Fukushima Refugees - Will they return or won't they?

Some interesting news tonight on the NHK 7 o'clock.

It seems there is some new government policy being formulated regarding Fukushima refugees and whether they will be allowed to return and, if so, when.

As I understand it, there are 80,000 refugees currently receiving compensation payouts. According to tonight's news, 25,000 don't know whether they will be allowed back at all.

The most polluted area is around the town of Namie. Tonight it was reported that the level of radiation was 4 microsieverts/hr. It was also stated that some areas are over 50 mSv/year. Since 4 microsieverts an hour only adds up to about 35 mSv/year, something is a little out already, but, whatever.

It's worthwhile noting that adverse human health effects have never been reported in areas with 35 or 50 mSv of radiation a year. In fact, the lowest level at which negative health effects have ever been observed is 100 mSv, and that was in a single dose (at Hiroshima and Nagasaki), not a very low dose spread out over an entire year. But that's a topic for another day.

So what is the Japanese government now considering while they prevent stressed and elderly residents from returning to completely safe homes in the clean and fresh countryside? Under the new proposals, some residents may never be able to return, and will receive sizable compensation payouts (paid from taxpayers funds) instead.

And because the Japanese government will obviously still have too much money left over, there are additional plans for further decontamination work, which (surprise surprise) has been unable to significantly reduce decontamination in many areas.

Since tens of millions of dollars have already been spent on decontamination efforts, successfully reducing radiation levels from completely safe to 'not significantly' lower than that, what's a few million more spent?

692 million dollars a week

Since all but two of Japan's nuclear power plants have been shut off since the Fukushima accident, Japan's utilities have had to pay huge sums of money for imported fuels to burn in order to replace the energy the nuclear plants would have generated.

In fact, according to Bloomberg in this fiscal year TEPCO and eight other power companies will pay 3.6 trillion yen more in fuel costs. These companies have been importing huge amounts of oil, LNG and coal.

This works out to an astounding 692 million dollars a week.

3.6 trillion yen is about 36 billion dollars, depending on the exchange rate. This increase in fossil-fuel imports is also forcing Japan to have a third annual trade deficit in a row.

Of course Japan can completely afford that. It's not like they any problems with massive debt or anything like that, is it?