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Nuclear waste plan turns neighbor against neighbor in a struggling Japanese fishing village

A huge underground vault could hold highly radioactive waste for thousands of years — but only if the government can overcome local opposition

Leslie Liang Science Line, • October 25, 2025

Nobuka Miki was flustered by the television reporter’s question. She was happily spending the day with her daughter, enjoying a Buddhist festival on the main street of her village in northern Japan, when the question came.

What did she think about the proposal to build an underground storage site for Japan’s high-level radioactive waste in Suttsu, the struggling fishing town where she lives? “As long as it’s not dangerous, then it should be OK?” Nobuka briefly answered before fleeing the uncomfortable exchange.

Until that 2020 interview, Nobuka, who owns a local beauty salon, had no idea the Japanese government was considering her village as the site for a huge underground vault capable of holding all of Japan’s high-level nuclear waste for thousands of years.

As soon as the television news clip was broadcast and calls from her worried friends started lighting up her phone, Nobuka had second thoughts.

“Everything was lovely and suddenly, I heard ‘nuclear waste’,” remembered Nobuka, who has since changed her mind and is now helping to voice the local opposition against the waste proposal. “I felt surprised.”

The bigger surprise came when Nobuka learned that years earlier, Suttsu’s own leadership had volunteered to be considered for the site, in an attempt to revitalize a community whose primary industry, herring fishing, has been declining for years.

Suttsu’s mayor, Kataoka Haruo, applied for the survey in 2020 to investigate if the village can be a permanent site for Japan’s high-level radioactive nuclear waste after a subsidy incentive was promised. The subsidies for the first stage of the survey were up-to-2 billion yen ($19.4 million), and seven billion yen ($48.6 million) for the second stage.

Five years later, the proposal remains highly divisive in Suttsu, which has a population of less than 3,000. Neighbors who know each other through generations of friendship have stopped talking. Their kids no longer play together……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The situation has gotten slightly less heated recently after a series of community meetings, Nobuka says, but nothing is resolved yet. Suttsu remains one of three candidates for the waste disposal site — the other is another isolated northern town 60 kilometers farther up the coast — despite growing opposition centered on safety concerns, including the possibility of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Japan needs to have a nationwide discussion about the waste issue, which has not attracted much attention beyond the potentially affected communities, said Takumi Saito, a professor who studies nuclear power at the University of Tokyo. He believes that for energy security, a natural resource-deprived country like Japan needs nuclear power.

The conflict in Suttsu is a small manifestation of a worldwide debate over what to do with highly radioactive waste products of nuclear power, especially spent fuel rods. As of 2023, Japan has generated more than 19,000 tons of used rods and other highly radioactive waste since it opened its first commercial nuclear reactor in 1966. Currently that waste is in temporary storage on the grounds of Japan’s 15 nuclear power plants, a situation experts say is risky considering that the waste will remain dangerous for more than 10,000 years.

Many other countries are in the same boat. More than a dozen nations are trying to develop underground storage facilities for high-level nuclear waste, but none are open yet, and many are mired in controversy. In the United States, the federal government has been pushing for the construction of a high-level waste storage facility at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain since 1987, but the proposal is now moribund after intense opposition from lawmakers and the public.

At a time when many countries are talking about building a new generation of nuclear power plants to reduce dependence on fossil fuels that drive global climate change, the lack of approved long-term waste storage facilities has been a critical hurdle — both in countries with long-established nuclear power programs and in many smaller nations that would like to develop their own………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Like many other countries with nuclear power, Japan is also trying to make progress on building a plant to reprocess and ultimately reuse spent nuclear fuel. France and Russia have been operating similar plants for years. In Japan’s case, reprocessing is crucial because the country is determined to reuse as much material as possible before it is shipped to the long-term storage site.

Critics are skeptical. The reprocessing facility in the town of Rokkasho “has been under construction for 30 years. [It was] supposed to be finished by September 2024. But it’s delayed again [until 2027],” said Satoshi Takano, a researcher from Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, an anti-nuclear group in Japan. “The policy is not working. We need to reconsider it.”

Plans to build the long-term storage site have been under consideration for almost as long. Suttsu’s leaders had volunteered their town for consideration more than 20 years ago, in response to a nationwide call from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan. The government promised billions in financial subsidies to the chosen community, but ultimately only three put themselves forward, including Suttsu.

In 2020, the government disclosed the names of the three communities. That was news to many local Suttsu residents, including Nobuka.

At the time, she didn’t even know what nuclear waste was. Even the devastating 2011 accident at Fukushima felt like a distant issue, 800 kilometers to the south. She and others quickly learned otherwise, not only because of the waste site proposal but also because of a plan to reopen the nuclear plant at Tomari, just 50 kilometers up the coast.

Their anxiety grew last November, when the government announced that a long-awaited review of the scientific literature on local geology showed that Suttsu and another northern coastal town, Kamoenai, were potentially suitable sites.

There are still numerous other steps, however, including drilling surveys and test tunnels — work that could take another 18 years, the government estimates.

The government’s plan is to build an underground storage site 1 to 2 kilometers wide and a depth of 300 to 500 meters, according to Satoshi. “If the site were to be built, it would be enough for the current waste in Japan,” he said

Nobuka, though, is one of many locals who say they are determined to stop it. She has made nuclear waste her second career, joining the Town Residents’ Association to speak out in opposition.

“People who are interested in this issue are quite doubtful about the decision” to name Suttsu as one of the finalists, Satoshi said. “The safety is not clear.”

Nobuka’s biggest concern is that nuclear accidents caused either by a natural disaster or man made malfunction will destroy Suttsu. But she worries that the project may already have too much momentum to stop, especially with the government’s drive to expand nuclear power.

She feels excluded from the government’s decision-making process. “Nobody showed up and asked about our concerns,” Nobuka said. “We’re not getting enough attention and I feel less and less hopeful.”…………………………………………..https://scienceline.org/2025/10/nuclear-waste-plan-turns-neighbor-against-neighbor/

October 27, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | wastes