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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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