Wild boars (Sus scrofa) loaded with dangerous quantities of cesium 137 have been turning up in tests conducted in central Sweden. Some specimens have been found carrying levels as high as 16,000 becquerels of radioactivity per kilogram of meat — an amount ten times higher than the set safety threshold in that country.

[…]

Boar meat is very popular throughout Europe and is used in many goulashes and stews. Boar is even considered a delicacy in multiple locations.

“Hunters won’t shoot the animals,” explained Calluna consultant Ulf Frykman, to Fox News. “When you see 16,000 [Bq/kg], people get worried.”

Wild pigs are about as far apart in their feeding behaviors from a koala bear as you can get. While a koala lives almost exclusively on a diet of eucalyptus leaves taken high in the trees, wild boars and feral pigs will eat just about anything — most of which is foraged from the ground where isotopes can remain in heavy concentrations. Additionally, wild boars like to feast on truffles, false truffles and other mushrooms known to readily absorb radiation.

“The cesium stays in the ground,” Frykman told Fox News. “It’s not a problem for moose and deer anymore who eat higher up, from bushes.”

[…]

Nuclear Hogs: A Problem Throughout Europe

It’s not only Sweden that is experiencing problems with nuclear hogs. Last winter in the Sumava mountain region, an area shared by Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria, a spike in radioactive boars was observed after an unusually cold and snowy winter forced the animals there to resort to a diet of false truffles — bio-concentrating radioactivity upward into the wild swine.

Germany has been hampered by radioactive boar problems for years. In many regions, all boar meat must be tested for radioactivity with the government being forced by regulations to buy all contaminated meat from the hunters who harvest it. There are also widespread reports in Germany of these contaminated animals attacking people.

Radioactive Wild Boars Running Amok Around Fukushima Too

Earlier this year, Fukushima Prefecture in Japan underwent a radioactive wild boar crisis after hundreds of specimens moved down from the mountains into contaminated and largely deserted areas around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Reports from the ground described aggressive behavior where boars would “stalk” and even attack people.

[…]

Read more.

In light of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis, the Fukushima Prefectural Government is hoping to find a new, faster and easier way to certify the safety of homegrown rice to ease the burden on local farmers.

The blanket radiation-screening method used in Fukushima is not known for being quick and efficient, yet the government and farmers are stuck with it for the time being until an alternative that is equally assuring to consumers can be found.

 

Struggling to counter misinformation about locally grown produce stemming from the core meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in 2011, farmers are looking to the globally recognized Good Agricultural Practice system, a third-party standard that certifies adherence to the standards recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The farmers hope GAP can help convince consumers that their products are safe, and holders of GAP certification are rising nationwide.

In addition to the GAP auditing system, there is a Japanese version dubbed “JGAP” recommended by the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry to verify that farmers have recorded their production processes and had their products screened and certified by designated firms and groups. As of 2016, about 4,000 JGAP certificates had been issued.

In May, the Fukushima Prefectural Government vowed to make itself the prefecture with the most GAP certificates. As of Nov. 20, Fukushima had acquired 17 GAP and JGAP certificates. The prefecture plans to acquire more than 140 certificates by the 2020 Olympics.

Separately, Fukushima designed its own verification system (dubbed “FGAP”) to reflect its experience with the nuclear crisis. In addition to the list of items inspected under GAP, such as food safety and environmental protection, FGAP adds a category pertaining to countermeasures for radioactive substances.

FGAP calls for the management of rice paddy radiation levels and for voluntary radiation screenings before shipment. To promote this GAP variation, the Fukushima Prefectural Government plans to cover all expenses linked to the acquisition and renewal of FGAP certificates.

An official from the farm ministry’s Agricultural Production Bureau called GAP an “effective method to raise confidence” in food safety.

The Finance Ministry’s Budget Bureau, which assesses cost allocations for the blanket screening method, said the two systems are “different in nature but looking in the same direction.”

In 2012, the Fukushima Prefectural Government began screening all rice grown in the prefecture after excessive levels of radioactive cesium were detected in the previous year’s crop.

The number of samples exceeding 100 becquerels per kilogram — the government’s safety limit for the isotope — has dropped each year, and no samples tested since 2015 have been found over the limit.

