Firewood ash at Nihonmatsu homes found to contain high levels of radioactive cesium

Yikes. But who can afford fireplaces here?

But who can afford fireplaces here?

mitoguitarman, you can pick up a wood burning stove at many home centers (hardware stores) for as little as 10,000 yen and install it yourself. Firewood can be cut by people who own cheap forested mountain land for their own use or to be sold. In the countryside (and Fukushima has plenty of it), there are lots of people with wood burning stoves.

Although the Forestry Agency has already advised that firewood containing 40 becquerels or more of radioactive cesium per kilogram should not be sold or burned

Right. I will just run a firewood sample down to the local lab...

firewood ash containing over 1,000 times that amount has been found in the garden of one home, TV Asahi reported

Wonderful. Winter is about half over, and now they have concluded that the firewood should not have been burned. Typical Japanese bureaucrats being proactive.

That's a lot of Bq's going up in smoke.

Just another example of how having people living in these radioactive areas is going to spread the radioactive particles all over the place.

Now you know why Russia just abandoned areas around Chernobyl and did not try to clean it up like the Japanese insist on trying. (special emphasis on the word "trying").

Earth to nagatacho, GET THESE PEOPLE OUT of contaminated areas! WTF! Let them live there getting high doses, daily activities spread the stuff around.

Govt time to dig yr heads outta your arses & start implementing some common sense, for christs sake!

Now you know why Russia just abandoned areas around Chernobyl and did not try to clean it up like the Japanese insist on trying. (special emphasis on the word "trying").

The Soviet Union should not be used as a role model for anything, they abandoned Chernobyl because of the primitive technology, lack of willpower and reluctance to use whatever precious little money they had to decontaminate the area. Don't write off the Japanese, they learn from their mistakes, after the devastation and massive loss of life caused by the Hanshin earthquake in 1995, strict building codes were implemented, and you can see for yourself how houses and roads remained intact after the much stronger 2011 Tohoku earthquake. They've already invented a machine since the Fukushima disaster that remove 97% of cesium from contaminated soil. There are problems, but don't be surprised if international predictions are proved wrong and that area is liveable alot sooner than what Westeners are saying. Thank God for the Japanese, they lead the way in refining and making best use of existent technology on a practical, human level.

Nobody is downing ingenuity in the face of adversity. Companies will always come up with ways strive to solve environmental and or health problems. There is big big money in it. But what the consensus of the above posters oginome is basic, human concern for those who are living and breathing in areas where there is contamination. The Concern for their wellbeing is quite obvious.

Nobody is downing ingenuity in the face of adversity. Companies will always come up with ways strive to solve environmental and or health problems. There is big big money in it. But what the consensus of the above posters oginome is basic, human concern for those who are living and breathing in areas where there is contamination. The Concern for their wellbeing is quite obvious.

I never said these people should continue to live areas while they are contaminated.

It seems that news like this pops up every other day. Last week it was cement used to build apartments. I fear the safety standards Japan has invoked are no where near stringent enough and over the two or three decades there will be a major increase in health problems related to exposure to radiation.

The Soviet Union should not be used as a role model for anything

Okay. The Soviets also ate food and drank water. Of course you will quit those now, right?

Don't construe my comment as meaning the Russians do everything right. Its stupid. You can say they are the broken clock that is right twice a day if you want. But in writing off the area of Chernobyl, they were right, like it not, hate them or not.

I never said these people should continue to live areas while they are contaminated.

Since they will be contaminated for hundreds of years, in a way, yes, you did. At least you have the sense to suggest they all get out while they "try" to clean it up though. But how in gawd's name you think they are going to deconaminate the trees that get used for firewood is beyond me, and that is the tip of the iceberg of things that are not going to be decontaminated until those materials are done decaying maybe in the next millenium.

oginome: " Don't write off the Japanese, they learn from their mistakes..."

Which is why they're going to make exceptions to the new legislation on 40 year old reactors? which is why they STILL want to build MORE reactors and restart the ones that have been shut down? which is why we are reading about this kind of thing AGAIN after many, many people should have said NOTHING should have been sold from the affected areas to begin with, and/or that this kind of thing will only spread? Which is why the government still makes sales of such products 'up to the local government/business' and only SUGGESTS they don't do it? which is why so man of the people who added to the seriousness of the disaster are still in high ranking positions (instead of jail) or the companies is being bailed out by government instead of nationalized? Better yet, why does Japan, the only nation who suffered a nuclear attack, have so many reactors, want to build more, and is so dependent on nuclear power?

Please! Russia may not learn from its mistakes, and many nations don't, but Japan is certainly among the last in terms of nations that do.

I hope the government and TEPCO would realize how big these problems really are.

Stop thinking about profits, losses and costs for a while, and make sure the people who pay for your services are safe!

oginome: Okay, I should add to my last comment that laws and legislature are indeed passed to better things, but it's often just lip-service, with loop-holes a-plenty, and it's always left of to the businesses/local governments to decide if they should follow. They're reneging on the 40-year rule thing and it hasn't even passed yet!

Elvensilvan: "Stop thinking about profits, losses and costs for a while, and make sure the people who pay for your services are safe!"

Wouldn't that be ideal? But it will NEVER happen while governance remains as it is here (and elsewhere, for that matter). Personal profit will always take precedence over the safety of the customer. Always. What has the Japanese government done to punish the company that sold all the radioactive rubble? NOTHING; the excuse being they got it out before the restrictions were in place (even though they never checked after the restrictions WERE put in place).

