Evacuees Wonder About The Future at Evacuation Centers
According to the Kyodo news agency, the Nuclear Safety Commission reported Monday that the plant, at one point after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, had been releasing 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactivity per hour. A release of tens of thousands of terabecquerels per hour corresponds with the leakage level that the IAEA uses as a minimum benchmark for a Level 7 accident.
According to statistics from Japan’s national police agency, the March 11 disaster collapsed 47,776 buildings. Another 11,030 partially collapsed. Some 84 burned down. Another 2,736 were flooded above floor level.
Combined, Japan’s hardest-hit prefectures — Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima — have requested 60,000 prefab homes. Japan’s prefab construction association said it can build 30,000 within the next two months; the other 30,000 within the following three months. But for now, the construction association faces a problem: Local authorities still don’t know where to put the new buildings. So far, land for 8,000 has been secured. (Wash Post, 4/12/2011, Wash Post, 4/11/2011)