Blanket screening costs an estimated ¥6 billion per year, and Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc, which runs the Fukushima No. 1 plant, shoulders at least ¥5 billion of that. The remainder is covered by state funds.

The prefecture’s environmental protection and farm division said it is keen to speed up efforts to quell false rumors about rice contamination.

[…]

Read more.

[…]

The AQSIQ banned imports of food produced in 10 prefectures in Japan including Miyagi, Nagano and Fukushima in 2011, amid fears of radiation contamination following the disaster.

The quality watchdog did not reply to a request for comment from the Global Times as of press time. Neither has any official statement from the Japanese side been released.

The Kyodo report said the talks were “a sign that the governments of the two countries are looking for ways to mend ties as they mark [in 2018] the 40th anniversary of the signing of the treaty of peace and friendship between Japan and China.” 

But this view was seen as overly optimistic by some Chinese experts.

Chen Zilei, deputy director of the National Association for the Japanese Economy, told the Global Times on Wednesday that the beginning of such talks does not mean an easing or lifting of the ban is imminent.

“The beginning of negotiations might signal an improvement in bilateral relations, but we have our own supervision standards and requirements for imported goods, which will not be changed,” Chen said.

Besides, Japan needs to publicize the accident-related information in a more open and transparent way in order to address the concerns, Chen said, adding that this would be a prerequisite for carrying out the negotiations.

“It is also Japan’s obligation to the international community,” he noted.

[…]

“Most consumers have a psychological barrier against accepting food from the nuclear radiation areas,” Zhu said, noting that Japanese seafood has not been very popular in the Chinese market over the past two years, partly due to increasing competition from products from countries such as Denmark, Norway and Canada.

“Friends around me have declined to eat any Japanese seafood since the accident took place since you cannot tell whether it is from the radiation-stricken area or not,” he said.

Read more.

The governor of Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture is in Paris to promote farm products that are suffering from a damaged reputation following the 2011 nuclear accident.

[…]

Uchibori organized the “Fukushima Pride” tasting event on Saturday at a shopping mall near Paris. Rice and fruit products were handed out to shoppers.

One visitor said she likes the dried peaches a lot and is not concerned about the safety of Fukushima produce now that it is widely circulated.

France has seen Japanese cuisine surge in popularity, which is pushing up the import of luxury foodstuffs and sake rice wine.

[…]

The Japanese government has been calling on other countries to lift import restrictions on its food products, after they cleared radiation screening.

In December, the European Union lifted import controls on some produce and seafood from regions affected by the nuclear accident.

Read more at Fukushima food promoted in Paris

In meeting with Tokyo’s foreign minister, Chief Executive Carrie Lam says restrictions will stay in place for now, while government reaffirms commitment to enforcing sanctions against North Korea

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor on Sunday rejected for the time being Tokyo’s official request that the city lift restrictions on Japanese food imports brought in after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, citing public safety.

[…]

Lam expressed her reluctance to lift the food ban, after Kono raised the possibility during the meeting.

In the wake of the 2011 earthquake and nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Hong Kong banned the import of fresh produce and milk from the prefecture and the four neighbouring prefectures, while conducting targeted radiation testing on fresh produce from the rest of Japan.

[…]

“She emphasised that it is incumbent upon the [government] to safeguard public health and hence effective measures must be in place to ensure food safety and to maintain public confidence,” a statement issued by Lam’s office read.

“Under this premise, the Food and Health Bureau will maintain communication with the Japanese authorities to review the latest situation and adopt appropriate measures in relation to the import ban.”

Secretary for Food and Health Professor Sophia Chan Siu-chee said her department had been in touch with Japan’s agriculture ministry over the ban and that “food safety is the primary concern”.

[….]

It is scientifically proven it is very safe and those people from Hong Kong who come to Japan [are] already eating spinach and cucumbers from Fukushima. And I think Hong Kong people who have been to Japanese restaurants have eaten Fukushima vegetables and fruit,” Kono told NowTV. 

“I would like to tell the Hong Kong people to come to Japan and enjoy the food in Japan.”

The city’s importers and legislators earlier urged Lam to be cautious about Tokyo’s request to lift restrictions on Japanese food imports, saying the government had to make sure all imports would not be contaminated with radiation.

