Japan’s nuclear horror relived as people return to Fukushima’s ghost towns via Mirror

It is eight years since a devastating tsunami caused three reactors to meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station on the north-east coast of Japan

ByEmily RetterSenior Feature Writer

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Radiation leaking in fatal quantities forced 160,000 people to evacuate immediately, and most to this day have not returned to their toxic towns and villages.

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The government is keen residents return as soon as it is safe, and this month around 40% of the town of Okuma, which sits just west of the plant, was declared safe for habitation thanks to ongoing decontamination efforts carried out on an superhuman scale.

The official mandatory evacuation order was lifted, and while reports reveal just 367 residents of Okuma’s original population of 10,341 have so far made the decision to return, and most of the town remains off-limits, the Japanese government is keen this be seen as a positive start to re-building this devastated area.

“This is a major milestone for the town,” Toshitsuna Watanabe, mayor of Okuma, told Japanese news outlets, as six pensioners locally dubbed ‘The Old Man Squad’, who had taken it upon themselves to defy advice and keep their town secure, finally ceased their patrols.

“It has taken many years to get to where we are now, but I am happy that we made it.”

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The government is particularly keen to show progress before the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Six Olympic softball games and a baseball game will be staged in Fukushima, the capital of this prefecture, which is free of radiation.

The torch relay will even begin at J Village, which was once the base for the crisis response team. Hearteningly, it is now back to its original function, a football training centre.

But the truth is, it is mainly older residents who have decided to return to their homes.

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Work to make the rest of Okuma safe is predicted to take until 2022. The area which was its centre is still a no-go zone.

In the years following the disaster, 70,000 workers removed topsoil, tree branches, grass and other contaminated material from areas near homes, schools and public buildings.

A staggering £21billion has been spent in order to make homes safe.
Millions of cubic metres of radioactive soil has been packed into bags.
By 2021 it is predicted 14million cubic metres will have been generated.

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But residents understandably want it moved out of Fukushima for good.

As yet, no permanent location has agreed to take it, but the government has pledged it will be gone by 2045.

At Daiichi itself, the decontamination teams are battling with the build up of 1m tonnes of radioactive water.

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Decommissioning the plant entirely is expected to take at least four decades.

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