It would take two days to evacuate over half a million residents in the event of another massive radioactive leak at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, according to local officials.
It would take two days to evacuate over half a million residents in the event of another massive radioactive leak at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, according to local officials.
The prediction released April 30 was part of a wide-area evacuation plan worked out by the prefectural government in preparation for the possibility of another nuclear accident occurring at one of the two nuclear power plants there.
It was based on the assumption that current evacuees from the areas around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, which was crippled by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster, have all returned to their homes.
The evacuation plan assumed a worst-case scenario in which 0.5 millisievert of radiation per hour spread to 13 municipalities, with wind blowing from the east to the west, preventing residents from fleeing westward.
In that case, a maximum of 550,000 residents would evacuate to areas within the prefecture or to its southern neighbor, Ibaraki Prefecture, and it would take nearly 50 hours for them to complete the process.