Japan Marks 10th Anniv. Of 3/11 Disaster
Thursday marks the 10th anniversary of a massive earthquake and tsunami that struck east and northeast Japan, triggering a severe nuclear accident. People in the country are remembering the lives lost in the disaster.
The magnitude-9 quake generated tsunamis over 10 meters tall, causing the deaths of 15,900 people and leaving 2,525 missing. The government says as of Tuesday 3,775 others had died due to health problems or other complications related to the disaster.
The remaining survivors still living in temporary housing will leave it soon. Construction of public housing for people who lost their homes was finished last December.
But over 41,000 people are forced to live away from their hometowns mainly because of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The plant suffered a triple meltdown in what is considered the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. Even a decade later, several municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture are no-go areas.
The Japanese government and the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, project work to decommission the plant will be completed by 2051. One of the biggest challenges is how to remove radioactive debris from inside the reactors, where radiation levels are still extremely high. TEPCO estimates there are 880 tons of such debris.
The company was planning to start removing the debris from this year, but the coronavirus pandemic has delayed that process by at least a year.
Another challenge is what to do with the more than 1.2 million tons of contaminated water stored at the plant in the 10 years since the disaster.
The water is used to cool the damaged reactors. The government has yet to decide how to dispose of it.
TEPCO and the government will also have to deal with the huge amount of radioactive waste created during the decommissioning work. The plant has already generated 470,000 cubic meters of such waste, which is stored at the plant. They have yet to assess how much more waste will be produced by the time decommissioning is completed.
The annual memorial ceremony will be held this year. It was canceled last year because of the pandemic.