has universal healthcare including Japan think Apr 2014 #2

The thing that pissed me off the most about this evacuation... hunter Apr 2014 #3

Demeter

(85,373 posts)

1. Me neither.

Reply to theHandpuppet (Original post)

Tue Apr 1, 2014, 08:19 PM

Apr 2014

I don't suppose Japan has universal single payer national health insurance, either.

think

(11,641 posts)

2. Almost every industrialized country has universal healthcare including Japan

Reply to Demeter (Reply #1)

Tue Apr 1, 2014, 08:46 PM

Apr 2014

Health care system in Japan

The health care system in Japan provides healthcare services, including screening examinations, prenatal care and infectious disease control, with the patient accepting responsibility for 30% of these costs while the government pays the remaining 70%. Payment for personal medical services is offered through a universal health care insurance system that provides relative equality of access, with fees set by a government committee. People without insurance through employers can participate in a national health insurance programme administered by local governments. Patients are free to select physicians or facilities of their choice and cannot be denied coverage. Hospitals, by law, must be run as non-profit and be managed by physicians. For-profit corporations are not allowed to own or operate hospitals. Clinics must be owned and operated by physicians.

As of the moment, Japan's Universal Healthcare System is being revamped by the current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe[1] as popularized by Abenomics.....

Overview

Since 1961 Japan has provided universal health coverage, which allows virtually all access to preventive, curative and rehabilitative services at an affordable cost.[2]

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_system_in_Japan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care

hunter

(38,328 posts)

3. The thing that pissed me off the most about this evacuation...

Reply to theHandpuppet (Original post)

Wed Apr 2, 2014, 01:42 PM

Apr 2014

... was that so many pets and farm animals were left to die. Not of "radiation" but for lack of water, food, and exposure.

Fuck that. The army would have had to drag me out of there kicking and screaming without my animals.

Hideko Takeda says her father never recovered from losing his home and his work

She has come to burn incense on her father's grave. The black marble is still shiny and new. She has a photograph of him with her. He was tall for a Japanese farmer and at 80 still robust. Each day he still milked the cows and tended his fields.

But then the disaster stuck and he was forced to flee, leaving his cows to starve to death in their shed. It broke him, Mrs Takeda says; his health collapsed, within two years he was dead.

"I blame the power company [Tepco] for his death," she said. "They took everything from him, his dreams, his hope. They took his land and scattered his family far from home. Nothing will ever bring those back."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26483945

That shouldn't have happened. They ought to have let older people stay (with their informed consent) and they ought to have let other people evacuate with their pets.

If I was a pensioner there I'd move back without hesitation. The place I grew up in, nineteen sixties Los Angeles, was more toxic than cities in the vicinity of Fukushima, even in the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe. I remember as a kid some days it hurt to breathe. And god only knows what was in the local fish we ate. Los Angeles was dumping it's sewage in the ocean with minimal treatment and this included industrial wastes. They almost killed off the brown pelicans and other wildlife with DDT production wastes.

Current radiation levels around the power plant are lower than the natural background levels found in some U.S. cities.

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