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Message to the G7 Ministerial Conference regarding the G7 Joint Statement

(From No Radioactive Soil in Shinjuku Citizen’s Group)

In December 2022, Japan’s Ministry of the Environment announced a new “contaminated soil recycling demonstration project.” Under this project, soil, which was contaminated with radionuclides emitted during the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident, is removed from the “interim storage facility” in Fukushima where it is presently held under centralized management, and transported approximately 250 km to Shinjuku Gyoen, a famous garden in Tokyo, as well as other locations in neighboring Saitama and Ibaraki Prefectures. 

  We are extremely concerned by media reports that the Japanese government is preparing to include contents such as “we welcome the process that was undertaken so that ‘treated’ water (from the Fukushima Daiichi site) can be released into the ocean” and “we welcome the soil recycling demonstration project” in the Joint Statement to be released by the G7 Ministerial Conference which will be held in Sapporo in April. We strongly oppose this content being included in the Joint Statement.

The Environment Ministry’s states that the safety of the “contaminated soil recycling demonstration project” has been confirmed and that radioactive soil will be recycled in areas across Japan. However, the legal basis for this project is insufficient and public consensus is far from being obtained.

It all started with the Ministry of the Environment's unkeepable promise to ensure that final disposal of  the radioactively contaminated soil in the "interim storage facility" would be outside Fukushima Prefecture and that all soil would be removed within 30 years of the start of storage (by March 2045).

In order to reduce the amount of contaminated soil as much as possible in order to meet the deadline, the Ministry of the Environment has set a new standard that allows the soil to be recycled if it is 8,000 Bq/kg or less. This is in contradiction to the Nuclear Reactor Regulation Law, which stipulates that a total of 100 Bq/kg or more of caesium 134 and 137 cannot be recycled.

It is most important that radioactive waste is centrally managed and not moved to multiple sites around the country. If this happens, it will become very difficult to keep track of environmental pollution and without realizing it, people and living creatures will be exposed to radiation.

We cannot permit this disastrous policy of digging up, moving and utilising the radioactively contaminated soil that is currently under central control, thereby exposing workers and local residents to further radiation exposure.

Before the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has even been resolved, the government is planning to restart other nuclear power plants, and their main concern is to make the ever-accumulating contaminated water and soil disappear from sight, putting off the real solution to the problems. We ask you to consider how irresponsible this is to future generations and the negative impact it will have on the global environment. 

　If your country does not support this kind of future, then please do not support a joint statement which allows the release of radioactively contaminated water into the ocean and the spread of contaminated soil.