Current status of evacuation areas near Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant

On page 6 of its "Fukushima Daiichi Status Report" dated 27 January 2012, the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency published a map showing "Current evacuation areas (as of 25 November)." A PDF copy of the map is viewable here. On page 8 of its previous "Fukushima Daiichi Status Report" dated December 22, 2011, IAEA stated:

"On 25 November, additional Specific Spots Recommended for Evacuation were established at 13 spots (15 households) in Date City and 20 spots (22 households) in Minamisoma City. This brings the total Specific Spots Recommended for Evacuation in Date City to 117 spots (128 households) and in Minamisoma City to 142 spots (153 households)."

This means that nearly 9 months after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Catastrophe began, the Japanese federal government is still identifying radioactive hotspots located well outside the 12.4 mile (20 kilometer) "Restricted Area" immediately around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, as well as outside the "Deliberate Evacuation Area" extending far beyond the 12.4 mile zone to the northwest of the destroyed atomic reactors. This almost certainly means that families -- perhaps including fetuses for nearly their entire gestation period -- have been allowed to inhabit areas that the Japanese government now admits are too radioactively contaminated to be considered "safe."

It bears repeating that even areas the Japanese government has declared "permissibly" or "allowably" contaminated -- namely, at levels of contamination as high as 2 Rem per year -- should not be declared "safe." The linear no threshold theory, affirmed for decades by the U.S. Academies of Science, holds that any exposure to radioactivity, no matter how small, still carries a health risk, and these risks accumulate over a lifetime.