Citing delays in decontamination work, the government has decided to extend evacuation orders by one year for two villages near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, sources said.
Citing delays in decontamination work, the government has decided to extend evacuation orders by one year for two villages near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, sources said.
The government initially planned to lift the orders in “zones being prepared for the lifting of the evacuation order” in Katsurao and Iitate in March, three years after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami triggered the Fukushima nuclear accident.
But the government’s local nuclear emergency response headquarters will set March 2015 as the new target date, the sources said.
Areas with this designation have annual radiation doses of 20 millisieverts or less.
The delay in lifting the evacuation orders could cause more evacuees to lose their desire to return home. The villages may also have to reconsider their rehabilitation plans, and the recovery of services necessary for the people’s daily lives may stall.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. will have to provide more compensation payments for evacuees. The redress period continues for one year after an evacuation order is lifted.
In Katsurao, the zone facing the delay was home to 1,359 people from 417 households, while 5,210 people from 1,582 households used to live in the zone in Iitate.
Target dates for two other evacuation zones remain unchanged. In the two villages, evacuation orders are expected to be lifted for “no-residence zones,” with annual doses between 20 and 50 millisieverts, in March 2016, and for “difficult-to-return zones,” with annual doses exceeding 50 millisieverts, in March 2017.
Other municipalities where government-led decontamination work has been behind schedule may also have their target dates pushed back.
The local nuclear emergency response headquarters has set target dates for lifting evacuation orders in Minami-Soma city, as well as the towns of Tomioka, Namie, Futaba and Okuma, based on plans for infrastructure recovery and decontamination work.
Tomioka, located south of the crippled plant, is calling on the government to review the targets based on realistic assessments.
“We hope to draw up a town development plan for the future, but target dates are based on shaky grounds and have lost substance,” a senior town official said.