Seafood is another concern after caesium-134 in seawater near the Fukushima plant climbed to levels 30 times the allowed safety standards last week, according to tests performed by TECPO, Bloomberg cited broadcaster NHK as reporting. “This is why the government needs to do something fast.” Seafood – a Japanese staple – still a concern “Some areas still have high radiation dosages and if you also eat products from these areas, you’ll get a considerable amount of radiation,” Sentaro Takahashi, a professor of radiation control at Kyoto University in western Japan, told Bloomberg. The government has also directed meat producers to seek compensation from Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) the owner of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, Bloomberg reported. On Tuesday, the Japanese government finally announced it would shoulder the $25 million financial burden of purchasing and destroying the meat and contaminated hay. The government on July 19 banned cattle shipments from Fukushima prefecture, though not before some had been slaughtered and shipped to supermarkets. Supermarkets started testing beef after the Tokyo Metropolitan Government found radioactive cesium in slaughtered cattle this month. “They’ve done little to ensure food safety.”Īeon Co, Japan’s biggest supermarket chain, said yesterday that 4,108 kilograms of beef suspected of being contaminated was accidentally put on sale at 174 stores across Japan, said the Bloomberg news agency. “The government is so slow to move,” Sano told the Kyodo news agency. That highlights the government’s inability to think ahead and to act, said Mariko Sano, secretary general for Shufuren, a housewives organization in Tokyo. Prolonged exposure to radiation in the air, ground and food can cause leukemia and other cancers, according to the London-based World Nuclear Association.Īgriculture Minister Michihiko Kano has said officials didn’t foresee that farmers might ship contaminated hay to cattle ranchers. The government limit is 500 becquerels per kilogram. More than 2,600 cattle have been contaminated, Kyodo News reported, after the Miyagi prefecture – which is next to the Fukushima prefecture – released figures showing that 1,183 cattle at 58 farms were fed hay containing radioactive caesium before being shipped to meat markets.Īs much as 2,300 becquerels of caesium a kilogram was detected in the contaminated beef, according to a July 18 statement from the health ministry. Meanwhile, stress tests in Russia have revealed that country’s reactors to be largely unable to withstand any major natural disasters.Ī weekend poll revealed that two thirds of the Japanese public are against the continuation of nuclear power in their country, and support Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s suggestion that the country should wean itself off the peaceful atom, Reuters reported. Germany will shut down all of its nuclear reactors by 2022 and Switzerland will follow in 2035, and Italy voted last month in a referendum against beginning a nuclear programme. The restarts will be a difficult sell to a public that has gone strongly anti-nuclear since Fukushima has weighed in as the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, and nuclear experts are hoping that the stress tests – coming later than those that were conducted in other countries around the world following the March catastrophe – will be more substantial than PR whitewash.
The Japanese government, anxious to restore the nuclear power supply, has also finally ordered stress tests of its reactors, some of which shut down automatically during the March 11 earthquake that devastated Fukushima Daiichi, others of which have not been restarted after routine maintenance and refueling, World Nuclear News reported.
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