Japan PM Abe continues to paint rosy picture of Fukushima disaster

An article in the Asahi looks at Japan Prime Minster Shinzo Abe's recent "unprotected" visit to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, site of history's second-worst nuclear disaster in 2011, and his attempts to further his notorious 2013 claim that the situation in Fukushima is "under control." 

The leader visited the viewing area, which is about 100 meters from the plant, in suit and tie in a bid to show the 40-year decommissioning of the plant is progressing smoothly. Abe has also been keen to push the notion that residents evacuated from the region in the aftermath of the disaster -- triggered by a magnitude 9 earthquake and towering tsunami -- are fast returning to the area.

In fact, the actual situation in both cases is at odds with his views. Radiation levels at the plant -- and in many parts of the evacuated zone -- are still dangerously high and official resident returnee figures are greatly exaggerated, inflated considerably by itinerant cleanup workers who are occupying abandoned homes and by the government's definition of "evacuee".  

Either way, of the 100,000-plus residents who evacuated from the zone in 2011,  only 12,000 have "returned" -- around half of those are thought to be cleanup workers. It would seem that just as with Trump's America,  Japan is victim not of fake news, but fake governmental data. 

And as I mentioned in an article for the Daily Telegraph in the UK recently, the situation at the plant is far from under control, with a million tons of contaminated water and hundreds of thousands of kilograms of strontium-laced sludge being stored within the plant's grounds. Not to mention, plant officials barely know the situation within the three devastated reactors that suffered meltdowns in March 2011.

​Asahi article in English can be found here