Today’s Wall Street Journal reports…

TOKYO—Japan may look to extend the evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as the crisis there drags on, the government’s top spokesman said Thursday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the current 20-kilometer (12.4-mile) zone, which was based on the assumption of short-term exposure, may need to be enlarged. The plant emergency caused by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11 is now nearing the end of its fourth week.

The article goes on to say that longer-term exposure, about a month, exposes residents to the allowed annual dose for a nuclear power plant worker.

That’s why the chorus of ‘no immediate risk’, from plant owners and nuclear power advocates is a non-answer. Radiation exposure over time is deadly. That’s why your x-ray is so quick, and the technician jumps behind a barrier when it’s turned on. That’s why there are tours of Pripyat, the city abandoned after the Chernobyl disaster, but no one lives there. That’s why the prospect of a ‘dirty bomb’ is so frightening, and why depleted uranium used is suspected as a cause of sickness and birth defects in war zones.

Will Japan end up with a contaminated zone unfit for human habitation?

The brave workers at Fukushima are pumping nitrogen into the reactor vessels hoping to prevent more explosions. They are also draining radioactive water into the ocean because they have a buildup of water 200,000 times more radioactive and they have no better options. If the plants were secured today, there would still be ample reason to declare nuclear power too dangerous, too expensive and too vulnerable to serve as an answer to our worldwide energy needs. As long as the news leak continues the truth will come out.