Japan finds radioactive waste leaked in typhoon aftermath
- 4 years ago
It's been confirmed that when Typhoon Hagibis hit Japan last weekend... radioactive waste did go missing.
The bags that had contained the waste were washed away... and have now been found empty.
Our Choi Jeong-yoon has more.
Japanese media report that traces of radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant have been found in various places following the season's strongest typhoon, Hagibis.
The Tokyo Shimbun reported Friday that ten bags that had contained radioactive waste were found empty along the Furumichi River, indicating that the contents had spilled out.
Those are understood to be some of the bags that the nearby city of Tamura said earlier this week were swept away by the storm's heavy rain.
Meanwhile, two other villages in Fukushima Prefecture, Kawauchi and Nihonmatsu, say they found a total of 33 bags downstream... and two of them were empty.
The Japanese government had collected about 30 million tons of radioactive debris after the nuclear disaster in March 2011.
The Tokyo Shimbun also pointed out that the authorities had not managed the nuclear waste facilities properly.
According to local media, four of the temporary storage units in Gunma and Fukushima Prefectures have been made inaccessible because of landslides and floods, so workers cannot even inspect them.
This isn't the first time something like this has happened.
In 2015, around 240 bags of contaminated waste from the Fukushima plant went missing in similar circumstances when the region was hit by torrential rain.
Choi Jeong-yoon, Arirang News.
The bags that had contained the waste were washed away... and have now been found empty.
Our Choi Jeong-yoon has more.
Japanese media report that traces of radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant have been found in various places following the season's strongest typhoon, Hagibis.
The Tokyo Shimbun reported Friday that ten bags that had contained radioactive waste were found empty along the Furumichi River, indicating that the contents had spilled out.
Those are understood to be some of the bags that the nearby city of Tamura said earlier this week were swept away by the storm's heavy rain.
Meanwhile, two other villages in Fukushima Prefecture, Kawauchi and Nihonmatsu, say they found a total of 33 bags downstream... and two of them were empty.
The Japanese government had collected about 30 million tons of radioactive debris after the nuclear disaster in March 2011.
The Tokyo Shimbun also pointed out that the authorities had not managed the nuclear waste facilities properly.
According to local media, four of the temporary storage units in Gunma and Fukushima Prefectures have been made inaccessible because of landslides and floods, so workers cannot even inspect them.
This isn't the first time something like this has happened.
In 2015, around 240 bags of contaminated waste from the Fukushima plant went missing in similar circumstances when the region was hit by torrential rain.
Choi Jeong-yoon, Arirang News.