"Japanese citizens are balking at the lack of information and supervision of waste stored in public places, such as playgrounds."

"Koriyama, Japan -- The small sandy square in front of Yasushi Takemoto's apartment in Koriyama, a city of 328,000 about 150 miles north of Tokyo, looks like a normal public park. On a recent weekday morning, a group of children played on the swings while the retired dentistry professor strolled under the trees.

Beneath the soil in one unmarked, unfenced corner, however, lie hundreds of bags packed with radioactive dirt, sludge from drainage ditches, and other contaminated debris.

The waste was collected from around the neighborhood last November by citizens trying to reduce radiation from the meltdowns earlier that year at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, about 37 miles to the east.

They packed the debris into bags, buried them about six feet deep between layers of plastic sheets, and covered them with soil – all with the approval of city officials."

Winifred Bird reports for the Christian Science Monitor November 5, 2012. [2]