Fukushima:
Construction workers stole and sold potentially radioactive scrap from near the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, Japan’s Environment Ministry said Thursday. The materials have disappeared from a museum that was demolished in a special zone about four kilometers from the nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan that was destroyed by a tsunami in 2011.
Although people were allowed to return to the area in 2022 after intensive remediation work, radiation levels may still be above normal and it is surrounded by a no-go zone.
Japan’s Environment Ministry was informed of the theft in late July by employees of a joint venture that carried out the demolition work and “is exchanging information with police,” ministry official Kei Osada told AFP.
Osada said the metal may have been used in the building’s frame, “meaning it is unlikely that these metals were exposed to high levels of radiation when the nuclear accident occurred.”
If radioactivity is high, metals from the area should go to a temporary storage facility or be disposed of properly. If they are low, they can be reused.
However, the stolen scrap metals had not been measured for radiation levels, Osada said.
The Mainichi Shimbun daily reported Tuesday, citing unidentified sources, that workers sold the scrap to companies outside the zone for about 900,000 yen ($6,000).
It is unclear what volume of metal has disappeared, where it is now and whether it poses a health risk.
The March 11, 2011, tsunami caused multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant in the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
Numerous areas around the factory have been declared safe for residents to return after extensive decontamination work, with only 2.2 percent of the prefecture still covered by no-go orders.
Japan last month began dumping more than a billion gallons of wastewater into the Pacific Ocean that had been collected in about 1,000 steel tanks at the site.
Plant operator TEPCO says the water is safe, a position backed by the UN nuclear watchdog, but China has accused Japan of treating the ocean like a “sewage”.
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