Evacuation after Fukushima disaster mishandled, finds survey

A survey commissioned by the Japanese parliament, Diet, has found that the government failed to inform people living in Fukushima and adjoining areas about radiation levels following the Fukushima nuclear accident in March last year, leading to chaos and confusion during evacuation. The survey found that many evacuees moved to areas which were subsequently included in the evacuation zones; most of these people had to move at least four times after their initial evacuation. Some people were relocated up to six times or more. Incidentally, the call for voluntary evacuation was not issued until March 25, 2011, a fortnight after the nuclear power plant was simultaneously hit by an earthquake and a tsunami, leading to a series of nuclear meltdowns. The survey, based on responses taken from the people in evacuation zones, was released on June 12.  

The report also brought to light the failure of the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI), which was set up during the 1990s when Japan started commercially exploiting nuclear power. The system was meant to help in issuing safety warnings in the event of radiation leakage from nuclear power plants. The absence of SPEEDI's real time radiation data led to confusion and only 30 per cent of the affected families shifted to safer areas voluntarily. Worse, about 50 per cent residents of Namiemachi area were relocated to areas with high radiation dose.

Slow reaction

The survey was commissioned in December 2011 by Diet’s Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Committee (NAIIC) to randomly interview a group of 21,000 of the 55,000 households in the evacuation zones. A little over 50 per cent households (10,633) responded to the survey and about three-quarters of them (8,073) criticised the government and the power corporation managing the nuclear power plant—Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)—for not reacting to the emergency urgently.