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2016 February 24 - March 1 TOP3 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Citizens voice anxieties about health damage from uranium dug up by maglev railway construction

Citizens living near a planned construction site for a maglev railway are voicing anxieties about the possibility that the construction will generate surplus soil containing uranium which will pose risks to the surrounding natural environment and their health.

As part of the maglev Chuo Shinkansen project, Central Japan Railway Company (JR Tokai) plans to build tunnels in the southwestern region of Gifu Prefecture which is dotted with uranium deposits. If uranium ore is dug up and exposed to the air, it produces radon gas which causes a health hazard.

JR Tokai has explained that uranium contamination will not be a problem as the planned railway route will bypass all known uranium deposits. The company wrote up the plan based on boring surveys carried out by a predecessor of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency several decades ago. The surveys, however, aimed to find uranium layers which are large enough to be mined and therefore they do not deny the potential existence of uranium minerals in places other than minable deposits.

Being skeptical about the explanation by JR Tokai, a group of citizens in Gifu and its neighboring prefectures in mid-February checked radiation doses in places related to the maglev bullet train project. According to their data, readings on their dosimeters in the planned construction site reached up to 0.341 micro Sv per hour, far exceeding 0.07 micro Sv in Nagoya City which they set as the baseline. It is even higher than 0.275 micro Sv in a place near a major Gifu uranium deposit, which is one of the largest uranium deposits in the country. This points to the existence of uranium beneath the planned construction site.

Kawamoto Masahiko of the citizens’ group which organized the measurement said, “We still have concerns about the possible damage to the natural environment and human health by exposure to uranium and radon gas. We think that JR Tokai should cancel the construction project.”