A reputed high school in Japan's Fukushima prefecture will formally close down by March for want of students, an aftermath of the 2011 nuclear accident which displaced tens of thousands of residents in the country's northeast.
Private-run Shoei High School in Minamisoma city will be the first of the prefecture's schools to close since the nuclear accident, the worst since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine.
The high school is less than 30 kilometers from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and was included in the evacuation zone. All of its 100 students had to transfer to other schools after the accident and it has been remaining shuttered since then.
The school management said the prefectural government had accepted its request for closure as there would not be enough of students to resume classes, while some areas of the city and nearby municipalities were still no-entry zones.
The management will be seeking compensation from the plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), Japanese media reported.
Four of the six reactors at the plant suffered meltdown as its cooling system was knocked out in the March 11, 2011 quake-triggered tsunami, sending out radiation on a large scale that forced the evacuation of more than 160,000 residents in a 30-kilometer radius.
TEPCO is now in the process of decommissioning the plant that will take 30 to 40 years. The company is also seeking public fund to provide compensation to the victims which, its says, will be more than $50 billion.
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