Read more at Hong Kong will not lift post-Fukushima ban on some Japanese food

Russia has lifted its ban on Japanese seafood imports adopted in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Moscow’s Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance on Friday approved seafood imports from six prefectures in northeastern and eastern Japan — Iwate, Miyagi, Yamagata, Ibaraki, Chiba and Niigata.

It also said Russia will accept products from Fukushima Prefecture that are accompanied by documentation showing they are free of contamination.

[…]

Russia banned fishery imports from over 200 companies that April before allowing products from Aomori Prefecture in July 2015.

According to Japan’s Fisheries Agency, more than 20 countries and regions, including China and South Korea as well as the European Union, still ban or partially ban imports of Japanese seafood products.

Read more at Russia lifts ban on Japan seafood adopted after Fukushima crisis

SUZHOU – Environment Minister Masaharu Nakagawa told his counterparts from China and South Korea on Sunday that radioactive decontamination work following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster is “all done” except for so-called difficult-to-return-to zones.

At the 20th Tripartite Environment Ministers’ Meeting held in Suzhou, in eastern China, Nakagawa also used the opportunity to again request the lifting of food import restrictions from prefectures hit by the Fukushima disaster.

Beijing has banned food imports from 10 prefectures surrounding the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, while Seoul has blocked Japanese seafood imports from eight prefectures.

Nakagawa explained to Chinese Ecology and Environment Minister Li Ganjie and South Korean Environment Minister Kim Eun-kyung that Japan has strict food safety standards in place that exceed international requirements. “Environmental regeneration in Fukushima is progressing steadily,” he said.

[…]

 

Read more.

KORIYAMA, FUKUSHIMA PREF. – The pumpkin is diced, the chicken carved and the eggs beaten into an omelet, but the people preparing the food are not chefs — they are scientists testing produce from the Fukushima region.

Seven years after the March 2011 nuclear crisis caused by devastating tsunami, rigorous testing shows no radioactive threat from Fukushima’s produce, officials and experts say.

But local producers say they still face crippling suspicion from consumers.

More than 205,000 food items have been tested at the Fukushima Agricultural Technology Centre since March 2011, with Japan setting a standard of no more than 100 becquerels of radioactivity per kilogram (bq/kg).

The European Union, by comparison, sets that level at 1,250 bq/kg and the U.S. at 1,200.

In the last year, the center says no cultivated produce or farm-reared livestock have exceeded the government’s limit. In all just nine samples out of tens of thousands were over the limit: eight from fish bred in inland ponds and one from a sample of wild mushrooms.

Each day, more than 150 samples are prepared, coded, weighed and then passed through a “germanium semiconductor detector.” Rice undergoes screening elsewhere.

While radiation affected several regions, which have their own testing processes, Fukushima’s program is the most systematic, testament to the particularly severe reputational damage it suffered.

In the wake of the nuclear crisis, a wide-scale decontamination program has been carried out in Fukushima.

It can’t be done in forests, where thick tree growth makes it impractical. But elsewhere topsoil has been removed, trees washed down and potassium sprinkled to reduce cesium uptake.

[…]

The situation is even worse for fisherman, many of whom have survived only on compensation paid by the manager of the defunct Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.

The tsunami destroyed ports across the region and demand for Fukushima seafood is low despite an even stricter testing standard of 50 bq/kg.

“When we catch fish and send it to market in Tokyo, some people don’t want to buy it,” said Kazunori Yoshida, director of Iwaki’s fishing cooperative.

As a result, fishermen brought in just 3,200 tons of seafood in the area last year, down from 24,700 in 2010.

The problem remains one of perception, despite the fact that independent testing confirms what government labs show.

The Minna no Data (Our Data) NGO carries out its own testing and spokesman Hidetake Ishimaru said the group was “very surprised” by the “mostly very low levels” it found in Fukushima produce.

[…]

Read more.

By Allison Herrera

[…]

“Chernobyl was a beautiful place,” she says. “I don’t know why they put this disaster there.”

