Canadian mainstream media, including the Globe&Mail and CBC, have been largely silent on the ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan, and its evolving global environmental, public health and economic implications. It is good to see this article about the concerns of Japanese residents about returning to highly contaminated areas.

Globe & Mail, Oct. 06, 2011 Residents of Japanese town contaminated by Fukushima refuse to return

Excerpt: […] “I don’t plan to come back, ever,” said a middle-aged woman who briefly visited Hirono this week to retrieve belongings from the two-storey home that she and her family fled on March 12, the day after the tsunami that set in motion the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. She paused to take in her abandoned home’s view of the ocean and its now-unkempt garden. “I’ll never feel safe here. I’ll never feel secure.”

The area where the government has lifted its advisory was one of three evacuation zones around the plant. The 20-kilometre radius around Fukushima Daiichi remains a no-go zone for the foreseeable future, as does a heavily contaminated corridor northwest of the plant that was later added to the mandatory evacuation zone. Once home to more than 100,000 people, the areas are expected to be uninhabitable for upward of two decades.[…]

[…] In the past week alone, plutonium was discovered in soil 40 kilometres from the stricken plant and a local environmental group reported finding levels of radioactive cesium in the city of Fukushima, 60 kilometres from the plant, that were triple the level that requires sealing in concrete. Hirono residents whisper about sky-high cesium-137 readings rumoured to have been taken near the window of the local school […]

Full article at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/residents-of-japanese-town-contaminated-by-fukushima-refuse-to-return/article2193802/