As reported by World News on NBC News, concerns are mounting about the ongoing leakage of radioactively contaminated water at the devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant site in Japan.
The article quotes a Greenpeace Japan energy campaigner, as well as a ruined -- but still resisting -- dairy farmer, whose herd is fatally near Fukushima Daiichi:
'...Hisayo Takada, energy campaigner with Greenpeace Japan, complained no real progress had been made.
“It’s still a very fragile situation and measures implemented by the government and [power company] TEPCO are only temporary solutions,” she said. "The issue with the contaminated water is very serious and we're very concerned. And we're very angry because it’s been two years and they've been saying that everything's safe."
Greenpeace has been testing food sold in supermarkets, and to date has not found “radiation levels higher than government guidelines,” Takada said.
But she said the “land and sea will never return to the way it was before the accident.”
One man who knows this all too well is cattle farmer Masami Yoshizawa. He lives in the Namie area, which was once inside a 12-mile, mandatory evacuation zone but is now among the places where people have been allowed to return.
He tends his herd of 350 cows as “a living symbol of protest.”
“As long as they're alive, I will keep them to show to the world -- these cows that have been exposed to radiation, cows that are no longer marketable, and that I’m being told to have slaughtered,” said Yoshizawa, 59.
“For us farmers, it’s impossible for us to return to work in Namie. Our community will disappear. It’s going to become like Chernobyl … Only the elderly who say they don't care about the radiation will return. Children will never return,” he said...'.
Note that Japan's "allowable" or "permissible" (NOT to be confused with "safe") dose of radioactive cesium in food is limited to 100 bequerels per kilogram. However, U.S. standards allow for 1,200 Bq/kg of radioactive cesium contamination in food. This means that food regarded as too radioactive and thus unfit for human consumption in Japan can be exported to the U.S. for consumption by unsuspecting families!