Tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan sparked a $ 300 billion effort to rebuild an interior

The country has expanded its reconstruction budget four times in 10 years and earmarked the equivalent of $ 2,400 for each person in Japan to revive Tohoku, the northeastern region hit by the tsunami, and mitigate radiation at the nuclear plant. Even with the increase in breakwaters and rebuilt houses, many people have not returned.

Most of the money was spent on rebuilding houses, adding walls and repairing other damaged infrastructure in order to bring people back and revive the main industries, such as fishing, agriculture and tourism.

The Tohoku region, home to around 7% of Japan’s population, has been experiencing a population decline for more than a generation, as young people move to larger cities. Half of the victims of the tsunami were 65 or older.

In the three prefectures most affected by the tsunami, Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima, the collective population has fallen 6% since the disaster.

Hundreds of kilometers of seawalls, some up to 15 meters high, have risen along the coast, costing about $ 13 billion. About 80% of the 268 planned wall miles have been completed.

In Ishinomaki, waves of up to 33 feet traveled more than 3 miles inland, killing more than 3,000 people – including 74 of the 78 children who attended Okawa Primary School that day. The city is now protected by walls up to 10 meters high.

The tsunami hit more than 1,600 kilometers off the coast, flooding some communities up to 9 kilometers inland. Some cities have seen widespread destruction of homes, such as Rikuzentakata in Iwate, where 99.5% of homes have been damaged. In Ishinomaki, 4,000 people have died or are still missing and 76.6% of all houses in the city have been at least partially destroyed.

When the earthquake struck, the Fukushima Daiichi reactors shut down automatically. Backup diesel generators operated the cooling pumps until two tsunami waves flooded the plant, paralyzing the generators. In the days that followed, the accumulation of hydrogen caused explosions in reactors 1, 2 and 3; a fire broke out at 4. Radiation levels rose to up to 400 millisieverts per hour (people are normally exposed to 2.4 millisieverts per year). The government declared an evacuation zone with a radius of 12.5 miles.

Now, a forest of steel tanks containing more than a million tons of water with radioactive elements grows outside the plant. Water flows through the plant every second, keeping the reactors cool, increasing the problem. The Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Co.

, owner of the plant, is studying the release of water with radioactive tritium in the Pacific. They say it is safe and other countries do the same at their nuclear plants, but people in the fishing industry are concerned.

Officials estimate that there are still 30 more years to go before Fukushima Daiichi is completely dismantled. The biggest task, which has not yet started, is to remove the melted fuel from reactors 1, 2 and 3. As the internal parts of the reactors are very radioactive for humans and often inaccessible to robots, they have not yet been fully mapped or photographed.

Remembering what is sometimes called a “triple disaster” – earthquake, tsunami and nuclear collapses – is an annual event in Japan. On March 11 this year, the government will hold a ceremony to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the disaster at the National Theater in Tokyo, offering a minute of silent prayer at 2:46 pm, earthquake time. Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako are ready to attend.

—Alex Newman contributed to this article.