Fukushima village urges residents back

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120201a3.html

After the government declared on Dec. 16 that the crippled Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant reactors have entered in "the state of cold shutdown" and that the crisis has been resolved, there seems growing pressure that residents of Fukushima shuould be back.

Cold shutdown and "the state of cold shutdown" are not the same notion.
Cold shutdown usually means the temperatures in the pressure vessels are below 100 degrees C, and nuclear fuel is stably cooled.
But this time, we don't even know where the fuel is. It might not remain in the containment vessels. Many experts suspect melt-through. So, to gauge the temperatures in the vessels may not make sense.

Furthermore, the real cause of crisis has not been revealed yet. The government attributes it to unexpected enormous tsunami, but some points out the possibility that the earthquake caused the loss of power supply.

In such a situation, however, the mayor in the above article urges villagers to return, as if those who don't come back are lack of love for their hometown.

The government declaration was merely political grandstanding, but it has been bringing down some irrational behaviors of people, which is surely related to the phenomenon of "dominance by atmosphere," proposed by the critic Shichihei Yamamoto.