Lost Places

A year ago, in Japan there was a terrible natural disaster that led to man-made accident at the nuclear power plant Fukushima Daiichi. Thousands of dead and missing, hundreds of thousands of affected residents in Japan, many of whom are still unable to return to normal life, washed away cities and villages, the huge economic damage – this is sad statistics of this disaster.

December 26, 2011. Around 12 a.m. we come back from Iitate to Minamisoma and go to the local city hall, to meet with the Minamisoma decontamination project director Tokio Hayama.

December 26, at 7:00 we leave our hotel in Minamisoma and go to the mountain village of Iitate.

Technical characteristics. Usage impressions.

With the search dosimeter-radiometer MKS 11 “Spectra” I get acquainted just a few days before the trip to Japan (to Fukushima prefecture, affected by the accident at the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant) at the end of December 2011. SPPE “Sparing-Vist” gave me a pre-production engineering sample for field testing. After a short briefing I was given a cardboard box with the device, pair sets of batteries and charger for them, operating manual, CD with software “Spectralog” and a screwdriver. Before that I had no experience with the equipment of such type and level: the search scintillator and with the function of identification of radionuclides at that, so I was interested to work with the device in real-time use of radioactive contaminated area.