Arab News Japan

TOKYO: Potentially highly irradiated items have been stolen from a temporary storage site for contaminated waste in Fukushima, the Asahi newspaper reported on Sunday.

The site, located about 3 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, features a home improvement center that was abandoned after the triple meltdown in March 2011. The building and merchandise inside were left untouched after the nuclear disaster. The site and the surrounding area are now used for temporary storage.

Although the site is monitored, managers say there is a limit as to what they can do to keep track of the waste and they don’t know if possibly dangerous goods have been sold to unsuspecting buyers.

Nishimatsu Construction was commissioned to demolish the commercial facility and they discovered that a worker from a subcontractor had taken two bicycles from the site to give to the children of an acquaintance. They were later recovered.

The Special Measures Law Concerning the Handling of Radioactive Materials states that contaminated waste should be taken to temporary storage sites to measure their radiation levels before deciding where they should be disposed of.

The Environment Ministry said it received a report in April about bicycles being taken from the temporary storage site and put on sale.

Nishimatsu Construction also reported that pipes of an air conditioner installed in the attic of the home improvement center were stolen in March this year.

“A total of 1,000 workers were involved in the demolition project, with 30 to 40 of them coming in and out of the site on a steady basis,” a manager at the site was reported as saying. “Frankly speaking, if they put merchandise into their pockets and took them outside, I wouldn’t know.”

A worker said several 4-ton trucks had entered the demolition site on a few occasions after employees had finished their shifts.

One worker said items from the site were being sold on the flea market app Mercari.

Recently, four former workers were arrested on suspicion of stealing iron scraps from a demolition site in the area that is within the “difficult-to-return zone” in Okuma.