Museum to open in Fukushima town to pass on lessons of 2011 nuclear disaster
FUTABA, Fukushima — A museum to pass on the memories and lessons from the 2011 accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant was shown to the media Saturday following its completion.
The museum, located in Futaba, Fukushima Prefecture, was established by the prefectural government at a cost of about ¥5.3 billion. It is scheduled to open to the public on Sept. 20.
About 150 items are on display in the three-story building, which has about 5,300 square meters of floor space.
Visitors will be able to learn about the situation of the plant at the time of the disaster, the lives of evacuees and prolonged process of reconstruction of the affected areas through presentations projected on large screens.
The items on display include whiteboards used at the Off-site Center, which was the base of operations to respond to the accident. Handwritten notes on equipment, among other items, illustrate the confusion felt among relevant officials and workers at the time of the accident.
All of the residents in Futaba evacuated in the aftermath of the accident. The evacuation order was lifted in some parts of the town for the first time in March. The museum was built on a site where the evacuation order has been lifted.