UN nuclear agency eyes Fukushima office

‘We have told the Japanese government that the IAEA stands ready to cooperate’: Yukiya Amano

The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog said the agency is considering opening a branch office in Fukushima to monitor efforts to contain the world’s worst atomic accident since Chernobyl, a report in Tokyo said.
The Japanese government has struggled with public trust over nuclear energy since the March 11 disaster and had asked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to open an office, which will help share information on the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
“We have told the Japanese government that the IAEA stands ready to cooperate,” the agency’s chief Yukiya Amano told Kyodo News on Saturday in the Swiss resort of Davos, where the World Economic Forum is being held.
“While the headquarters in Vienna will continue to deal with issues related to the decontamination and disposal of spent nuclear fuels, we’ll be able to have close contact.”
A press officer for the IAEA in Tokyo, who is accompanying an ongoing mission to Japan, said no firm decision had yet been made, but that the government’s request was being given “careful consideration”.
The Nikkei newspaper independently reported from Davos the IAEA chief had stated his intention to open a local office.
Fuji News Network also reported Amano, who is Japanese, was intending the office would be opened, saying it could “strengthen communications with people on the spot.”
Tokyo wants an international seal of approval for the energy-hungry country’s nuclear industry to bolster its faltering efforts at reassuring the public it is safe to resume atomic operations.
The vast majority of Japan’s 54 commercial nuclear reactors are offline because popular opposition has prevented them being restarted in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

Emissions rising after atomic crisis

Japanese manufacturer’s greenhouse gas emissions are rising after the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, hurting the country’s carbon reduction goals, the Nikkei business daily reported yesterday.
The trend will deal a blow to Japan’s target of reducing emissions by six percent from 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol, the report added.
Emissions by 399 leading manufacturers are projected to rise 0.2 percent year-on-year to about 388 million tonnes in the year to March 2012, the second straight annual rise, according to a Nikkei survey.
Total estimated emissions for all industries, excluding the power and gas sectors, reached 442 million tonnes, the report said, nearly equal to emissions recorded in fiscal 2010.
Japan’s economic activity shrank in the wake of the March 11 earthquake-tsunami disaster and record flooding in Thailand, which pounded the supply chains of manufacturers with operations in the country.
But the closing of Japan’s nuclear power plants sent emissions upwards as manufacturers started running their own generators to secure additional power and supply electricity to utilities, the Nikkei said.
Emissions also rose amid a jump in resources needed to produce power through other means such as thermal plants, the daily added.
The problem could get worse since Japan’s nuclear plants are expected to suspend operations by April, about a year after the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986, the report said.