The Unseen Endpoint: The Maze of Fukushima Decommissioning 2018-2019

The Unseen Endpoint: The Maze of Fukushima Decommissioning 2018-2019

Between 2018 and 2019, less than a decade after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, the term "decommissioning" was used symbolically in the government's and TEPCO's explanations. The chaotic period immediately after the disaster had passed, and the site appeared outwardly tidy, with debris removed and radiation levels reduced. One of the foreign visitors commented, "I had imagined a much more dangerous site, but contrary to my expectations, the site is clean and safe. However, behind this neat and tidy scene, even the location of the fuel debris could not be accurately ascertained, and the phrase "steady progress" was repeated without concrete measures for removing the debris being decided upon. The source of the author's sense of discomfort was precisely this confusion between the apparent maintenance and actual progress.

At the time, TEPCO and the government had a roadmap of "up to 40 years to complete decommissioning. This figure has been treated as a banner to show the public the direction of reconstruction, but a spokesperson for the site responded to a question during the inspection by saying, "We have not defined what decommissioning completion means. The composition of the figure, which indicates only a deadline without defining a goal, has been criticized by experts and Diet members alike. Furthermore, in 2019, it was announced that the decommissioning of the Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Plant, which had not caused an accident, would take "44 years," a longer planning period than the accident reactor. This reversal of the figures is something that shakes the heads of even those who know the actual situation, and the author could not help but feel that the figures are a hoax.

In the political arena, public opinion was sharply divided on the issue of restarting or decommissioning nuclear power plants. While some reactors, such as Kawauchi and Takahama, were being restarted, others were being decommissioned around the country, and the question of whether to restart or decommission them was influencing the elections for the heads of local governments. However, the policy question of what "decommissioning" meant--whether the reactors would be cleared or whether they would be left in place under safety management--had not yet been settled. Internationally, this period was also known as the "Great Decommissioning Era," and although Japan ranked fourth in the world in terms of the number of reactors scheduled for decommissioning, there were few cases of complete land reclamation, and the future of fuel removal and decontamination remained uncertain.

Against this backdrop, the statement "the completion of decommissioning has not been decided" was not simply an ambiguous response from the site. It was a symbolic moment that showed that there was no shared end point for the accident, that the political slogan and reality were far apart, and that the structure that imposed the future burden on the local community and the public was still in place. With this sense of discomfort in mind, the author would later engage in discussions with Diet members and experts to reexamine the meaning of decommissioning and the nature of the system.