With nobody wanting to give it a permanent home, a large amount of waste contaminated with radioactive materials due to the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has remained in eastern Japan.
With nobody wanting to give it a permanent home, a large amount of waste contaminated with radioactive materials due to the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has remained in eastern Japan.
By last December the Environment Ministry had ruled that a total of about 140,000 tons of waste fell into the category of "designated waste" in 11 prefectures and Tokyo. The central government is responsible for the final disposal of designated waste, including rice straw and sludge, which is contaminated with more than 8,000 becquerels of radioactivity per kilogram.
It plans to set up five final disposal sites for the tonnage--one each in five prefectures.
However, the locations have yet to be decided. Because of that, the designated waste is currently being held in temporary storage sites, causing dissatisfaction among residents living around it.
On March 27, an executive of the Miyagi prefectural government visited an explanatory briefing in the Tsukidate district of Kurihara in the prefecture and apologized to residents there.
A total of about 930 tons of contaminated rice straw, including one that has yet to be officially designated as such, are currently being kept in five temporary storage sites in Kurihara. However, the two-year storage periods for the five sites, promised by the Miyagi prefectural government and the Kurihara city government, will start expiring from May.
“The schedule to find a final disposal site is delayed. We cannot keep the promise that we will close the temporary storage site here in two years. We are very sorry,” the Miyagi official said.
In the meeting, residents expressed their anger in succession. “It is unforgivable to cheat residents,” one said. Another said, “We cannot endure it (the temporary storage site) anymore.”
The prefectural government and the Environment Ministry have made efforts to find a final disposal site.
Starting in autumn 2012, the prefectural government held meetings with all the municipalities in the prefecture and confirmed that one final disposal site is necessary in the prefecture.
After that, the ministry announced three candidate sites for the final disposal site in the prefecture in January this year. The three, all of them on state-owned lands, are located in Kurihara, Kami and Taiwa.
Kurihara’s candidate site, the mountainous Fukayamadake area, is located near the border with Akita and Iwate prefectures.
The Kurihara city-operated stock farm next to the candidate site was closed soon after the Fukushima nuclear accident due to contamination by radioactive materials. It was reopened in August 2013 after decontamination work was completed.
Dairy farmer Kyoichi Suzuki, 65, who entrusted seven head of cattle to the stock farm in 2013, has anxiety over the candidate site.
“If radioactive materials leak from the site, it will cause serious damage,” he said.
Takeo Oba, 75, who runs an inn-cum-restaurant at the side of a nearby dam lake, is participating in a signature-collecting campaign against a final disposal site.
Due to contamination by radioactive materials, “iwana” mountain trout caught in the upper stream of the dam are now under shipment restrictions. Because of that, Oba is serving farm-raised "safe" trout in his restaurant.
“Unless I explain to my customers, they do not understand that the trout are safe. I am fed up with that,” he said.
In an area north of the dam lake, a large landslide occurred in 2008 due to the powerful Iwate-Miyagi inland earthquake.
At the disaster site, measuring one kilometer in width and 150 meters in height, the inner brown soil layer is still exposed.
The Kurihara city government is trying to use the location as a sightseeing spot to bring back tourists, whose number has declined since the earthquake. It is aiming to win recognition of the area, including geologically important faults and a volcano, as a geopark. Despite such plans, the state-run land in the city was chosen as a candidate for the final disposal site.
“I will risk my own political life to oppose the final disposal site,” Kurihara Mayor Isamu Sato said.
The other two municipalities of Kami and Taiwa are also opposed to the construction of the final disposal site in their areas.
When they were chosen as candidate sites in late January, Senior Vice Environment Minister Shinji Inoue visited the Kami town office. At that time, Kami Mayor Hirobumi Inomata told him, “You lack awareness of the damage caused by rumors (of possible contamination).”
Expressing anxiety over the possible influences on the local rice, called “Seiryumai” (limpid stream rice), Inomata said, “If the final disposal site is constructed here, consumers will not have faith in the name of the rice.”
The local agricultural cooperative has received inquiries about the construction plan of the final disposal site from at least five of seven companies that are purchasing rice from the cooperative.
For its part, Taiwa cast doubts on the safety of the candidate site as it is only two kilometers from the Ground Self-Defense Force’s Ojojihara training area.
“Bullets could mistakenly land on the final disposal site,” the town said in its written opinion to the ministry.
The Environment Ministry wants to start detailed surveys on the three candidate sites in Miyagi Prefecture before choosing one. However, it does not even have a prospective timetable for doing so.
“As no one wants to host the final disposal site, there are various opinions on it. But unless we construct it, (contaminated waste such as rice straw) will be kept (in the temporary storage sites) forever. That will be the worst case. So we have to explain politely (to residents),” said Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara.
Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma and Chiba prefectures are also facing difficulties in selecting final disposal sites.
In autumn 2013, the Environment Ministry chose candidate sites in Ibaraki and Tochigi prefectures. However, the sudden announcements of those locations elicited anger from local residents. As a result, the ministry retracted the proposed sites.
After that, it was decided that the selection method of candidate sites would be determined through meetings of mayors in each prefecture.
However, a different method to choose a candidate site was decided in Tochigi Prefecture in December 2013. Unlike Miyagi Prefecture, which chose three candidate sites as the first step, Tochigi adopted a method in which the Environment Ministry will show only one potential site after a process lasting several months.
“Before announcing the candidate site, the central government should release measures to prevent damage from rumors and revitalize the local economy,” said Tochigi Governor Tomikazu Fukuda.
In Ibaraki, Gunma and Chiba prefectures, the mayors in each have met two or three times. However, they have yet to even settle on the method for choosing candidate sites.
(This article was compiled from reports by Hiroshi Shimada and Yoshinobu Motegi.)