TEHRAN, Apr 10 - Eight years after nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima power plant forced evacuation of nearby communities, Japanese authorities on Wednesday gave the first clearance for residents to return to a neighborhood of one of the towns that hosted the stricken plant.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - The little town of Okuma faces an uphill battle rebuilding. More than half of its 10,000 registered residents have decided against returning, according to a survey.
Only 3.5 percent of them had lived in the neighborhood where people have been allowed to return, but Okuma’s mayor insisted it was just the start.
“This is a major milestone for the town,” Mayor Toshitsuna Watanabe said in a written statement. “But this is not the goal, but a start towards the lifting of the evacuation order for the entire town.”
In March 2011, an earthquake and tsunami destroyed Tokyo Electric Power’s (Tepco) Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, which straddles the municipalities of Okuma and Futaba on the Pacific coast.
More than 160,000 people were evacuated as a result of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in a quarter of a century. Since then, the restricted area has gradually shrunk, leaving just 339 square km (131 square miles) still deemed too unsafe to live.
Source: Reuters
Your Comment