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Japan Boosts Nuke Safety Standards
Monday December 13 7:09 AM ET
Japan Boosts Nuke Safety Standards
TOKYO (AP) - Japan's parliament passed two bills today meant to avoid
another serious nuclear accident.
One calls for periodic inspection of nuclear-fuel processing
facilities, and the other stipulates that the central government is
responsible for dealing with nuclear accidents.
It allows the prime minister to declare a state of emergency and call
out the self-defense forces.
Japan's worst-ever nuclear accident, on Sept. 30, severely injured
three workers at a nuclear-fuel reprocessing plant and exposed at
least 66 people to radiation. Thousands of people were forced indoors
or evacuated.
An investigation found that workers at the plant, operated by JOC Co.
in Tokaimura, 70 miles northeast of Tokyo, routinely violated safety
procedures, including mixing uranium in buckets.
The government had not thought that inspection of such plants was
necessary, said Juniichi Miyagawa, an official of the Science and
Technology agency's nuclear policy section.
But the agency learned from the accident that workers do sometimes
violate safety procedures, Miyagawa said.
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