Today News Trends: Evacuees slam Japan nuclear plant operator(Video)
Evacuees slam Japan nuclear plant operator(Video)
The dissent by approximately 20 small business owners from communities near the plant reflects growing public frustration with Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s discussion of the nuclear crisis that erupted when a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake on March 11 wrecked its cooling systems and backup generators.
Angry residents forced from their homes near Japan's tsunami-stricken nuclear power plant gathered in protest at the Tokyo headquarters of the plant's operator Wednesday demanding compensation as the company's president pledged to do more to help those affected by the crisis.
"I can't work and that way I have no money," said Shigeaki Konno, 73, an auto repair mechanic, who lived seven miles (11 kilometers) from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant before he was evacuated along with tens of thousands of others due to radiation fears. "The talk about compensation is not concrete. We get it quickly."
The dissent by approximately 20 small business owners from communities near the plant reflects growing public frustration with Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s discussion of the nuclear crisis that erupted when a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake on March 11 wrecked its cooling systems and backup generators.
TEPCO's president, Masataka Shimizu, and other company executives bowed in apology, once again, on Wednesday, after Shimizu pledged to do more to help compensate residents unable to take home or shape due to the accident.
Cash payments are being "readied as soon as possible," Shimizu said.
He said the company "will do our utmost" to get the plant's reactors under control and curb radiation leaks that prompted the government to revise its evaluation of the attendant to the worst possible, on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
TEPCO manager Kensuke Takeuchi told Konno and the other protesters the company was not yet given to take any money, but he promised to get their demands to higher level management.
"You are eating a warm meal every day," said Konno, complaining that the two pieces of bread provided at the evacuation center where he is staying were not fit to be fed to dogs.
"I am not asking for anything more than I am entitled to. I just want my due," said Ichijiro Ishikawa, 69, a construction worker who lived eight miles (13 kilometers) from the plant.
Japan's leaders are urging a return to normality, with Prime Minister Naoto Kan exhorting the public Tuesday in a televised address to induce an "even more marvelous country."
Work on repairing damage at the plant and ending radiation leaks has been impeded by aftershocks, fires, explosions and other glitches in the improvised efforts to fix its cooling systems.
Nuclear safety officials and TEPCO reported no major changes Wednesday, a day after the government ranked the accident there at the highest possible severity, 7, on an international scale.
The higher rating was open recognition that the nuclear crisis has become the second-worst in history after the calamity in Chernobyl, but it did not show a worsening of the plant's status in late years or any new health dangers.
Still, Kan warned that the situation remained unpredictable. Radioactive isotopes have been detected in tap water, fish and vegetables far from the facility.
Shipments of produce from 16 cities, towns and villages around Fukushima Dai-ichi have been banned. On Wednesday, the government added wood-grown shiitake mushrooms raised outdoors to a number of vegetables banned for transfer to markets after high levels of radiation were detected in tests over the weekend.
Still, work on recovery and reconstruction is underway, and the country took a pace forward with the reopening of a coastal airport that had been swamped by the tsunami.
Staff at the Sendai airport stood on the tarmac waving as passengers emerged from a JAL Express flight emblazoned with the logo "Hang in there, Japan." It was the inaugural flight since the 32-foot (10-meter) wall of water raced across the airport's runways and slammed cars and aircraft into its terminals.
The area around the airport, which sits about half a mile (a kilometer) from the shoreline, remains a twisted wasteland of mud, uprooted trees and the remnants of smashed buildings and cars. Soldiers were sifting through the debris looking for the bodies of some of the more than 15,000 people still lacking after the twin disasters. The final death toll is expected to top 25,000.
The airport will have but a few daytime flights for now and just one end is running, but its opening should do with relief efforts in regional communities virtually obliterated by the tsunami.
"We can alone act in a small area, but I think it's a big step toward recovery," said Naohito Nakano, an operations manager for Japan Airlines.
Hiroshi Abe, 41, whose parents are among the missing, was preparing to board a trajectory back to the western city of Osaka.
"There's not really anything I can do there now, so I'm flying home," Abe said. "Now that flights are open again I enjoy it will be much easier for me to go back."
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