Construction workers stole and sold potentially radioactive scrap metal from the area around the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant according to the Japanese environmental ministry. The material was taken from a museum being demolished in a special zone about two and a half miles from the nuclear plant in northeast Japan that was destroyed by a tsunami in 2011.
Residents were allowed to return to the area in 2022 after intense decontamination work. However, the radiation levels can still be above normal, and the Fukushima plant is surrounded by a no-go zone.
Kei Osada is an official of Japan’s Ministry of the Environment. The ministry was informed of the theft by workers from a joint venture conducting the demolition work in late July of this year. Osada said the ministry is continuing to exchange information with the police. Osada went on to say that the stolen metal may have been used in the frame of the building “which means that it's unlikely that these metals were exposed to high levels of radiation when the nuclear accident occurred.”
If radioactivity levels of the metals are high, the metals must go to an interim storage facility or be properly disposed of. If the radioactivity levels of the metals are low, they can be reused. The stolen scrap metals had not been measured for radiation levels, according to Osada. It was reported that the workers sold the scrap metal to companies outside the Fukushima zone for about six thousand dollars.
It is not exactly clear what volume of metal went missing, where it is now or if it poses a health risk. Japan’s national broadcaster NHK reported over the summer that the police in the Japanese prefecture of Ibaraki which borders Fukushima, had contacted scrap metal companies to ask them to scrutinize their suppliers more carefully as metals thefts surged there. Ibaraki authorities reported that there were over nine hundred incidents last June alone. This is the highest number of metal thefts for any of Japan’s forty seven prefectures.
Officials in Chiba, east of Tokyo, stated that metal grates along more than twenty miles of roadway had been stolen. This terrified motorists who use the narrow roads with the prospect of falling into an open gutter, especially at night. Maintenance workers with the city of Tsu, in Mie prefecture, west of Tokyo, have started patrolling roadside grates and installing metal clips in an effort to thwart thieves.
Infrastructure crime may not pay as much as it once did. The World Bank and other sources say that base metal prices have peaked. They will continue to decline through 2024 as global demand falls.
The March 11, 2011, tsunami caused multiple meltdowns at Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant in the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. Numerous areas around the plant have been declared safe for residents to return after extensive decontamination work. Only two and two tenths of a percent of the Fukushima prefecture is still covered by no-go orders.
Japan just began releasing into the Pacific Ocan more than a quarter of a billion gallons of wastewater that had been collected in and around one thousand steel tanks at the site. Plant operator TEPCO says that the released water is safe. The IAEA agrees with TEPCO. However, China has accused Japan of treating the Pacific Ocean like a “sewer”.