Workers move waste containing radiated soil, leaves and debris from the decontamination operation at a storage site in Naraha town, which is inside the formerly no-go zone of a 20 km (12 mile) radius around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and currently a designated evacuation zone, Fukushima prefecture on August 24.

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. There is also the problem of storage.

Most of the contaminated soil and leaves remain piled up in driveways and empty lots because of fierce opposition from local communities to storing it in one place until the Ministry of Environment secures a central site that could hold it for the longer term. Reuters/Issei Kato