Reconstruction continues to be hampered in areas of Fukushima Prefecture affected by the March 2011 triple meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant four years ago. Nearly 120,000 residents of Fukushima remain displaced within and outside the prefecture — compared with 135,000 a year ago. In some of the municipalities around the plant once rendered off-limits by the radiation fallout, the return of local residents reportedly has proceeded slowly even after evacuation advisories were lifted over the past year.
Tepco continues to struggle in its attempt to clean up the mess at the No. 1 plant. Managing the massive flow of radiation-contaminated underground water remains a huge challenge, and the work to decommission the crippled plant — estimated to take decades to complete — is still in its initial stage. Huge volumes of radioactive soil and other waste collected during the decontamination of areas hit by the fallout are still kept in flexible containers and piled up in hundreds of temporary repositories or even in housing premises across the prefecture, waiting to be shipped to a giant storage facility to be built around the No. 1 plant.
Having reversed the previous Democratic Party of Japan-led government's policy of phasing out nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima crisis, the Abe administration is now pushing to reactivate nuclear reactors idled since the 2011 disaster once they have cleared the safety screening of the Nuclear Regulation Authority. While Prime Minister Shinzo Abe repeatedly pledges to reduce the nation's energy dependency on nuclear power as much as possible through energy-saving efforts and the introduction of more renewable energy, his administration contemplates measures to help maintain nuclear power even in the upcoming wave of power retail deregulation.