The mayor of Tsushima in southwestern Japan said Wednesday he has decided against applying for a preliminary survey to gauge the city's suitability to host an underground disposal site for highly radioactive waste.
Mayor Naoki Hitakatsu's decision comes despite the city assembly's approval earlier this month of a request filed by local construction groups urging the city to accept a survey. The groups had said doing so could bring up to 2 billion yen ($13.4 million) in state subsidies for the shrinking Nagasaki Prefecture city.
Hitakatsu apparently wished to avoid causing division among local residents by accepting the survey, which is the first step in a three-stage process spanning around 20 years to select a permanent disposal site for waste from nuclear power generation, the sources said.
While supporters of the survey said the state subsidies could be used to rev up the local economy and support childrearing, opponents feared the survey's potential impact on tourism and primary industries such as fisheries. They also argued that the survey could eventually lead to hosting the final nuclear waste disposal site.
In 2020, two municipalities in Hokkaido in northern Japan -- Suttsu and Kamoenai -- became the first to seek to become sites for preliminary surveys.
But Hitakatsu, whose second four-year term ends next March and who may seek a third term, had been cautious on the issue.
The surveys, conducted by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, a quasi-government body in Tokyo, involve checking land conditions and volcanic activity based on published geological sources.
Japan, like many other countries with nuclear plants, is struggling to find permanent disposal sites.
High-level radioactive waste, produced when extracting uranium and plutonium from spent fuel, must be stored in bedrock at least 300 meters underground for tens of thousands of years until the radioactivity declines to levels that do not pose harm to human health or the environment.
Tsushima was identified on a map of potential disposal sites released by the central government in 2017.