In April 1986, Chernobyl’s reactor 4 exploded as scientists were conducting an experiment at the plant. The explosion sent clouds of radiation particles across Europe. Almost 100 villages in Ukraine were evacuated as hundreds of thousands of soldiers from the across the former Soviet Union, including Belarus and Ukraine, were sent in to clean up and contain the damage.

Now, 32 years later with $700 billion spent, Ukraine is still cleaning up. The country has created a 1,000-square-mile “exclusion zone” around the disaster that prohibits people from living there. Scientists take samples of the soil, wood and vegetation inside the zone to monitor radiation levels.

Nina’s potato field isn’t in the zone, but for a while, scientists also monitored the soil in her village. Sometimes the levels were just as bad as those in the zone.

Why? Because the soldiers sent to clean up after the disaster stayed in her village.

Almost 80 miles away from Nina is a block of Soviet-style buildings on the outskirts of central Kiev. It’s here that scientists Valery Kashparov and Valentin Protsyk work for the Ukrainian Institute of Agricultural Radiology (UIAR). They’re the people who monitor the soil, wood, plants and animals inside and outside the exclusion zone. 

In the first years after the disaster, the focus was the cleanup. Around 800,000 soldiers, firefighters, miners and engineers — collectively known as “liquidators” — were tasked with cleaning up the radiation. In 1991, they were able to “stabilize” the areas surrounding the plant. That’s when they implemented the exclusion zone, which includes the northernmost portions of Kiev and Zhytomyr oblasts. Cities closest to the plant will never be inhabitable — like the city of Pripyat, which once had a population of nearly 50,000.

At the radiation institute, down a long, dark hallway, are rooms where bags full of soil, wood and grass lay on the floor. These samples were taken from within the exclusion zone and are waiting to be tested for radiation levels. As Kashparov explains, it’s not the external radiation they worry about, these days — but rather what gets consumed. Stuff like iodine and cesium, which has a long half life. How do they get in the body? By drinking milk, for example.

“Because of the settlement, we had very low level density of contamination with cesium, but very high transfer of cesium from soil to grass from the root — and from grass to the animals as milk. And people use this milk and obtain the internal radiation after it,” explains Kasparov.

[…]

Read more.

TAIPEI (Kyodo) — Voters in Taiwan approved a referendum Saturday to maintain a ban on food products from five Japanese prefectures, imposed after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, dealing a major blow to the government of President Tsai Ing-wen and the island’s relations with Japan.

The Central Election Commission website showed that a total of 7.79 million approved the initiative, well over the 25 percent required out of 19.76 million eligible voters, against 2.23 million votes in opposition.

The referendum result is legally binding and government agencies must take necessary action.

 

The result dealt a significant blow to the Democratic Progressive Party government that proposed easing the ban after coming to power in May 2016, but backed away when the main opposition Nationalist Party (KMT) questioned the new government’s ability to ensure the safety of the imported products.

[…]

China is the only other country still restricting comprehensive imports from Fukushima Prefecture and nearby Ibaraki, Gunma, Tochigi, and Chiba prefectures.

Read more.

By Simon Denyer

[…]

The twin natural disasters in March 2011 killed 16,000 people, and the subsequent reactor explosions sent clouds of radioactive dust spewing over thousands of square miles of northern Japan, causing 165,000 people to flee their homes across 12 percent of the prefecture. Agriculture and fishing industries collapsed as consumers steered clear of their products, and tourists shunned the region.

Most of the evacuees have gone home across the prefecture. Less than 3 percent — an area roughly twice the size of the District of Columbia — of the prefecture remains officially off limits: in the mountainous forests and ghost towns nearest the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. 

Huge swaths of topsoil have been removed. Potassium has been added to soil to displace the radioactive cesium that fell from the sky and to prevent it entering plants through their roots.

[Near Fukushima’s disaster site, a shattered town and scattered lives]

Japan has set stringent limits on the amount of cesium allowed in food, 12 times stricter than the United States. And an agriculture testing center in the city of Koriyama has analyzed 210,000 samples of local produce, including peaches, rice, asparagus, strawberries and beef from the danger zone. At the Onahama fishing port, a similar effort monitors fish from every ocean catch.

[…]

Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the ill-fated plant, spent two months after the nuclear disaster denying that a meltdown had occurred. TEPCO later apologized for a “coverup” that remains the source of much bitterness among people here.

