TOKYO: The Japanese premier’s office will symbolically accept soil from near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to show it is safe, officials said on Tuesday (May 27), with reports saying it will be used in flower beds.
Authorities have found few takers for any of the 14 million cubic metres of soil removed from the region after the 2011 disaster despite assurances that radioactivity levels in most of it are not dangerous.
“The government will take the lead in setting an example, and we will do so at the prime minister’s office,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said at a special meeting to discuss the problem.
The soil – enough to fill 10 baseball stadiums – has been stored near the Fukushima Daiichi plant, where three reactors went into meltdown following a massive earthquake and tsunami.
The government has promised Fukushima residents that it will find permanent storage for the soil outside Fukushima by 2045.
Authorities want to use it for building road and railway embankments, among other projects.
Details of the new plan, including when and how much soil will be brought to the prime minister’s premises, will be decided later, an Environmental Ministry official told AFP.
The UN atomic agency published its final report on the recycling and disposal of the soil last year, saying that Japan’s approach was consistent with its safety standards.
Almost all areas of the northern region have gradually been declared safe, but many evacuees have been reluctant to return because they are worried about persistent radiation or have fully resettled elsewhere.
In 2023, Japan began releasing into the Pacific Ocean some of the 540 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of treated wastewater that had been collected at the plant.
But the most dangerous part of making the plant safe – removing around 880 tonnes of highly hazardous radioactive fuel and rubble from the reactor buildings – has barely begun, with two tiny samples removed.
