information about Fukushima published in English in Japanese media info publiée en anglais dans la presse japonaise
13 Février 2014
February 13, 2014
Fukushima prefectural authorities have asked the Environment Ministry to reduce from three to two the number of sites it plans for the temporary storage of radioactive debris generated by the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant disaster.
Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato on Feb. 12 submitted a request to Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara and Takumi Nemoto, the minister in charge of post-quake reconstruction, asking them not to build a storage facility in the town of Naraha so that its residents can return home earlier.
Based on the request, Ishihara said the Environment Ministry will review the initial plan to erect facilities in Naraha, as well as the towns of Okuma and Futaba.
“It will be hard work to go over the plan, but we will consider the proposal promptly and offer an explanation,” said Ishihara.
The central government intended to construct intermediate storage facilities in the three towns, all in Fukushima Prefecture, that are capable of storing 13.1 million, 12.4 million and 2.5 million cubic meters of debris, respectively. The smallest of the sites was to be built in Naraha.
However, Sato argued in his request that if collected debris were burned to reduce its volume, the two larger sites could accommodate all the waste.
The governor also proposed that the ministry build a plant to process the ash from debris with radioactive values at 100,000 becquerels per kilogram or lower in Naraha instead.
The central government first asked the prefecture and the three municipalities in December to accept the construction of the intermediate storage facilities. But Naraha asked the Fukushima prefectural government to call on the central government to hold off on the site in their town, arguing that radiation levels there were relatively low and erecting a storage facility would hamper its efforts to help displaced residents return.
Elsewhere though, many other municipalities in the prefecture have urged the prefectural government to quickly facilitate the building of those facilities because radioactive soil and other associated waste generated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster are filling up temporary storage sites throughout the prefecture.
The Environment Ministry estimates that 1.6 million cubic meters of debris was stored across Fukushima Prefecture as of the end of last October.
Starting in mid-December, the prefectural government began discussing Naraha’s request with the local authorities in Okuma and Futaba.
On Jan. 22, the day Fukushima Governor Sato declared the prefectural government would play a leading role in deciding how to implement the central government’s plan, Masao Uchibori, a vice governor of Fukushima Prefecture, informally met with mayors of Okuma and Futaba to finalize the contents of the request that would be submitted to the environment minister.
The Environment Ministry has vowed to remain flexible when handling requests from local governments. Until Sato submitted his plea neither the prefectural government nor the municipalities had responded to the ministry’s request.
“A path to dialogue has finally opened,” said a senior ministry official.
Another senior official said the latest request from the prefectural government will create a need for the ministry to redesign the planned facilities and revise routes to transport radioactive soil.
“We will be able to show a revised plan to local governments in early March at the earliest,” the official said.
http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20140213p2g00m0dm052000c.html
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Fukushima Gov. Yuhei Sato on Wednesday urged the central government to exclude one of the three towns where facilities are to be built to store highly radioactive material from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster.
"We want the government to consider...building the waste storage facilities in the towns of Okuma and Futaba," Sato said in a written request which called for revising the government's proposal to also build a storage site in Naraha to store soil and other radioactive material removed during decontamination work outside the plant.
The government has planned to acquire a total of about 19 square kilometers of land inside the three towns to build facilities to store waste containing over 100,000 becquerels per kilogram of radiation.
But the town of Naraha, which is less contaminated than the two other towns that host the disaster-struck plant, has refused to accept highly radioactive waste, saying it does not want to disrupt efforts to bring back residents.
So Sato decided to exclude Naraha from the plan, while also saying he does not want the move to increase the burden borne by the towns of Futaba and Okuma.
"We expect the government to consider revising the plan without leading to an increase in the size of areas needed for the construction of the facilities in the two towns," Sato said in the request.
The government expects about 28 million cubic meters of waste from decontamination work to be stored in the facilities, of which 2.5 million cubic meters was to be stored in Naraha.
The waste is supposed to be disposed of outside Fukushima Prefecture within 30 years.
Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara, who received the request along with Reconstruction Minister Takumi Nemoto, said, "It is not easy to change the plan, but I want to take it seriously as it is the consensus of local opinions."
The Environment Ministry may present a revised plan to the local governments later in the month. The local governments will decide whether to accept the proposal after hearing explanations from the central government.
Decontamination work is taking place in a vast land area outside the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which saw three reactors suffer core meltdowns. Around 140,000 Fukushima Prefecture residents still live as evacuees.
February 13, 2014(Mainichi Japan)
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