Japan Nuclear Accident Raises Safety Fears

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Thursday September 30 7:33 AM ET 

Japan Nuclear Accident Raises Safety Fears

TOKYO (Reuters) - An accident at a Japanese nuclear fuel facility 
Thursday exposed three workers to radiation and prompted authorities 
to evacuate the vicinity, raising fresh concerns about the nation's 
nuclear safety.   

Government officials said there may have been a ''criticality 
incident'' at a uranium processing plant in the village of Tokaimura 
in Ibaraki Prefecture, about 87 miles northeast of Tokyo.  

Criticality is the point at which a nuclear chain reaction becomes 
self-sustaining, similar to what occurs inside a nuclear reactor.

Toshio Okazaki, vice minister at the Science and Technology Agency, 
told a news conference that a ``criticality incident'' may have 
caused the accident, which temporarily caused radiation levels to 
race up 4,000 times higher than normal.  

Later Thursday, conflicting reports emerged on whether these levels 
had returned to normal or were remaining high. Officials were unable 
to clarify the discrepancies.  

Authorities at Tokaimura advised some 50 households living within 380 
yards of the processing plant to evacuate and others were advised in 
radio broadcasts to stay home.  

All three workers were taken to hospital and later transferred by 
helicopter to a specialized hospital in Chiba Prefecture east of 
Tokyo, officials said.  

A doctor who treated the three workers told a televised news 
conference: ``Judging from the symptoms, they appeared to
have received quite a substantial amount of radiation and we will 
need to keep a close eye on their conditions.''

Makoto Ujihara, an executive at JCO Ltd, the private company which 
operates the plant, told a separate news conference that the workers 
had seen a blue flash -- said by experts to be a sign of a 
``criticality incident'' -- and then began to feel ill.  

The village of Tokaimura, with a population of around 33,802 people, 
is home to 15 nuclear-related facilities and was the scene of Japan's 
worst nuclear plant accident in which 35 workers suffered radiation 
contamination in 1997.  

Japan's nuclear power program has been plagued by a number of 
accidents and cover-ups.  

In the 1997 Tokaimura accident at a nuclear reprocessing plant, a 
fire that caused radiation to escape was not extinguished properly 
and caused an explosion hours later.  

The accident exposed 37 staff to radiation in what was later declared 
Japan's worst nuclear accident. The plant was closed.

Greenpeace said in a statement that Thursday's accident ''confirms 
our fears. The entire safety culture within Japan is in crisis.''

Chihiro Kamisawa, a nuclear expert at the anti-nuclear group 
Citizen's Nuclear Information Center, told Reuters that preventing a 
``criticality incident'' was top priority for nuclear safety and that 
Thursday's accident would cast doubt on Japan's entire nuclear 
program.  

He said the accident could force a postponement of the plan to 
restart the nuclear reprocessing plant in Tokaimura as well as
affect Japan's MOX fuel program.

The first shipment of MOX nuclear fuel -- a mix of uranium and 
plutonium recycled from spent nuclear fuel -- docked in Fukui 
Prefecture north of Japan Monday and a second shipment is destined 
for unloading at another location soon.  

Greenpeace has warned that the shipments could have been converted 
into 60 nuclear bombs if the two ships had been hijacked at sea.  

Japan is heavily dependent on nuclear power, with its 51 commercial 
nuclear power reactors providing one-third of the  
country's electricity.

Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
              - G. K. Chesterton -
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