(GugukluhayaT) Japan PM: stricken nuclear plant to be scrapped

Japan PM: stricken nuclear plant to be scrapped
Released on - Friday,01 April , 2011 -06:26
Japan has said its crisis-hit nuclear plant must be scrapped, but
currently had no plans to evacuate more people, despite calls for a
larger exclusion zone around the crippled facility.
[Japanese authorities are struggling to safely dispose of thousands of
tons of highly contaminated run-off water] Grappling with the
aftermath of a massive earthquake and tsunami, its biggest post-war
disaster, Japan's government hosted French President Nicolas Sarkozy,
who called for clear international standards on nuclear safety.
Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan said, in talks with the Japanese
Communist Party leader, that the facility at the centre of the worst
atomic accident since Chernobyl in 1986 must be decommissioned, Kyodo
News reported.
Officials have previously hinted the plant would be retired once the
situation there is stabilised, given the severe damage it has
sustained including likely partial meltdowns and a series of hydrogen
blasts.
Radioactive iodine-131 in groundwater 15 metres (50 feet) beneath the
plant has reached a level 10,000 times the government safety standard,
the plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said early
Friday.
It cautioned the figure -- showing radioactive runoff from efforts to
cool the plant has entered the water table -- might be revised. TEPCO
said Thursday iodine-131 in nearby seawater had hit a new high 4,385
times the legal level.
However, there were no plans to widen a 20-kilometre (12-mile)
exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant despite the UN atomic
watchdog saying radiation at Iitate village 40 kilometres away had
reached evacuation levels.
"At the moment, we do not have the understanding that it is necessary
to evacuate residents there. We think the residents can stay calm,"
said Yoshihiro Sugiyama, an official at the nuclear safety agency.
Japan's top government spokesman Yukio Edano also said further
evacuations were not imminent, although he did not rule out that this
could change.
"We will continue monitoring the level of radiation with heightened
vigilance and we intend to take action if necessary," he told
reporters.
The comments came after the IAEA added its voice to that of
Greenpeace, which has warned for several days that residents,
especially children and pregnant women, should leave Iitate village.
The IAEA's head of nuclear safety and security, Denis Flory, told
reporters in Vienna that radiation levels there had exceeded the
criteria for triggering evacuations.
He said the IAEA -- which has no mandate to order nations to act --
had advised Japan to "carefully assess the situation, and they have
indicated that it is already under assessment."
The reading in Iitate was two megabecquerels per square metre -- a
"ratio about two times higher than levels" at which the IAEA
recommends evacuations, said the head of its Incident and Emergency
Centre, Elena Buglova.
Authorities later said they would Friday lift restrictions issued
earlier on drinking tap water in the village, public broadcaster NHK
reported.
Radiation exceeding the legal limit was found for the first time in
beef from near the Fukushima plant, Kyodo News reported early Friday,
adding to concerns over food safety.
The local news agency also said up to 1,000 bodies of tsunami and
earthquake victims were lying unclaimed in the nuclear exclusion zone.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Tokyo on Thursday in a
show of solidarity with the disaster-hit nation, and urged nuclear
authorities in the Group of 20 to establish an international safety
standard.
"We call on the independent authorities of G20 members to meet, if
possible in Paris, to define an international nuclear safety standard"
for power plants, he said in a speech earlier in the day at the French
Embassy in Tokyo.
"It is absolutely abnormal that these international safety standards
do not exist," he said, suggesting the Paris meeting could take place
as early as May.
French nuclear group Areva is assisting TEPCO, which runs the
Fukushima Daiichi plant, and the Japanese utility has asked it to
provide more help, said Areva Japan president Remy Autebert.
"We'll need a bit of time, but our actions will probably increase in
response to their requests," he told AFP.
About 150 Marines of the US Chemical Biological Incident Response
Force were due to arrive Friday, although there were no plans for them
to take part in the emergency work to stabilise Fukushima, US defence
officials told AFP.
At the plant itself, workers pushed on with the high-stakes battle to
stabilise reactors, into which water has been poured to submerge and
cool fuel rods that are assumed to have partially melted down.
They are also struggling to safely dispose of thousands of tons of
highly contaminated run-off water.
Japan has considered a range of high-tech options -- including
covering the explosion-charred reactor buildings with fabric, and
bringing in robots to clear irradiated rubble.
Workers also plan to spray an industrial resin at the plant to trap
settled radioactive particles, although plans to start Thursday were
delayed because of weather conditions.

via http://freeworldnewrbegining.blogspot.com/

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