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Home >Expats Living in ShanghaiNuclear meltdown? Should we be worried?
Update：2013-12-10 00:56 Views：
PLUTONIUM found in soil at the Fukushima nuclear complex heightened alarm yesterday over Japan's battle to contain the world's worst atomic crisis in 25 years, as pressure mounted on the government to widen an evacuation zone around the plant.Some opposition politicians blasted Prime Minister Naoto Kan in parliament for his handling of the disaster and for not widening the exclusion zone. Kan said he was seeking advice on such a step, which would force 130,000 people to move in addition to the 70,000 already displaced.
The drama at the six-reactor facility has compounded Japan's agony after the earthquake and tsunami on March 11 left more than 28,000 people dead or missing in the devastated northeast.
In a gesture of support, France said it had sent two nuclear experts to Japan to help contain the accident and French President Nicolas Sarkozy is due to visit tomorrow for a meeting with Kan.
France is the world's most nuclear-dependent country, producing 75 percent of its power needs from 58 nuclear reactors, and selling state-owned Areva's reactors around the world. Sarkozy will be the first foreign leader to visit since the earthquake.
Soil samples
In the latest blow to hopes authorities were getting the plant under control, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said plutonium was found at low-risk levels in soil samples at the facility.
They believe some of the plutonium may have come from spent fuel rods at Fukushima or damage to reactor No. 3, the only one to use plutonium in its fuel mix.
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that while the plutonium levels were not harmful to human health, the discovery could mean the reactor's containment mechanism had been breached.
"Plutonium is a substance that's emitted when the temperature is high, and it's also heavy and so does not leak out easily," agency Deputy Director Hidehiko Nishiyama said.
"So if plutonium has emerged from the reactor, that tells us something about the damage to the fuel. And if it has breached the original containment system, it underlines the gravity and seriousness of this accident," he said.
Sakae Muto, a Tokyo Electric vice-president, said the traces of plutonium-238, 239 and 240 were in keeping with levels found in Japan in the past due to particles in the atmosphere from nuclear testing abroad.
Total meltdown
"I apologize for making people worried," Muto said.
Workers at Fukushima may have to struggle for weeks or months under extremely dangerous conditions to re-start cooling systems vital to control the reactors and avert total meltdown.
On Monday, highly contaminated water was found in concrete tunnels extending beyond one reactor while, at the weekend, radiation hit 100,000 times over normal in water inside another.
That poses a major dilemma for Tokyo Electric, which wants to douse the reactors to cool them, but not worsen the spread of radiation.
Japan's nuclear safety agency said fuel rods in the plant's reactors 1, 2 and 3 were damaged and there was a high possibility of some leakage from their containment vessels.
The crisis has contaminated vegetables and milk from the area, as well as the surrounding sea. United States experts said groundwater, reservoirs and the sea all faced "significant contamination."
A Tokyo Electric official told reporters he could not rule out the possibility that radioactive water could still be entering the sea.
Experts have said the lack of information and some inconsistent data made it hard to understand what was happening at the Fukushima plant, which appears to have moved from a core-meltdown phase to one in which management of released radioactivity is paramount.
Pressing concern
Another pressing concern has been the health of people living near the plant. More than 70,000 people have been evacuated from within 20 kilometers of the facility.
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