Government Starts Selection of Location for Final Disposal of Soil

Ministry of Environment published the schedule for final disposal of nuclear waste accumulated in the intermediate facility built in the place close to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Although national government has promised to remove all the waste from the facility to somewhere out of Fukushima prefecture, it has not reached any conclusion of where the final disposal facility will be built.

In the severe accident caused by losing electricity after being soaked in tsunami in 2011, the reactors in Fukushima plant exploded and emitted a large amount of radioactive materials into the air. Those were estimated as 500 peta-becquerel of noble gas, 500 peta-becquerel of iodine 131, 10 peta-becquerel of cesium 134 and 10 peta-becquerel of cesium 137. “Peta” stands for one thousand trillion.

 

Those radioactive materials mainly fell down on Fukushima area. Given necessity of removing contaminated earth surface, the government of Japan decided that the soil should be temporarily treated by each prefecture without any idea of final disposal. Hoping a facility for final disposal built anywhere out of the area, Fukushima accepted in 2015 an intermediate disposal facility in the place stretching over the towns of Okuma and Futaba. The total amount of contaminated soil brought in the facility was accumulated as much as 14 million cubic meters.

 

When the intermediate facility was built, the government of Japan promised Fukushima to remove the contaminated soil to another place within thirty years. It legislated related law for it. However, the place to carry the nuclear waste has not yet been determined as ten years has already been spent.

 

The time schedule considered by Ministry of Environment did not indicate when and to where the soil would be carried out. It only proposed to begin the discussion about how the final disposal facility would be built and how to reduce the amount of nuclear waste by the end of FY 2025. It is supposed that the decision of the place for the final disposal facility will be in FY 2030 or later.

 

The report offered four options for the final disposal. If the soil with low level radiation is reused for some construction such as building roads, the amount of soil for final disposal will be as much as 2 or 3 million cubic meters. But once the soil was burnt and then radioactive materials are extracted from the ashes, the remains for final disposal will be reduced to the level of a thousand cubic meters. The ministry is planning to build the final disposal facility fitting to the amount of nuclear waste.

 

There is a skepticism about accepting a facility for final processing of nuclear contaminated soil in everywhere in Japan. As seen in the persistent opposition for building final disposal facility for high level nuclear waste produced by nuclear power plants, it will be a difficult project for the government to determine where the contaminated soil should be relocated.