Today News Trends: Evacuees slam Japan nuclear plant operator(Video)

Evacuees slam Japan nuclear plant operator(Video)

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 assist those affected by the crisis.

"I can't make and that way I make no money," said Shigeaki Konno, 73, an automobile 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 mouth about compensation is not concrete. We take it quickly."

The dissent by roughly 20 small business owners from communities about the plant reflects growing public frustration with Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s treatment 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 former company executives bowed in apology, once again, on Wednesday, after Shimizu pledged to do more to help compensate residents unable to return home or shape due to the accident.

Cash payments are being "readied as shortly as possible," Shimizu said.

He said the party "will do our utmost" to get the plant's reactors under check and curb radiation leaks that prompted the regime to revise its evaluation of the incidental to the worst possible, on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

TEPCO manager Kensuke Takeuchi told Konno and the other protesters the party was not yet disposed to make any money, but he promised to get their demands to higher level management.

"You are eating a quick 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 only wish my due," said Ichijiro Ishikawa, 69, a construction worker who lived eight miles (13 kilometers) from the plant.

Japan's leaders are urging a yield to normality, with Prime Minister Naoto Kan exhorting the public Tuesday in a televised address to make an "even more marvelous country."

Work on repairing damage at the works 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 later 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 turn the second-worst in history after the disaster in Chernobyl, but it did not indicate a deterioration of the plant's status in recent years or any new health dangers.

Still, Kan warned that the site 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 list of vegetables banned for transportation to markets after high levels of radioactivity were detected in tests ended the weekend.

Still, work on recovery and reconstruction is underway, and the area took a step ahead 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 region round 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 about of the more than 15,000 people still lacking after the twin disasters. The last death toll is expected to top 25,000.

The airport will hold but a few daytime flights for now and only one end is running, but its opening should serve with relief efforts in regional communities virtually obliterated by the tsunami.

"We can only work in a modest area, but I suppose it's a big stride toward recovery," said Naohito Nakano, an operations manager for Japan Airlines.

Hiroshi Abe, 41, whose parents are among the missing, was preparing to table a trajectory support 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 love it will be much easier for me to go back."