UN to send nuclear experts to Japan

[News_Editor]

UN to send nuclear experts to Japan

2011-03-16 07:46:44 GMT+7 (ICT)

UNITED NATIONS (BNO NEWS) -- An environmental monitoring team from the United Nations (UN) will be deployed to Japan following the partial meltdown at reactors, the UN said Tuesday.

The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which coordinates global nuclear safety, has expressed concern after another explosion and fire dramatically shook the Fukushima power plant that was crippled by last week's earthquake and tsunami in Japan, increasing the release of radiation.

However, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano underlined that the situation in Japan is different from the world's worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl 25 years ago.

"I continue to think that Chernobyl and these Fukushima reactors are different," Amano said during a news conference at its Vienna headquarters, noting that even though the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant reactors were shut down, a chain reaction was not talking place.

Amano also stated that the cause of the accident was a natural disaster, not a power output surge, and the Japanese reactors do not have a huge amount of graphite that can catch fire.

Just last week in a report to the Board of Governors of the 151-Member State agency, Amano noted that global nuclear safety has improved significantly since Chernobyl, when an estimated 8 million people in what is now Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were exposed to radiation, and thousands contracted thyroid cancer and other diseases.

Amano, who came to the news conference after briefing Member States, said he was setting up an agency coordinating team under his own leadership.

"I felt I needed to raise the level of response on the part of the IAEA," Amano stated, adding that he would soon send a small team of staff who have expertise in environmental monitoring at the request of the Japanese Government, which has said this is the area where the agency can be most helpful.

The IAEA has already intensified its cooperation with other international organizations, including the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which can help coordinate global information on wind directions, showing where any radioactive clouds might be bound.

Meanwhile, UN disaster assessment officials on Wednesday will tour parts of Japan that received the brunt of Friday's devastating earthquake and tsunami as they continue their efforts to help the country in what Prime Minister Naoto Kan has called its worst disaster since World War II.

In addition, the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination team, based in Tokyo to help with information management and international offers of aid, plans to send a reconnaissance mission to the prefectures of Fukushima and Miyagi, where more than 10,000 people, at least, are estimated to have died.

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