According to the Kyodo news agency, the full elimination of the accident, including payment of compensation to the evacuees and the costs of decontamination of populated areas affected by the state of emergency, will reach 22.6 trillion yen.
Energy companies, including those that do not have nuclear power stations in their arsenal, will be obliged to allocate every year some part of their profits to partially cover the costs. According to the agency, the energy firms may shift the financial burden to electricity consumers by raising prices.
At the same time, the technical question of how to extract the nuclear fuel that melted at the time of the accident at Fukushima and has since accumulated underneath the reactors remains unresolved, the media reported.
Dismantling of the NPP will begin in 2021 and will last 30 years.
In March 2011, a 9.0-magnitude offshore earthquake triggered a 46-foot tsunami that hit Japan's Fukushima NPP, leading to the leakage of radioactive materials and the shutdown of the plant. The accident is considered to be the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
