Fukushima farmers pray for radiation-free rice

[PearliePoo2]

FUKUSHIMA —
Last year’s crop sits in storage, deemed unsafe to eat, but Toraaki Ogata is back at his rice paddies, driving his tractor trailing neat rows of seedlings. He’s living up to his family’s proud, six-generation history of rice farming, and praying that this time his harvest will not have too much radiation to sell.

“All I can do is pray there will be no radiation,” Ogata, 58, said last week, wiping his sweat during a break in his 1.5-hectare paddy 60 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. “It’s not our fault at all, but the land of our ancestors has been defiled.”

Following orders from the government, they have sprinkled zeolite, a pebble-like material that traps radioactive cesium, and added fertilizer with potassium to help block radiation absorption. That work is part of the 100 billion yen Tokyo has allocated for decontamination efforts this year.

Ogata won’t need to sell his rice to skeptics. He plans to sell some of his 10,000 kilograms of rice direct to customers he has cultivated for years, families who live in the area. The rest he will sell to a local farming cooperative that distributes to corporate buyers, such as restaurants, that are more willing to buy Fukushima rice.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/fukushima-farmers-pray-for-radiation-free-rice

[PearliePoo2]

1. If TEPCO had done its job right...

From the article:

A handful of farmers are giving up on growing rice. Some are switching to flowers, which don’t require radiation checks. Others are suing Tokyo Electric Power Co, the utility that operates Fukushima Daiichi, for damages.

Fukushima farmer Shoichi Watanabe is angry he even has to worry about radiation.

“See how peaceful this place is,” he said, pointing to paddies filled with gently croaking frogs. “I want to say at the top of my lungs that we would not be going through all this suffering—if only Tokyo Electric had done its job right.”

[RobertEarl]

2. Former Prime Minister of Japan said

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/asia/japans-naoto-kan-condemns-nuclear-power.html

In an unusually stark warning, Japan’s prime minister during last year’s nuclear crisis told a parliamentary inquiry on Monday that the country should discard nuclear power as too dangerous, saying the Fukushima accident had pushed Japan to the brink of “national collapse.”

...his strongest comments came at the end of his testimony, when a panel member asked him if he had any advice for the current prime minister. Mr. Kan replied that the accident had brought Japan to the brink of evacuating metropolitan Tokyo and its 30 million residents. He said the loss of the capital would have paralyzed the national government, leading to “a collapse of the nation’s ability to function.”

He said the prospect of losing Tokyo made him realize that nuclear power was just too risky, the consequences of an accident too large, for Japan to accept.

“It is impossible to ensure safety sufficiently to prevent the risk of a national collapse,” Mr. Kan said. “Experiencing the accident convinced me that the best way to make nuclear plants safe is not to rely on them, but rather to get rid of them.”