Work to clear radioactive fallout in Fukushima Prefecture is so far behind schedule that government deadlines could be missed and evacuees may have to wait longer to return home, Environment Ministry documents showed.
Work to clear radioactive fallout in Fukushima Prefecture is so far behind schedule that government deadlines could be missed and evacuees may have to wait longer to return home, Environment Ministry documents showed.
The ministry on March 8 released its first progress reports on the government’s decontamination project in 11 municipalities where some or all residents were forced to evacuate due to high radiation levels caused by the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant on March 11, 2011.
Cleanup work has started in only four of the municipalities, and progress rates remain extremely low in certain zones, according to the ministry’s documents.
Kuniaki Makiya, a senior ministry official, hinted that the government will review the decontamination project and perhaps push back the overall completion date goal of March 2014.
"We will review the progress in each municipality around the coming summer," he said.
Ministry officials said the delays were caused in part by the unusually heavy snowfalls this winter and the deadlocked negotiations with local residents over where to temporarily store radioactive soil collected in the work.
Experts also said the government was overly optimistic when it mapped out the unprecedented decontamination project. They said it has become clear that the actual amount of work far exceeds the initial estimates.
The Environment Ministry in January 2012 released a road map for radioactive decontamination work under the direct involvement of the central government.
According to the plan, the cleanup work would be completed over a two-year period from fiscal 2012 to fiscal 2013 in residential areas, farms, roads, forests surrounding residential areas and other zones in the 11 municipalities. Exemptions were made for areas exceeding 50 millisieverts in annual radiation doses and the bulk of forested areas.
The ministry also set goals to complete at least part of the cleanup work in six of the 11 municipalities by the end of fiscal 2012 this month.
However, work has not even started in two of these municipalities--Kawamata and Minami-Soma.
In Iitate, work has ended on only 1 percent of the land in residential areas scheduled for decontamination in fiscal 2012. The progress rate was zero for farmland in Iitate.
Progress in Naraha and Kawauchi was better than in Iitate, but still considerably behind schedule, according to the ministry documents.
Work was roughly on schedule only in Tamura, where land plots were secured early on for use as temporary depots for radioactive soil and the cleanup work was running smoothly before winter, ministry officials said.
Ministry officials said they will stick to the goal of completing the cleanup by the end of fiscal 2013 because "the work can get on track if land plots are secured for setting up temporary depots."
However, they presented no concrete measures on how to make up for the delays so far.
Further delays in the cleanup process could lead some of evacuees to give up hopes of ever returning to their homes.
In early October, then Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda inspected a cleanup site and ordered officials to disclose information on the decontamination progress to residents.
The Environment Ministry said in late October it would release data for decontaminated areas and other relevant information to the public, but disclosure came more than four months later.
Makiya said it took time to sum up the decontaminated land figures and promised efforts to disclose more detailed information in the future.
But such words are doing little to quell frustration in the affected areas.
"I have always thought that nothing was proceeding smoothly in the cleanup process," said Katsuya Endo, mayor of Tomioka, one of the 11 municipalities.
He cited the delay in locating plots for temporary storage of radioactive soil and expressed skepticism on the effectiveness of the cleanup efforts.
"Perhaps everything was an optimistic, armchair theory," Endo said. "The central government should review the progress and redress the cleanup plans."
(Harufumi Mori contributed to this article.)