11 years after meltdown, Fukushima towns to welcome back residents

March 11, 2022
TOKYO — Eleven years after a major earthquake and tsunami triggered meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Japan will reopen part of the surrounding area to residents starting this spring as a new hub for the region’s revival.
The government considers the five years that began in April 2021 as the “second phase” of recovery efforts in northeastern Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture. But with costs ballooning and tens of thousands still unable to return home, rebuilding communities there remains an uphill battle.
The death toll from the triple disaster, which occurred March 11, 2011, totaled 15,900 as of the beginning of this month. The search for the 2,523 missing continues to this day.
Another 3,784 deaths are associated with the disaster. A total of 38,139 evacuees had not returned to their homes as of Feb. 8, including 26,692 from Fukushima who now live outside the prefecture.
As the next step in the region’s recovery, Japan is decontaminating a 27-sq.-km area that was evacuated following the disaster, including the towns of Futaba and Okuma. Evacuation directives will be lifted in aand allowing residents will be allowed to move back there starting this spring and into 2023. The government plans to press ahead with nurturing industries to help disaster-hit areas grow on their own.
Another 310 sq. km around the Fukushima plant will remain off-limits to the public. Japan plans to eventually decontaminate residential areas as needed to give all former residents the option to return by the end of the 2020s.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings, operator of the Fukushima plant, aims to start removing nuclear debris from the damaged reactors on an experimental basis in the latter half of the year. The utility looks to complete the decommissioning of the plant by 2041 to 2051.

But recovery efforts in Fukushima face mounting financial and logistical hurdles.
Contaminated soil and other waste from the disaster are supposed to be stored within the prefecture for 30 years before they can be moved elsewhere. But the government has yet to secure a final disposal site, and the total cost of the process remains unclear.
In terms of decontamination, “there’s no clear guideline on how far into the mountains and woods our efforts would extend,” said an official at the Environment Ministry.
Japan estimates the total costs associated with the Fukushima disaster, including damages paid to victims, at 22 trillion yen ($190 billion). But the final tally could end up far higher, given how much of the recovery process still needs to be ironed out. One private-sector estimate places the figure beyond 35 trillion yen.
“Should costs continue to mount, our budget for other energy-related policies, like promoting renewable sources, could take a hit,” a government source said.
Though the rebuilding of infrastructure is nearly complete in neighboring Miyagi and Iwate prefectures, personal connections within communities have weakened further, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 680 people living alone have died in the three prefectures since the disaster. Japan still faces the issue of people becoming isolated, which was highlighted following the 1995 earthquake in the Kobe area.
Only 30% of Fukushima residents happy with disaster recovery progress
January 1, 2021
Nearly 10 years after the 2011 earthquake-tsunami and nuclear disasters in northeastern Japan, only 30 percent of Fukushima Prefecture residents say reconstruction has been sufficient, a Kyodo News survey showed Thursday.
The figure was notably lower than 80 percent in Miyagi and 66 percent in Iwate prefectures, which were also affected by the natural disasters.
Photo taken Dec. 23, 2020, from a drone shows rows of public houses for residents who lost their homes in the disaster in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture.
The low number in Fukushima reflects how the nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant and subsequent evacuation orders have slowed reconstruction work.
Face-to-face surveys were conducted in November involving 100 residents in each of the three prefectures to ask about reconstruction of the communities where they lived when the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the region March 11, 2011.
A total of 176 people, or 59 percent, across the three prefectures said reconstruction was “progressing” or “progressing to some degree,” while 123 people, or 41 percent, said there had not been enough progress. One person did not answer.
“My hometown is full of vacant plots of land,” said a man in his 50s who evacuated from Futaba, which hosts the Fukushima Daiichi plant, to Iwaki in Fukushima Prefecture. “I cannot imagine the town becoming a place we can return to.”
Many respondents appreciated the rebuilding of infrastructure, but some said it has taken too much time. Among Fukushima residents unhappy with the reconstruction progress, many said they are disappointed that they are still not allowed to return to their hometowns due to radioactive contamination and that townscapes have not been restored.
Photo taken on Sept. 26, 2020, in Okuma, northeastern Japan, shows the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant where decommissioning work is taking place
Across the three prefectures, 66 percent said their lives were back on track as they were able either to move to public housing for disaster victims or build new homes. By prefecture, the rate was 80 percent in Miyagi and 70 percent in Iwate but significantly lower at 49 percent in Fukushima.
The cost of rebuilding homes and a decrease in income have also been a burden for residents.
“To reconstruct my house, I needed to get another loan (in addition to that for the home destroyed by the disaster). I won’t finish the payments until I’m 80 years old,” said Toshiyuki Naganuma, 58, who runs a construction firm in Natori, Miyagi Prefecture.
