Japan quake city says nuclear plant to stay closed

Kariwa (Japan), July 18: A quake-hit Japanese city insisted today that the world's biggest nuclear power plant remain closed after a tremor caused radiation leaks, as the top UN nuclear watchdog said the utility had misjudged seismic risks.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) has reported 50 problems at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in northwestern Japan after a 6.8 magnitude tremor on Monday, and said today it had revised up the level of radiation in water that leaked.

''It's clear that this earthquake, as TEPCO, the operating company, indicated, was stronger than what the reactor was designed for,'' International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

ElBaradei urged a thorough probe to find out what went wrong.

The leaks into the ocean and atmosphere from the plant in the city of Kashiwazaki, near the epicentre of the quake on Monday that killed nine people, have renewed fears about the safety of Japan's nuclear industry.

The sector has been tarnished by years of cover-ups of accidents and fudged safety records, and that worried residents in an area of Japan that suffered another big earthquke in 2004 that killed 65 people.

''We've had two big ones in three years,'' said 60-year-old Hoshi Murofushi, who was sheltering with her two grandchildren in an evacuation centre in nearby Kariwa.

''There's no guarantee that there won't be another one. It will be too late if we have another Chernobyl.'' MISCALCULATION TEPCO said it had miscalculated and underreported the amount of radiation in 1,200 litres (317 U.S. gallons) of water that had leaked from the power plant, but it said the leak was still within government safety regulations and posed no threat to the environment.

''I apologise for causing you worry and trouble,'' TEPCO president, Tsunehisa Katsumata, dressed in blue overalls, told Kashiwazaki Mayor Hiroshi Aida as he bowed in apology.

The tremor flattened hundreds of homes, injured more than 1,100 people and thousands more are in evacuation centres.

Though some local people say they would be better off without the plant, the economically struggling city is dependent on nuclear power along with fishing for its income.

Senior officials, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, have criticised TEPCO, saying it had been slow to issue information and risked undermining public trust in the nuclear industry.

But Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki also said it was important not to cause unnecessary concern.

''There were media reports this morning that 50 problems had been found,'' he told reporters on Wednesday. ''But I asked about the content and while there were various problems, most were not directly linked to radiation emissions,'' he said.

REASSESSING RISKS

Quake-proofing regulations for nuclear power stations were tightened last year, requiring utilities to reassess the risks for their reactors.

One expert said the incident, though small in scale, meant Japan needed stronger safety standards.

''This is not an amount that needs to be worried about,'' said Tetsuji Imanaka, Assistant Professor at the Research Reactor Institute, Kyoto University, of the miscalculated leak.

''What's more of a concern is why it happened.'' Roads at the nuclear plant complex were buckled and deeply cracked, while white steam emerged from one facility on site.

Local residents were struggling to get back to normal, almost 9,000 people spent a second night in evacuation centres.

''Electricity, gas, water, we've got nothing. We slept well last night because we were exhausted, but with these two small ones, it's tough living here,'' Murofushi said.

There have been a relatively small number of aftershocks since the quake, but weather forecasters warned that rainfall in the area could lead to further landslides.

REUTERS>