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Page added on December 11, 2013
Japan sets aside $1 billion for nuclear fallout storage
The total cost of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown may never be known, but the country has at least put a number on how much it anticipates storing the radioactive debris will cost it. Asahi Shimbun reports that the 2014 Japanese budget includes a 100 billion yen provision (roughly $970 million) for the purchase and development of land for “intermediate storage facilities.” Once construction and operation costs are also included, the total anticipated expense is calculated to be 1 trillion yen, or just under $10 billion. Though Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the disaster-stricken plant, was expected to handle all decontamination work, its financial struggles have delayed the cleanup and the government is now stepping in with public funds to speed things up.
Construction and operation costs raise the total to 1 trillion yen
There are multiple candidate sites in the area around the Fukushima plant, though the report suggests that local authorities have been understandably reluctant to green-light a project that would deliver up to 28 million cubic meters of radioactive debris into their jurisdiction. The main worry appears to be that the chosen site would turn into a permanent disposal area, as opposed to the 30-year temporary storage facility that the government envisions. In any case, a long-term storage solution needs to be found, with the AFP noting that at the end of August there were already over 130,000 tons of contaminated debris collected, which are presently being stored in ill-suited facilities like waste incineration and sewage treatment plants.
The Verge
Vlad Savov
5 Comments on "Japan sets aside $1 billion for nuclear fallout storage"
BillT on Thu, 12th Dec 2013 12:46 am
$ 10,000,000,000.00 is a drop in the bucket. Multiply that by at least 1,000 and you will be closer. Then multiply that times the 400+ nuclear plants scattered around the world and ask yourself who is going to pay for it over the next 1,000 years? Long after they no longer produce energy.
GregT on Thu, 12th Dec 2013 1:12 am
And to think that there are still people that deny the seriousness of this ongoing disaster. Everything that I have read, points to Fukushima as being magnitudes worse, than most of what the media has reported.
Norm on Thu, 12th Dec 2013 10:58 am
Dump it into the ocean. That could be done for free.
This is about wasting pork money. The $1 Billion goes into a greedy scumbag construction company pocket. Not for digging holes in the ground to store dirt.
Fraud, sculduggery, manipulation, racketeering, money laundering and embezzlement. Thats how it works. That’s the Lord’s plan.
I already suggested an effective way to clean up the dirty stinking 6 reactor meltdown. Uncork a fusion bomb Bikini Atoll style. Put it right in the middle, with 3 reactors on either side.
Use only under Adult Supervision. Do not hold in hand. Light fuse and get away. Ker boom. All tidied up, Bikini Atoll style.
Perhaps maybe the wind blowing to North Korea.
It will even sweep the driveway clean, no broom needed. Then its Miller Time, cause it got solved without 40 yrs of pork to the billionaires.
BillT on Thu, 12th Dec 2013 11:18 am
Yes, and all of those millions of tons of radioactive debris would rain down on the world for the next few decades. The two nukes dropped on Japan were air bursts, not ground explosions. They popped at 1,800 feet for maximum blast and minimum debris.
Americans were not stupid enough to ask for the two cities to be delivered by the jet stream to North America. That is what would happen with nuking six reactors and the thousands of tons of spent fuel. Do you really want slow suicide, Norm?
J-Gav on Thu, 12th Dec 2013 4:31 pm
Problem Norm : it would have to also douse South Korea first.
The larger point, of course, as Bill mentions, is that $1 billion in this context is peanuts. We’d be talking trillions for the unbelievably massive clean-up tab our existing nuke facilities would already require, not to speak of ‘new generation’ this & that …