A group of Fukushima students will head to France in the coming week to present results of a study showing minimal differences in radiation levels between local communities in Japan and locations in three other countries.
A group of Fukushima students will head to France in the coming week to present results of a study showing minimal differences in radiation levels between local communities in Japan and locations in three other countries.
Five students attending Fukushima High School embarked on the survey to clarify their situation for people outside Japan. They said they were baffled when foreign teenagers they have chatted with online since 2012 expressed disbelief that life was back to normal following the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011.
About 220 teachers and students living at a combined total of 30 sites in Japan, France, Belarus and Poland participated in the study.
The foreign participants used the same type of dosimeters as the students, and annual radiation exposure for individuals at each site was calculated based on readings over a two-week period between June and October last year.
The results showed that the median figure for the annual radiation exposure in Fukushima Prefecture was between 0.63 millisievert and 0.97 millisievert.
Meanwhile, figures for locations in France, Belarus and Poland were between 0.51 millisievert and 1.17 millisieverts.
The reading for Fukushima was 0.86 millisievert, while the figures for Nihonmatsu and Iwaki, both in Fukushima Prefecture, were 0.97 millisievert and 0.69 millisievert, respectively.
Figures in the more-distant Yokohama and Ena, Gifu Prefecture, were 0.59 millisievert and 0.87 millisievert, respectively.
“The difference (in annual radiation dosage levels) between municipalities outside the nuclear disaster zone in the prefecture and those overseas was insignificant,” said Haruka Onodera, a second-year student at the school. She will discuss the results at the International Radiation Protection Workshop for High School Students in France, which starts from March 23.