nuclear-news

Always a most dangerous nuclear plant – Fukushima

SPECIAL REPORT-Fukushima long ranked Japan’s most hazardous nuclear plant One of 5 worst nuclear plants in world for exposure to radiation

* Tepco prioritised cost-savings over radiation standard

* Tepco says old plants like Fukushima have high radiation

* Foreign workers used to avoid exposing staff to high radiation

* Improvements made at Fukushima before disaster hit

By Chisa Fujioka and Kevin Krolicki, TOKYO, July 26 (Reuters) – Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant ranked as one of the most dangerous in the world for radiation exposure years before it was destroyed by the meltdowns and explosions that followed the March 11 earthquake.     For five years to 2008, the Fukushima plant was rated the most hazardous nuclear facility in Japan for worker exposure to radiation and one of the five worst nuclear plants in the world on that basis. The next rankings, compiled as a three-year average, are due this year.     Reuters uncovered these rankings, privately tracked by Fukushima’s operator Tokyo Electric Power, in a review of documents and presentations made at nuclear safety conferences over the past seven years…..

As Japan debates its future energy policy after the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, a Reuters review of the long-troubled record at Fukushima shows how hard it has been to keep the country’s oldest reactors running in the best of times. It also shows how Japan’s nuclear establishment sold nuclear power to the public as a relatively cheap energy source in part by putting cost-containment ahead of radiation safety over the past several decades. …..http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/26/idUSL3E7IE3Z920110726—

July 28, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | - Fukushima 2011, Japan, safety