The government of Japan announced its intention to use slightly radioactive soil from the Fukushima power plant in the flower beds of the prime minister’s garden. This decision was publicized as an effort to dispel anxiety around the long-lasting radioactive contamination, which has plagued Japan since the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
By putting contaminated soil in the gardens outside Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s Tokyo office, the government aimed at reassuring the public of the safety of such soil, which will be used for broader construction projects. While some have applauded this news as a way to tackle misinformation about Fukushima, it is also part of a broader public relation strategy that attempts to normalize the long-term consequences of industrial pollution, as well as the impacts of nuclear disasters.
To understand how Japan came to reuse contaminated soil in the garden of its prime minister, it first helps to set up the context that led to radioactive flowerpots.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 11, 2011, released an important amount of radioactive contamination in Japan, particularly within the northeast region known as Tohoku. This harmful contamination forced the government to evacuate more than 160 000 citizens, some of whom have not yet returned to Fukushima.
Yet, for a country like Japan – a nation island that has little territory and traditional tropes about the value of its land – adopting policies that lead to the permanent abandonment of national territory is unthinkable. Consequently, the government quickly began to promote a policy of revitalization after this disaster, with the aim of enabling evacuees to return to Fukushima. One of the main tools that enabled this revitalization were expensive decontamination programs that attempted to remove radioactive pollutants. In August 2011, Japan enacted “The Act on Special Measures concerning the Handling of Environment Pollution by Radioactive Materials Discharged by the NPS Accident Associated with the Tōhoku District,” with the Ministry of the Environment becoming responsible for implementing radioactive decontamination activities.
Throughout the years, decontamination policies have been successful at reducing the initial scale of evacuated zones. After decontamination is done in an area, evacuation orders are gradually lifted. However, it is important to note that the effectiveness of “decontamination” is limited. Indeed, decontamination is mostly synonymous with moving radioactive-laced materials elsewhere, often in plastic bags that are prone to breaking, which then re-scatters radiation in the environment.
As such, while decontamination is a word that sounds highly efficient, there is no way to halt radiation once and for all. Radioactive waste can be buried in the ground, diluted by the oceans, or reduced in size through incineration, but these processes do not stop radioactivity. Buried waste is still radioactive, radionuclides disperse themselves in the seas, and incinerated waste creates radioactive ashes. Only time lowers the amount of radioactivity emitted by harmful radioactive materials.
In Fukushima, decontamination waste is currently enough to fill more than 11 Tokyo Domes, or roughly 305 hectares. While the Ministry of the Environment has promised to eliminate waste in Fukushima by 2045, it faces the legal challenge of finding a final disposal site outside of Fukushima Prefecture. Against this literal mountain of waste, the Ministry of the Environment has begun to promote alternate governance schemes, with one implying the “recycling” (sairiyō in Japanese) of decontamination waste. Faced with the hardship of disposing of this waste, the Ministry is attempting to recycle radioactive-tainted soil or debris as construction materials in farmlands, embankments, or construction projects.
The plan is to transfer soil below the threshold of 8,000 Bequerel per kilo (a unit expressing radioactive decay) to be used under roads and in building projects all over Japan. Exhibits of potted plants containing removed soil from Fukushima have been seen in the Prime Minister’s Office, in large public gardens, as well as in the offices of political parties. According to official documents, this diffusion of radioactive waste throughout the archipelago of Japan is officially being done to “eliminate” misconceptions about Fukushima, as well as to improve the social acceptance of radiation protection.
From something that was considered scary or harmful to one’s health, residual radioactivity from a nuclear disaster is now transmuted as a matter of everyday life, a mere potted plant.
Diverse euphemisms have always been an important part of nuclear propaganda, with the aim of downplaying the severity of a nuclear disaster. Similarly, in talking about contaminated soil, the Ministry increasingly eschews words with negative connotations, like waste (gomi) or pollution (osen), replacing them with neutral-sounding words such as “removed soil” (jokyo dojō) or “recycled material” (shizai no saiseiriyō). This is done to increase the social acceptability of using contaminated soils in construction projects.
What these linguistic plays fail to highlight is the fact that “recycling” has been made possible by raising the threshold of allowable radiation by 80 times from its previous standard, from 100 becquerels per kilo to 8,000 becquerels per kilo. This decision led to local opposition in Fukushima, which subsequently lowered the threshold in some cases.
In the end, it is safe to say that flowerbeds in the prime minister’s garden will probably not increase one’s exposure to radiation, nor lead to harmful adverse health effects. However, there is a huge difference between flowerbeds that used tested and removed soil, and being exposed to the reality on the ground of a nuclear disaster, particularly when we know that harmful radioactive fallout has been concealed from the Japanese public for years. Notwithstanding this, the flowerbeds send an unambiguous message, one that attempts to put to rest the controversy surrounding radioactive contamination, especially in Japan, which can’t seem to shake off the tainted legacy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.