Greenpeace | Radioactivity on the Move 2020
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Lifted evacuation areas - Namie and Iitate On 31 March 2017, the Japanese government lifted the evacuation orders for areas in Namie Town and Iitate Village, which lie north and northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and are not in the “Difficult to Return” zone. In March 2011, the populations of Iitate and Namie districts were 6,509 and 21,434 respectively.4 As of 31 January 2020, the population of Namie was 1189 (compared with 896 in 2019), and the population of Iitate, as of 1 January 2020, was 1,392 (compared with 1,003 as of 1 February 2019). Greenpeace Japan conducted radiation surveys in Namie and Iitate in 2011; we resumed survey work in Iitate in 2015 and have revisited each year subsequently. In September 2017, Greenpeace Japan extended its survey to the central area of Namie Town where the majority of the population formerly lived. As with the results of our surveys in Iitate conducted in 2015, 2016, and 2017, we found that as of October 2019 radiation levels in the area of Namie where the evacuation order has been lifted are still significantly higher than the government’s current long-term target level of 0.23 μSv/h. As confirmed in our survey of these open areas, radiation exposure for people returning to Namie and Iitate would, in some cases, be well in excess of the recommended maximum of 1 mSv/y. The Japanese government maintains that exposure up to 20 mSv/y is acceptable in these lifted evacuation order areas. This is despite clear scientific evidence of the cancer risks from low dose radiation exposure in the 1-5 mSv/y range, which the Japanese government continues to disregard.5
Namie Town The town of Namie lies 10 km north-northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and has clearly undergone extensive decontamination between 2014 and 2017. However, in areas surveyed by Greenpeace Japan in 2019, this decontamination has clearly failed to reduce radiation levels to the government’s current long-term target of 0.23 μSv/h. The Takase river, which flows through Namie, acts as a crossing point between the publicly open area and “Difficult to Return” zone of Namie.
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