NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...

after extensive remediation efforts, found that r
adiation levels inside homes had dropped by only a
bout 25 percent. That left parts of the city with
levels of radiation four times higher than the rec
ommended maximum exposure.
“We can only conclude that these efforts have so fa
r been a failure,” he said.
Minamisoma, a small city whose center sits about 1
5 miles from the nuclear plant, is a good place to
get a sense of the likely limitations of decontam
ination efforts.
The city has cleaned dozens of schools, parks and
sports facilities in hopes of enticing back the 30
,000 of its 70,000 residents who have yet to retur
n since the accident. On a recent morning, a small
army of bulldozers and dump trucks were resurfaci
ng a high school soccer field and baseball diamond
with a layer of reddish brown dirt. Workers burie
d the old topsoil in a deep hole in a corner of th
e soccer field. The crew’s overseer, Masahiro Saku
ra, said readings at the field had dropped substan
tially, but he remains anxious because many parts
of the city were not expected to be decontaminated
for at least two years.
These days, he lets his three young daughters outd
oors only to go to school and play in a resurfaced
park. “Is it realistic to live like this?” he ask
ed.
The challenges are sure to be more intense inside
the 12-mile zone, where radiation levels in some p
laces have reached nearly 510 millisieverts a year
, 25 times above the cutoff for evacuation.
Already, the proposed repatriation has opened rift
s among those who have been displaced. The 11,500
displaced residents of Okuma — many of whom now li
ve in rows of prefabricated homes 60 miles inland