Photo/Illutration Vacant lots dot the Murohara district of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, where the evacuation order will be lifted on March 31. (Sayuri Ide)

On the 12th anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, reconstruction has progressed in Miyagi and Iwate prefectures, which were both devastated by the twin disasters.

However, the picture is much different in Fukushima Prefecture, where residents are struggling to overcome the impact of the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant following the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. 

A total of about 31,000 evacuees are still unable to return home. While that figure is a sharp drop from the peak number of about 470,000, about 90 percent of the current evacuees are from Fukushima.

Central government spending on reconstruction projects has been slashed from fiscal 2021, but Fukushima has not been forgotten. 

For the fiscal year starting from April, the Reconstruction Agency’s initial budget totals 552.3 billion yen ($4 billion), only about 20 percent of the amount spent in fiscal 2013 when rebuilding projects began in earnest.

About 90 percent of the amount set aside for fiscal 2023 will deal with the nuclear accident, such as constructing an interim storage facility for radioactive waste and helping residents return home.

The remainder will go to providing psychological care to evacuees and subsidizing rent for those still residing in public housing set up after the natural disasters.

In Fukushima Prefecture, a total of about 80,000 residents evacuated from 11 municipalities. While evacuation orders have been lifted in some of those municipalities, only about 16,000 residents have returned to their homes.

There are parts of seven municipalities where radiation levels are still too high for residents to return.

Evacuation orders have been lifted for certain communities in such municipalities since June 2022, but so far only about 100 residents have returned to their homes. That represents only about 1 percent of the residents officially registered at the local governments.

Part of the Murohara district of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, will have the evacuation order lifted on March 31. But an area where homes once stood is now nothing but cleared vacant lots. Other homes are awaiting demolition.

Parts of Tomioka and Iitate in Fukushima will also have evacuation orders lifted in the near future, but with so many evacuees having already established new lives elsewhere, such municipalities may not see their populations return to pre-3/11 levels.

The Kishida administration this year approved a radical shift in its nuclear energy policy, allowing for the construction of new reactors and extending the operating life of existing reactors to 60 years.

Amid that change, Tohoku Electric Power Co. plans to resume operations at its Onagawa plant in Miyagi Prefecture in February 2024.

Related News