Abe visits interim storage site

March 1, 2015

Abe views Fukushima site for radioactively contaminated waste

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20150301p2g00m0dm032000c.html

FUKUSHIMA (Kyodo) -- Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Sunday viewed a site in Fukushima Prefecture for interim storage facilities for radioactively contaminated soil and other waste generated in cleanup work following the 2011 nuclear disaster.

"I hope to speed up the decontamination work to ensure reconstruction," Abe said as he looked at the facilities under construction from the roof of the Futaba town hall under the guidance of Futaba Mayor Shiro Izawa.

The mayor asked Abe for constant support for the town's reconstruction given that the local authorities took the bitter decision to host the facilities.

The central government plans to begin delivery of the waste to the interim storage site on March 13, two days after the fourth anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake that triggered the nuclear crisis.

The facilities are being built on about 16 square kilometers of land in Futaba and Okuma, both in the Fukushima Prefecture.

They are expected to be capable of storing 30 million tons of soil and other radioactive waste, such as burned ash, but they will not store highly radioactive waste generated in the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant of Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Under the government plan, the radioactively contaminated waste will be kept at the interim facilities and be permanently disposed of outside the prefecture within 30 years, as requested by the prefectural government in accepting the storage plan.

The prefectural government has called on the state for legislation guaranteeing that the waste will be put to final disposal outside Fukushima Prefecture within 30 years.

A site for the final disposal of the radioactive waste has yet to be decided.