TOKYO —
Giant piles of debris from Japan’s earthquake and tsunami scar the country’s once picturesque northeast coast—and the clean-up is hamstrung by fears the rubbish may be contaminated by radiation.
Decades-worth of waste was left behind when the waters receded in March last year after claiming more than 19,000 lives.
The survivors are desperate to rebuild, but must first get rid of more than 22 million tons of rubbish—far too much for the disaster-struck region to deal with alone.
But despite appeals to national solidarity, worries over nuclear contamination from the crippled Fukushima power plant mean virtually no one elsewhere in Japan wants the debris processed near them.
“We hope everything will be taken away as quickly as possible so we can go back to normal life,” said one man from the devastated town of Onagawa.
According to Environment Minister Goshi Hosono, facilities across the entire country will have to be brought into play to deal with the 16 million tons of debris from Miyagi Prefecture and 4.42 million tons from Iwate—amounts that dwarf the annual average waste generated by both areas.
Hosono, who is also responsible for handling the nuclear crisis, agrees the 2.28 million tons of waste in Fukushima will have to be treated on site as radioactive elements have been released into the environment in the prefecture.
When the disaster struck a national outpouring of empathy brought with it offers of help from all over the country.
But these have since dried up and now there are few volunteers for taking waste from Miyagi and Iwate, amid fears it could be contaminated and would be dangerous to burn despite the use of filters in incinerators.
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