Japan Press Weekly

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2013 August 21 - 27 [NUCLEAR CRISIS]

Gov’t should take initiative in stopping toxic water leak at Fukushima: JCP Ichida

Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi told reporters on August 26 that the central government should exercise its responsibility for handling the radioactive water leakage at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

It was revealed in August that about 300 tons of highly radioactive water leaked out from a storage tank on the plant premises and some of it flowed into the Pacific Ocean.

Ichida stressed that the disabled plant is in “a state of emergency and critical condition that human beings have never seen before.” He pointed out that the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) lacks the ability to deal with the accident because it has been always slow to respond. He also strongly criticized the Abe administration for leaving the response to the crisis to TEPCO and failing to set up its own emergency headquarters at the site.

Ichida said that the government should do the followings urgently: withdraw its declaration that the nuclear disaster was “brought under control” and drastically review the countermeasures for the crisis based on the recognition that the power station is in a state of emergency; clarify its position to take full responsibility for the nuclear crisis; and bring together the wisdom of experts in order to investigate the subsurface structure and examine measures to prevent contaminated water leakage from a technical perspective.

Asked about who should bear the expenses for those measures, the party spokesman said, “It is natural for the state to cover the cost for the time being, while taking it into account the need to pass some part of the costs incurred in the future on to the ‘community of interest’ profiting from nuclear power promotion, including TEPCO.”