Feature: Fukushima still battling environmental, social, economic strife 5 years on from disaster

The people of Fukushima Prefecture are still suffering under the burden of a myriad of ongoing environmental, social and economic problems despite almost half a decade passing since an earthquake- triggered tsunami knocked out the key cooling functions at the Daiichi nuclear power complex, causing multiple meltdowns in its reactors and leading to the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

According to the latest media polls, the majority of local government officials still have reservations about the use of nuclear power, as the nation will somberly honor the lives lost during the triple disasters at ceremonies up and down the country on March 11.

In a survey released by the Kyodo News Agency on Monday about municipal leaders' views on the nation's future energy policy, 44.6 percent of those polled said they wanted to see a reduction in the country's reliance on nuclear power, with more than 20 percent saying they wanted to see the use of nuclear energy phased out entirely in the future.

Of those surveyed, concerns were voiced about ongoing safety woes about the use of nuclear power, as the majority of Japan's aged reactors still remain offline for ongoing safety inspections and in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

The central government, under the stewardship of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, however, is sticking to its policy of restarting the idled reactors and is eyeing nuclear power to account for at least 20 percent of the nation's entire power generation by 2030, despite opposition to the move at local levels.

While some of those surveyed said that nuclear power was the only feasible means of economically achieving Japan's plans to cut carbon emissions with a reduction of plants currently used to burn fossil fuels to produce power, in lieu of nuclear power plants supplying the nation's grids, 13 prefectural governors whose locales host nuclear power plants said they hoped nuclear power reliance would be reduced.

Hirohiko Izumida, the governor of Niigata Prefecture, on the northwestern Honshu island, facing the Sea of Japan, for example, said that investigations into the Fukushima disaster should go deeper and were "indispensable" to the future of policy decisions here, whereas the governor of Saga Prefecture, northwest Kyushu, the south-westernmost of Japan's main islands, said that he hoped Japan would reduce its reliance on atomic energy in "the medium to long term."

Nerves remained tetchy among local leaders and authorities, the survey showed, with 46.6 percent of them saying that they have been updating their disaster preparedness response plans, with a potential nuclear accident in mind.

As the nuclear situation at the stricken facility in Fukushima, in Japan's northeast, rumbles on as the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), continues to grapple with storing massive amounts of contaminated water in tanks at the plant, with space rapidly running out as new tanks quickly reach capacity, and prepares to activate an ice wall to prevent ground water entering the battered reactor buildings and vice versa, separate data from the government continued to paint a bleak picture of the situation in the crisis-hit region.

According to the latest estimates from the Environment Ministry, while the actual decommissioning of the faulty plant will still take decades, decontamination work involving the cleaning up of radioactive substances is still ongoing in one-third of municipalities that were affected by the disaster.

As reported by NHK, in Fukushima Prefecture, of 43 communities cited, only 14 have been properly decontaminated, while 50 of 58 municipalities in seven other prefectures have seen the vital cleaning up work finished or very nearly so.

Five years ago, an undersea megathrust earthquake jolted the very foundations of Japan, with the most powerful earthquake ever recorded here causing a devastating tsunami with waves as high as 40 meters killing almost 16,000 people.

According to the government's latest statistics, specifically those from the Reconstruction Agency, more than 3,400 of the survivors of the 2011 disasters have since died, due to health problems related to the catastrophes, with the most deaths being in Fukushima Prefecture, which accounted for 58 percent of the total at 1,979.

As of February 12, meanwhile, 174,471 people remain in temporary housing or are still living in relatives' homes, the agency reported, the former of which includes 156,234 people who are living in prefabricated housing or apartment complexes that are being rented out to the evacuees by the government.

The agency also said that 43,139 people originally from Fukushima are still living outside the prefecture, with officials there stating that Japan's broader population crisis is magnified in the nuclear-disaster-hit hub, with families with children reluctant to return, and the birthrate in the prefecture dropping demonstrably after the crisis.

In Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate, 12 communities said their population has slumped more than 10 percent since the disaster, with more than half of those communities saying that numbers had plunged by more than 20 percent, according to the agency.

An NHK survey released recently also revealed that returning to Fukushima Prefecture for some evacuees is not an attractive proposition, not only for environmental and health reasons, but also for economic ones. The report, based on studies conducted between December and February, showed that almost half of those surveyed are hovering around the poverty line and finding it hard to afford life's basic necessities.

Forty two percent of those polled maintained that their living conditions had not changed substantially, but 37 percent said their situation has become markedly worse, with 11 percent stating that they are "struggling" economically.

Figures also showed that for 37 percent of the population their income had decreased, with 22 percent saying they have no income at all, with household spending pressures, like transportation, food and utilities, increasing in the embattled prefecture.

Separately, the Education Ministry said recently that not all public school buildings will be earthquake-proof by the end of this fiscal year, meaning that some 2,400 buildings could collapse if a major earthquake were to strike of an intensity of 6 or more on Japan's scale that peaks at 7.

Local governments have said that financial constraints have delayed the process of the nationwide construction upgrade to public school buildings. Endit