» Alpinist Club completed radiation map on Fukushima mountains

2013/10/01

An alpinists’ club based in Fukushima city has completed a map of radiation levels on mountains across Fukushima prefecture.

This is the first time since the outbreak of the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant disaster that such a map has been produced, and shows that mountains to the west of the power plant have high radiation levels, while mountains further inland have lower levels.

The highest radiation levels were found on Toratoriyama on the border of the village of Iitate and the city of Date, where at 6.6 microsieverts per hour.

Radiation levels on mountains to the northwest of the Fukushima power plant were found to be the highest, with some high figures found also in some mountains southwest of the plant.

Mr.Isao Izumi of the alpinist association said, “Even on the same mountain, radiation levels tended to be higher in coniferous forests and areas with brush,In the case of mountains in the mid-western part of the prefecture, in the winter if there was a lot of snow, radiation levels dropped to one-fourth that of the summer. We found radioactive hotspots in the western part of the prefecture, and trends in how radiation levels dropped varied from mountain to mountain. We plan to carry out further surveys.”

<Media Report>

Radiation map on Fukushima Mountains

Alpinists’ club produces color-coded map of radiation levels on Fukushima mountains (Mainichi Newspaper)

Tags:citizens' movement, contamination, news, radiation dose

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