State Department: Stay 50 Miles From Fukushima Plant
The Washington Post reports:
TOKYO — Six days into the world’s worst nuclear emergency in 25 years, as the crisis at one of Japan’s damaged power plants worsened, the United States offered Wednesday night to evacuate family members of State Department and Pentagon officials from northern Japan while urging other Americans to stay at least 50 miles from the plant — four times the distance recommended by the Japanese government.
The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo will remain open, Undersecretary of State Patrick F. Kennedy said in Washington, adding, “We have not ordered [family members] to leave. We have made this opportunity available to them, should they choose to exercise it.”
The messages from U.S. officials came on the heels of congressional testimony from Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who said that a deep pool holding uranium fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi facility sat empty of water needed to prevent releases of radiation. “And we believe that radiation levels are extremely high,” he added.
That assessment, the first detailed comments by an American official about Fukushima Daiichi, was rejected Thursday by a spokesman for the utility that owns the nuclear plant, who said that an aerial survey showed that the fuel pool at the unit 4 reactor still contained water. The question is an important one: If exposed to the air, the spent-fuel rods would start to decay and release radioactivity into the air.
Jaczko’s comments provided an even more worrisome picture than the one coming from the government in Tokyo, and they gave millions in Japan a heightened sense of concern about how far and how fast radioactive material might spread.
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