International recovery efforts continue in
Japan. As the toll of confirmed fatalities
from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in
northeastern Japan continues to rise to more
than 14,200, the nation’s Meteorological
Agency warned people in the Tohoku region
to be on alert for possible flooding and landslides.
The northeastern and eastern regions began
receiving intense rain and winds on Saturday,
April 23, with lands worryingly vulnerable
to landslides due to ongoing aftershocks.
Since the initial disasters, searches continue
for more than 12,000 listed as missing, with
an incalculable number of victims still unaccounted
for. As for the more than 130,000 people in
evacuation centers, a survey by NHK news agency
of mayors from 42 cities, towns, and villages
in the worst-hit Iwate, Fukushima, and Miyagi
prefectures found that 60% see little or no
hope of rebuilding residents’ lives. Although
the majority have secured essential supplies
such as food and water, most said they currently
have no way to be able to restarting businesses
or make reconstruction plans.
At the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear power plant, workers’ exposure to
radiation is still rising as they continue
the toiling effort to bring the nuclear crisis
under control. On Saturday, another worker
was found to have been exposed to over 100
millisieverts of radiation, the 30th to reach
that dosage level since the accident. The
legal limit for plant workers during an emergency
had been 100 millisieverts, before the government
raised the level to 250 millisieverts during
the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. The
operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)
has drawn up a map showing the radiation levels
at some 150 locations inside the damaged power
plant. Debris in some areas is highly radioactive,
and workers taking measurements found a concrete
fragment near reactor No. 3 with radioactivity
of 900 millisieverts per hour, which they
transferred into a container with other debris.
By Saturday morning, workers had moved 930
tons of radioactive water into an on-site
waste processing facility. Meanwhile, some
25,000 tons of contaminated water has been
filling up the basement of reactor No. 2’s
turbine building and connecting tunnel, hampering
crucial cooling efforts. At the No. 4 reactor,
TEPCO personnel pumped 340 tons of water into
the storage pool for spent fuel rods in hopes
of bringing down the reactor's temperatures
from a reading of 90 degrees Celsius, which
is more than twice normal. Amid fears that
the already damaged building may not be able
to structurally handle the pressure of the
extra water, the company has said it will
be cautious and is monitoring the level and
temperature of water in the pool. Meanwhile,
the Japanese government announced that shipping
containers and ships leaving the country will
be issued certificates confirming that their
radiation levels are within the safety margin
of international standards.
At the site of the Chernobyl disaster, to
which Japan's accident has recently been likened,
Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych, United
Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Director General Yukiya Amano convened as
the 25th anniversary of the catastrophe there
approaches. In regards to the current nuclear
event in Japan, Director General Anamo said,
“... This latest accident demonstrates that
despite the great progress made in the last
25 years, more needs to be done to ensure
that (the) safety first approach becomes fully
entrenched among nuclear power plant operators,
governments and regulators.”
Ban Ki-moon, United Nations Secretary-General:
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power accident,
and together with this Chernobyl disaster
have given us enough and strong message, and
we have to learn from these lessons.
Our thankfulness for the relief efforts of
the Japanese and international governments,
organizations, and personnel. With Heaven’s
grace, may the safety and welfare of the Japanese
and world citizens be restored through humanity’s
kinder and more elevating lifestyles�
