Elevated radiation claimed at Tokyo 2020 Olympic venues
Citizens'
group carries out tests at sites for key Tokyo Games facilities, but
expert cautious about findings and organisers see no problemJulian Ryall in
Tokyo
*
The damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. Photo: EPA
A citizens' group in Tokyo has found elevated levels of radioactivity
at sporting facilities that will be used in the 2020 Olympic Games and
is warning that competitors and the hundreds of thousands of people
expected to flock to the city for the event will be putting themselves
in danger.
The Citizens' Group for Measuring Radioactive Environment at
Facilities for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics claims wind-borne radiation from
the four crippled reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant has
contaminated a number of future venues.
Measurements were taken at 39 sporting venues that have been
earmarked to stage events in seven years' time, including the
Kasumigaseki Country Club, which will host the golf tournament, the
Asaka shooting range and the site of the planned National Stadium, which will
stage the opening and closing ceremonies and a number of other
events.
The tests were also carried out at the planned site of the Olympic
Village and the media centre, with the highest radiation reading - 0.484
microsieverts per hour - detected in undergrowth close to Yumenoshima
Stadium, where the equestrian events will be held.
Soil samples collected at the site had 3,040 becquerels of caesium per kilogram.
Some experts point out that the context in which the tests were carried out is
crucial.
"It is difficult to have this debate unless we know for sure whether
this radiation is from Fukushima or whether it is naturally occurring
background radiation," said Pieter Franken, founder of the Japan office
of the environmental monitoring organisation Safecast.
While the readings do not pose an immediate threat to human health,
members of the group say they are still significantly higher than the
level of 0.23 microsieverts per hour set by the government as the
standard for decontamination work going on in the exclusion zone around
the nuclear plant.
"We found caesium-137 at almost every place we carried out tests, and there was
no caesium here before the accident at Fukushima," Mitsuo
Tanaka, a member of the group, told the South China Morning Post.
In July, the group wrote to Jacques Rogge, the then president of the
International Olympic Committee, and members of its evaluation committee and
urged them not to select Tokyo as the host of the 2020 Games.
Tanaka's group received a brief e-mail message to confirm that their
letter had been received by the IOC - but it clearly had limited impact, as
Rogge announced on September 7 that Tokyo had beaten off competition from
Madrid and Istanbul for the right to host the Games.
A similar message was sent to the committee behind Tokyo's bid to host the
Games, but Tanaka's group received no reply.
In response to a request from the Post, a spokesman for Toyko 2020 insisted:
"Radiation levels in the air and water of Tokyo are safe.
"Measures have been taken even before the 2011 nuclear accident in
Fukushima, and they show that radiation levels in Tokyo are absolutely
safe and normal - comparable with levels in other major cities, like
London, New York and Paris," the spokesman said.
"The Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health is constantly
measuring radiation levels and will continue to do so," he added.
However, the organisers' confidence has done little to reassure Tanaka.
"We believe the money spent on having the Games in Tokyo should have
been spent on helping the 80,000 people who have had to leave their
homes close to the Fukushima plant," he said.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as
'Elevated radiation at Olympic venues'
http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1329729/elevated-radiation-claimed-tokyo-2020-olympic-venues
*
*
*
The damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. Photo: EPA
