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from Photographers Blog:
A visit to Fukushima Ground Zero
By Issei Kato
“This day finally came.”
That was my first impression when I was chosen as a pool photographer on behalf of foreign media based in Japan to visit the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
We were allowed to enter the plant last Monday, ahead of Japan’s one-year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami, which triggered the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. The media tour was the first to take place since the Japanese government announced in December that reactors at the plant had reached a stage of cold shutdown. We were allowed to cover not just from inside a bus, but from a certain outlying spot close to a reactor building for 15 minutes.
The pictures and TV footage of the explosion at Fukushima Daiichi that followed the disaster had filled me with fear. Although the government and the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) had explained at the time, that it was a “hydrovolcanic explosion” we had witnessed, the blast appeared more like the explosion of the atomic reactor itself. "Can we keep on living in this country?" "Would this incident end up forcing Tokyo and nearby residents to abandon home to escape?" I can easily recall the fears I felt at the time of the explosion.
When I received the offer to do this assignment, honestly, I struggled against a feeling of fear, thinking about its potential risk. But then I recalled the reason why I chose the job of a news photographer. A key motivation was that I wanted to be “an eyewitness of the historical moment.” I just could not refuse the offer and decided to take the opportunity to enter Japan’s ground zero.
from Photographers Blog:
Tragedy in Fukushima: when can we go back to home again?
After covering myself from head to toe in protective clothing in the hope of protecting me from radiation, I went to accompany evacuees who were temporarily allowed to visit their homes in the 20 km no-entry zone surrounding the tsunami-crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, a place now notorious for its radiation leaks.
My destination was Okuma town where the whole population of about 11,000 had been evacuated since last year’s earthquake. The town is still afflicted with high levels of invisible radiation.
from Photographers Blog:
Fukushima’s invisible fear
By Issei Kato
These days, a mask, protective clothing and radiation counter have all become a usual part of reporting trips, as essential as a camera, lenses and a laptop. Soon, this situation will have gone on for a full year.
The 20 km (12 mile) zone around Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is now a virtual ghost town after being evacuated of residents due to radiation. I asked a friend, who was forced by the disaster to leave the area and has been searching for a way to resume work, for help, and was able to enter the area where he used to live.
from Photographers Blog:
Invisible snow
Invisible Snow from Reuters Tokyo Pictures on Vimeo.
When the Fukushima nuclear power plant exploded, I was in Fukushima covering people who had evacuated from their houses near the plant, as they underwent radiation checks as authorities isolated those who had showed signs of exposure.
The disaster control center in the prefectural government hall in Fukushima city, situated about 63 km (39 miles) north-west of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, was chaotic. However, once I stepped out the building, everything around me looked the same in the city and it was difficult to comprehend what was actually happening. People in the city were walking their dogs outside and riding their bicycles on the streets, although lights were out and many places were experiencing cuts in water supplies.
from Photographers Blog:
Beefing up radiation checks
Since covering the Fukushima nuclear crisis in March, I have photographed various radiation scenes in the months that followed.
Starting with shocking scenes of people who were actually contaminated with radiation being cleansed and scenes of people being isolated into a building.
from Photographers Blog:
Chernobyl graves
Every year Orthodox Christians in Belarus throng to local cemeteries to commemorate their deceased relatives and loved ones on the ninth day after Easter, following an ancient Slavic rite on a revered day called Radunitsa. They tidy up tombs and adorn them with wreaths, and bow their heads in somber silence.
But in the southeast of Belarus, people stream to a tightly guarded area surrounded by solid fences and barbed wire, where whole villages were evicted 25 years ago after being contaminated with deadly radiation spewed by a blown up reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in neighboring Ukraine.
from Photographers Blog:
Japan’s nuclear crisis and my life
As a Reuters photographer, I have covered many disasters and incidents over the last ten years but these things had little direct affect on my life. Just like the saying: “The photographer must be taken out of the picture”, I was a third party in most of these cases. By and large, those catastrophes had nothing to do with my personal life. Once my assignment was over, I used to go back to my normal life and switch from emergency mode.
But last month’s magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that sparked the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in Japan was different. I am not exempt from the fear caused by the disaster nor am I immune to the threat of the invisible nuclear radiation.
from Russell Boyce:
Asia – A Week in Pictures, March 27, 2011
Japan continues to dominate the file from Asia with new photograhers rotating in to cover the twists and turns of this complex and tragic story. In a country were the nation rarely buries its dead, the site of mass graves is quite a shocking scene to behold. Holes the length of football pitches are dug in the ground with mechanical digggers and divided into individual plots by the military and are then filled with the coffins of the victims of the tsunami. Family members come to weep and pray over the graves. Some are namless and marked only with DNA details, others bear the names of the victims. There is not enough power or fuel to cremate the thousands of bodies that are being recovered from the disaster zone.
Members of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force carry a coffin of a victim of the earthquake and tsunami to be buried at a temporary mass grave site in Higashi-Matsushima, in Miyagi prefecture, northern Japan March 24, 2011. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao
from The Great Debate:
The cantankerous effects from Japan’s radiation
Devra Davis, PhD, MPH, president of Environmental Health Trust, is an award-winning scientist and writer on environmental health issues, author of "The Secret History of the War on Cancer," and "Disconnect" who served as the founding director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 1983-93. The opinions expressed are her own.
The discovery of ionizing radiation at the turn of the nineteenth century revolutionized science and society. Within two weeks of their being created at the end of 1895, the stunning x-ray images of his wife's bejeweled hand that physics professor Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen had taken appeared in major newspapers around the world. From Paris, to London and Tokyo, scientists and celebrities engaged in a world-wide medical vogue with fashionable x-ray parties featuring popular demonstrations of moving skeletons.
