Fukushima soil travels to Japan's afternoon flower beds to alleviate fear of nuclear safety
Slightly radioactive soil from the damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima will be transported to Tokyo and used in flower beds in the Prime Minister's Garden to prove to a suspected public that the material is safe.
The decision comes 14 years after the plant suffered a triple collapse in the world's worst nuclear accident since Chornobyl.
The sample will be taken from 14 million cubic meters of soil (enough to fill 10 baseball fields) that have been removed from the factory during work to make the local community suitable for the return of evacuated residents.
Related: Robot retrieves radioactive fuel samples from Fukushima nuclear reactor site
The soil is in temporary storage space on a vast site near the factory, but authorities have been working to obtain legal obligations to find permanent homes for materials outside Fukushima by 2045.
The government recommends describing it as low-risk materials for building roads and other infrastructure in other parts of Japan. It will be used as a base material and covered with a thick enough surface soil to keep the radiation at a puny level.
Officials said they hope Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's gesture will convince others that accepting the amount of soil does not pose a risk to public health or the environment.
“The government will take role models as an example and we will do so in the Prime Minister's Office,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said in a meeting held.
On March 11, 2011, the Fukushima daiichi Plant was hit by a powerful earthquake and tsunami, releasing a large amount of radiation into the atmosphere. The disaster phased out the facility’s backup power supply, sending its three reactors into a collapse.
Although most communities evacuated after the disaster were declared safe, many residents were reluctant to return. Some people worry about the potential health effects of living in previous areas that don’t go to, especially for children, while others build new lives elsewhere.
Work on removing 880 tons of high-risk damaged fuel from reactor vessels has hardly begun. So far, specially designed equipment has successfully retrieved two small sample samples of fuel, but all of them are expected to take decades and trillions of yen.
Tokyo Electric Power, the operator of the plant, also had to fight against large amounts of water that was contaminated when used to cool damaged reactors. In 2023, the utility began pumping treated water (all elements except one radioactive element) into the Pacific Ocean, triggering an angry reaction from China and South Korea.
Remove topsoil, trees and other debris from nearby houses, schools, medical facilities and other public buildings, creating a large pile of contaminated waste, which now fills the sites across the towns of Futaba and Okuma near the factory. This material does not include any debris from the interior of Daiichi in Fukushima.
In its final report on soil recycling and disposal last year, the IAEA said the work is consistent with its safety standards.
But the public has not yet confirmed it. Last month, local opposition forced the Environment Ministry to abandon a pilot project to use some Fukushima soil as landfills for flower beds and lawns in public parks and surroundings in and around Tokyo.
