Ghost Towns of Fukushima Remain Empty After Decade-Long Rebuild

  • Stricken Japan area seeks to excel in robots, hydrogen power
  • A decade on, former residents have put down roots elsewhere
Namie residents walk their dog by the Ukedo river in Namie, Japan. Fukushima is still struggling to recover.Photographer: Toru Hanai/Bloomberg
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Laid waste by a nuclear disaster a decade ago, Japan’s Fukushima is still struggling to recover, even as the government tries to bring people and jobs back to former ghost towns by pouring in billions of dollars to decontaminate and rebuild.

But reconstruction efforts from the mundane -- supermarkets and transport infrastructure -- to a cutting-edge hydrogen energy plant have yet to entice more than a small fraction of the former population to return.