Memorials to a disaster.
It began on the 11th of March 2011.
Five years on, there is no end in sight.
All I’ve thought about these past years is the nuclear plant.
Why did we build it in the first place? What’s it all for?
I thought about it over and over again
Radiation is so high here that nobody will be able to live here in the coming years.
Who is responsible?
That's the biggest problem.
No-one in Japan is willing to claim responsibility.
An earthquake off the coast of Japan with a magnitude of nine
triggers a tsunami that was to end in nuclear catastrophe.
In the flooded nuclear plant Fukushima Daiichi,
the emergency power supply is cut off,
causing the reactor’s cooling system to fail.
Radioactive material is released in serveral explosions
and nuclear meltdowns in three reactors.
At first the Japanese government orders an evacuation within a ten kilometre radius of the plant.
A day later it is extended to twenty kilometres.
Some 160.000 people are forced to leave their homes
– without knowing if they’ll ever return.
Ten days after the accident, Greenpeace starts measuring for radiation around the exclusion zone.
By this point, the radioactivity detected
is already a hundred times the normal level in many places.
Greenpeace is focusing its attention on areas outside the exclusion zone.
The village of Iitate, for example, lies some forty kilometers northwest of the plant.
People are still living their daily life here.
But radiation levels are very high
and we strongly recommend people to move out of this area.
It is a whole month after the tsunami that evacuation began here
- Iitate remains uninhabitable to this day.
Toru Anzai only rarely returns to the house that has been in his family for generations.
It was here in March 2011 that he heard the explosions,
followed shortly after by black snow falling onto his land.
The evacuation came far too late.
The water was already contaminated immediately after the accident.
It wasn’t until 20th April though that we were told not to drink the water.
To begin with we had irritable skin, even indoors.
I had severe stomach pains as well. They persisted for two years.
Even now I always feel weak after I’ve been to Iitate.
Sometimes I get headaches too.
Decontamination work on his land plot is progressing
and is almost complete according to official sources.
Reinhabitation of the area is scheduled for 2017.
But Toru Anzai has doubts about the government findings.
Measurements taken by Greenpeace around the house confirm
that the invisible risk is still far from gone.
Here we have around 0.8 microsieverts per hour.
0.23 was the government target for the decontamination work.
and if we go over here – in this area that’s also been cleaned already –
we see it quickly goes up to 1.5 – 2, sometimes as high as 3.5.
This is not the kind of count where you can say things are back to normal.
The procedure seems absurd.
Decontamination is only carried out within a twenty-metre radius of private plots,
and along the edge of roads.
As well as on farmland.
The top five centimetres of soil are removed and packed into airtight plastic sacks:
an estimated 29 million cubic metres of contaminated earth.
Huge amounts of nuclear waste are forming.
There are more than 80,000 of these waste disposal sites,
and over 3 million of these bales.
And the realisation then hits that this countryside
– the mountains, the valleys, the rivers – cannot simply be reverted back to its former state.
The problem is impossible to ignore.
Nuclear waste lies in part under makeshift covers in private gardens.
Some of the radioactive material is due to be burnt to at least reduce the volume.
In some places, the whole affair is simply relocated beneath the surface.
We’ve taken a look at this here.
It’s obvious here that nuclear waste has been buried.
these black sacks we see everywhere are underneath here,
they’ve been covered and then buried under earth.
And if we look, we have around 0.25 microsieverts per hour here,
and if I walk over to the nuclear waste, it goes up to 1.30.
So nuclear waste has been buried here
and it almost certainly won’t be moved to temporary storage.
These sacks will rot away and the radioactive material will seep into the groundwater.
Fukushima City lies sixty kilometres from the site of the accident.
Officially, that’s far enough away to be protected from radioactivity.
The regular measurements taken by Greenpeace over the past five years paint a different picture.
Radiation levels that are anything but harmless.
Especially where children play.
Children pick up earth with their hands, they put their fingers in their mouth,
they can’t take on board the rules to protect themselves against radiation.
If contamination is so high that you need authorisation to touch this soil,
this isn’t the place for a playground.
Whether in the city or the country – genuine decontamination is difficult and takes a long time.
A bitter truth that the Japanese authorities are evidently reluctant to accept.
