Up to 1 million residents of municipalities within 50 kilometers of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant will be eligible for nuclear accident compensation, a government committee decided on Dec. 5.
Up to 1 million residents of municipalities within 50 kilometers of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant will be eligible for nuclear accident compensation, a government committee decided on Dec. 5.
People will be able to apply for money even if their homes are located outside the 50-km radius, as long as their municipality has land within the zone, according to the committee set up to deal with compensation disputes arising from the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Residents who did not evacuate will also be eligible.
The decision will be included in the government's guidelines on compensation.
Qualifying municipalities include Soma city, Fukushima city, Date city, Nihonmatsu city, Motomiya city, Koriyama city, Iwaki city and Miharu town.
There are some locations outside the 50-km radius where radiation levels are high, raising the possibility of the number of recipients increasing further.
The small print of the committee’s decision states that residents in municipalities located within the “Keikai Kuiki” (no-entry zone within a radius of 20 km), “Keikakuteki Hinan Kuiki” (which is located outside the no-entry zone, but whose residents were requested to evacuate) and the “Kinkyuji Hinan Junbi Kuiki” (the evacuation standby zone that was abolished at the end of September) will be eligible for payments. In addition, people in municipalities that are located outside the three zones but have districts within the 50-km radius will be qualified.
In reaching the decision, the committee looked at the proportion of municipalities’ populations who evacuated of their own volition following the disaster, as well as the distribution of iodine tablets to prevent damage to thyroid glands. The compensation to each resident will be paid as a lump sum.