(Reuters) - The most ambitious radiation clean-up ever attempted has proved costly, complex and time-consuming since the Japanese government began it more than two years in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. It may also fail.
Doubts are mounting that the effort to decontaminate hotspots in an area the size of Connecticut will succeed in its ultimate aim - luring more than 100,000 nuclear evacuees back home.
If thousands of former residents cannot or will not return, parts of the farming and fishing region could remain an abandoned wilderness for decades.
In many areas, radiation remains well above targeted levels because of bureaucratic delays and ineffective work on the ground. As a result, some experts fears the $15 billion allocated to the scheme so far will be largely squandered.
The deep-seated problems facing the clean-up are both economic and operational, according to a Reuters review of decontamination contracts and interviews with dozens of workers, managers and officials involved.
In Kawauchi, a heavily forested village in Fukushima prefecture, decontamination crews have finished cleaning up houses, but few of their former inhabitants are prepared to move back. Just over 500 of the 3,000 people who once lived here have returned since the March 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant 25 km (15 miles) to the east.
Even after being deemed safe enough for people to return, Kawauchi has no functioning hospital or high school.
The mushrooms that used to provide a livelihood for foragers are now steeped in dangerous levels of cesium. The only jobs on offer in town are menial. Some houses are so mildewed after three summers of abandonment that they need to be torn down.
The village has not only shrunk; its population has also aged. While the elderly used to make up a third of the town, they now account for 70 percent of residents.
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