— Polls Show Voters Did Not Appreciate Kan’s Crisis Handling

TOKYO (MNI) – Tokyo Electric Power Co has presented a roadmap for
settling Japan’s worst nuclear crisis but the utility has made little
progress in containing radiation leaks from its quake-hit Fukushima
Daiichi power plant amid continued aftershocks in eastern Japan.

The firm plans to restore the cooling systems of the six reactors
within three months, and at the final phase, it aims to complete a cold
shutdown over the following three to six months, TEPCO Chairman
Tsunehisa Katsumata told a news conference on Sunday.

“We will do our utmost to create a situation where the Japanese
people can live without fears,” he said.

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda praised TEPCO’s
announcement, saying that “it is an important first step” in resolving
the crisis, which has been defined as a Level-7 accident, on a par with
the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

The announcement came after the company had finished on Friday
discharging water with low levels of radiation into the Pacific Ocean
from a waste disposal facility to make room for more contaminated water
from the turbine buildings and elsewhere.

It released 10,393 tons of water from this facility and from the
No. 5 and No. 6 reactors into the sea.

Removing radioactive water from the site will allow workers to
resume repair work on the cooling systems for the six-reactor complex
knocked out by the violent tsunami that hit Japan’s northeastern Pacific
coast on March 11.

Meantime, the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima plant continued to see
fluctuations in temperatures despite the injection of nitrogen since
April 7, suggesting the possibility that radioactive vapor is still
leaking from the containment vessel.

TEPCO has also failed to reduce the volume of highly radioactive
water at the basement of the turbine building and in the trenches around
the No. 2 reactor.

Meantime, the plant operator also reported that the temperature in
the upper section of the pressure vessel at the No. 3 reactor had
climbed by several tens of degrees Celsius.

Last week Japan’s nuclear safety commission raised the
international alert for the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
plant to 7 from 5, the highest level on the international scale.

The Chernobyl accident, in 1986, released hundreds of thousands of
terabecquerels of radioactive iodine-131 into a wide area of eastern
Europe.

As unabated aftershocks are hampering efforts to quickly restore
the cooling functions at the stricken nuclear power plant in Fukushima,
Japan has tightened its rules on evacuation orders.

Under the new criteria, Japan will issue an evacuation order if
radiation exposure exceeds an annual rate of 20 millisieverts, at the
low end of the 20 to 100 millisieverts range for radiation emergencies
set by the International Commission on Radiological Protection.

Until recently, the government has issued an evacuation order if
the radiation exposure tops 50 millisieverts a year, and based on this
criteria, it had ordered residents who lived within 20 kilometers from
the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to evacuate and those outside
the zone and within a 30-kilometer radius to stay indoors.

Under the new rule, the government is urging residents of Iitate
Village, located some 40 kilometers northeast of the quake-hit plant,
among other municipalities which are located out of the 30 kilometer
zone, to evacuate.

On the quake front, a 5.9-magnitude earthquake jolted wide areas of
the Kanto Plain on Saturday among other aftershocks, with its epicenter
estimated in Ibaraki Prefecture that borders Fukushima to the north.

Hundreds of aftershocks have jolted wide areas of central, eastern
and northern Japan since the 9.0-magnitude earthquake, the largest ever
for Japan.

The Japan Meteorological Agency has warned of aftershocks in wider
area, as the epicenter of the recent earthquake has shifted from
offshore to inland points.

A powerful aftershock with an 8-magnitude could hit northeastern
Japan within a month, according to media reports.

Meantime, the support rating for the cabinet of Prime Minister
Naoto Kan has rebounded slightly but stayed at low levels as the public
scrutinizes his leadership in crisis management and reconstruction
efforts, according to media surveys.

A poll conducted between April 15 and 17 by Nikkei Inc and TV Tokyo
Corp showed that 70% of respondents did not appreciate the cabinet’s
handling of the nuclear emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant
and that 71% of respondents pointed out the government’s disclosures on
the crisis were inadequate.

The survey also showed that the approval rating for the cabinet led
by Kan came to 27%, up 5 points from the previous survey, which was
carried out over the three days through Feb. 27. The disapproval rating
remained unchanged at 67%.

The survey was conducted on 1,603 households with eligible voters,
of which 983, or 61.3%, took part.

Meanwhile, a separate telephone poll conducted between April 16 and
17 by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper showed that 60% of respondents felt
Kans crisis management was inappropriate. The support rating for his
cabinet stood at 21%, little changed from 20% in the February 19-20
poll.

The latest survey during the same period by Nippon Television
Network found that 68.5% of respondents did not appreciate Kans
response after the quake and nuclear crisis and 61.6% of respondents did
not support Kans cabinet.

The prime ministrer saw the public rating tumble to 19% in a
February poll by the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.

The reading was the lowest since the Democratic Party of Japan took
power away from the Liberal Democratic Party in September 2009 and it
also fell below the key 20% mark which often resulted in the resignation
of past prime ministers.

As the aftermath of the March 11 disaster showed no clear signs of
stabilization, the ruling Democratic Party of Japan suffered losses at
the recent nationwide local government elections.

Altogether, politicians linked to the main opposition Liberal
Democratic Party defeated candidates affiliated with the DPJ in all
three elections for governorships of Tokyo, Hokkaido and Mie
prefectures, according to election results.

The DPJ also lost in the mayoral race in Hiroshima and was dealt a
major setback in polling for prefectural assembly seats as well.

The second round of the local polls to elect mayors and city
assembly members is set for April 24, along with a House of
Representatives by-election in Aichi Prefecture.

Meanwhile, the Group of 20 industrialized and emerging economies
expressed solidarity with Japan and pledged to offer any support for the
crisis-hit economy at their meeting in Washington last week.

For Japan’s part, Kan has promised to compile by the end of the
month the first supplementary budget for fiscal 2011 that began on April
1.

The government has said the massive damage inflicted on Japan’s
northeastern Pacific coast is estimated at up to Y25 trillion ($309
billion), making it the costliest natural disaster in the country’s
post-war history.

The estimated damage would exceed the toll of around Y9.6 trillion
from the Great Hanshin Earthquake, which hit the western Japanese port
city of Kobe on Jan. 17, 1995.

Local media, including the Nikkei, have reported that the first
supplementary budget would total Y4 trillion.

The official death toll from the March 11 disaster is now 13,802
people, with 14,129 still missing, as of 1800 JST on Sunday, according
to the National Policy Agency.

tokyo@marketnews.com
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