Tokyo, March 24: Tokyo residents were warned not to give babies tap water because of radiation leaking from a nuclear plant crippled in the earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeast Japan in the world’s costliest natural disaster.
The UN atomic agency said there had been some positive developments at the Fukushima nuclear plant 250 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo but the overall situation remained serious. Some countries have started blocking imports of produce from Japan, fearful of radiation contamination.
The first official estimate put the cost from the March 11 disaster at more than USD 300 billion, dwarfing losses from both the 1995 Kobe quake and Hurricane Katrina that swept through New Orleans in 2005, making it the world’s costliest natural disaster.
The plant, battered by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that has left 23,000 people dead or missing, has still not been brought under control, and workers were forced away from the complex when black smoke began rising from one of its six reactors.
“There are some positive developments related to the availability of electrical power…although the overall situation remains of serious concern,” Graham Andrew, a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told a news conference.
Tokyo authorities said on Wednesday that water at a purification plant for the capital of 13 million people had 210 becquerels of radioactive iodine – more than twice the safety level for infants.
Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara said that level posed no immediate risk. “But, for infants under age one, I would like them to refrain from using tap water to dilute baby formula.”
As concern grew over the risk to food safety of radiation from the nuclear plant, the United States became the first nation to block some food imports from the disaster zone.
Hong Kong, a major importer of Japanese food, also banned produce and milk imports from the disaster zone. Japan’s Jiji news agency said Hong Kong authorities had found radioactivity levels in spinach and turnip samples up to 10 times above the safety limit.
France this week asked the European Commission to look into harmonising controls on radioactivity in imports from Japan, after the world’s worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl in 1986.
Authorities have said above-safety radiation levels had been discovered in 11 types of vegetables from the area, in addition to milk and water, and have halted shipments of some food and told people there to stop eating leafy vegetables.
Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano, the government’s public face during the disaster, urged the world not to overreact.
Edano also said an exclusion zone around the plant did not need to be expanded and he urged Tokyo residents not to hoard bottled water, a plea that fell on deaf ears with many shops quickly selling out of supplies.
“If this were temporary, I wouldn’t be so worried. If this is a long term, I think we have a lot to worry about,” said Riku Kato, father of a one-year-old baby. Physicians for Social Responsibility, a US anti-nuclear group, disputed the food safety assurances and called for a stricter ban on sales of exposed food.
——Agencies