Fukushima Says Radiation Poses No Threat to Olympic Torch Relay
TOKYO (Reuters) - Fukushima prefecture, home to the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, on Tuesday reassured participants and spectators at the Olympic torch relay this year that they would not need to worry about radiation exposure.
The four-month torch relay ahead of the 2020 Olympics will begin on March 26 at J-Village, a soccer training center in Fukushima that served as a frontline operations base for workers who battled the 2011 nuclear crisis.
Of more than 24,000 monitoring spots along the relay route in Fukushima, one in Iitate village, 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, had the highest reading, at 0.77 microsieverts per hour, the prefecture’s December survey results showed.
A four-hour stay there would bring radiation exposure to 3.08 microsieverts, or 0.003 millisieverts, well below the government’s target of keeping the public’s annual exposure arising from the nuclear accident below 1 millisievert.
By comparison, an air traveler is exposed to 0.1 to 0.2 millisieverts of radiation during a round trip between Tokyo and New York.
"This won’t be posing any problem for holding the torch relay,” the Fukushima prefecture said in a statement.
The radiation level in Iitate is about 20 times higher than that of downtown Tokyo, which registered at 0.037 microsieverts per hour on Tuesday, according to the web page of Japan’s nuclear watchdog, the Nuclear Regulation Authority.
The four-month torch relay ahead of the 2020 Olympics will begin on March 26 at J-Village, a soccer training center in Fukushima that served as a frontline operations base for workers who battled the 2011 nuclear crisis.
Of more than 24,000 monitoring spots along the relay route in Fukushima, one in Iitate village, 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, had the highest reading, at 0.77 microsieverts per hour, the prefecture’s December survey results showed.
A four-hour stay there would bring radiation exposure to 3.08 microsieverts, or 0.003 millisieverts, well below the government’s target of keeping the public’s annual exposure arising from the nuclear accident below 1 millisievert.
By comparison, an air traveler is exposed to 0.1 to 0.2 millisieverts of radiation during a round trip between Tokyo and New York.
"This won’t be posing any problem for holding the torch relay,” the Fukushima prefecture said in a statement.
The radiation level in Iitate is about 20 times higher than that of downtown Tokyo, which registered at 0.037 microsieverts per hour on Tuesday, according to the web page of Japan’s nuclear watchdog, the Nuclear Regulation Authority.