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Sanya, China (AFP) April 13, 2011 The disaster at the Fukushima atomic power plant cannot be compared to Chernobyl, Russia's nuclear chief said on Wednesday, suggesting Tokyo was exaggerating the emergency, possibly for financial reasons. "It is hard for me to assess why the Japanese colleagues have taken this decision," Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of Russia's state nuclear agency Rosatom, told reporters in the southern Chinese city of Sanya on the eve of the BRICS summit. "I suspect this is more of a financial issue than a nuclear one." Earlier this week Japan upgraded its month-old nuclear emergency to a maximum seven on an international scale of atomic crises, placing it on a par with the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Kiriyenko appeared to suggest that the Japanese authorities were seeking to reduce the burden on insurance companies. "I guess that maybe it could be linked to the definition of force majeure with regards to insurance? I would pay attention to that. It is a bit strange," Kiriyenko said. Kiriyenko said at first the Japanese authorities had thought to downplay the scale of the disaster but now the situation at the plant was improving. "Our estimates have shown that the level was between five and six," Kiriyenko said. "Today it doesn't reach the sixth level." France's nuclear safety agency also said this week that the impact of the Fukushima accident was not comparable to the Chernobyl disaster. Fukushima has had three reactors that have hit problems, compared with one at Chernobyl. But the Japanese plant has released only one-tenth of the radioactivity disgorged by Chernobyl because its reactor vessels have so far remained intact, thus keeping almost all of the nuclear fuel enclosed. The previous rating of five had placed the unfolding disaster at the tsunami-hit Fukushima plant northeast of Tokyo on the same level as the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the US state of Pennsylvania. Level seven of the UN's International Nuclear Events Scale describes events with "major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects, requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures." pool-as/pdw
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China state paper blasts Japan over nuclear crisisBeijing (AFP) April 13, 2011 Japan owes its neighbours an apology for failing to tell them about the severity of its nuclear crisis, a Chinese state newspaper said Wednesday, accusing the West of letting Tokyo off the hook. The English-language Global Times, which has ties to the ruling Communist party, also rounded on the West for engaging in double standards by treating Japan with kid gloves due to its status as a key ... read more |
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