Contaminated Garden in Iitate Village

A garden in Iitate Village. Level of radiation: 1.01 Micro Sievert per hour.
The normal rate before the Fukushima nuclear disaster was 0.08 microsieverts an hour. The impact of the Fukushima meltdown in the surrounding villages is already obvious with abandoned homes and gardens rapidly falling into decay. Around 150,000 people will not be able to go back to their homes for years to come and many may never be able to return at all.

Unique identifier: GP0STOS3R

Type: Image

Shoot date: 01/06/2014

Locations: East Asia, Fukushima Prefecture, Iitate, Japan

Credit line: © Robert Knoth / Greenpeace

Size: 8713px × 7100px 75MB

Ranking: ★★★★★★ (B)

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Contaminated Landscapes near Fukushima

In northern Japan the soil in many forests, agricultural fields and on mountain slopes is now contaminated by radioactive elements. As a result these have become vast reservoirs of radioactive particles which are absorbed by the trees and plants. With the annual shedding of leaves, the radioactive pollution ends up in the soil once more and will get absorbed time after time -and for decades to come, until it finally breaks down-. It is this cycle of continued pollution that will be Fukushima’s ultimate legacy, preventing the use of agricultural lands and forests, thus virtually ending a traditional way of life for many of its inhabitants. Decontaminating agricultural lands and gardens provides no definite solution as areas previously decontaminated are already being re-polluted by groundwater and through migration of soil from mountain slopes and forests –areas so vast they can never be thoroughly cleaned.

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