Fifth Candidate Appears for Nuclear Waste Site

Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) requested the city of Hitachi-Omiya, Ibaraki, to accept a literature survey for selection of the site of high-level nuclear waste disposal. If Hitachi-Omiya accept the survey, it will be the fifth municipality which approves to join the process of selection. It also will be the closest city to Tokyo among those five. As other frontrunners, the residents in Hitachi-Omiya started protesting the decision of the city.

The government of Japan decided in 2000 to bury highly radioactive nuclear wastes, including used fuel rods produced from nuclear power plants, in the deep underground, which method was named “geological disposal.” It is estimated that those wastes take one hundred thousand years to be harmless. METI released a nationwide map of “scientific features” relevant for geological disposal in 2017.

 

Designated as an area where was assumable to be preferable, Hitachi-Omiya was picked as a possible region for constructing geological repository. It made the second example for METI to request a local municipality to accept literature survey which will be followed by preliminary investigation and detailed investigation, if the place proceed to the steps for building the facility. Although METI asked Ogasawara village to accept the survey at Minamitorishima island in March, other three predecessors, Suttsu town and Kamoenai village in Hokkaido and Genkai town in Saga, voluntarily raised their hand for accepting the survey.

 

Hitachi-Omiya has been expressing some willingness to accept a literature survey. The city is located 110 kilometers away from Tokyo metropolitan area. Sixty percent of its land is forestry and have certain distance from local mid-size cities. Once a municipality accepts literature survey, it is awarded 2 billion yen of subsidy, which can be used for any purpose. While the leaders of five municipalities for literature survey emphasizes contribution to national energy policy, the subsidy must be the major reason to accept it.

 

Japan has no disposal site for nuclear wastes produced in nuclear power plants. Nevertheless, it kept on operating nuclear power plants even after the severe accident in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011. As long as power companies have not retrieved their investment to the nuclear power plants, it is supposed that they would not stop the plants. Final disposal site is what they definitely need.

 

However, no one knows whether high-level nuclear wastes will be safely kept underground for a hundred thousand years. The archipelago of Japan is well known as the nest of earthquakes. Geological move underground can easily destroy storage of nuclear wastes underground. Some people in Hitachi-Omiya protested the literature survey, arguing that their hometown should not be a stackyard of nuclear garbage. Sharp division in the local community is a typical order of the municipalities that accepted literature survey.

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