Abstract
The Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 11, 2011, resulted in three full reactor meltdowns and the spread of radioactive fallout over mainland Japan, primarily throughout the Tohoku region. Many affected communities required long-term and, in some cases, permanent evacuation. This chapter examines the social, economic, and health effects the disaster has had on women and children. It also examines how and why many Japanese women and mothers became antinuclear activists after the disaster. In becoming outspoken nuclear power opponents, these women broke traditional social barriers and gender expectations and a nascent feminism or ecofeminism was born.
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A sievert , or SI, is the unit of radiation defined as producing the same biologic effect of high energy X-rays. One sievert is equivalent to 100 rem. 1 sievert, if absorbed all at once, will cause severe illness; 8 sieverts will cause death. Japan’s allowable safety limits have been set to millisieverts (mSv) . Twenty mSv and under are now considered officially safe by the Japanese government for long-term exposure; although prior to the nuclear accident, that number had been 1 mSv. According to Physicians for Social Responsibility , 20 millisieverts is equivalent to one thousand chest X-rays per year, or three chest X-rays every day per year. Exposure to 20 millisieverts over a lifetime will produce cancer in one in every six people (Helfand et al. 2011). Dr. Alice Stewart , the British epidemiologist, discovered that a single X-ray to the womb doubled the fetus’ chance of acquiring cancer as a child (in the 1950s); she argued there is no safe dose of radiation (Greene 1999).
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Hutner, H. (2018). Japanese Women and Antinuclear Activism After the Fukushima Accident. In: Brinkmann, R., Garren, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Sustainability. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71389-2_14
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