Fukushima's crisis new blow to fishermen's hopes

[xchrom]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_JAPAN_NUCLEAR_FISHERMEN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-08-28-04-57-33

YOTSUKURA, Japan (AP) -- Fumio Suzuki, a third-generation fisherman, sets out into the Pacific Ocean every seven weeks. Not to catch fish that he can sell but to catch fish that can be tested for radiation.

For the last 2 1/2 years, fishermen from the port of Yotsukura near the stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant have been mostly stuck on land with little to do. There is no commercial fishing along most of the Fukushima coast. In a nation highly sensitive to food safety, there is no market for the fish caught near the stricken plant because the meltdowns it suffered contaminated the ocean water and marine life with radiation.

A sliver of hope emerged after recent sampling results showed a decline in radioactivity in some fish species. But a new crisis spawned by fresh leaks of radioactive water from the Fukushima plant last week may have dashed those prospects.

Fishermen like 47-year-old Suzuki now wonder whether they ever will be able to resume fishing, a mainstay for many small rural communities like Yotsukura, 45 kilometers (30 miles) south of the Fukushima plant. His son has already moved on, looking for work in construction.

[Atman]

1. Yeah, like the big problem is fisherman's jobs...

...not the destruction of an ecosystem and a food source. STOP NUKES!

[FBaggins]

2. It shouldn't be

So far, the only thing they've detected is an increase in tritium levels in the quay area right beside the plant. That area has been sealed off from the rest of the harbor (and thus the rest of the ocean) for quite some time. There haven't been any detected increases of cesium (etc) and no increases of even tritium outside of that.

There can be little doubt that something is getting out, but the impact to the fishery is the original release and the ongoing "release" caused by rain washing existing contamination from the land and into the sea.

The leaks reported over the last few weeks are significant and indicate an unacceptably slipshod performance on TEPCO's part... but they aren't significant to the fishery.