Forbidden Land Of Fukushima A Photo JournalRichard Wilcox, Ph.D. Locations visited included Nakaso, a seaside town on the southern border of Fukushima just north of Ibaraki; Hisanohama, a fishing village about 14 km south of FNPP#1; and finally Hirano town (ghost town) and J-village which acts as Tepco worker headquarters and is about 12 km from the NFPP#1 reactors. When we arrived at Nakaso my dosimeter (Terra-P made in the Ukraine) measured normal background radiation. However, after we had dropped off our bags at the hotel and traveled farther north, radiation levels increased. *(I have used the dosimeter on a commercial flight where it measured 2 3 microsieverts per hour which is normal at high altitudes; and in the US where background radiation was the similar to most of Tokyo, about 0.1 0.15 microsieverts per hour.) Hirano town itself had been decontaminated pushing radiation levels back to normal. The small town offered beautiful countryside vistas of the Abukuma mountain range. However, as soon as we reached the outskirts of the town levels jumped to 0.52 micro sieverts per hour, about four or five times the level considered safe for long-term habitation. Background radiation in this area (outside the decontaminated zone of Hirano town) ranged from 0.45 to over 0.5 microsieverts per hour. Most of radiocesium in the coastal sediments is incorporated into lithogenic fractions, and this incorporation is almost irreversible. Accordingly, the biological availability of sedimentary radiocesium is relatively low, but continuous monitoring of radiocesium inmarine biota is highly recommended because significant amounts of radiocesium have been accumulated in the sediment (2). Michio Aoyama, a senior researcher of marine chemistry at the Japan Meteorological Agencys Meteorological Research Institute, estimated that 30 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium and another 30 billion becquerels of radioactive strontium continue to leak into the outer ocean every day (3). Richard Wilcox holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies from a social science, holistic perspective. He teaches at a number of universities in the Tokyo, Japan area. His articles on environmental topics including the Fukushima nuclear disaster are archived at http://wilcoxrb99.wordpress.com/ and he can be contacted at wilcoxrb2013@gmail.com 1. My Trip To The Fukushima 2. Japan Experts: Contamination from Fukushima is almost irreversible in coastal sediments 3. ANALYSIS: Contaminated water flowing into ocean despite Abes claim 