Over 80% Japan's big cities unwilling to accept quake debris

About 86 percent of the municipalities in Japan are reluctant to be the locations where the debris from the quake-hit Iwate and Miyagi prefectures will end, according to a Kyodo News report on Sunday.

Kyodo, which conducted the poll in February, said in the poll that the unwillingness among those municipalities was partly due to fears that the debris may contain radioactive substances resulting from the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

The survey covered 1,789 municipalities and prefectural governments in the country.

About 33 percent of responding municipalities said it would be difficult for them to accept debris from the prefectures now, while 53 percent said they have no plans to accept such waste, according to the poll.

The Japanese government put the total amount of waste generated in the two prefectures at about 20.45 million tons, of which only about 6 percent, had been disposed of by Feb. 27.

Debris in Fukushima, where the troubled plant is located, is set to be disposed of within the prefecture.