Japan's refusal of US help hikes radiation fears: Rpt

Tokyo, Mar 18: Even when the world watches the nuclear fallout in Japan and the impending catastrophe triggered by the earthquake and tsunami, there are reports doing the rounds that Japan turned down an offer of timely help from the US to provide technical assistance in the event of overheating of the reactors.

The report appeared in a Japanese daily and was extremely vocal in criticizing the action of the Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan during the country's worst crisis in recent history. While the US was extremely forthright in offering help to the troubled country that was looking at an extremely worrying spread of radiation levels in Japan, the latest revelations is likely to cause more anguish to the Japanese citizens.

According to the popular newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun who quoted a senior official of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan as saying that the US had made an immediate offer for help when the first reactor in the Fukushima nuclear plant went ablaze. The unidentified person also revealed that US had offered support to dismantle the troubled reactors run by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) , 250 kms northeast of Tokyo.

Both TEPCO and the Japanese government believed that the cooling system issue could be handled by themselves and refused the offer then and were in the though process that "it was too early to take." There was apparent dissent on this decision by certain members within the ruling party and other government officials who maintains that the current crisis could have been avoided if the Japanese PM had accepted the offer then.

The situation in Japan is extremely alarming and with US joining in the efforts to contain the damages, the effort doesn't seem to produce any tangible results yet. Today, the Japanese military resorted to dumping tonnes of water on the plants to cool it down and reduce overheating of the fuel rods to avoid disastrous results.

The deadly tsunami and earthquake has shook Japan with an official death toll of more than 10,000 and so many others displaced and missing.

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