The last time Jean-Christophe Gariel visited Fukushima, two images marked this French nuclear specialist: the “ghost” villages, abandoned by the inhabitants the day after the accident, which took place on March 11, 2011 , around which swarm wild boars.
And these “mountains of radioactive waste” piled up in huge bags from one end of the Japanese prefecture to the other.
Ten years after the worst atomic disaster since the Chernobyl explosion, Japan is only at the start of decontamination operations.
"In Chernobyl, the authorities decided to abandon the contaminated territory," underlines Jean-Christophe Gariel, Deputy Director General in charge of the environment at the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN).
The Japanese, for their part, have decided to initiate a project to reconquer the territory ”.
But at what cost?
Of the 95,000 people evacuated, only 21,000 returned.
"Mainly elderly people attached to their native village but very few families because they have gone to make their living elsewhere and do not want, when they have children, to make them live in a contaminated zone" explains the specialist of IRSN.
An open-air nuclear waste reception center
It is because Fukushima has become a sort of open-air nuclear waste collection center.
There are no less than 1,359 waste storage sites, containing 17 million m2 of contaminated plants and soil residues.
Or the equivalent of 6,800 Olympic swimming pools!
We can understand that the rate of return of populations does not exceed 20%.
The French association leaving nuclear power has thus collected the testimony of Akiko Morimatsu, considered by the authorities as a “voluntary refugee”.
After the accident, she left the area for Osaka with her two children, then aged three years and five months.
Her husband stayed behind for his work.
"Throughout these ten years, I have seen so many mothers' tears flow: for not having had the means to leave, for not having been able to avoid irradiation for their children, for being sorry for their fragmented family life… ”
Fukushima: 10 years later, she returns to see her abandoned house
At the end of March 2017, the government decided to end housing assistance for these “volunteer refugees”.
“Their removal has forced underprivileged families to return to contaminated areas,” sighs Akiko Morimatsu.
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What parents fear is the release of radioactive iodine, which can cause thyroid cancer.
“Since October 2011, ultrasound scans of the thyroid have been performed every two years on people under 20,” testifies radiological science researcher Hisako Sakiyama.
In June 2020, there were 252 cases of suspected thyroid cancer ”.
But the evaluation commission responsible for examining the occurrence of cancers observed, "refuses to recognize the causal link with the accident, evoking the effects of screening", according to this doctor.
IRSN epidemiologist Enora Cléro also believes that these high findings of thyroid cancer could be the consequence of massive screening.
“We were thus able to discover the presence of microcancers that already existed before the accident, that we might never have diagnosed and which may never develop”.
The plant's contaminated water tanks
To encourage the return of the populations on the spot, the authorities carried out in-depth cleaning of the grounds and gardens and the high-pressure jet cleaning of the houses.
The majority of the villages which were affected by the fallout from the radioactive cloud are said to be decontaminated today.
"There remains an area of 340 km2 where the levels of contamination are still too high", explains Jean-Christophe Gariel.
In terms of agriculture, of the 15,000 ha dedicated to growing rice, fruits and vegetables, only 5,000 hectares are usable again.
"Products such as mushrooms, game and wild berries are not authorized for consumption, because the forests in which they are found have not been cleaned," adds the IRSN specialist.
Inside the plant, titanic work continues to remove the nuclear fuel rods still present in the storage pools.
The main difficulty is to continuously cool the reactor cores and to recover the contaminated water which escapes in the basements of the damaged buildings.
“There are around 1,000 contaminated water reserves on site,” explains Karine Herviou, IRSN deputy director general in charge of nuclear safety.
"The tanks will reach their maximum capacity at the end of 2022 and the government therefore plans to discharge the contaminated water into the sea after dilution", explains researcher Shinzo Kimura, radiation protection specialist.
Many residents, especially in the fishing industry, oppose this solution.
Ten years after the start of this colossal project, nuclear specialists agree that it will take another 30 or 40 years before the decontamination project of the plant comes to an end. “The sanitation work should last a total of nearly half a century,” confirms Karine Herviou. Almost as long as the operating life of this atomic complex, which before the accident was one of the largest nuclear power plants in the world.