Fukushima Gov Yuhei Sato said Tuesday that Okuma and Futaba towns will accept interim nuclear waste storage facilities as planned, although a third designated site—at Naraha town—rejected the proposal last month. In December, Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishiara and Reconstruction Minister Takumi Nemoto met with the mayors of Naraha, Futaba and Okuma, as well as Sato, to seek their support for the government’s plan to build storage facilities for thousands of tons of soil contaminated with radiation and other nuclear waste from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster. The plan called for the government to spend 100 billion yen on the project, which involves buying about 16 square kilometers of land in Futaba and Okuma towns, which lie in the no-go zone around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and about three square kilometers of land near the idle Fukushima Daini plant in Naraha. The facilities themselves, which will be able to store 28 million cubic meters of waste, are expected to cost 1 trillion yen to build, the environment ministry says. However, last month, Naraha Mayor Yukiei Matsumoto said local residents had rejected the plan. On Tuesday, Sato told a news conference that Naraha’s rejection of the plan did not mean the share of Futaba and Okuma would increase, Fuji TV reported. Futaba Mayor Shiro Izawa said, “We accepted the plan as there will be no change in the size of the storage facilities.” Okuma Mayor Toshitsuna Watanabe said, “Many people consider the facility quite a nuisance and there will surely be a lot of problems when displaced residents come back.” Reconstruction work in Fukushima has progressed much slower than in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures because the government has been unable to find a site to store all the contaminated waste. Some residents are opposed to the plan because the land is ancestral and they fear they will never be able to return to their land if the storage facilities are permanent. The government plans to enact a law stating that the waste must be moved out of the prefecture with 30 years.