With the establishment of the modern municipalities system after the start of the Meiji period, on April 1, 1889, the village of Rokkasho was created following the merger of six small hamlets.

[6] Rokkasho's per capita income was $129,676 (1557,8000 Yen $1= 120.13 Yen )[7] Nuclear fuel cycle related facilities: The Japan Atomic Energy Agency also has multiple facilities at the site like the Linear IFMIF Prototype Accelerator (LIPAc) devoted to the Fusion Energy Development Programme under the European Union-Japan Broader Approach agreement.

Since the 1970s, local opposition to plans to operate Japan's first large commercial plutonium plant at Rokkasho have focused on the threat of a large-scale release of radioactivity.

During the 1990s anti-nuclear groups in Japan released studies showing the risks of routine operation of the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant.

Greenpeace has opposed operation of the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant under a campaign called "Wings of Peace: No more Hiroshima, Nagasaki.

Rokkasho has been hosting the Helios high-performance supercomputer[19] centre capable of performing complex plasma physics calculations for fusion research, since January 2012.