The evacuation order areas established due to the accident at the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings' (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) have been reorganized according to the decrease in ambient dose rates and the decontamination progress. The Japanese government decided to decontaminate the difficult-to-return areas and lift the evacuation order by 2030. This radiation protection strategy can be optimized by examining emergency exposure situations to date and the existing exposure after the accident. This article reviews the methods that can determine the individual radiation doses of residents who should return to their homes when the evacuation order is lifted in the specific reconstruction reproduction base area and the difficult-to-return areas outside this base area and summarizes the points to be considered when implementing these methods. In Part 1 of this article, we review the efforts made by the Japanese government and research institutes to assess radiation doses to residents after the FDNPP accident.
Keywords: Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident; difficult-to-return areas; external exposure assessment; governmental policy; simulation.
© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Japanese Radiation Research Society and Japanese Society for Radiation Oncology.