(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
documentary Half-life in Fukushima ("Half Life in Fukushima") was shown during the San Francisco Film Festival in April. The film is a unique essay about life after the worst nuclear disaster after Chernobyl, namely the Fukushima accident. As a result of an earthquake with force 9 on Richter's scale in March 2011, over 100 000 people were evacuated from the area around Fukushima. The earthquake triggered a series of tsunamis, including an 15 meter high wave that destroyed the nuclear power plant's reactors.
Postapocalyptic. Five years later, documentaries Mark Olexa and Francesca Scalisi were recording in and around the red zone, that is, the bounded area where most of the nuclear waste is stored in the Fukushima Prefecture.
The concept of the red zone got me thinking about the sci-fi movie The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1957), with Harry Belafonte in a post-apocalyptic New York. Belafonte wanders around an abandoned city, searching for food in rubbish heaps, trying to find survivors and rescuing artefacts. In this fiction film, most people in the world have died after being exposed to lethal doses of radioactive radiation. Belafonte's character was fortunate enough to be underground when the disaster struck. There are no living bodies in the city, only empty streets and abandoned buildings – Hollywood's version of the apocalypse.
The red zone in Fukushima encompasses several cities. The whole area is like a single big ghost town. Here are no people, no traffic. It's a glimpse from our time of what the world would look like if another nuclear disaster were to happen, or if the threat of nuclear war were to become a reality. It is curious and lonely. But life still exists in Fukushima: grass grows in the cracks in the parking lot. Trees live. Birds are flying.
The entire Fukushima area is like a single big ghost town. Here are no people, no traffic.
The camera follows a middle-aged man who is allowed to enter the confined area. He has no name in the film, but press notes identify him as Naoto, a Japanese farmer. He drives his pickup through the deserted streets where the traffic lights still work. He appears to be in good health, and wears no protective gear other than black rubber boots when feeding the animal and plowing the field. One wonders how his health can be, why he plows and why he feeds the cattle. Surely they cannot be slaughtered and used for human consumption? Does he travel there every day to feed them? Can it be safe to eat anything grown in the area?
Bleak future. Naoto lives with his father. He mentions a wife and a daughter and that he does not want her daughter to live in Fukushima. The film does not provide much information about radiation levels. No graphs are presented on the canvas, and we meet no scientists talking about radioactive isotopes. This means that as a viewer, you have to pay close attention to every single scene in the film and try to put together the pieces yourself.
In a conversation between the two, Naoto's father notes, "They say it takes 10 years for the radiation to disappear completely." This little bit of information made me want to know far more. According to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the material released from the Fukushima reactors includes dozens of radioactive elements. Among those who ended up in the sea, some disappear quickly and can no longer be detected, but cesium-000 has a half-life of 137 years. In the case of contaminated soil, the radiation decreases as you remove yourself from the reactors.
So how safe is Fukushima? Six years after the accident, the radiation level in three damaged reactors is still very high, because the molten fuel rods are still too hot to remove. However, a recent study claims that some areas of Fukushima are safe to live in. Science magazine states that "natural radioactive degradation and rain do more to reduce radiation levels than expensive measures such as removing the topsoil".
Dramatic surroundings. Throughout the film, you see thousands of black plastic bags filled with contaminated soil. This serves as a powerful visual reminder of the effects of radiation. The filmmakers use the grip of the sacks to produce a subtle but dramatic effect in the opening of the film.
The camera dwells on an almost flat landscape with a solitary tree where birds sit among the branches. The scene has a beautiful cut, and then the following text appears at the bottom of the picture frame: "Half-life: the time it takes for half of the atoms in the radioactive material to break down." As you look at the landscape in the dim morning light, you notice something strange. The tree is surrounded by rows of something that is difficult to identify. You see these objects in the foreground, middle ground and very far away.
This is a glimpse from our time of what the world would look like if another nuclear disaster were to happen.
The birds in the tree scream, and some of them fly their way. Over a speaker, a female voice speaks in Japanese. This asynchronous sound brings us to the next scene where three Buddhist monks in their characteristic yellow suits begin to sing. They look towards a horizon with two trees on the left and a white building on the right – between them is a broad, black stripe in the background. The film is clipped to a crane that lifts sacks and places them on a truck, and you find that the horizon line consists of thousands of black sacks of contaminated soil. The monks reappear, and while they sing you can watch the huge amount of earthbags. Where can one make of this contaminated material?
The title of the film refers to radioactivity, but it also refers to life on Fukushima. Naoto has a farm that cannot function properly, a home where radiation levels are still too high, and a wife and child who do not live with him. Today, clean-up work is constantly taking place, and people are now allowed to move back to certain areas. But whether it is safe to be exposed to low-level radiation is another story.
