Minamisoma City
Wednesday - It was a day relatively light on
meetings but punctuated with long bus and train rides. When Kazu (one of the
trip leaders) woke me up for breakfast, the only thing I noticed was that he
was wearing a yukata (a traditional leisure robe). Assuming that everyone else
in the hotel would also be wearing their yukata to breakfast, I grabbed mine
from the closet and headed down. Of course, I was the only person wearing a
yukata at breakfast other than Kazu. After breakfast we drove to Chuson-Ji
temple (home to a gorgeous gold-leaf plated Buddhist shrine from the 9th
century) and did a quick drive-by of the classic garden at Motsuji Temple.
The main activity of the day was meeting with the mayor of
Minami Soma City and touring the exclusion zone(s) affected by the Fukushima
nuclear disaster. The mayor has been a strong critic of nuclear power. We asked
him a few questions about TEPCO’s potential use of poor, disadvantaged citizens
for the most dangerous cleanup jobs, health monitoring in Minami Soma City and
about nuclear power in general.
After meeting with mayor we boarded the bus for a driving
tour of the district. Similar to Rikuzen Takata, there are large swaths of the
valley covered in grass and weeds with no structures in site, divided into
grids by the remaining streets. However, much of this area was closed off after
the nuclear disaster and has only recently been opened for people to work in.
Therefore there are still piles of rubble in the middle of the fields, many
damaged but undemolished buildings, and even a few boats resting in the middle
of the fields. After the nuclear meltdown, there was no information from the
government and TEPCO regarding evacuation orders so the mayor ordered the town
evacuated. The government and TEPCO finally issued orders on 3/15. I don’t know
the exact timing but eventually there was a 20km exclusion zone around the stricken
plant and a 30km emergency evacuation preparation zone. Around 25km is another
line separating where people are allowed to work during the day but are
prevented from living overnight. Most of our tour occurred in the 20-25km
corridor where people are allowed to be during the day to repair their homes,
farm their land, clean up rubble, but no one is allowed to live there. The
former main commerce street of the city sits in this zone with shops and
buildings lining the road in various states of disrepair but all closed, a
modern day ghost town.
On the drive to Minami Soma City, I had an interesting
debate with one of the other students on the trip about nuclear power. I am
pro-nuclear power because I think it is a lesser of evils when it comes to meeting
our energy demands. I also think that people have a somewhat irrational fear of
nuclear power because any potential problem is seen as entirely “man-made,”
while if an earthquake caused a dam to collapse and people died as a result, I
don’t think people would become anti-hydroelectric power the way many have
reacted to nuclear disasters. But my classmate made the excellent point that
the difference in a nuclear disaster is the long-term impact on the land (and
obviously the people). That it lays waste to a large swath of land is a
consequence that I have now seen with my own eyes. I am less cavalier about
nuclear power than I was before the visit, and while I think it is still worth
pursuing, I have a new appreciation for the risks involved and hope that every
policymaker fully considers the worst case scenario when choosing the plant’s
location, design, and contingency plans.
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