Factors influencing acceptability of final disposal of incinerated ash and decontaminated soil from TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident

Public Attitudes toward the Final Disposal of Radioactively Contaminated Soil Resulting from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Accident

“…After the accident, planned power outage was immediately implemented in Kanto region because of the reduced power supply capacity of TEPCO (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry 2011 ). Kansai region was chosen for comparison with Kanto region based on our previous online survey of Japanese citizens living outside Fukushima Prefecture and their acceptance of the final disposal of radioactively contaminated soils (Takada et al 2022 ; Shirai et al 2023 ). Results of our earlier survey confirmed that interest and subjective knowledge of this final disposal policy differed among regions.…”

“…Shirai et al ( 2023 ) found that factors affecting the acceptability of the final disposal of contaminated soil varied with the importance of moral norms. Therefore, we expected answers to the questions in Table 1 to vary with different characteristics of moral norms.…”

“…We also examined the differences according to moral foundations (Graham et al 2011 ; Murayama and Miura 2019 ) by asking three questions for each of the five moral foundations: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. These questions are the same as those used in Shirai et al ( 2023 ). After responding to the questions in Table 1 , the respondents were asked to rate on a five-point scale the degree to which the question is relevant to them when determining whether an action is right or wrong (1 = not at all relevant, 5 = very relevant); for example, the question “whether or not someone was mentally injured” was used to assess the relevance of the moral foundation of harm/care.…”

“…These include municipal, industrial, radioactive, and nuclear facilities. For example, studies have shown that a perception of high risks associated with the facility negatively impacts facility acceptability (Slovic 1987 ; Slovic et al 1991 ; Sjöberg 2004 ; Shirai et al 2023 ). The burden of such a facility is unevenly distributed in a region and can lead to a sense of “why is this in our own region when it could be in another region?” (Willard and Swenson 1984 ), which has a negative impact on facility acceptance (Yokoyama et al 2021 , Takada et al 2022 ).…”

“…Takada et al ( 2022 ) reported that questionnaire respondents chose to locate a final disposal site for the contaminated soil in Fukushima far from residential areas, and that they attached importance to distributive and procedural fairness. Shirai et al ( 2023 ) used structural equation modeling to show that risk perception decreases acceptability, social benefits increase acceptability, and trust and intergenerational expectations are important factors affecting the acceptability of the disposal; the impact of each of these factors on acceptability varies depending on the level of emphasis placed on moral norms, and moral foundations have a strong relationship with policy discussion (Graham et al 2011 ). Although these findings have much in common with the studies on NIMBYs mentioned above, the characteristics of contaminated soil differ from those of conventional waste disposal from a social perspective (Takada et al 2022 ): for example, in the case of contaminated soil, the source region is not a potential candidate for the final disposal site.…”