A road in Seoul was found to be highly radioactive by residents wielding Geiger counters purchased in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The Nowon district council is now trying to dispose of the 330 tons of asphalt dug up earlier this month from two segments of the road.
On November 1 a resident of Nowon, a district in northeastern Seoul, reported registering radiation levels 10 times higher than normal from stretches of the road. The level was too low to pose a health threat but demands by residents forced the district council to dig up the asphalt.
The council caught more heat from residents when someone learned a week ago that chunks of the asphalt had been dumped in a park.
“No one wants the material around their home so it is stuck in the backyard of our own office,” a Nowon district office spokeswoman told AFP.
But residents living near the office have begun complaining now and she is seeking to have the city and the nuclear safety agency pay the $8.7 million needed to buy special containers to ship the asphalt to a radioactive waste site.
The problem is that the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission doesn’t consider the asphalt to be bona fide nuclear waste. Exposure to the asphalt for an hour a day for an entire year would amount to less than half the annual permissible dose of radiation, it has estimated. However it is probing how the road became radioactive.
“Regardless of the cause, the amount we found in the area posed no health risks,” said an unidentified NSSC official. “But the district officials repaved the road anyway. We have no responsibility to pick up the slack for their political decisions.”