I am gonna give up soon. The point now is so what if we become radioactive. The worst that can happen is that we die or maybe something else is worse since that does not seem so bad at all. Having birth defects seems worse. Everybody seems to be worried about dying and some things do not change. I am not saying that what they are doing is good even though the Japanese government is doing some good like quickly building bridges and roads that were destroyed. Why are we so afraid of radiation? We are gonna die anyways--though to tell you the truth (that implies I have not told you the truth, but this is just a common saying) I would prefer not to die by radiation.

Must be daft or oblivious to be burning fire wood from Fukushima, or any other contaminated region for that matter. The nonsense never ends...

"they abandoned Chernobyl because of the primitive technology, "

Japan's official response to this disaster has been gross negligence and outright abuse of the majority of its citizens. Japan is using hands and hoses, shovels and plastic suits, pressuring civilians with no experience or training, and no equipment to handle nuclear waste. Japan's famous robots were useless and its optical technology only shows that TEPCO's brightest engineers were way off the mark in its estimate of how much water remains in #2. The guesses the government and TEPCO have been making about the situation at the reactors and the extent of contamination have been consistently and ridiculously wrong when they have not been outright lies. The men most intently involved in addressing the situation are not technology experts but in the main day labourers with no education or training for such work. The government is intentionally spreading radioactivity across the nation by burning contaminated materials from the disaster sites and sludge and municipal garbage on which nuclear waste has fallen. Even when a site is rudimentarily cleaned, it becomes contaminated again as rain, wind and fallout from incinerators descend. Civilians with no training are trying to handle nuclear waste. Japan has no magic technology, only lies that the government is telling and myths that the government is spinning about the ability to make the area safe. The government fears that telling the truth will mean the end of Japan's nuclear power program, which because of Japan's peculiar tectonic situation is the most dangerous by far in the world. The government is more concerned about the costs of moving people than their health. It has enough money to build dams which the nation has thus far not needed but none to protect the health of children. Japanese should be ashamed that the government of the Soviet Union, a dictatorship, cared more about its children than the government of Japan. It took Japan's technical experts until now to realise that the same contamination that fell on straw, rice, cattle, spinach, tea, mushrooms, drinking water, humans, etc., also fell on firewood and gravel! Did they assume it hovered in the air so those alone would not be besmirched ? And these are the blokes that are going to provide technology to decontaminate half a dozen prefectures?

valley I wish J Govt were giving the people in Fukushima an alternative to burning their firewood but alas I don't think J Govt is really interested in doing so or the areas where there is contamination and people coexisting would be abandoned and J Govt would not be saying No Serious Threat to Human Health to everything. Accumulation of radioactive substances would be taken into account.

Okay. The Soviets also ate food and drank water. Of course you will quit those now, right?

The Soviets didn't pioneer eating food and drinking water.

Since they will be contaminated for hundreds of years, in a way, yes, you did. At least you have the sense to suggest they all get out while they "try" to clean it up though. But how in gawd's name you think they are going to deconaminate the trees that get used for firewood is beyond me, and that is the tip of the iceberg of things that are not going to be decontaminated until those materials are done decaying maybe in the next millenium.

I never implied people should continue to live in contaminated areas, despite what you try to say. Decontamination efforts will not take anywhere a millenium, gross exaggeration. And they shouldn't burn the trees, simple as.

Which is why they're going to make exceptions to the new legislation on 40 year old reactors? which is why they STILL want to build MORE reactors and restart the ones that have been shut down? which is why we are reading about this kind of thing AGAIN after many, many people should have said NOTHING should have been sold from the affected areas to begin with, and/or that this kind of thing will only spread? Which is why the government still makes sales of such products 'up to the local government/business' and only SUGGESTS they don't do it? which is why so man of the people who added to the seriousness of the disaster are still in high ranking positions (instead of jail) or the companies is being bailed out by government instead of nationalized?

It's been less than a year since the disaster. There are many corrupt factions and interest groups who will fight to maintain the status quo no matter what. It'll take a LONG time, if ever, to reach solution which benefits everyone. Civil society always begins to emerge when the government fails or betrays and Fukushima was a major failure. A change is occuring in the public consciousness as people realise they can't just blindly trust what their government tells them any more. Citizens are pressing their government for reater transparency. Last September, over 500,000 people gathered in Tokyo to protest against nuclear energy, the largest such demonstration since the student agitations in the 1960s. Change IS happening.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/eo20111201a1.html

Better yet, why does Japan, the only nation who suffered a nuclear attack, have so many reactors, want to build more, and is so dependent on nuclear power?

Because they are resource poor and have to import most of their energy.

Please! Russia may not learn from its mistakes, and many nations don't, but Japan is certainly among the last in terms of nations that do.

Japan does learn as we've seen from the difference in building standards before and after the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake. We're already seeing the beginnings of a civil society (which actually started to form half-heartedly in the mid 80s, but remained stagnant) after the Fukushima disaster.

Soviet Union did not abandon the Chernobyl accident site before the polluting reactor was fully contained and not spewing radioactive materials into the air, something the Japanese have not done to this day. Tepco was running away within three days of the tsunami as we all know and forever remember. Tepco didn't even know about preussian blue before told so by the French (and my high school teacher to me some 20 years ago).

It took two weeks for Soviet Union to tell the world of the meltdown - it took three months for Tepco and Japan. Soviet Union started evacuations and relocations the very next day - still waiting to see what the J-gov will do.

Japan and Soviet Union are truly in a different class altogether.

As long as the Japanese keep incinerating everything around them then the radiation will keep being recycled in and out of the food chain ad infinitum. There is not anything known to science that neutralises radioactive particles unless someone comes along (like God) and changes the laws of physics