April 20, 2026

Akahata editorial (excerpts)

In preparation for the construction of a final disposal site for “nuclear waste” from its nuclear power plants, the Takaichi government requested a preliminary survey of Minamitori-shima Island administered by Ogasawara Village in Tokyo, and the village mayor agreed to the survey. Minamitori-shima is an uninhabited, state-owned island in the Pacific Ocean where only government employees live.

Similar surveys have already been conducted in Suttsu Town and Kamoenai Village in Hokkaido, and another is currently underway in Genkai Town in Saga Prefecture.

However, the two Hokkaido municipalities are hesitating to respond to further surveys, because the prefectural governor is unlikely to give his consent based on an ordinance unwilling to accept radioactive waste.

Nuclear waste possesses extremely high levels of radioactivity. No local government would willingly accept a disposal site for such a dangerously toxic substance. It is totally impermissible for the government to force this upon them.

Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. (JNFL) stores nuclear waste returned in a vitrified form from France and the U.K. at its High-Level Radioactive Waste Storage and Management (HLW) Center in Rokkasho Village in Aomori Prefecture. Under the agreement between JNFL, the prefecture, and the village, the waste is to be removed within 50 years of its arrival in 1995. With less than 20 years remaining until the removal deadline, it is unlikely that the deadline will be met in reality, given the time required to select and construct a final disposal site.

JNFL’s Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant in Rokkasho Village is scheduled for completion by the end of March 2027. Once operational, the plant will extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants and produce vitrified waste for burial at a final disposal site.

However, Japan currently has no operational fast breeder reactors that use plutonium. Even if the plant carries out reprocessing, it will only serve to increase the amount of highly radioactive plutonium and various components of nuclear waste.

The government should stop its push to reactivate nuclear power plants which will lead to the inevitable increase in nuclear waste, and should shift toward achieving a “zero nuclear” Japan.

Past related article:
> Nuclear energy will end in imposition of disposal sites on underpopulated areas [October 9, 2020]