Today, Japan marks 8 years since 3/11 quake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear crisis, with 52,000 still displaced

• Japan on Monday marked the eighth anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan that left more than 15,000 people dead and triggered the world’s worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl crisis.
• While the number of displaced has dropped from its peak of 470,000, about 52,000 people have yet to return to their hometowns since the magnitude 9.0 quake struck the region on March 11, 2011.
• As of Friday, the disasters had left 15,897 people confirmed dead and 2,533 unaccounted for, mostly in the prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima, according to the National Police Agency.
• Some 1,300 people in the hardest-hit prefectures are expected to continue living in temporary housing due to delays in construction of replacement housing, financial problems and other reasons, a Kyodo News survey found.
• According to the decommissioning road map, the utility and the Japanese government will decide within the next fiscal year starting this April in which order and how to extract fuel from three of the reactors that suffered core meltdowns under extremely high radiation levels. The actual removal is expected to start in 2021.

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