“Radiation eradicated” is the official line for example in Miyakoji, home to Miyoko Watanabe.
Her house has been deemed inhabitable once again. Mrs. Wanatabe graciously declines.
I don’t plan to live here again.
Sometimes we come back and take care of a few things.
We hardly ever bring our grandchildren here though and none of us stay overnight.
A sensible decision, as measurements at the house show. Here too, it’s all in the details.
Decontamination has certainly been thorough here.
Here we have 0.13 micsosieverts per hour.
That kind of count is one you could live with, in principle.
But radioactivity has infiltrated everything here.
You can see here for instance that radiation has been swept down from the roof.
Although work has only recently finished here,
we find counts of 1 to 2 M per hour.
This is then carried forward again and into the entrance to the house.
That’s not a satisfactory situation for the people here in this contaminated area.
Long since a Japanese tradition, Miyoko Watanabe sends produce she has harvested herself to relatives.
Before the disaster she was convinced by the health-enhancing power of her jam.
Last year the family had to go without.
I had lost all hope.
But I gave it a try nonetheless.
The berries measured six becquerels.
I didn’t think it would increase any more during cooking with the sugar and other ingredients.
But the number of becquerels rose. That was very disappointing.
Even so, she will be trying again this year.
From now on the seventy-year-old will live in a newly built home in a less contaminated area –
without any financial support from the state.
All compensation payments have since been discontinued.
The people in the Fukushima prefecture will have to live with the nuclear disaster for a long time to come.
Meanwhile, the Japanese government is planning to restart nuclear plants in other regions.
For instance, in the south of the country.
Like all other 48 nuclear power plants,
the Sendai plant was shut down after the tsunami.
Just 40 kilometres away lies the province capital of Kagoshima with a population of 600,000.
The main thing posing a risk here is Sakurajima,
one of the most active vulcanos in Japan.
A danger that the local government seems unperturbed by.
In 2014 Greenpeace looked into the city’s plan of action if a nuclear accident were to occur here.
We have been many times in this region. And we really see how strongly contaminated the village of Iitate was.
We see a connection between Fukushima and Kagoshima.
It could be strongly affected.
The emergency plans for the region are more than inadequate.
We have an evacuation plan for a radius of 30 kilometres.
There is not yet a specific plan for 60 kilometres.
They are not learning the lessons from Fukushima!
The message from Fukushima is so clear.
The people from this prefecture do understand
the majority of the people are against a restart.
So we are here to demand that the authorities listen to the reason of the population.
Undeterred by the doubts and protests of the population
in August 2015 the energy company Kyushu Electric restarted the reactors in Sendai.
Japan wants to hold on to its nuclear power – that, at least, is the current government’s plan.
Japan’s former Prime Minister Naoto Kan takes a completely different view.
The disaster in Fukushima happened while he was in office – and changed him.
Up until the nuclear accident in Fukushima
I didn’t think something like this could happen in a high-tech country like Japan.
That made me change my mind completely.
But then an accident did happen.
For the good of humanity it is absolutely necessary
to shut down all nuclear power plants.
That is my firm belief.
A change of heart that comes too late for the people of Fukushima.
Hiroshi Kanno was forced to leave behind his livestock and four hectares of land in the disaster zone.
Far away from home he now grows vegetables on a much smaller scale.
Little consolation for the farmer who lived for his land.
We all want to go back.
But that’s not possible in the current situation.
Nobody knows how many decades it will take.
I won’t be around long enough to find out.
People uprooted and surroundings contaminated for centuries to come
that is the reality five years after Fukushima.
Prime Minister Abe was in Fukushima and claims
we needn’t be scared about the health effects.
The Abe government is just awful.
We’ve been trampled all over and that needs to be clearly stated.
It’s about the future of our children.
We should shut down all nuclear power plants.
If Japanese technology really is the best in the world
and an accident can still happen here, then it shouldn’t be allowed anywhere.
We must stop.
We should also put a cease to nuclear testing and nuclear weapons.
It’s all far too dangerous and everyone in the world should be aware of that.
Everyone must know that. It is very important to me.
Once again it is clear:
the repercussions of a nuclear accident are beyond our control.
Every nuclear plant still in operation poses a risk.
