A Vermont-based consultant on nuclear issues say soil samples he took in Tokyo about a year after the Fukushima nuclear disaster would qualify as nuclear waste in the United States.
Arnie Gundersen, chief engineer with Burlington-based Fairewinds Associates, says he traveled to Tokyo recently, took soil samples from parks, playgrounds and rooftop gardens around the city and brought them back to be tested in a U.S. lab.
He says they showed levels of radioactivity would qualify them as nuclear waste in the U.S.
Gundersen says the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and U.S. nuclear industry don’t consider the costs of mass evacuations and radioactive contamination in their cost benefit analysis used to license nuclear power plants.