Scattered Plastic Bags

As reaching the fifth anniversary of East Japan Great Earthquake and the severe accident at First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, Japanese media organizations are focusing on review of reconstruction policy by Japanese government. The most difficult effort should be how to recover the contaminated cities and towns around 1F Plant. The government decided to concentrate all contaminated soil in Fukushima to the intermediate storage facility around the plant. Nevertheless, the government has obtained only 1% of whole site from the land owners. Contaminated soil is still scattered to everywhere in Fukushima.

According to a report of the Diet Investigation Committee in 2012, Fukushima Plant emitted 500 petabecquerel of radioactive iodine and 10 petabecquerel of cesium 137. Ministry of Environment and related local governments kept on scrape contaminated land in Fukushima Prefecture. Their effort produced 900 million cubic meters of radioactive soil, accumulated on 115 thousands of ground places.

Selecting place for the intermediate storage facility was highly controversial. People in Fukushima were negative in accepting the radioactive soil, because their homeland was already devastated too much. Then Minister of Environment, Nobuteru Ishihara, who currently replaced a scandalous Minister in Charge of Economic Revitalization, Akira Amari, resigned with his gaffe to settle the problem depending on power of money. Based on a condition that all the soil would be relocated out of Fukushima thirty years later, national government managed to persuade Fukushima to construct the facility there. The government assumed 16 square kilometers of the land around 1F Plant for storing the contaminated soil.

But, the land was owned by 2,365 people. MoE has achieved contracts for transfer of land ownership with only 44 owners, which would worth 0.15 square kilometers. It obviously is less than 1% of all 16 square kilometers. The Ministry has not determined where 990 owners are now. Missing owners possess one tenth of whole land for the facility.

Scattering plastic bags filled with contaminated soil disturb reconstruction. Even how escaping residents wants to get back home, they have to reconsider it in an environment of their houses surrounded by radioactive soils. If they tries to sell their houses, no price will be determined. Governmental authority is incompetent to remove those obstacles against reconstruction. Government officials are still worrying about reaching Tokyo Olympic in 2020 with scattered plastic bags here and there, rather than the future of the people evacuated from Fukushima.