Katsunobu Sakurai, former mayor of the nearby town of Minamisoma, said TEPCO gave out little information about the disaster during a chaotic evacuation that ultimately led to the deaths of 3,700 people, including many elderly people whose medical care was interrupted.

In 2012, TEPCO was forced to admit that it had failed to heed safety warnings before the accident, or even consider the risk of a large tsunami, because it feared doing so would undermine public confidence in the industry.

[…]

Read more.

By DAISUKE HIRABAYASHI/ Staff Writer

FUKUSHIMA–Shipments of Fukushima rice have rebounded since the 2011 nuclear disaster, but Masao Matsukawa, a rice farmer in the prefecture, is not happy about the situation.

Before the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, most of the rice grown at Matsukawa’s farm in Sukagawa was sold for household use.

Now, the bulk of his annual harvest of 15 tons is designated for “industrial use,” mainly by convenience store and restaurant chains, and simply labeled “domestic product.”

“I am so sad about it all,” Matsukawa, 74, said. “I am so confident in the rice I grow, so I wish to sell it openly under the ‘Fukushima’ label.”
But rice from the northeastern prefecture is still struggling to reach pre-disaster levels for household use because of lingering consumer concerns about radiation.

The nuclear disaster took a heavy toll on the prices of Fukushima rice.

[…]

When the scope is limited to rice handled by the Fukushima Prefecture branch of the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations, industrial use accounts for more than 80 percent of the shipments, up about 15 percentage points from pre-disaster levels, officials said.

“There is high demand for industrial use rice from Fukushima Prefecture, which is cheap for its taste,” one distributor said.
Industrial use rice often only carries a “domestic” label with no mention of the production area.

But labels on rice for hpusehold use usually show the production area. And consumers are still pulling back from Fukushima labels.

Rice of the Tennotsubu strain, a brand from Fukushima Prefecture that debuted in autumn 2011, was put on the shelves at a rice store in Tokyo last year, only to be withdrawn because of next-to-nothing sales.

[…]

The prefectural government plans to switch to a sample testing, possibly with the 2020 harvest.

According to a Consumer Affairs Agency survey conducted in February, 12.5 percent of consumers are hesitant to buy products from Fukushima Prefecture because of possible radioactive content.

Although that percentage is the lowest since the survey started in 2013, it shows that aversion to Fukushima products remains.

Read more at As fears linger, Fukushima rice rebounds under anonymity

Elliot Waldman

[…]

The following day, three former executives of the Tokyo Electric Power Corporation, or TEPCO—which operated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant when it took a direct hit from the tsunami—entered the district courthouse in Tokyo for the final day of their trial. They reiterated pleas of “not guilty” in response to charges of criminal negligence in connection with the disaster at Fukushima. The prosecution is requesting that each defendant serve five years in prison.

The case has garnered attention in Japan partly for the unusual circumstances that led to it. Initially, the Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office twice declined to issue indictments. But an inquest panel, a mechanism by which aggrieved plaintiffs can try to force a trial, rejected those decisions, ensuring the case would be heard. At its heart, though, the TEPCO trial is a test of whether the Japanese system of justice can live up to Abe’s lofty exhortation: to preserve the lessons of one of the worst nuclear accidents in modern history by holding accountable those who failed to prevent it.

The case hinges on whether the three former TEPCO officials knew in advance of the possibility that such a large tsunami might hit the plant and could have taken precautions. Key pieces of evidence include a prescient government study from 2002 that found a 20 percent chance of a magnitude 8 earthquake striking along the Japan Trench, off the eastern coast of Japan’s main island, over the following 30 years. Then, in 2008, TEPCO’s senior executives received an in-house report that found that the Fukushima facility could be hit by a tsunami of up to 15.7 meters, or 51.5 feet. But testimony from other TEPCO officials indicates that the company’s top leadership put planned countermeasures on ice once they realized how much they would cost.

