hankyoreh

A storage facility for radioactively contaminated waste resulting from the Fukushima nuclear disaster. (Hankyoreh archives)

More radioactively contaminated waste matter was spilled in Japan as a result of Typhoon Hagibis, with many contaminated soil storage suits left in unverifiable condition, studies show.

The Japanese Ministry of the Environment announced on Oct. 17 that it had confirmed the loss of sacks containing radioactive waste from two sites in Nihonmatsu and Kawauchi-mura, Fukushima Prefecture. In Nihonmatsu, 15 large sacks containing tree branches and other waste matter collected during decontamination efforts were reportedly washed away by rising river waters. In Kawauchi-mura, 18 sacks of waste matter were found downriver, two of them missing all of their contents.

Sacks containing radioactively contaminated grass and wood were previously confirmed to have been lost in the Fukushima Preference communities of Tamura and Itate-mura. The city of Tamura announced on Oct. 17 that 17 of the 19 lost sacks had been recovered, 10 of them empty. The sacks appeared to have opened up, spilling their waste matter into the river. Tamura previously speculated that the contents might not have spilled out of the sacks, but its predictions were not borne out.

“Prior to recovering [the sacks] from the river, we had no idea [the contents had fallen out],” a city official told the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper. A total of 2,667 sacks containing radioactive waste had been stored at a temporary storage site in Tamura; the total number lost has yet to be confirmed.

In many cases, it remains impossible to verify how well the contaminated soil discovered in the decontamination process was being stored, the Tokyo Shimbun reported. Contaminated soil and waste from the decontamination process are frequently kept at temporary storage sites by Japanese local governments.

Of the seven prefectures and 43 basic local governments with temporary storage sites set up, four – Shimonita-machi in Gunma Prefecture, Manumori-machi in Miyagi Preference, and Soma and Minamisoma in Fukushima Prefecture – had their sites rendered inaccessible to employees due to the effects of landslides and rising river waters, the newspaper said. The latest example of radioactively contaminated waste being lost is not the first.

In 2015, 240 sacks of decontamination waste were carried from a temporary storage site in Itate-mura amid heavy rains, with some of them subsequently tearing open and releasing their contents.

By Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]