TOMIOKA, Japan (AP) – A part of the city of Tomioka, about 10 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, is still a no-go zone ten years after a collapse sent radioactive fallout over the area.
The no-go zone is about 12% of the city, but was home to about a third of Tomioka’s 16,000 population. It remains closed after the rest of the city in northeastern Japan reopened in 2017.
Only persons with the official permission of the city office can enter the area for a day visit.
A portion of the area, called Yonomori, was formerly a commercial center with shops, houses, a 7-Eleven store and a popular local supermarket chain called York Benimaru.
The area also has Yonomori Park, surrounded by cherry tree streets, where residents used to gather for ‘hanami’ parties, have a picnic under the blossoms and walk through a tunnel of flowering trees.
This part of the no-go zone is a special recycling area and officials want to reopen it in 2023. The other half of the zone is a nuclear landfill, an area filled with black bags containing radioactive soil, felled tree branches and other contaminated debris collected from across the town. The bags will eventually be sent to a medium-term waste storage facility in Futaba and Okuma, the two towns where the nuclear plant is being hosted.