[…]

Even for areas outside the initial evacuation zone, fears of radiation persist amid a massive, ongoing cleanup effort. One problem has to do with contaminated soil and debris that has been removed and stored in black bulk container bags across Fukushima. There’s still no set plan for their removal, so in many neighborhoods, the bags simply pile up—an ugly reminder of a tragedy that continues to reverberate through the area. In some cases, storage pits have been created, but they are far from a lasting solution, and not sufficient to hold the massive amounts of contaminated material slated for eventual disposal. The government has also installed monitoring posts throughout the affected area, but these sensors often fail to catch radioactive “hot spots”—concentrations of contaminated particles that accumulate over time due to weather patterns.

Concerns over residual radiation are also hampering the recovery of the largely agriculture-based economy in Tohoku, the region that includes Fukushima. In the weeks and months after the meltdown, as many as 54 of Japan’s trading partners, fearing that radiation would reach their shores via contaminated produce, enacted trade embargoes on agricultural products from the region. Many governments have since removed or relaxed these prohibitions, but 24 countries and territories maintain some form of restriction despite repeated assurances from Tokyo that food products from the region are safe. These include major nearby export markets like China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s most widely circulated daily newspaper, reports roughly $6 billion worth of exports are affected.

This reality points to the permanent reputational damage to the people of Fukushima and its neighboring prefectures caused by the nuclear meltdown, which is proving just as hard to clean up. Like other sites of major nuclear accidents—Chernobyl, for example, and Three Mile Island—Fukushima is indelibly associated with nuclear fallout and the stigma that comes with it.

For affected citizens, the process of seeking justice has been halting and uncertain, but there has been some progress. The verdict in the Tokyo criminal case is expected in September, though legal experts point out that guilty verdicts in cases that have been forcibly brought to trial by an inquest panel are rare. Meanwhile, roughly 30 class action lawsuits brought by residents of the Fukushima plant’s surrounding area are working their way through Japan’s legal system. A number of courts in those cases have found both TEPCO and the Japanese government liable for the disaster, awarding substantial damages.

[…]

Japan is certainly no exception when it comes to lax and failing government regulation. Nor is it the only country that has prioritized economic growth over safety concerns. But as Japan’s nuclear reactors gradually come back online eight years after the meltdown in Fukushima, the potential costs of failing to learn from its mistakes seem particularly stark.

Read more at The Unlearned Lessons of Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Disaster

Japanese authorities have been engaging both tourists and foreign governments in a double-pronged strategy to promote food products produced in areas that were hardest hit by the nuclear disaster in 2011, according to a senior government official.

FoodNavigator-Asia recently spoke to Naohiko Yokoshima, the Director of Export Promotion Division, Food Industry Bureau at Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) to find out more about the ministry’s strategies to promote food production in Fukushima.

He said that one of the key strategies included regular and sustained engagement with foreign governments to prove the safety of exports from the region.

[…]

Even for countries where import bans remain, he added there were also other ways to change perceptions.

He said inviting tourists to experience life and consume the food produced in Fukushima was “a very powerful promotion in regaining the trust of foreign consumers.”

[…]

“Also, if we were to find radioactive contamination, there is a regulation under the Food Sanitation Act which requires the products to be recalled and disposed. If there are some areas which have a higher radioactive level, there will also be restriction on the distribution of food from these areas, or the supply of the contaminated food will be cut off.”

He revealed that some of these products included wild deers and white mushrooms from prefectures surrounding Fukushima.

Read more at Nuclear challenge: How Japan has boosted food exports from disaster hit Fukushima – exclusive government interview

FUKUSHIMA – Exports of agricultural products produced in Fukushima Prefecture rose about 2 percent in fiscal 2018 to a record 217.8 tons, according to the prefectural government.

[…]

In fiscal 2018, which ended last month, exports of peaches and Japanese persimmons were sluggish due in part to unfavorable weather.
Shipments of rice to Malaysia, at about 115 tons, led the total exports, as in fiscal 2017. Exports of apples to Thailand and beef to the United States also grew.

Following the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, the prefecture’s agricultural exports plunged due to import restrictions by countries concerned about radioactive contamination, falling to 2.4 tons in fiscal 2012.

The prefectural government has strengthened efforts to boost exports to Southeast Asian countries since the restrictions were scrapped.
In fiscal 2017, Fukushima’s agricultural exports came to 213.3 tons, exceeding the then-record of 152.9 tons in fiscal 2010, helped by about 101 tons of rice shipments to Malaysia.

