TENS OF thousands of children living near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are to be given personal radiation monitors, as concern grows over the long-term health effects of exposure to radiation.
Dosimeters will be given to 34,000 children aged between four and 15 living in Fukushima city, 72km (45 miles) from the plant, after abnormally high radiation readings in the area.
The risks posed by radiation from the world’s worst nuclear incident since Chernobyl have already driven 80,000 people from homes within 20km (12 miles) of the plant. Many of the child evacuees from communities that now lie empty attend schools in Fukushima, a city of 300,000 people.
Local authorities have provided monitors to schools outside the exclusion zone, but this is the first time they have been supplied to individual pupils. Data from the dosimeters will be analysed to assess the risks posed by cumulative radiation exposure.
The move came as the company that operates the plant faced repeated verbal attacks at a rowdy annual shareholders’ meeting in Tokyo.
More than 9,000 investors attended the meeting, held at a hotel under heavy police guard, with many berating Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) executives over their response to the March 11th tsunami.
The crisis has knocked 85 per cent off the value of Tepco shares and resulted in annual losses of $15 billion (€10.4 billion). The company also faces a compensation bill that could exceed $100 billion, while a government plan to help fund damages claims has yet to be put to a parliamentary vote.
The executives got a more sympathetic hearing from others at the meeting, however, and late yesterday afternoon, institutional investors helped vote down a motion by activist shareholders to force Tepco to scrap its nuclear reactors.
The company’s new chairman, Tsunehisa Katsumata, opened the meeting with an apology for the incident. “We are working to get out of this crisis as quickly as possible,” he said. His attempts however to answer questions were punctuated by heckles and demands for him and the rest of the Tepco board to resign.
One man demanded that the company’s executives “jump into the reactors and die”, while another said that in feudal times, they would have been expected to commit ritual disembowelment.
The meeting was held the same day that Japan's nuclear safety agency said about 15 tonnes of low-level radioactive water had leaked into the ground from the Fukushima plant. – ( Guardianservice)