Scientists and engineers are now taking a second look at the Fukushima Daiichi incident. Every new concern raised tends to create new safety requirements. This ultimately creates contradictions between the rules themselves and the science that those creating the rules referenced in the first place.

Every single death during the Tōhoku-Sendai disaster was caused by something other than ionizing radiation. People comfortably live in areas where natural geological processes create far higher levels of radiation than those measured in the forbidden areas of Fukushima Prefecture.

People living there were actually told they couldn’t return to their homes for potentially many years.

Decontamination efforts involve stripping away soil then coating the remaining ground with a material purported to reduce the number of radioactive particles that remain. Many residents have fallen into a deep depression and a few even killed themselves out of fear. This is all in spite of the fact that scientific evidence indicates radiation levels aren’t life-threatening.

These restrictions are based on prudence rather than science, and so ironically these rules have been very destructive. Professor Wade Allison proposed that the radiation limit gets raised nearly 1,000 times for this very reason. Even this level is far below the level at which DNA damage occurs according to a myriad of clinical studies that have been collected over a long period of time.

Some radiation experts are even coming around to this way of thinking, and they’re starting to say that their restrictive rules are hurting the Japanese economy. They’ve also created widespread panic, which has been far more harmful than the radiation itself.

Revoking this draconian measures would go a long way to restoring normalcy. Simply explaining the known facts about ionizing radiation would be a step in the right direction when it comes to educating the public.