Japanese nuclear establishment hunting for high-level radioactive waste dumpsite

As the Mainichi Daily News reveals in its question and answer format, the Japanese federal government, on behalf of the Japanese nuclear power industry, has been quietly, and not so quietly, seeking a "voluntary" host community somewhere in the island nation "willing" to "serve" as the national "deep geologic" (if 900 feet can be called "deep") dumpsite for high-level radioactive wastes leftover after reprocessing 54 reactors' worth of irradiated nuclear fuel. In the year 2000, Kevin Kamps, now serving as Radioactive Waste Watchdog at Beyond Nuclear, travelled to Japan as the guest of the Japanese Federation of Environmental Lawyers, on a national speaking tour about the risks of Yucca Mountain in the U.S. Kamps travelled to a town near the major city of Nagoya, long studied as a potential dumpsite within an abandoned uranium mine located there. However, fast-flowing creeks of water down the sides of the mine tunnel would seem to indicate this might not be the best choice for trying to isolate the forever deadly poisons. Kamps also travelled to Sapporo, the capital city of Japan's northern island, Hokkaido. Given its less densely populated rural regions, Hokkaido is more likely to be targeted for such a dump.