Inside Fukushima

A. Watch the video and answer the questions:

1. Chris says he has come to Fukushima to do three things. What are they?
1) To piece together what happened 8 years since the disaster
2) To hear from the locals who endured the nightmarish aftermath
3) To see what the future might hold for the area
2. How did the Fukushima disaster start?

It starts with a tsunami so powerful it moved Earth from it’s axis and ends with a nucluear
disaster with a 200 billion dollar cleanup budget.

3. What are the data for the huge clean-up operation after the disaster?

200 billion dollar budget

70 000 workers

40 years to complete

4. Where is the exclusion zone situated?

It’s 3 and a half hours away from Tokyo. On Fikushima’s remote east coastline.

5. In the video, Geiger counters are mentioned. What are they?

They count the height of radioactivity in the area.

6. How did the children from the Ukido elementary school survive the event?
The teachers evacuated them to a hill nearby.

7. Why are the radiation doses similar to those in Tokyo at one of the places shown in the
video?

The area was already decontaminated and the areas up north have more radiation.

8. What do we learn about the decontamination operation carried out in Fukushima? What
data do we get from the video?

There’s an area as big as 10 football fields covered in bags of soil

By 2021, 14 milion cubic meters of topsoil have been removed

It was a 29 billion dollar operation

9. There is something special about the town of Tomioka. What is it? What was its
population before the disaster and what is it after?
There’s a street where you can’t leave your car because of the high level of radiation. A portion of
the town is the no go zone where people aren’t allowed to live again. Before it was 16,000 people,
now it is 1000.

10. Why is Katsumi Arakawa´s business in growing flowers a challenging task?

A lot of the good soil was removed during decontamination

11. The government is trying to give the evacuees an opportunity to return to the area to live
or just to visit. What are the radiation levels and are they acceptable?

12. What is Masami Yoshizawa´s Hope Farm project about?

The government ordered him to kill all his cows, but he refused and kept them alive, even
adopting some abandoned cows from other farms. He accepts food donations from people
to be able to feed them.

13. Why is the Iwaki City back to normal so soon, even though it is close to Fukushima
Daiichi?

The winds carried the radiation north.

14. For what special occasion do the people return to the Tomioka town regularly?

For the cherry blossom season

15. How are they using the fields that cannot be used for farming?

Solar power plant and solar panels were build there

16. What two cities are used as an example of Japan knowing how to recover?

Onagowa, hiroshima

B. Vocabulary
Shrine – a place where people worship their gods
Backdrop - background
Man-made disaster – created by humans
To piece together – make sense of something
Nightmarish – horribly, scary
Aftermath – consequences
Move the planet off its axis – move the planet from the way it moves in space
Livelihood - a means of securing the necessities of life
 To loom - it appears as a large or unclear shape
Ominously - scarily
To reveal - make (previously unknown or secret information) known to others
To creep - move slowly and carefully in order to avoid being heard or noticed
To catch the first glimpse – see the first sight of something
Crane – machine is used in building
Fallout - aftermath
Treacherous - traitorous
Topsoil – the top layer of earth
Debris – pieces of destroyed buildings
Eerie sight – scary view
Derelict - in a very poor condition as a result of disuse and neglect
To vow - promise
Self-defence force – warriors/soldiers that protect somebody from attacks
Troops - armies
On par - at the same level or standard as
Prefecture - a district under the authority of a prefect or governor

C. Discussion
Have you heard about the Fukushima nuclear disaster? Do you think nuclear power plants
are safe? Would you be willing to return to live in an area affected by a nuclear disaster?