The local government in Natori declared the completion of the city’s recovery in March 2020. More houses have been built and tourists are returning. But Naganuma said that while “it may look like the city has recovered, reconstruction is not finished.”
“Jobs are still gone. My income is unstable,” said a man in his 40s who changed jobs three times after the disasters. He used to work at a restaurant in Rikuzentakata, Iwate, but sales dropped when construction workers and others engaged in work to rebuild the city left.
Yukihisa Ojima, 49, who operates a home appliance store in Rikuzentakata, worries about the city’s declining population. “Public facilities were rebuilt but things are slack for businesses here,” he said.
For those affected by the disasters, recovery means “getting back one’s life before the disasters,” said Jun Oyane, a professor at Senshu University and head of the Japan Society for Disaster Recovery and Revitalization.
“The next step after restoring infrastructure will be to focus on the varying needs of individual residents and to stand by them in rebuilding” their lives, he said.
Seven years after meltdown, Fukushima’s recovery still decades away

40% of local leaders doubt 3.11 disaster area recovery by 2020 due to Fukushima crisis
Many trucks are seen engaged in land redevelopment work in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, on March 9, 2017.
About 40 percent of 42 local leaders along the coasts of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures doubt their areas will recover from the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake by the time of the 2020 Tokyo Games due to the ongoing Fukushima nuclear crisis, a Mainichi Shimbun survey shows.
A large majority of the pessimistic local chiefs represent cities, towns and villages in Fukushima Prefecture where many residents were forced to evacuate following the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. The survey results show that these municipalities have yet to recover from the meltdowns.
The central government has categorized a five-year period from fiscal 2011 as an intensive recovery period, and another five-year period from fiscal 2016 as a recovery and building period. It plans to spend as much as 32 trillion yen over a 10-year period ending in fiscal 2020 to complete recovery operations and abolish the Reconstruction Agency. It aims to support Fukushima and other disaster-stricken prefectures, but has no clear budget provision.
The Mainichi Shimbun received written responses from all 12 city, town and village mayors it queried in Iwate Prefecture, and from all 15 mayors queried in each of Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures.
While only two municipal chiefs in Iwate and one in Miyagi did not anticipate an end to recovery efforts by fiscal 2020, 13 local leaders in Fukushima Prefecture — including those in evacuation zones — shared this view. Only the Shinchi town mayor replied that recovery will be possible by fiscal 2020, while the mayor of Soma said he did not know.
Many local leaders in Fukushima Prefecture say they do not expect recovery operations to be completed by fiscal 2020 due to negative effects from the nuclear disaster. The town of Namie says it does not anticipate an end to recovery operations in three years, pointing out that the recovery speeds in areas hit by tsunami versus the nuclear disaster are obviously different.
The town of Futaba, 96 percent of which is designated as a difficult-to-return zone, says post-disaster restoration has not even started. Kawauchi village, which has already seen its evacuation order lifted, laments that its population is set to drop drastically due to a very low birthrate and a rapidly aging citizenry.
Rikuzentakata and Otsuchi in Iwate, and Yamamoto in Miyagi, responded that they are unlikely to witness a full recovery by fiscal 2020. Rikuzentakata explained that its new city hall isn’t scheduled to be completed until fiscal 2021. The town of Otsuchi cited a delay in a land redevelopment project and other reasons. The town of Yamamoto said that community formation at mass relocation sites and psychological recovery take a long time.
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170310/p2a/00m/0na/007000c
Survey: Many dissatisfied with 3/11 recovery
NHK conducted a survey of survivors and nuclear evacuees of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and a majority of respondents were dissatisfied with recovery efforts so far.
The survey was conducted from November to February, ahead of the 6th anniversary of the disaster on Saturday.
NHK got responses from 1,437 people from the hardest-hit northeastern prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima.
Asked about recovery efforts in the areas where they lived before the disaster, 26 percent of the respondents replied they don’t feel any sense of progress, and 36 percent said they’ve seen slower-than-anticipated recovery.
On the other hand, 34 percent said they’ve seen progress at a reasonable pace, and 2 percent said they’ve seen faster-than-expected recovery.
But even among those who gave positive answers, most of them apparently felt there has been little improvement to regional economies and standards of living. Only 4 percent of them said they think the regional economy is better than before the disaster, and 8 percent said they feel their community is more vibrant.
Associate Professor Reo Kimura of the University of Hyogo says the challenge ahead is to provide support for daily life, and come up with ideas on how to make those regions more attractive.
