Tokyo - Japan's government said yesterday it would deploy 96,000 soldiers over the new year in case of millennium bug (Y2K) accidents, including special units to tackle nuclear incidents. Tokyo is to put chemical units on standby across Japan to handle any possible incidents at nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities, a spokesman said.
On September 30th, three workers at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, north-east of Tokyo, set off the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.