Japan’s Environment Ministry Allows Press to See Inside Building Storing, Preparing Soil from Fukushima Meant for Reuse

The Yomiuri Shimbun

15:55 JST, February 5, 2026

The Environment Ministry allowed the press on Wednesday to see inside the building where preparation work is being done to reuse soil — with low radiation levels — from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

The 8,500-square-meter building is an interim facility, straddling the towns of Okuma and Futaba in Fukushima Prefecture, to store the soil, which was removed during cleanup work at the nuclear plant following the 2011 accident.

At the end of last year, about 14 million cubic meters of soil removed from contaminated areas was stored at a facility on about 1,600 hectares of land near the plant. While the government plans to reuse soil with radiation levels below 8,000 becquerels per kilogram for public works projects and other projects nationwide, the rest is expected to be disposed of outside the prefecture by March 2045.

Inside the building, about 600 cubic meters of soil that will be reused was covered with tarps.

According to the ministry, before transporting the soil outside the facility, certain measures are taken, including spraying the soil with water to prevent it from scattering and placing it into bags.

Last year, the government began reusing the soil for flower beds and embankments at government ministries and agencies in the Kasumigaseki district in Tokyo.

The government plans to begin the process of selecting candidate sites for the final disposal of the soil around 2030, aiming to finalize the selection by 2035. To reduce the amount that is disposed of, the government intends to reuse as much of the soil as possible.

The soil that is meant to be reused accounts for about 75% of the stored soil.

“To fulfill our promise, we aim to foster public understanding through measures like organizing tours for people outside the prefecture,” a ministry official said.