Roadmap for Decontaminated Soil in Fukushima

The Cabinet led by Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba approved a “roadmap” to final disposal of decontaminated soil produced by a severe accident in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) in 2011. The roadmap aims at starting selection of location for final disposal site for the soil in anywhere in Japan except Fukushima by the end of 2030. The government of Japan needs to remove the decontaminated soil from intermediate stockyard in Fukushima by 2045. 

The ash emitted from broken nuclear reactors in the FDNPP and fell on the soil in Fukushima and other prefectures around it created contaminated soil to be disposed in 2011. The government built in 2015 a temporary disposal site in Fukushima, against concern of the people there, and stockpiled contaminated soil gathered from land surface in Fukushima. It promised that it would remove the soil from Fukushima within thirty years. However, the government has no plan so far to build a final disposal site to remove the soil from Fukushima.

 

Total amount of contaminated soil accumulated in the temporary disposal site is 14 million cube meters. Three quarters of the soil are with relatively low radiation with 8,000 becquerel per kilogram or lower and the rest has high radiation which needs final disposal. However, that low-level radioactive soil is going nowhere, facing reluctancy of using that soil in other places out of Fukushima.

 

The roadmap approved by all the ministers of Ishiba Cabinet supposes to establish a conference by experts to discuss how to use the less radioactive soil and how to find the place for final disposal of high-level soil. The experts are supposed to consider how to select the place for final disposal, how to reduce the amount of soil by removing radiation, or how to keep communication with the people related to building new facility for final disposal.

 

Reuse of decontaminated soil is the key issue for the government. It has been considering how the soil can be used in public places. Ishiba administration decided to use it in Prime Minister’s Official Residence. The roadmap encourages various use of the soil not only in public places but in private properties, defining the soil not for disposal but as resource. It hopes that the soil will be used for the basis of roads or development of housing.

 

Although the government keeps their effort to achieve positive understandings on decontaminated soil, it faces oppositions from the residents around the place where the government tried to utilize the soil from Fukushima. The government has also found no place to build final disposal place of high-level nuclear waste. It is the weakest point of the government to find a consensus on building facility which may cause concern on the people’s life. Time does not wait for the government to achieve a broad consensus on a consequence of severe nuclear accident which it once promised not to be going to happen.

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