Rebuilding Fukushima through Soccer
To expose children to possible radioactive nanoparticles without any protection just for the sake of propaganda to show that everything is safe and back to normal in Fukushima is irresponsible and criminal! All in the name of the recovery and reconstruction campaign organized by the Japanese government to welcome all the tourists to come to “clean” beautiful Japan for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics! Olympics to which Fukushima produce will be used to prepare the meals fed to the visiting athletes! All in the name of promotion and economic reconstruction! Alternate facts, total denial of reality being substituted to real facts and dangers. A total insanity!
A former soccer training facility close to Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant has been used as a staging point for recovery work since the 2011 nuclear disaster, but that’s about to change.
Temporary dormitories for workers stand where there used to be a soccer field at the facility, called J-Village. The area is filled with memories for Shigenari Akashi, who worked as a coach for a junior youth team there for more than 10 years.
“National tournament finals used to be held here. Children from all over the country would practice hard, aspiring to play here,” Akashi says.
J-Village was Japan’s first national soccer training center. It opened in 1997 and over the years saw more than a million visitors. The complex was even used to train the national teams of Japan and Argentina.
But the nuclear disaster changed everything. The facility is just 20 kilometers from the plant, so Tokyo Electric Power Company rented it to set up an operational base for containing the accident.
“I was in shock and at a loss for words when I saw the Self-Defense Forces’ tanks here, and the gravel laid on the natural turf for the parking lot,” says Akashi.
At the end of last year, the moment he had been waiting for finally arrived as TEPCO began work to return the facility to its original form.
Fukushima Prefecture has even bigger plans — tt wants to build Japan’s first “all-weather soccer field” at the site. Part of the facility is scheduled to open in the summer of 2018.
The Japan Football Association has given the project its full support. The Japanese national team will use the new J-Village as its training base for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
But there are bigger challenges than rebuilding. There are fears over radiation levels — in some areas they’re still higher than international standards recommend. So the J-Village operator has a plan.
“The construction work will focus on largely replacing the soil, a technique we expect will reduce radiation levels more than usual decontamination methods,” says Eiji Ueda, who is executive vice president at the facility. “We can emphasize how safe it is by hosting national teams from Japan or perhaps abroad for training.”
A town near J-Village was evacuated because of the disaster. Residents got the green light to move back a year and a half ago but few have returned as most of the evacuees still live in a neighboring city.
Akashi and his co-workers have been giving soccer classes for children, including some who lived near J-Village. But there are mixed feelings about playing there again.
“I want to use the new J-Village, but I live far away now, so it will be hard to go there very often,” says a boy at the facility.
“We still have the lingering memory of it being used as the staging ground for decommissioning work,” says one father.
For Akashi, he’s got a specific goal in mind.
“In reviving J-Village, we want to give back local people a gathering place and their sense of pride. We believe this will also help to revive Fukushima as a whole,” he says.
The clock on the J-Village scoreboard is stopped at 2:46 p.m., the moment the earthquake struck. The deep rift created over the last 6 years will need to be filled so that the clock can move forward once more.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/editors/3/rebuildingfukushimathroughsoccer/
Fukushima governor rebuts minister’s 3/11 recovery claim
Reconstruction Minister Masahiro Imamura addresses an official conference on the reconstruction and rebuilding of Fukushima Prefecture in Fukushima city on Jan. 28.
FUKUSHIMA–Using marathon analogies, opinions on the current state of Fukushima Prefecture almost six years after the 2011 nuclear accident were running far apart between a national minister and local officials at a conference here to discuss the recovery process.
“If this is a marathon, Fukushima’s recovery is 30 kilometers into the race,” said Reconstruction Minister Masahiro Imamura at the beginning of the conference on reconstruction of quake damage and rebuilding in the prefecture on Jan. 28. “Now, we have come to the crunch.”
A disgruntled Fukushima Governor Masao Uchibori refuted Imamura’s optimistic analogy when he was interviewed by reporters after the conference’s close.
“Some regions in the designated evacuation zones are not even at the starting line,” said Uchibori. “Even in the areas where the designation is already lifted, recovery has only just begun.”
The evacuation order in most of the surrounding area of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is scheduled to be lifted at the end of March, apart from some “difficult-to-return zones” where radiation readings remain high.
The affected municipal governments are concerned that the central government’s understanding of areas affected by the 2011 disaster has been fading as the sixth anniversary approaches in March.
Aside from the opening, the conference, chaired by Imamura, was closed to the media.
According to one attendee, Imamura told conference delegates that he put “Fukushima first.”
Aping the catchphrase style of U.S. President Donald Trump and Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, Imamura apparently meant he prioritizes the recovery of the disaster-hit area of Fukushima Prefecture, but his choice of words failed to impress local officials.
The head of one municipal government said: “It is not a very good catchphrase to use here as it reminds us of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.”
“I would like him to be more sensitive about expressions he uses,” another complained.
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