After five years from severe accident in
First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, it is still a serious problem for
residents in broad area around the plant to deal with radioactively
contaminated soils or plants. Ministry of Environment made a plan to build
final processing facility in each prefecture for concentrated preservation.
However, it faced firm protests from the people around proposed site. The Ministry reluctantly began to take plan-B.
According to a report of Mainichi Shimbun,
MoE decided not to build final processing facility in Ibaraki Prefecture and to
approve dispersed preservation of designated debris contaminated by radioactive
materials emitted from the broken plant. Receiving a request for
decentralization from Governor of Ibaraki last month, the Ministry changed its
policy and allowed continuing current situation of dispersed preservation of
the waste.
In November 2011, Japanese government
decided a policy to build a processing facility in each of five prefectures of
Miyagi, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma and Chiba. The policy received firm opposition
from some of the local governments. MoE picked three towns in Miyagi and a town
in Tochigi as candidates for final processing facilities. But, people in those
towns started protesting against the policy and have been rejecting actual
research for location.
While MoE chose a power plant of Tokyo
Electric Power Company, the entity that caused the accident, in Chiba city as
the place for final solution, the Mayor refused detailed research there, based
on broad anxiety of the residents. Dispersed preservation policy seemed to be
deadlocked with strong protests. Those protests should be encouraged by an idea
that all debris must be returned to the place they originally belonged, Fukushima.
It is fair to say that continuous appeal to
reconsider the plan achieved first victory. “Seriously receiving request, we
will consider measures including dispersed preservation,” told Vice-Minister of
MoE, Shinji Inoue, about location in Ibaraki. MoE realized that radioactive
wastes in Ibaraki were stably controlled in existent facilities. But, it is
taking a different approach to Miyagi and Tochigi, claiming that sixty percent
of all debris in those two prefectures is unstably left in each house.
It is likely that protests will be
encouraged by the policy change in Ibaraki, anyway. Fundamentally, making
comprehensive plan only after seven months from the accident was too early.
Although it was not realistic for the government to ask central processing in
Fukuhima at that time, MoE now looks like imagining concentration of all debris
there. People in Fukushima will become more uneasy in returning home. That
shows another immorality of nuclear accident.
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