Contaminated Soil to Prime Minister’s Residence

Shigeru Ishiba Cabinet discussed how the radioactively contaminated soil in Fukushima prefecture would be treated and decided some of it should be used in Prime Minister’s Official Residence in Tokyo. Although the soil needs to be removed from Fukushima with legal requirement, the government of Japan has not found anywhere it should go. Ishiba administration hopes that the decision will pave the way for any local community to accept the soil. 

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant emitted a huge amount of radiation into the air, which contaminated the land surface around the site, in the severe accident in East Japan Great Earthquake in 2011. The contaminated soil in Fukushima prefecture was stocked in the intermediate stockyard built in the towns of Futaba and Okuma, where the power plant is located. The government promised the people in Fukushima to remove the soil out of Fukushima prefecture within thirty years, when it decided to build the stockyard in 2014.

 

The total amount of the soil in stockyard is14 million cube meters. The three quarters of the soil will be reused for basis of roads, after the radiation would be reduced as much as possible. The remainder will be treated for final disposal. The government hopes to reduce the soil for final disposal by reusing it for construction or any other purposes.

 

The basic plan shared by the ministers included an idea to use the soil in Prime Minister’s Official Residence. When some of local cities tried to accept the soil for reusing, their residents opposed with concern on radiation remaining in the soil. The Ishiba administration thought that the public understandings would be generated, if the prime minister accepts the soil around the residence.

 

That was the only news in the meeting of Ishiba Cabinet. The project for finding the place for radioactive soil has not make any progress. Ministry of Environment released a guideline for reuse of accumulated soil in March 2025. However, no local community has stepped forward to accept the soil so far. The government of Japan only argues the necessity to make effort to get further understandings on their project.

 

“It is necessary to make the roadmap for next twenty years clear for final solution of the contaminated soil outside Fukushima,” says the basic plan of the Cabinet. To implement the promise to remove the soil from Fukushima, the government is going to make a roadmap for promotion of reuse, production of understanding and risk communication for next five years.

 

These are nothing more than a method of finding final solution. The government, mainly the bureaucrats in Kasumigaseki, has no idea how they can find the final solution, because they do not realize desperate responsibility to salvage the people still living in Fukushima with concern of radiation. 

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