Global Security Newswire

A Japanese government panel on Monday endorsed reforms aimed at better safeguarding the nation's atomic energy sites against potential strikes by extremists, Kyodo News reported (see GSN, Nov. 14).

The policies demand action by Tokyo and atomic energy firms to secure auxiliary electricity generators and temperature-mitigation equipment. The crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi atomic facility placed focus on the need for such steps, according to government sources.

The six-reactor power plant was damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that left more than 20,000 people missing or dead in Japan. Radiation releases on a level not seen since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster forced the evacuation of about 80,000 residents from a 12-mile ring exclusion zone surrounding the site in Fukushima prefecture.

Under the reforms -- backed by a committee of specialists on extremism and transnational criminal activity -- Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency would order nuclear energy firms in the upcoming budget cycle to examine means of lowering the radiation impact of a strike to the greatest extent possible.

Japanese leaders are expected to pursue fiscal 2012 funding for implementing the policies (Kyodo News I/Mainichi Daily News, Nov. 15).

Law enforcement officials would move to bolster protections against extremist strikes at atomic sites throughout Japan, the National Police Agency announced on Tuesday.

"A (nuclear) accident (such as the one at) the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant could also occur through a terror attack," agency head Yutaka Katagiri said at a gathering in the Japanese capital of law enforcement officials from various Japanese prefectures. Katagiri called on attendees to shore up efforts for guarding nuclear facilities (Kyodo News II/Mainichi Daily News, Nov. 16).

Meanwhile, experts this week said cesium contamination in food, water and the atmosphere fell within acceptable levels in a July 2-8 study of the area between 12 and 43 miles of the Fukushima facility, the Asahi Shimbun reported (Nobutaro Kaji, Asahi Shimbun I, Nov. 15).

Fukushima plant contaminants have probably reached Hokkaido and western Japan, farther than the Japanese Science Ministry had suggested, U.S. and European specialists said in a separate paper published on Monday.

"These deposition levels do not have immediate impact on human health and do not require decontamination," said Nagoya University professor Tetsuzo Yasunari, who helped prepare the article (Susumu Yoshida, Asahi Shimbun I, Nov. 15).

International Atomic Energy Agency specialists in a Tuesday report pressed Japan to establish long-term sites for storing debris contaminated in the disaster, Kyodo News reported (Kyodo News III/Mainichi Daily News, Nov. 16).