Devices to detect fallout installed at U.S. Yokosuka Base

Japan Press Weekly

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Devices to detect fallout installed at U.S. Yokosuka Base

Devices to detect radioactive materials are installed at the U.S. Navy’s Yokosuka Base in Kanagawa Prefecture.

This shows that people living close to the base are in danger of exposure to possible radiation leakage since the base is used as the home port of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George Washington.

A visitor to the base on the “open house day” last December took a picture of a “sensitive monitoring device”.

The Naval Installations Command states that the device is to prepare against fallout from nuclear blasts or other conventional explosions spreading other types of radioactive material.

It says, “The presence of radioactive material can be detected only by using sensitive monitoring devices. Monitoring can project the arrival of radioactive fallout from a distant blast. Such predictions would be announced through official warning channels, but any increase in the buildup of gritty surface dust and dirt would be reason to take protective measures.”

Sensitive monitoring devices are posted by the Yokosuka Detachment of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility. The detachment conducts maintenance work on the nuclear reactor on the Geroge Washington.

- Akahata, March 5, 2010