In Japan, 'desperate' shrinking towns eye radioactive nuclear waste storage to make a fast buck: 'it's all about money'

Two communities in southern Japan have agreed to undergo preliminary evaluations to host sites for radioactive nuclear waste and spent fuel from the nation's atomic energy plants, despite opposition from environmental groups and locals.

Authorities in Kaminoseki, a town in Yamaguchi prefecture with some 2,340 residents, said on Friday they would permit Chugoku Electric Power Co. to carry out a survey for an interim site to store spent nuclear fuel before it is recycled, just 16 days after the firm made the proposal.

Local officials reached the decision without a vote and town council members were not allowed to ask any questions, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. Around 100 people gathered outside the town hall during the closed-door meeting to oppose the plan.

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Mayor Tetsuo Nishi said after the meeting: "We have decided to accept the firm's proposal. The survey and construction [of a waste dump] are separate issues."

Nishi said the town had effectively been forced to accept the utility company's request as it needed the funds. Kaminoseki had previously been earmarked as the site of a new nuclear power plant with two reactors, but that plan was halted after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011.

Under the agreement, Chugoku Electric will carry out a borehole survey on the site of the planned nuclear plant to determine if it is geologically stable. The town will receive 140 million yen (US$964,400) every year during the survey stage. Once the study is complete and if the site is deemed viable, the company will propose a plan to build an interim nuclear waste storage site.

If Yamaguchi prefecture's governor approves that plan, Kaminoseki will earn 2 billion yen (US$13.8 million) over two years, as well as annual payments as soon as the first waste is delivered.

The town has traditionally relied on fishing as its source of income, but with younger people moving away and the population shrinking, there are fewer people to keep the local industry alive.

Those fishermen who do remain fear that a disaster involving the nuclear storage facility would seriously damage their reputations and livelihoods, just as it has done in Fukushima prefecture.

A similar debate is raging on Tsushima island, which lies between Japan's southern Kyushu island and the Korean peninsula. A special committee set up by the municipal council recommended on Wednesday last week that the city start the studies and procedures required before an underground site can be built.

If the offer is accepted, the city would also be eligible to receive subsidies of up to 2 billion yen.

Despite the panel's recommendation, the council and Tsushima's 28,000 residents are deeply divided over the issue. Given the island's location and South Korea's antipathy towards Japan's track record on nuclear energy, it's likely that residents of the port city of Busan - some 50km from the northern tip of Tsushima - will also oppose the proposal.

Tsushima not only has a large fishing industry, it's also a major destination for both Japanese and South Korean tourists. The fear is that bad publicity surrounding a nuclear storage facility or some sort of accident could devastate both industries.

"For these towns, it's all about money," said Aileen Mioko Smith, an environmental campaigner with the Kyoto-based Green Action Japan. "These communities have been losing their populations and jobs to the big cities for decades, so mayors are desperate for funds."

Residents of Kaminoseki were bitterly opposed to Chugoku Electric's plans to build a nuclear plant in their town when it was first proposed more than 40 years ago, Mioko Smith said, with regular demonstrations against the plan.

The utility companies, however, are both wealthy and becoming increasingly desperate to find a storage site for the waste produced by their reactors.

Mioko Smith said the Kaminoseki project was ostensibly being carried out by Chugoku Electric, even though it did not urgently require a storage facility for waste. Kansai Electric Power Co, however, was desperately in need of a storage site as its existing facilities were reaching capacity. Last year, it promised the Fukui government that it would solve the problem of stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel at its facilities in the prefecture by the end of 2022.

Kansai Electric missed that deadline and has been given until the end of this year to provide a guarantee of a future interim storage site. The two utility companies are cooperating on the Kaminoseki site and apparently hope that large amounts of subsidies will help to overcome local residents' apprehensions.

Even though the mayor has agreed to the preliminary study on the site, residents are unlikely to take the decision laying down.

"Locals stood up against the reactors and then were expecting construction to start any day when the Fukushima accident happened, so it was all put on hold, although the company still owns the land," said Mioko Smith.

"To me, what's really unconscionable is that Kansai Electric wants to export spent nuclear fuel that was generated in the Kansai region, and used to power companies and homes there to a community in a different part of the country that does not want it."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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