As Japan searches for nuclear waste dump, needy Hokkaido villages take cash bait despite radiation dangers
- Local councils in Suttsu and Kamoenai have given their consent to start a process that could make them hosts to a vast storage bunker for radioactive waste
- Environmental groups caution that the long-term cost may far outweigh the short-term cash boost the two villages will receive from the project
In defiance of dire warnings from environmental groups, pleas for a rethink from the prefectural governor and the anger of local people, preliminary surveys have commenced in two tiny communities in Hokkaido to determine their suitability for a vast underground storage bunker for highly radioactive waste from Japan’s nuclear reactors.
The national government has been looking for a final repository for the thousands of tons of debris that has been produced since the nation’s first reactor became operational in 1966, but potential hosts have always balked at the potential dangers associated with waste that experts warn may take 100,000 years to reach safe radiation levels.
Finally, however, the local councils in the town of Suttsu and the village of Kamoenai, on the remote northwest coast of Japan’s most northerly main island, have given their consent for the first two-year stage of a process that could ultimately take 20 years to complete. By law, the waste from uranium and plutonium must be stored in concrete structures at least 300 metres underground and not affect the environment or the lives of local residents.
Experts from the Nuclear Waste Management Organisation of Japan (NUMO) started work on November 17 and are using geological mapping and academic resources to examine the geographical layers in the broader region, as well as determining the strength of the bedrock. Once that study is complete, a second-phase study, also lasting two years, will involve drilling in the most suitable locations to verify the data.
Most important, from the two communities’ perspective, the first phase of the project will net each of them 2 billion yen (US$19.23 million) in subsidies from the national government. The subsequent survey is worth an additional 7 billion yen.
That is a lot of money for Suttsu, which is home to 2,893 people and earned 5.3 billion (US$50.97 million) in tax revenues in 2018, and Kamoenai, which has around 800 residents and brought in some 2.1 billion yen in the same year.
And like many other rural communities across Japan, these towns are shrinking as young people move for the bright lights and job opportunities of the big cities. And with little in the way of local industry – some coastal fishing, a little tourism in the summer months – the extra money would come in very handy.