'No choice': "Town near crippled nuclear facility OKs plan to build storage facility for waste"
January 14, 2015 As reported by the Asahi Shimbun, town leaders in Futaba -- one of two towns which host the radioactive ruins of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant -- have agreed to turn their town into an "intermediate storage site" for radioactive debris leftover from the triple disaster of 3/11/11: earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear catastrophe.
Futaba thus joins the other host town, Okuma, and Fukushima Prefecture, in blessing the deal.
As the article reports:
'"I decided we have no choice but to agree to hosting the facility. It was a difficult decision that was made purely for the sake of rebuilding and revitalizing Fukushima," Futaba Mayor Shiro Izawa said Jan. 13 after a town assembly meeting.'
A former Fukushima Daiichi town leader, who served during the initial phase of the nuclear catastrophe, has become an outspoken anti-nuclear voice since. He now lives, alongside many of his neighbors, as a permanent evacuee in an abandoned school on the outskirts of Tokyo.
Large parts of Futaba and Okuma lie within the 12.4-mile radius radioactive exclusion zone around Fukushima Daiichi.