Japan Orders Killing Of Wild Animals Around Fukushima Nuclear Plant

– Japan orders killing of wild animals around Fukushima nuclear plant (Voice of Russia, Feb 27, 2014):

The area of four settlements near the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant has been covered by wild boars, pigs and raccoons. The Ministry of the Environment is drafting a decision to kill the animals that are currently roaming the settlements whence the population has been moved out due to high radiation levels.

Experts believe that a person’s accidental meeting with a wild animal may end in a tragedy, so wild animals should not be allowed to wander about randomly over the area, the Interfax news agency reports.

According to the Mainichi newspaper, 120 wild boars have been trapped in the Tomioka settlement, the boars that did great damage to local buildings and agricultural crops.

The population of the Tomioka, Namie, Futaba and Okuma was evacuated following the March 11th 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which resulted in the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, the gravest since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.

Japan’s nuclear regulators said poor management was responsible for the worst leak of toxic water in six months at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, news reports said Tuesday.

The operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co, was criticized for insufficient crisis management after the leak of about 100 tons of water containing high levels of radioactive material from a storage tank at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station last week, Tokyo Shimbun reported.

The leak was attributed to a wrong valve setting, which led to the tank overflowing with contaminated water, and the lack of an alarm warning of a rise in water levels.

Tokyo Electric officials conceded that workers at a control room had failed to notice the problem soon enough.

“The failure to check the water level of the tanks that should have been receiving water was a problem from the viewpoint of preventing the situation from worsening,” Nuclear Regulation Authority commissioner Toyoshi Fuketa said.

The leak was the largest since about 300 tons of toxic water escaped from another storage tank in August.

The plant suffered a triple meltdown after a tsunami swept through the complex in March 2011.

The operator is injecting water into the three reactors to keep them cool, and has been battling leaks from storage containers where the resulting radioactive water is being stored.