TOKYO – Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said on Friday he was ready for a long fight to bring a quake-hit nuclear plant under control but was convinced Japan would overcome the world’s worst nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
“I am prepared for a long-term battle over the Fukushima nuclear plant and to win this battle,” he said in a nationally broadcast news conference as the country marked three weeks since a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered the crisis. “We cannot say that the plant has been sufficiently stabilised. But we are preparing for all kinds of situations and I am convinced that the plant can be stabilised,” Kan said, promising a quake relief budget by the end of April.
As Tokyo Electric Power Co tries to regain control of its stricken nuclear plant in the face of mounting public criticism and a huge potential compensation bill, the government was reportedly moving to take control of the utility. Kan said the government had to “responsibly” support TEPCO as it faced obligations to compensate for the accident. But he said he wanted the firm to continue to “work hard as a private company.”
The utility may have to deal with compensation claims topping $130 billion, according to one US investment bank. In the devastated northeast, many Japanese still see only the splintered remains of their homes and lives after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami on March 11 that left more than 28,000 people dead or missing and damaged six nuclear reactors.
Japan’s Nuclear and Industry safety Agency (NISA) says radiation may be continuously flowing out into the sea. Radiation 4,000 times the legal limit has been detected in seawater near the plant as contaminated water used to cool down reactor rods leaks into the ocean, and high levels of radiation outside a 20 km (12 mile) exclusion zone have put pressure on Japan to widen the restricted area.
“They are throwing water on what they can’t see and hoping that they don’t get more radiation out. They are flying blind, partially, at least,” said Ed Lyman, senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a US nuclear safety watchdog group.
More than 172,400 people were still living in shelters around northeast Japan. Many devastated areas looked like rubbish-strewn junk yards, with cars lodged in the side of toppled buildings and boats still high and dry on roads.