Read more at Fukushima agricultural exports bounce back from nuclear disaster to hit record high

On 26 April 1986, an experiment on the cooling pump system at Chernobyl power station, in the then-Soviet city of Pripyat, Ukraine, went badly wrong. The nuclear reactor exploded, causing a fire that raged for nine days and emitting large quantities of radioactive debris. Fallout settled largely in nearby Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, but the radioactive cloud covered much of Europe. At least 30 people died during or shortly after the incident, with many thousands of cancer cases since linked to radiation exposure. Shortly after the catastrophe, journalist Svetlana Alexievich visited the region affected by the Chernobyl disaster. Here she describes her experiences…

At the time that the Chernobyl incident happened my sister was in hospital in Minsk, so I was spending almost all of my time with her there. It just so happened that on one of those days a Swedish friend of mine called me and told me about a serious accident at a nuclear power station. We hadn’t been told anything about it.

[…]

When I first visited the zone, everyone had bewildered, almost crazed faces. They looked on while they sheared the upper, infected layer of earth and buried it in special pits. They buried earth in earth. They buried eggs and milk, and infected animals they had shot. They just kept burying and burying. The information about Chernobyl in the papers was straight out of a military report: an explosion, an evacuation, heroes, soldiers… The system was reacting as usual when faced with extreme conditions, but a soldier with an assault rifle in this new world cut a tragic figure. All he could do was amass an enormous dose of radiation and then die when he returned home.

[…]

Among the stories that stand out for me are those of the firemen who, on the night after the explosion, found themselves on the roof of the reactor and were exposed to radiation 1,000 times exceeding a lethal dose. When they were taken to the hospital, even the doctors, auxiliary medical staff and their relatives had to wear protective clothing just to be around them. They were no longer human beings, but objects to be decontaminated. Scientists, doctors, family and loved ones – all were afraid of them, of going near them. The irradiated lay on the other side of a boundary, posing us new moral questions.

[…]

I saw a terrible sight that I’ll never forget when they evacuated people from the infected villages. All around the buses gathered the pet cats and dogs that had been left behind. People were afraid to look them in the eye, and turned away; only the children cried. Soldiers went into the villages and shot the animals… Man saved only himself. An old bee-keeper told me that his bees refused to leave their hives for a week. Fishermen recalled that they couldn’t dig up a single worm – they had gone deep into the earth. The bees, the worms and the beetles knew something that people didn’t.

The government did everything in its power to keep the people as ignorant as possible. That’s because, if the people had known more, they would have demanded checks on food products, dosimeters [radiation detectors], and medicines to cleanse the body – and the government had no intention of providing these things. That’s why they lied. At one point they promised to give everyone dosimeters; they did give them to some, but people began to panic so they quickly changed tack.

[…]

Svetlana Alexievich is a journalist and author who won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her books include Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future (first published 1997; updated version Penguin Classics, 2016).

This article was first published in the December 2016/January 2017 issue of BBC World Histories magazine

Read more at Eyewitness account: the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster

The health ministry said Thursday that it will strengthen inspections on flatfish and some other fishery products from South Korea starting Saturday.

The ministry characterized the measure as an effort to safeguard the health of Japanese people ahead of summer, when food poisoning cases tend to increase.

But the tighter inspections are likely a de facto countermeasure against South Korea, which has banned imports of fishery products from Fukushima and seven other prefectures since the March 2011 nuclear disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 plant, analysts say.

According to the ministry, the tighter inspections will also cover refrigerated shucked arch shells, fan mussels, cockles and sea urchins.

[…]

The ministry will raise the annual number of South Korean flatfish covered by inspections for parasites that may cause diarrhea and other problems to 600 from the current 300.

The number of patients who suffered food poisoning in Japan due to parasites in South Korean flatfish stood at 62 in 2015, 113 in 2016, 47 in 2017 and 82 in 2018.

[…]

In April, the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization overturned a lower body’s ruling that South Korea’s import ban on Japanese fishery products from the eight prefectures amounted to unfair discrimination.

