Japan has decided to take matters into its own hands to find appropriate domestic locations to permanently store highly radioactive nuclear waste, after waiting in vain for more than a decade for an offer from a regional government. “The government will play an active role in choosing a permanent place,” Industry Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told reporters at a regular news conference Tuesday. “We’ll abandon the current system of waiting for volunteers to raise their hands.” Japan, which currently doesn’t have any final disposal sites for high level radioactive waste, has 17,000 metric tons of domestically spent nuclear fuel that dates back to the 1970s. Most of the current waste is stored in a facility in Rokkasho, a small village in Aomori prefecture in northern Japan, where it is mixed with liquid glass to let it consolidate in big cylindrical bins. The prefecture only allowed the facility to be established […]