PYONGYANG, April 18, Kyodo — North Korea’s state television has reported the seriousness of continued radioactive leakages at a Japanese nuclear power plant hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan.
In a Korean Central Television Station program broadcast Sunday night, experts voiced concern about the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
”What is most serious is that even a month after the accident, we see no prospects of getting radioactive leakages under control,” an expert said.
Another expert warned, ”There is a possibility that unexpected radioactive substances may leak (out of the plant).”
Similarly, the official Korean Central News Agency and the Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, reported that radioactive contamination has been spreading to not only the air but also soil and the ocean environment.
KCNA and the paper quoted the Japanese nuclear watchdog as saying earlier that Japan had raised the level of severity of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant from 5 to 7, putting it on par with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.
The crisis at the Fukushima plant ”is getting more serious,” KCNA said.
Neither the state TV, KCNA and the Rodong Sinmun referred to a plan unveiled Sunday by the Fukushima plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., to put the troubled reactors at the plant under control in six to nine months.
April 18, 2011
Source: Kyodo News