Radioactive Wild Boars Rampaging Fukushima Nuclear Site

Radioactive boars are running wild and breeding uncontrollably in the northern region ofJapan contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The animals have been devastating local agriculture and eating toxic, nuclear-contaminated food from around the accident site.

Mass graves and incinerators have been unable to cope with the quantity of boar corpses, shot by local hunters.

However, boars remained in the area, unchecked by humans. Their precise number is unknown, but since 2014, the number of boars hunted has increased from 3,000 to 13,000, The Times reported.A quarantine zone near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant where a 2011 meltdown leaked radioactive material into the surrounding countryside has been uninhabited by humans since the disaster.

“Sooner or later, we’re going to have to ask local people to give us their land to use,” said Tsuneo Saito, a local hunter. “The city doesn’t own land which isn’t occupied by houses.”

In desperation, the authorities are resorting to using incinerators to get rid of the corpses. But it has been difficult to find the workers to chop up the remains into pieces small enough to feed into the furnaces because this leaves the volunteers heavily contaminated with radiation.

In the city of Soma, a purpose-built incinerator has been developed, complete with filters to absorb some of the radioactive material released by its cremations. However, even this £1million operation can only dispose of three boars a day.

The animals were considered a local delicacy, but the nuclear contaminated boars are unfit for human consumption. Tests have shown the contaminated area remains dangerous, with levels of radiation 300,000 times the safe limit for humans.

The radiation levels are expected to remain toxic for at least another 300 million years.

Despite evidence of mutations to local plant and insect life, there has been nothing yet recognised suggesting the boars suffer any discoverable ill effects from the radiation. Authorities still manage to ignore all indicators of damage due to radiation exposure.

Exposure to radiation can take years for damage to show, and years after being exposed or for cancers to develop.