Fukushima power plant remains the biggest technological and ecological problem for Japan. Nuclear disposal and storage require significant efforts and time even eight years after the catastrophe, Nikkei reports.
The Japanese government doesn’t stop to fix the bunch of problems after Fukushima power plant disaster. The top priority is struggling with the issue of nuclear cleanup, waste disposal and storage, especially after recent flooding caused by Hagibis.
The natural disaster swept across the Kanto region of Honshu, leading to deadly floods and landslides across the area where a temporary repository locates. Some 2,667 bags of highly radioactive nuclear cleanup waste collected from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were stored was completely flooded two weeks ago.
After Hagibis, a batch of the bags got washed into a nearby river about 100 meters away from the storage facility. And the environmental ramifications could be disastrous and far-reaching. However, the experts say that it wasn’t the first time highly radioactive nuclear waste from the Fukushima was accidentally exposed to the environment.
Floodings in Japan made the Fukushima nightmare even worse
Heavy rains, earthquakes and flooding are common in Japan, but these natural disasters are washing the bags of nuclear cleanup waste into the rivers. In 2015, heavy rain in Honshu washed almost 400 bags of nuclear cleanup waste into a river. Among them, 163 were broken while 80 were unaccounted for.
Despite that fact was registered and published, the Japanese government hasn’t learned any lesson from the accident four years ago, and allowed it to happen once again. In 2019, Hagibis revealed other terrible details.
As the local media reported repeatedly, many local workers who handled the bags were cutting corners, and didn’t tie them tightly, not to mention that most of the bags, which totalled over 10 million in 2015, were only piled outdoors, unlike other nuclear waste handling plants which generally have facilities to store or cover the nuclear waste inside.
Most of the bags containing the nuclear cleanup waste from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have not been handled properly. In other words, the Japanese government and the subcontractors were negligent on the nuclear issue.
