Nuclear waste storage area in Iitate, Fukushima prefecture in Japan. Adopting a return to normal policy, the Japanese government undertook an unprecedented decontamination program for areas of Fukushima contaminated by the triple reactor meltdown in March 2011. Fukushima prefecture is 70 percent mountainous forest which has not and cannot be decontaminated, with decontamination efforts focused along roads and in towns, farmland and in narrow areas around people’s houses. Even so, the result has been that the Japanese authorities have produced a nuclear waste crisis, with over 13 million cubic meters of waste located in 147,000 locations (as of July 2017). The Japanese government is determined to force people back to their homes despite the on-going radiation risks and the vast volumes of nuclear waste.