Fukushima, 10 years on: Hong Kong researcher says the ‘suffering is far from over’ for residents of areas devastated by nuclear disaster

Hong Kong researcher leading team monitoring radiation levels in Japanese town of Namie says many residents are still caught between abandoning their homes or risking their health to return

City should learn from the March 2011 disaster to prioritise safety ahead of profit when formulating energy policy, Lei adds

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Parts of Namie still resemble a ghost town, 10 years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant catastrophe. Photo: AFP

Published: 10:00am, 13 Mar 2021Updated: 12:08pm, 13 Mar 2021

Amid the barren fields and empty streets, Hong Kong nuclear radiation researcher Ray Lei Yu-ting still senses the lingering unease in the town of Namie, a decade after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.

Sitting only a few kilometres north of the ill-fated nuclear power plant in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture, the town was devastated by the meltdown at the facility from the deadly earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. Its entire population was evacuated.

Although the Japanese government in 2017 allowed residents to return to all but the most-contaminated areas, only about 1,500 residents – fewer than 10 per cent of the pre-disaster population – have gone back.

Wild boars and monkeys are still seen wandering the town, parts of which sit only five kilometres away from the disaster site. Thursday marked the 10th anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear tragedy, which together killed about 20,000 people.

Hong Kong nuclear radiation protection specialist Ray Lei. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Lei, 46, research unit head at environmental group Greenpeace, spent three weeks between October and November 2019 re-examining the radiation levels in Fukushima.