Long-term nuclear evacuees should get 6 mil. yen each: Education Ministry Panel

Long-term nuclear evacuees should get 6 mil. yen each: gov't panel

Villagers clean the kitchen of their home during a brief visit - their first since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami - to their house located near the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, in Kawauchi, Fukushima prefecture, northern Japan, Tuesday, May 10, 2011. (Pool Photo)

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- A government panel setting guidelines for compensation to be paid to victims of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster decided Friday that about 6 million yen should be given to every individual unable to return to their homes for at least five years because of radiation contamination.

The sum is to compensate the mental suffering of evacuees whose homes are in a zone where it is difficult to return for a long time, one of the new categories to be created soon by the government in reclassifying the existing evacuation area around the plant.

The people in the so-called "difficult-to-return" area should also be paid the full value of their real estate, such as homes, as calculated just before the nuclear accident triggered by a huge earthquake and tsunami on March 11 last year, according to the guidelines.

As the nuclear complex achieved a stable state of cold shutdown in December, the government is preparing to reclassify the existing no-entry zone within a 20-kilometer radius of the plant, as well as areas outside the no-go zone where annual radiation exposure is feared to reach 20 millisieverts.

A member of a bereaved family lays flowers for the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami dead in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, a town falling within the no-go zone around the damaged nuclear power plant, during a memorial service for the victims on March 11, 2012, the first anniversary of the disasters. (Mainichi)

Under the new classification, an area with more than 50 millisieverts a year will be designated as difficult-to-return, while an area of more than 20 and up to 50 millisieverts will be categorized as a "habitation-restricted" zone where residents will be asked to stay away until the radiation is reduced through decontamination efforts.

Residents will be allowed to return as soon as possible to areas with 20 millisieverts or less, after infrastructure is restored and the polluted land is cleaned.

The compensation panel under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology decided that a 2.4 million yen lump sum should be paid to every resident of the habitation-restricted zone for a two-year period, while 100,000 yen should be paid every month to each person from areas with 20 millisieverts or less.

The panel also acknowledged that costs stemming from decontamination activities, including the removal of polluted soil and its disposal, should also be compensated.

In this Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011 photo, the city of Fukushima is seen in northeast Japan. Residents of the city live in a state of uncertainty about their safety and are being studied in what amounts to a test case for long-term exposure to low-dose radiation. (AP Photo/Greg Baker)

Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima plant, will calculate the amount of compensation payments that would increase in line with the guidelines and craft its compensation criteria for residential land, houses and household items.

The estimated amount of compensation is expected to be included in a business restructuring plan to be compiled later in March for the cash-strapped utility known as TEPCO.

(Mainichi Japan) March 17, 2012