Japan has made big strides toward stabilizing its tsunami-crippled nuclear plant, but is now facing another crisis — what to do with all the radioactive waste the disaster created.
Goshi Hosono, the country’s nuclear crisis minister, said on Friday that Japan has yet to come up with a comprehensive plan for how to dispose of the irradiated waste that has been accumulating since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Hosono gave the assessment after the government announced a ￥900 billion (US$11.5 billion) allocation to help the cash-strapped plant operator cover the massive cost of recovery without collapsing. Officials have rejected criticism that the allocation is a bail-out, stressing that the money comes from a joint fund of plant operators, with a government contribution in zero-interest bonds that must be paid back.
The disaster, which killed nearly 20,000 people along Japan’s northeastern coastline, touched off the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, generating meltdowns, fires and radiation leaks at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station northeast of Tokyo.
Officials say that, almost eight months later, the plant has been restored to a relatively stable condition and is leaking far less radiation than it did in the early days of crisis. They hope to achieve a “cold shutdown” — with each reactor’s temperature below 100oC) — by the end of the year.
However, Hosono, in a response to a question from The Associated Press, acknowledged on Friday that the crisis has spawned a huge amount of irradiated waste that will require new technology and creative methods to dispose of safely.
“We still don’t have a full picture of how to deal with the waste,” he said. “It would require research and development that may take years. For instance, we still need to develop technology to compress the volume of the huge amounts of waste that we cannot move around.”
Japan could be stuck with up to 45 million cubic meters of radioactive waste in Fukushima and several nearby prefectures, according to the environment ministry.
Hosono said Japan is not considering shipping out the waste for overseas processing.
The total amount of radiation released from the plant is still unknown and the impact of chronic low-dose radiation exposures in and around Fukushima is a matter of scientific debate. More than 80,000 people evacuated from their homes, and a 20km no-go zone is still enforced around the plant.
Cleaning up the area and compensating residents is expected to cost trillions of yen. Hot spots of highly localized radiation have been reported hundreds of kilometers away. Hosono said a task force has been set up to investigate them.
The ￥900 billion fund payout announced on Friday for Tokyo Electric Power Co is meant to help the operator meet its responsibilities without going bankrupt.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS