A team of UN nuclear inspectors arrived in Japan yesterday to assess the condition of a nuclear power plant severely damaged in an earthquake last month, Japanese officials said.
The July 16 magnitude-6.8 quake in Niigata Prefecture killed 11 people and injured more than 1,000. It also caused numerous malfunctions and leaks at the plant -- the world's largest in terms of capacity -- and raised concerns about safety at Japan's nuclear power stations.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team, led by Philippe Jamet, director of the Nuclear Installation Safety Division, will start examining the plant today and will return to Tokyo on Friday for talks with Japanese nuclear safety officials, according to a statement by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
The team will compile a report after the inspection.
"We'll collect information and identify the lessons learned that are the most important for the international community," Jamet told reporters at Narita International Airport near Tokyo. "We're here ... to make an independent examination."
Jamet said that he and his team would try to "look at everything" but that they would have to be selective because of time constraints.
Japanese officials, already at the plant for investigations, will cooperate with the six-member IAEA team, but the UN agency's probe will be independent, agency officials said.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co has come under fire in the wake of the powerful quake, which triggered a small fire at the plant.
The company has also revealed hundreds of other incidents and damage in the aftermath, including a radioactive water leak into the sea, though the amount of radioactivity released was minimal.
Plant officials said they had not foreseen such a powerful quake hitting the facility, and repeatedly underreported its impact afterward.
The company said the radiation from the leaks was far below levels people would naturally breathe in through the air, but the prefecture's government requested that the IAEA visit.
"The accident created anxiety among the people and the prefecture has been hit hard by harmful rumors," Niigata Governor Hirohiko Izumida said.
Nuclear experts said the plant proved solid, and blamed human error for the leaks, singling out the failure to turn off a fan that apparently emitted the radioactive particles.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
RSS