Separating Sufferers

The Government of Japan is introducing new discriminative reconstruction policy, in which there will be a distinction between who can go back home and who cannot among sufferers of the accident of First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. With this new policy, the government is going to focusing on cleaning the land up for the returners and to prepare for compensation and alternative land to live for the people who cannot get back. It is marking a major change of its reconstruction policy, however, both enough money and land will not be provided with.

The evacuation area around the plant is categorized into three: hard to going back, restricted to live, and preparing for return. The government is subsidizing 25,000 people in the hardest category with additional compensation for building new houses and starting new life. It also is necessary to provide with some lands where they can start new life out of hometown. Local governments of the region are already discussing how to maintain original communities in some cites.

For the rest of the people, about 56,000, the government will increase its effort to make them return. It is cleaning the land to reduce the level of radioactive materials on the roads, houses of public facilities. For resuming ordinary life, it will also encourage enhancing city functions including utilities, hospitals and shopping stores. The key is how soon they can determine the place for building intermediate processing facilities for radioactive debris.

Reconstruction policy of the government has been based on the notion that all the evacuees would be going to back home. Because all the people were returning back, the impact of Fukushima accident was less than that in Chernobyl, the accident of a nuclear power plant would be manageable, other nuclear power plants should therefore be resumed, and Tokyo Electric Power Company is not need to be closed down. That has been the idea of the government. This policy change will completely undermine those premises of reconstruction policy.

One of the key points here is responsibility. The impact of the accident is bigger than estimated, though it has already been expected. Because the cost of the accident was far too great for an electric company to pay, huge amount of tax money is pouring into the reconstruction projects. Who is responsible for this accident caused by human made errors? One thing obvious is that a company that owed huge default can no longer exist. The first thing the government has to do is to set the company in bankruptcy.