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A lease contract for a tract of land which Minamisoma City is using to temporarily store decontaminated waste material from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will not be renewed.
The land is located in Minamisoma City's Ichihara-cho Ward. The city signed a three-year lease contract with the land owner which is valid until next March, NTV reported. However, renewal of the contract has been opposed by local residents since a rice paddy field improvement project in the area had already been planned before the March 11, 2011 disaster.
The city has given up on renewing the contract and is planning to look for a new interim site to store decontaminated waste material.
Many other "temporary" storage sites in Fukushima Prefecture are also nearing the end of their leases, local government officials said.
© Japan Today
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SenseNotSoCommon
Rice from that new paddy field coming to a gyu-don near you. Yummy!
albaleo
Thanks, lucabrasi. That's the second time recently we've had the same poor translation. In the recent case of the waste being washed away, it appeared it was waste from the precautionary removal of top soil from schools and parks, so probably low level contamination. If this article is correct about it coming from the reactor site, then I guess the contamination level is much higher.
lucabrasi
@wtf
A bit harsh. "Decontaminated waste" is just a poor English translation. The Japanese press use the phrase 除染で出た汚染土 (polluted soil resuting from decontamination).
Peace Out
I did a search for "decontaminated waste". The top two hits were from Japan Today. I don't think its an established term at all, and I hope JT makes efforts to correct this oversight or whatever it is.
The logical conclusion is that this is the waste produced by decontamination efforts. Its not like you gather the radioactive particles from a bag of soil or whatever with a magnet. Which is why they scrapped off the top of top soil in contaminated areas, or dug out holes where rain runoff collected radioactive particles together. I am sure a lot of this is that very soil, among other items that you cannot simply remove microscopic radioactive particles from.
wtfjapan
'decontaminated waste" its labeled decontaminated waste because it was removed from areas that are now decontaminated, I tell you Japanese are masters of word play and changing the meanings of things to suit them!
Heda_Madness
I guess until there are official readings on what the level of contamination is we will never know.
Disillusioned
I don't get it! If this is 'decontaminated' waste why is there a need to store it? Shouldn't it just be placed back into the environment? Or, is it possible that this waste is not as 'decontaminated' as we are meant to believe?
Peace Out
Easy fix!
Just put it in bags by some river before the next typhoon! Whoops!
Or put it on a ship and toss it overboard cause everybody knows the oceans are so big it will dilute anything to harmless!
And right now, there are some who I am sure took all that seriously and approved! And I wish we could store this stuff at THEIR house!
Utrack
Why is the radioactive waste material called decontaminated waste material. The article makes it sound like the radioactive waste is harmless . When in actuality it is anything but. The radioisotope levels must be too high to have the radioactive waste buried which is the normal procedure for low level radioisotope waste. So why not call the waste material what it is and that is radioisotope contaminated waste material.
wtfjapan
so when the leases run out where are they going to move the waste!? If nobody else is going to accept it then itll be staying there.