Storage facilities

February 16, 2012

Naraha mayor opens N-waste dialogue

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120215006014.htm

Mayor Takashi Kusano of Naraha, Fukushima Prefecture, has told Reconstruction Minister Tatsuo Hirano about conditions under which his town might accept planned intermediate storage facilities for soil and other waste contaminated with radioactive substances, according to the mayor.

The town is near Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and has been affected by the nuclear disaster there.

The mayor told the minister he would set some conditions, such as siting the storage facilities in two different locations, before agreeing to accommodate the facilities.

The mayor said he made the comments on Sunday, when Hirano visited the town government's temporary office in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture.

The mayor also told Hirano that an intermediate storage facility the government is now considering may not have sufficient capacity.

The mayor proposed that two storage facilities be built in different locations somewhere in the following four towns: Futaba and Okuma, which share the site of the Fukushima No. 1 plant, and Tomioka and Naraha, which share the site of the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear plant.

Hirano declined to give any immediate reply, the mayor said.

The central government has asked the Fukushima prefectural government and other municipal governments to agree to the building of an intermediate storage facility in Futaba County, which comprises eight towns and villages and where the two nuclear plants are located.

Kusano is the first local government head in the county to mention detailed points about accepting the storage facility.

On Wednesday, Kusano told The Yomiuri Shimbun: "It doesn't mean the town of Naraha has decided to accept a storage facility. I meant by the remarks that we want intermediate storage facilities to be built as quickly as possible."

The mayor added, "If the central government officially requests it, we will have to discuss whether to accommodate such a facility."

Regarding the mayor's remark, an official of the central government's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters in the prefecture said, "We'll proceed with the plan while hearing opinions through dialogue between the central government and the nearby local governments."