The Environment Ministry will start storing nuclear waste from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and surrounding areas in interim facilities in two Fukushima towns from March—four years after the disaster that devastated the Tohoku region. Environment Minister Yoshio Mochizuki made the announcement after the plan overcame the final obstacle last week with the agreement by Futaba town to accept the facility. The plan had been held up for more than a year because the government had not been able to secure the land due to ongoing negotiations with landowners in Futaba and Okuma towns. Okuma dropped its opposition in December and Futaba finally gave the green light on Jan 14. Futaba Mayor Shiro Izawa said it had been a tough decision but said it was the only way to speed up the recovery effort in Fukushima Prefecture, TV Asahi reported. Most of Futaba’s residents have relocated to other parts of the prefecture and are unlikely to return. The radiation contaminated areas far and wide, rendering a swathe of Fukushima uninhabitable, perhaps for generations, and forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes. Tokyo’s solution has been to try to scrub the radiation from the affected areas, often by lifting topsoil in the hope that contamination levels will go down. This has left the thorny problem of what to do with all the waste, with no community in Japan prepared to accept its permanent storage. The government’s answer has been to seek a temporary fix while it works on getting a long-term plan in place. While observers have long said the area around Fukushima is the only viable option, people already displaced have seen it as unacceptable because it would in effect finalise the abandonment of their communities. Former Fukushima Gov Yuhei Sato agreed to the plan last August after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government offered subsidies worth more than 300 billion yen, including land rent for the facility location. Under the plan, the government will build storage units on an area of 16 square kilometers near the power plant. Nuclear waste will be stored there for an interim period of 30 years and then be moved to a permanent location, as yet undecided.