March 9, 2016

Waste storage site yet to be secured in Fukushima

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20160309_22/

Japan's government is required to speed up its work to secure land for storing soil and other materials contaminated in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident nearly 5 years ago.

The government removed such materials from roads, fields, residential areas and elsewhere around the plant.

It plans to build a facility to store such waste for about 30 years on a plot measuring about 16 square kilometers in Futaba and Okuma towns, near the crippled plant. But it has secured only about 2 percent of the land for the intermediate storage facility.

Only 69 of about 2,300 owners of the land have signed contracts with the government.

About 40,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste, or only 0.2 percent of the total, has been taken to a storage area for the planned facility.

Tainted waste is stored at about 1,100 initial sites across Fukushima Prefecture. Such waste is also kept at 127,000 other sites including decontaminated residential gardens.