Radiation-Threatened Fukushima Accuses Japan of Information Void
March 30, 2011, 3:18 AM EDTBy Yuji Okada and Tomoko Yamazaki
(See EXT2 <GO> for news on the nuclear crisis.)
March 30 (Bloomberg) -- Fukushima Prefecture, epicenter of the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986, accused Japan’s central government of sowing confusion and hampering recovery efforts through poor communication.
"The people of Fukushima are worried about the situation, so make sure you’re keeping us informed of what the government is doing," Governor Yuhei Sato said today in a heated exchange with Shingo Naito, deputy director general for industrial safety at the Ministry for Economy, Trade and Industry.
Almost 5,900 people in Fukushima prefecture died or are listed as missing following the March 11 quake and subsequent tsunami, according to the National Police Agency. More than 177,000 people were evacuated from houses within 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) of the Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant.
Sato’s criticism was echoed by the mayor of the Fukushima city of Minami Soma, whose residents were forced to leave because of quake damage and their proximity to the crippled facility, which is leaking radiation.
"The government tells us to be ready for further evacuation orders in case of a ‘worst-case scenario,’ but I wonder what that suggests?" Minami Soma Mayor Katsunobu Sakurai said in a telephone interview. “We want to get on with rebuilding our city. We just don’t have the sort of information we need from the government.”
Supplies Shortage
While essential services including water, gas and electricity are about 80 percent restored, the city remains in desperate need of food and gasoline, Sakurai said. As the government evacuated people within 20 kilometers of the plant and warned those within the next 10 kilometers to stay indoors, truck drivers stopped coming in with supplies.
"As if it wasn’t enough that we were struck by the disaster, people began treating us as if we were a highly contaminated city," Sakurai said. Lack of fuel meant "we have to walk all the way to the edge of the evacuation zone to pick up supplies."
Naito told Sato, who was elected as an independent in 2006, that he understood the gravity of the situation, adding that the government started taking atmospheric readings from vehicles within the exclusion zone. The exchange took place at a public meeting of the prefectural emergency task force in Fukushima city.
Radiation readings rose today in the city, which lies about 61 kilometers from the Dai-Ichi plant. The levels remain well below the equivalent of the dose from a single X-ray.
Radioactive Iodine
Seawater samples collected yesterday near an outlet south of the plant had traces of radioactive iodine 3,355 times the legal limit, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said today. The level was the highest detected to date and compared with 2,572 times the limit earlier in the day.
Fukushima had the highest level of iodine-131 among 12 prefectures contaminated by the radioactive material in tests conducted on March 28, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The level was 23,000 becquerel per square meter, compared with a reading below 50 becquerel in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward, it said. Tokyo lies about 220 kilometers south of the nuclear plant.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s administration has expressed frustration with Tokyo Electric Power Co., owner of the damaged nuclear plant. Kan, who yesterday criticized the company’s tsunami defenses as inadequate, has pledged transparency in its handling of the crisis.
The government "has very rudimentary communication skills," said Jun Okumura, a former trade ministry official and a consultant with the Eurasia Group in Tokyo. "They’re making their best effort at putting information out there but they’re not very good at it."
--With assistance from Aaron Sheldrick, Bill Austin and John Brinsley in Tokyo. Editors: Bill Austin, John Brinsley
To contact the reporters on this story: Yuji Okada in Tokyo at yokada6@bloomberg.net; Tomoko Yamazaki in Singapore at tyamazaki@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bill Austin at billaustin@bloomberg.net
