NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...
NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...
NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...
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after extensive remediation efforts, found that r<br />
adiation levels inside homes had dropped by only a<br />
bout 25 percent. That left parts of the city with<br />
levels of radiation four times higher than the rec<br />
ommended maximum exposure.<br />
“We can only conclude that these efforts have so fa<br />
r been a failure,” he said.<br />
Minamisoma, a small city whose center sits about 1<br />
5 miles from the nuclear plant, is a good place to<br />
get a sense of the likely limitations of decontam<br />
ination efforts.<br />
The city has cleaned dozens of schools, parks and<br />
sports facilities in hopes of enticing back the 30<br />
,000 of its 70,000 residents who have yet to retur<br />
n since the accident. On a recent morning, a small<br />
army of bulldozers and dump trucks were resurfaci<br />
ng a high school soccer field and baseball diamond<br />
with a layer of reddish brown dirt. Workers burie<br />
d the old topsoil in a deep hole in a corner of th<br />
e soccer field. The crew’s overseer, Masahiro Saku<br />
ra, said readings at the field had dropped substan<br />
tially, but he remains anxious because many parts<br />
of the city were not expected to be decontaminated<br />
for at least two years.<br />
These days, he lets his three young daughters outd<br />
oors only to go to school and play in a resurfaced<br />
park. “Is it realistic to live like this?” he ask<br />
ed.<br />
The challenges are sure to be more intense inside<br />
the 12-mile zone, where radiation levels in some p<br />
laces have reached nearly 510 millisieverts a year<br />
, 25 times above the cutoff for evacuation.<br />
Already, the proposed repatriation has opened rift<br />
s among those who have been displaced. The 11,500<br />
displaced residents of Okuma — many of whom now li<br />
ve in rows of prefabricated homes 60 miles inland