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Nuke leak 'worse than thought'
19/07/2007 10:46 - (SA)
Kashiwazaki, Japan - The world's largest nuclear power plant was ordered closed indefinitely amid growing anger about revelations that damage was much worse than initially announced after it suffered a near-direct hit by a powerful earthquake earlier this week.
Toyota and other major automakers meanwhile announced they would temporarily halt production because a local parts maker was heavily affected by the magnitude-6.8 quake, which killed 10 and left tens of thousands in the region without power or water.
The mayor of Kashiwazaki, a city of 93 500 on Japan's northern coastline, called in the head of the nation's biggest power company on Wednesday and ordered the damaged facility closed until its safety could be confirmed, escalating a showdown over a long list of problems at the plant, which is the world's biggest in output capacity.
Stop production lines
"I am worried," Mayor Hiroshi Aida said in issuing the closure order. "The safety of the plant must be assured before it is reopened."
Repercussions were felt in the business world and overseas as well.
The temporary closure of auto parts maker Riken Corp.'s plant at Kashiwazaki forced Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co., Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and Fuji Heavy Industries to scale back production.
Toyota, Japan's No. 1 automaker, will stop production lines at a dozen factories centred in central Aichi prefecture on Thursday afternoon and all day on Friday, said Toyota spokesperson Paul Nolasco.
The International Atomic Energy Agency pressed Japan to undertake a thorough investigation of the damage to see if lessons could be applied to nuclear plants elsewhere.
Cracked roads and buckled pavements
Speaking in Malaysia, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said such a review was key and offered help from his Vienna-based agency.
"I would hope and I trust that Japan would be fully transparent in its investigation of that accident," he said.
Officials at Tokyo Electric Power Co., the company running the plant, said the damage caused by the quake posed no danger to residents or to the environment.
But there was visible damage on the site, from cracked roads and buckled pavements to the charred outside wall of a transformer building.
Tepco also warned on Wednesday that the closure of the key nuclear reactor could trigger a power shortage in the summer months.
'Hard to make everything go perfectly'
The Tokyo-based company has asked six other power companies in Japan to consider providing emergency electricity to prepare for a surge in demand as people turn up their air conditioners in the summer heat, according to Tepco spokesperson Hiroshi Itagaki.
"To be honest, it's a mess," said Tepco President Tsunehisa Katsumata.
But he said fears of radiation leaks were unfounded.
"We will conduct an investigation from the ground up. But I think fundamentally we have confirmed that our safety measures worked," he said. "It is hard to make everything go perfectly."
Though Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, officials at the plant admitted that they had not foreseen such a powerful temblor hitting the facility.
New data from aftershocks of Monday's offshore quake suggested a fault line might run underneath the power plant itself, which was only 19km from the epicentre.
- AP
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