The Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba received dozens of bags of slightly radioactive soil for a flower garden on Saturday. The soil comes from the area around the Fukushima nuclear power plant, where a nuclear disaster occurred in 2011 due to an earthquake and tsunami.
For the first time since the disaster, soil from the region around Fukushima is being used, apart from some experiments, reports news agency AP. Japanese authorities want to demonstrate that the soil is safe.
After the disaster, a layer of contaminated soil was removed to reduce radiation levels. Since then, 14 million cubic meters of soil have been stored near Fukushima, enough to fill 11 stadiums. The Japanese government aims to have distributed this soil throughout the country by 2045 at the latest, reports Japan Today.
But the Japanese government has so far failed to convince people that the soil is safe. That is why the bags were unloaded in the front garden of the Prime Minister. There, the soil is used in a flower garden, under twenty centimeters of clean soil.
The Ministry of the Environment says that the soil emits little radiation. For people who stand directly on the ground or work with it, the radiation would be comparable to that of one X-ray per year.