Lifting Evacuation Order

Government of Japan on Wednesday announced its plan to lift evacuation order in a part of towns which were too heavily contaminated by radioactive materials emitted from First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant for the residents to get back home. The plan estimates that those people can return home by 2022 after governmental effort of decontamination of the land. Anyway, who would live in a house built on an island of residential area on the sea of contaminated forest?

Headquarters of Measures for Nuclear Disaster and Reconstruction Promotion Committee, both of which were presided by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, agreed on releasing ban on the area designated to be unlivable, which had been registered right after the severe nuclear accident in the plant in 2011. About 24 thousands of people had to evacuate from their sweet home and still are living in temporary houses.

The plan explains that radiation level in the evacuation area has been naturally lowered even without artificial effort of decontamination. Embracing concern on delay of reconstruction with negative image on the products from Fukushima area, if evacuation would be prolonged, the government decided to make livable spots for public facilities such as city office, train station or community center. That is based on the idea that the people will need basic infrastructure for ordinary life, when they are requested to go back home independent from governmental assistance.

However, the people do not seem to return to their home so quickly. In the survey by Reconstruction Agency to the evacuees from Okuma Town, where broken reactors of the plant is located, only 11% of the people was hoping to go home. Considering scarcity of jobs or schools for kids, young people are inevitably reluctant to return their hometown, even if a part of it is decontaminated and resumes to be a community. Long time evacuation exhausted their motivation to resume their life in hometown.

It is always obvious that the return-home policy is to justify traditional nuclear policy led by national government, based on underestimation of the impact of nuclear disaster. Cost for decontamination and building infrastructure is paid by national government, leaving responsibility of power generating company aside. While local governments around the plant expect sufficient support to rebuild their hometowns, the government has no plan to decontaminate whole forests. It is possible that the government coerce the evacuated people to go home in newly decontaminated spots and cut off the support for their evacuation. It may create another type of refugees.