Fukushima nuclear plant town lifts evacuation order after 11 years

Its one of those areas where anyone under 70 years old has gone. Its a dying area, the disaster has just sped up the inevitable decline. Better to just let it go. That whole area will be depopulated in 30 years so why waste tax payers money pretending that it will go back to normal?

I support the opening of a few areas, this will allow a hand full of people to go back home, but its been a long time since they left, some people have made new homes in other prefectures, some people have just passed away through covis or natural causes, this begs the question, what will happen to these house that can be returned to, but no one is around to go back, can and who will claim these houses? ( if any one would want them)

"I would like to support the town by keeping the peace here so residents can return feeling secure," said Hirotaka Umemiya, 40, as he began his duties in the town. this police man will probably bored out of his tiny mind after 1 month, can any crimes be commited here? only a hand full of returning residance will live here,

There is no infastructure here, like shops, builders merchants, restaurants, vets, has the water supply been reinstated? electricity and gas supplies, unless you like living off grid, this is going to be a tough place to live, admittedly its going to be very quit. with very low chance of being burgled

what condition are these house going to be in when they return? they are going to want a lot of work to get them fixed up for living in, and what contractors would want to go there? they will probably put a hefty price tag on jobs, are people going to have the energy and finance to repare these houses, i would think that a large amount of people would have moved on with there lives living else where, and we must not forget, the emotional scars of that day and what they left behind.

I cant see loads of people flocking back to there old houses.

Fukushima Gov Masao Uchibori also pointed out that "the steps and scope of decontamination, as well as how to treat the homes and land of those who do not wish to return, have not been worked out

So what happens to the radioactive soil during the next Typhoon? One house is ”decontaminated” but the house two doors down the street not..

Awesome. I will definitely visit! I'm so happy.

This is great news! Beta ionizing radionuclides only have a half life of around 34-7 years. Alpha radionuclides about 1000 years. Gamma we throw in the sea. Japan should use this magic secret technology to deal with Chernobyl which is still highly radioactive.

@Dave Fair

The sad fact is the only people who will move back are former elderly residents and ones without young children because what parents would want their children to play outside with all that contamination in the soil?

I spent some time examining the tsunami-destroyed Kesennuma and Rikuzentakata areas last year, and I was surprised by the number of non-Japanese that I encountered. I was told that it is because of the tremendous amount of construction and infrastructure development in the area. I would not be surprised if parts of the Sanriku Coast came to be home to an inordinate amount of blue-collar non-Japanese.

Houses left unmaintained for 11 years and five months I guess they will need to be completely outfitted or replaced how are they going to get carpenters plumbers etc to go and work in these areas?

"...the steps and scope of decontamination, as well as how to treat the homes and land of those who do not wish to return, have not been worked out."

They have had more than 10 years to consider it...

There are locations with radiation levels of 5 microsieverts per hour. Only a very small area has been opened.

Website for the museum

https://www.fipo.or.jp/lore/en

The sad fact is the only people who will move back are former elderly residents and ones without young children because what parents would want their children to play outside with all that contamination in the soil?

The government, not TEPCO, will have to offer incentives such as 0% interest loans for purchase of new and used housing and some cash back scheme, subsidized rent and anything else that will attract people who are desperate for a residence because why else would anyone want to move there unless they have roots in these designated "difficult-to-return" zones!

What the government/TEPCO should have done was moved all the contaminated materials, soil and such into these government designated "difficult-to-return" zones nearest to TEPCO and have them pay the owners for the land plus some amount of compensation for all the headaches caused instead of spreading all the nastiness and such around the country to dispose of at a huge cost on the backs of the Japanese tax payers and thus containing the problem to where it originated from.

Yeh they can't release that "safe" water into the sea if the area they are releasing it from is still designated uninhabitable...meh!

Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum, are located.

They constructed a museum, in a town, under evacuation orders, and where 80% still is, for all intents and purposes, "difficult to return to" meaning uninhabitable.

I'll bet the construction workers got "glowing" accolades for their work

They used to say nobody would be able to step foot there for thousands of years. A bit of an exaggeration, perhaps?

Hmm. The Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum open in Futaba two years ago — in September 2020.

https://www.nippon.com/en/guide-to-japan/gu900162/