FUTABA, Fukushima Prefecture--The Environment Ministry has begun transporting radioactive soil to the planned site of an interim storage facility here after years of tough negotiations with town officials.
FUTABA, Fukushima Prefecture--The Environment Ministry has begun transporting radioactive soil to the planned site of an interim storage facility here after years of tough negotiations with town officials.
Twelve bags, each holding about 1 cubic meter of soil, were transported March 25 by two 10-ton trucks to the site in the town where the facility is expected to be built. The highest radiation level recorded on the surface of the bags was 25 microsieverts per hour.
Trucks began transporting radioactive dirt to the other planned site, located in Okuma, a town just south of Futaba, on March 13. The soil was contaminated by the March 2011 disaster at the nearby Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
In addition to the 12 bags deposited in Futaba, 246 bags of contaminated soil were transported to Okuma as of March 25.
Although the process of transporting contaminated soil to interim storage facility sites has finally started, the government considers the first year or so of the process as a trial period because of numerous outstanding issues.
The interim storage facilities are together scheduled to receive 1,000 cubic meters of contaminated soil and debris from each of the temporary storage facilities in 43 cities, towns and villages across Fukushima Prefecture during the trial period. However, the total of 43,000 cubic meters of soil accounts for less than 0.2 percent of the maximum amount of debris planned for storage at the two sites, estimated at 22 million cubic meters.
Obtaining more land to store the contaminated debris is also an issue, as less than 2 percent of the 16 square kilometers required for the entire project has been secured. Additionally, no clear path has been set regarding the government's plan to establish a final storage site outside Fukushima Prefecture after 30 years of interim storage.