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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to