Fukushima no-entry zone sealed, residents fear they will never return home

[Barrett808]

The 83-year-old man spoke with tears in his eyes. "It's all over. It is better to just die." He had just learned his small farm would be sealed off at midnight April 21 inside the government's no-entry zone around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

Like many with properties within a 20-kilometer radius of the crippled plant, he feared the worst--that he would never see his home again. ...

Fukushima no-entry zone sealed, residents fear they will never return home – ‘It is better to just die’

[sasha031]

1. how horribly sad, one can only imagine the grief these poor people continue to suffer

[DCKit]

2. Not until they have to abandon Tokyo.

I don't mean to be a total dick about this, but they'll do their best to minimize this as long as it takes to change the meme.

[peace13]

3. This is not a surprise.

If you are in Japan and have 'stuff ' that you care about you should probably send it somewhere far away before it becomes contaminated. This is one time when my worst case scenario mentality really comes in handy. If I lived 20 kilometers from the death machine I would have gotten out right away. They should have started walking on day one because the exposure is all the same. Those folks could have been to the south end by now. This is so sad. I feel sorry for everyone in Japan. If they don't get out they are in serious danger. The rest of us will die a slow lingering death as a result of this. Their situation is more immediate I fear.

[jwirr]

4. I wonder if there is any program set up by the owners of the reactors

to give them the original value of their lands, homes? This would not help the grief but it would help them get life going again. At the moment they are refugees. They at least should be compensated for their loses. Yeah - I know - we are still trying to get BP to compensate the victims of the Gulf oil spill.

[localroger]

5. The exclusion zone is about 150,000 acres

I know land in Japan is a lot more expensive than it is in, say, rural Mississippi where farmland (there is essentially no "raw" land in the US sense in Japan) is in the $4,000/acre range; that means the land alone that is being condemned is worth a bare minimum of 500 million dollars or so, not including other improvements such as buildings. It could easily be worth 20 times that what with Japanese land prices and structures. I don't think TEPCO has that kind of money, particularly since they're going to have to pay for cleaning up the reactors too.

[SpoonFed]

6. a good metric for how the Japanese are handling crisis

not to downplay how incredibly devastating this is to the residents (for which the blame lays squarely on TEPCO and the regulators and the Japanese government for building these things in the first place),

but it is incredible that is has been 40 days since the first reactor blew and only now have the Japanese announced they are doing the right thing and isolating the poisonous radioactive filth that undoubtingly fell all around the plant and the exclusion zone.

Too bad that cat has been out of the bag for so long.

[madokie]

7. My hope is we don't ever have to read similar stories about the same thing happening here