Read more at Japan to tighten checks on South Korean fishery products in apparent Fukushima ban tit-for-tat

By Kataoka Ryohei

The Reconstruction Agency’s ‘Truth about Radiation’

The Reconstruction Agency compiled a 30-page, A5-sized booklet titled Hoshasen no Honto (Truth about Radiation), which it published and began distributing in March 2018. As of November 2018, 22,000 copies had been distributed to relevant government agencies and participants of functions such as PTA conventions (in Saga and Niigata) in and outside of Fukushima Prefecture. It is part of a “safety campaign” aimed at promoting recovery from the Fukushima nuclear accident. 

It presents a one-sided view, saying for example, “No proof of health impacts has been found (from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident),” “The occurrences of numerous cases of thyroid cancer from radiation are considered not worthy of consideration,” “The amount of radiation in the major cities of Fukushima is decreasing,” and “The people who have gone back to their hometowns are returning to their normal livelihoods.”

It contains three particularly big mistakes that were pointed out in citizen group negotiations with the government held in December 2018. One is the statement that the effects of radiation are “not inherited genetically.” The Ministry of the Environment’s “Integrated basic information on health effects caused by radiation” (published in 2015) states that “The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) estimates the risk of hereditary influence at 0.2% per Gray.” It is a mistake to conclude that the effects are not passed along genetically.

[…]

The second mistake is found in the “Standards for radioactive materials in foods” table (shown below) regarding cesium 134 and 137. The figures on Japan’s standards for food in “normal” times are identical to the figures of the EU, US and Codex Alimentarius Commission for times of emergency. The booklet compares figures from circumstances so different as to be incomparable and states “standards are set at the world’s strictest level.” The truth is that the standards for drinking water at normal times are 8.7 Bq/kg in the EU, 4.2 Bq/kg in the US and not specified under the Codex Alimentarius. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW), the Consumer Affairs Agency and the Reconstruction Agency have all recognized this error, but it remains uncorrected at present.

The third mistake is the statement that “The increase in cancer risk due to 100-200 milliSieverts (mSv) exposure is about the same as from insufficient vegetable consumption or excessive salt intake.” The National Cancer Center of Japan, which provided the original data on cancer risk from lifestyle choices such as eating too few vegetables, announced in 2008 that it could not find any connection between vegetables and cancer. Making such a comparison in spite of that can only be called intentionally dishonest in that the booklet attempts to make exposure look less risky than it is.

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TOKYO

The European Union has told Japan that it plans to relax its restrictions on some food products from areas affected by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japanese officials said Thusday.

EU leaders Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Junker conveyed the plan during talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ahead of a Group of 20 summit beginning Friday, according to the officials.

The EU was among 22 countries and regions that restricted farm and fisheries imports from Fukushima and 10 other nearby prefectures after meltdowns at the nuclear plant spewed radiation, contaminating plants, soil and fish.

Japan has established a radiation monitoring system since the Fukushima accident and set allowable limits that are much stricter than international standards. The government has conducted extensive efforts to decontaminate forests, farms and other areas by washing down radiation and removing topsoil.

The EU, which resumed imports of Fukushima rice in 2017, said it plans to allow soybeans from the prefecture as well as food and seafood from several neighboring prefectures.

Kyodo News agency said radiation inspection certificates will no longer be needed.

Junker told Abe that the decision came after an analysis of data provided by Japan. EU leaders said they plan to reach a consensus among member nations and a positive result is expected within several months, Kyodo said. It said Abe expressed hope for a complete lifting of the ban at an early date, saying a full recovery from the 2011 disaster is Japan’s deep wish.

Japan hopes to have all bans lifted before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

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• By Dan Palmer

The Korean Sport and Olympic Committee (KSOC) has written to Tokyo 2020 organisers to express concern about food from Fukushima being served at the Games.

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Baseball and softball matches will be staged there and Fukushima prefecture will also host the start of the Japanese leg of the Torch Relay.

Produce from Fukushima has been served at official events, including IOC Coordination Commissions, but the KSOC said they are worried about contamination.

Their letter comes at a period of increasing tension between Japan and South Korea.

“Within our planning framework we will respond to them accordingly,” said Toru Kobayash, Tokyo 2020’s director of NOC services, to Reuters.

“We have said that we will respond to them properly. 

“We have had no further questions [from South Korea].”

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