5,300 tons of radioactive wood waste taken into 5 prefectures besides Shiga

OTSU -- Some 5,300 metric tons of wood chips contaminated with radioactive cesium from the Fukushima nuclear disaster was transported into Tochigi, Ibaraki, Chiba, Yamanashi and Kagoshima prefectures, documents from the Otsu District Public Prosecutors Office in Shiga Prefecture have shown.

The finding comes after it was learned that a large amount of contaminated wood waste had been illegally dumped in a riverbed in the Shiga Prefecture city of Takashima.

The waste had been held by a lumber company in the Fukushima Prefecture city of Motomiya. The president of a consulting firm in Tokyo took on the job of disposing of the waste, but came under suspicion of dumping around 310 cubic meters of it in Takashima. The president was subsequently convicted over violation of a waste disposal law.

According to a lawyer of a citizens group who had access to the information held by the Otsu public prosecutors, two intermediate processing companies in Tokyo and Gunma Prefecture removed the waste from Fukushima between December 2012 and September 2013. Later, other transporters took it into six prefectures including Shiga via 18 different routes. Roughly 3,437 tons was taken into Tochigi Prefecture, 1,214 tons into Yamanashi Prefecture, 344 tons into Kagoshima Prefecture, 280 tons into Chiba Prefecture and 10 tons into Ibaraki Prefecture, the documents reportedly showed.