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Japan mulls emergency system to deal with nuclear accidents
Japan mulls emergency system to deal with nuclear accidents
TOKYO, April 12 (Kyodo) - Japan is considering introducing in the
nuclear power industry an emergency-response system led by the
private sector in which remote-controlled robots will be used to deal
with accidents involving radiation leaks, government sources said
Wednesday.
The government has begun discussions on the planned emergency-
response system, after studying similar systems in France and
Germany, the sources said.
The Ministry of International Trade and Industry announced in January
that it and several Japanese firms will launch a 3 billion yen
project to jointly develop by the end of March 2001 remote-controlled
robots that can deal with radiation leaks.
But the government has not yet announced any plan regarding who
should be in charge of managing the robots.
The government decided to accelerate efforts to develop robots for
dealing with radiation leaks after seeing some 80 workers exposed to
radiation in operations to deal with a leak at the nuclear
reprocessing plant in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture, last September
in Japan's worst nuclear accident.
Workers risked radiation exposure when they drained water from the
accident site to halt a nuclear chain reaction and during operations
to minimize the radiation leakage from the uranium processing plant
where the chain reaction occurred.
The government studied between January and March how the United
States and some European countries deal with emergency situations at
nuclear facilities, the government sources said.
In France, Groupe INTRA, financed half by the government and half by
electric power companies, possesses a number of robots resistant to
radiation as well as vehicles for use in operations to deal with
nuclear accidents.
INTRA officials say workers can combat leaks at a distance of 10
kilometers from an accident site by using vehicles equipped with
antennas and robots. The French body has an annual budget worth 800
million yen.
In Germany, KHG, funded jointly by 43 electric power companies,
provides the emergency-response system. In one incident in which a
radioactive material was lost in a hospital, it sent in a robot to
search for it. The body has an annual budget worth 700 million yen.
''We can learn a lot from France and Germany where emergency-response
systems function well by minimizing involvement by the government,''
a government official said.
In Japan, three domestic companies -- Toshiba Corp., Hitachi Ltd. and
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. -- and Cybernetix, a French robot
maker, will be in charge of developing several types of remote-
controlled, radiation-resistant robots, according to industry
sources.
The government is asking the makers to develop robots that can
withstand 10 sieverts of gamma rays per hour, the sources said.
Cybernetix, which makes robots for INTRA and KHG, can make robots
capable of withstanding radiation exposure of about 1,000 times the
requested level, the sources said.
It is also hoped that through the joint robot development project the
Japanese companies will learn advanced robot technology as well as
know-how on using robots from Cybernetix, an industry source said.
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