Japanese government admits to spiralling Fukushima compensation costs
Compensation costs from Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster will be almost twice the levels previously anticipated, the country’s trade ministry has revealed.
At the end of 2013, the government department estimated compensation costs of ¥5.4 trillion (£40bn).
However, updated ministry predictions have leapt to ¥8 trillion.
Including decontamination, interim storage and decommissioning costs, the overall number is likely to jump by nearly ¥6 trillion to nearly ¥17 trillion, according to reports in Nikkei business daily.
Read more: Largest ever radioactive leak from steel tank reported at Fukushima
One way the costs will be funded is through increased electricity costs, sources told Reuters.
It is over five and a half years since the strongest ever earthquake to hit Japan led to three tsunamis and the ensuing devastation at the nuclear power plant at Fukushima. The destruction to the plant led to one of the World's worst-ever nuclear power crises, prompting comparisons with the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
Read more: Rolls-Royce ramps up efforts to build mini-nuclear power plants
Last month, the Japanese government said the cost of cleaning up the doomed plant at Fukushima could rise to billions of dollars a years from a current run-rate of less than $800m a year.