The government on Monday said it had chosen a 4-hectare area of national forest land in Tochigi Prefecture as a candidate storage site for radioactive waste from Fukushima Prefecture. The area is near the town of Yaita. It is the first time since last year’s nuclear disaster that the government has publicly announced a site for waste storage. However, the announcement seemed to take Tochigi officials by surprise. Vice Environment Minister Katsuhiko Yokomitsu outlined the government’s plan to build a storage site by 2014 to Tochigi Gov Tomikazu Fukuda who in turn informed Yaita Mayor Tadao Endo. Both men later told reporters they were surprised at the decision, NHK reported. They also said it will be difficult to secure the approval of local residents for the storage site. Environment Minister Goshi Hosono, who is also the minister in charge of the nuclear crisis, had previously said that the government was looking at candidate disposal sites in Miyagi, Chiba and Ibaraki prefectures. The ministry said that around 48,000 tons of waste containing radioactive cesium of over 8,000 becquerels per kilogram needs to be disposed of, NHK reported.