ACSO: News: Japan feared Fukushima could 'finish' Tokyo

ACSO: News: Japan feared Fukushima could 'finish' Tokyo

A worst-case scenario sketched out by the Japanese government foresaw the end of Tokyo in a chain of nuclear explosions as the Fukushima crisis erupted, an independent panel said Tuesday.

Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano told investigators: "I had this demonic scenario in my head" that nuclear reactors could break down one after another."If that happens Tokyo will be finished".

Plans were drawn up for the mass evacuation of the capital as Edano -- the government's point man on the nuclear crisis -- fretted that reactors all along the coast could go into meltdown and engulf the city of 13 million people.

The revelation came in a 400-page report published Tuesday by a panel of experts who were given free rein to probe the events surrounding the world's worst nuclear crisis in a generation.

The panel said as the situation on Japan's tsunami-wrecked coast worsened, Fukushima operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) had wanted to abandon the plant and evacuate its workers.

But the utility, which refused to co-operate with the study, was ordered to keep men on site by then prime minister Naoto Kan.

Experts concluded that if the premier had not stuck to his guns, Fukushima would have spiralled further out of control, with catastrophic consequences.

"When the prime minister's office was aware of the risk the country may not survive (the crisis)...TEPCO's president (Masataka) Shimizu....frantically called" to tell the premier he wanted his staff to leave the crippled nuclear reactor, panel head Koichi Kitazawa told a news conference.

Kitazawa said Kan threatened to break up the powerful utility if the company insisted on pulling its men out.

He said Kan's refusal to bow to TEPCO's demand had averted a worse crisis.

Kan told Shimizu: "It's impossible. If you withdraw staff, TEPCO will be demolished," according to Kitazawa.

"Consequently, it's Mr Kan's biggest contribution that the Fukushima 50 remained at the site," added Kitazawa, referring to dozens of operatives who worked to contain the accident and were feted as heroes.

Respected academics, engineers and journalists were drafted in by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation after calls for an independent probe into the meltdowns at Fukushima.

The six-member panel interviewed more than 300 people central to the disaster and was given access to data and documents used in the days and weeks after March 11.

The panel said Kan had instructed experts to draft a plan to evacuate a huge swathe of the country, based on the worst case scenario.

Planners worked on the assumption that if the nuclear crisis were to worsen "it is possible that a compulsory evacuation zone will spread to 170 kilometres (105 miles)...and a voluntary evacuation zone will spread to 250 kilometres and beyond".

Tokyo lies around 220 kilometres from the stricken plant.

AFP/.

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ACSO: News: Shooter now unknown

The Interior Minister backtracked yesterday after previously declaring officials knew the identity of the person who shot three protesters outside a shoe factory in Svay Rieng province last week and refused to quash rumours that Bavet town governor Chhouk Bandith was a suspect.

Rushing to his car outside an ASEAN seminar yesterday morning, Interior Minister Sar Kheng told reporters they would “have to wait and see” if the governor was a suspect in the shooting outside the Kaoway Sports Ltd factory in Bavet town last Monday.

“We don’t know the identity of the gun shooter yet and our police are looking to arrest the suspect,” he told reporters, before declining to answer any further questions.

The minister’s comments come six days after he declared officials had identified the shooter and had sufficient evidence to convict the perpetrator.

At the time, he declined to reveal details about the suspect’s identity due to the ongoing investigation into the person’s whereabouts.

Sar Kheng’s comments also contradict Svay Rieng provincial police chief Prach Rim, who yesterday said police were pursuing a suspect.

“We know their identity already, so we will arrest them soon, and you will know who they are when we arrest them,” he said.

Chhouk Bandith told the Post last week that he was aware of rumours that he was the shooter, which he categorically denied. Since then, he has not answered his phone despite repeated attempts to contact him.

The three victims were shot at a protest of about 6,000 people last Monday morning outside the Kaoway Sports factory in the Manhattan Special Economic Zone where protesters pelted the building with rocks and lit fires, demanding transport and food allowances.

Eyewitness reports suggest a gunman dressed in a khaki police-style outfit and flanked by a bodyguard and a man dressed in police uniform arrived in a car, fired into the crowd and then ran off, escaping in another vehicle.

Moeun Tola, head of the labour program at the Cambodian Legal Education Centre, questioned why someone who committed a crime in front of police and thousands of people was not arrested immediately in a case where there are some obvious clues.

“One, the workers were told the governor was coming. Two, the man [perpetrator] came in the expensive [Lexus] car with bodyguards and a couple of days later, Sar Kheng said the police officials had identified the gunman,” he said. “It is so strange that Sar Kheng changed his message [to say] he does not know who the gunman is, so strange.”

He said he was worried the suspect, who has now been alerted, would have had sufficient time to flee the country.

The shooting has attracted significant international media attention largely because Kaoway Sports supplies sportswear giant PUMA and sparked concern amongst international buyers that source products from Cambodia.

...Read more at PhnomPenhPost...

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