Bloomberg reported on April 24 that as demand grows for tourism to disaster sites, visitors to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant are increasing.
Tourists are flowing into villages abandoned by residents, and tours inside the plant are also being offered. According to Tokyo Electric Power Company, the number of visitors in 2024 was 20,542, the highest on record.
Visitors are seeing for themselves the tanks storing radioactive wastewater and the damaged reactor buildings, grasping the scale of the accident.
The Fukushima nuclear accident was a major radiation disaster that displaced about 160,000 residents. It occurred on March 11, 2011, when the power supply and cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company were simultaneously paralyzed by the magnitude 9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake and the ensuing tsunami.
Afterward, Japan at one point pursued a "zero nuclear" policy, but it has shifted to a stance of restarting reactors due to power supply issues and carbon neutrality goals. Decommissioning work, including removing about 880 tons of nuclear fuel, is underway and is expected to take decades to complete.