Radiation Threat Gone, Japan Says, but Some Skeptical

Hundreds of thousands of anxious Japanese were told they could leave their homes and resume normal activities Friday, after the government declared that the immediate danger had passed from the nation’s worst nuclear accident.

Radiation levels returned to normal outside the uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, about 80 miles northeast of Tokyo, where a nuclear fission chain reaction spun out of control Thursday, officials said. Samples of tap water, dust, soil and vegetables taken within a six-mile radius of the plant showed no signs of radioactive contamination, and medical checks of more than 4,600 residents revealed no abnormalities, they said.

“Even in the long term, I do not foresee any health hazard” to the plant’s neighbors, said Yoshitsugu Tanabe of the Ibaraki prefecture Nuclear Safety Committee.

But critics of Japan’s accident-prone nuclear power industry said that assessment was premature and unduly rosy. On Thursday, the government said radiation at the plant during the accident had reached 4,000 times the normal level.

Keiji Kobayashi, an expert in nuclear reactor physics at Kyoto University, said the government had yet to release data showing how much of what kind of radiation had been spewed into the atmosphere. The assertions that the situation is now safe are therefore not credible, he said.

“It is impossible to evaluate whether they are telling the truth since we do not know the amount or nature of the emissions,” Kobayashi said in a telephone interview from Kyoto. “The government’s priority is not to worry people, not to create panic or anxiety. This distorts the truth.”

However, other experts said that although the inside of the uranium plant is heavily contaminated, environmental damage is expected to be mild in comparison with the radioactive fallout seen in larger nuclear power plant disasters.

The World Health Organization said Friday that the accident was “not a health concern outside the Japanese territory and is unlikely to have any public impact beyond the local population.”

Three workers who were in the room when the nuclear reaction started with a flash of blue light--and who are suffering from acute radiation poisoning--remained hospitalized today. Two of them were in critical condition and were being kept in isolation rooms to protect their compromised immune systems. Doctors were reportedly considering bone marrow transplants to save their lives.

At least 46 other people were exposed to radiation, but were allowed to go home and return for medical checks in a week.

About 310,000 people living within a six-mile radius of the plant, who had been told to stay indoors, were allowed to resume normal life Friday afternoon, though they were warned not to harvest produce or marine life or drink well water until further notice.

However, 39 families evacuated from homes within about 400 yards of the uranium plant were advised not to return until the government completes radiation testing in the area. A decision on whether it is safe for them to return could come as early as today.

Japanese officials said the accident ranked at level 4 on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s seven-point scale for nuclear disasters. That qualified it as the world’s third-worst nuclear accident, after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union, which ranked at level 7, and the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania, which was rated level 5.

Thursday’s accident terrified some Japanese, who remember or have been taught in vivid detail since childhood about the suffering of the atomic bombing victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. Myriad questions remained about how safety procedures at the Tokaimura plant could have been so lax, and why the Japanese government’s response to the accident was so belated.

“Unfortunately, we must frankly admit that we were slow in responding,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiromu Nonaka. “We must frankly admit that we were too optimistic in judging the seriousness of the accident.”

People within the six-mile radius of the plant were not ordered to stay inside their homes until 10:30 p.m. Thursday, twelve hours after the accident occurred. Nuclear activists charged that residents should have been advised to leave the area if possible, because porous Japanese homes would offer little protection against a passing cloud of radioactive gases.

Public distrust was apparently heightened by the government’s delay in releasing information to the news media, as television reports about the severity of the incident were not broadcast until late Thursday afternoon.

“Why didn’t the government release information right away?” demanded Tomoko Kato, 37, a homemaker in neighboring Saitama prefecture. “They were too slow. The government says it’s safe now, but I do not believe them.”

“I was terrified just watching TV,” Kato added. “You can’t see it or smell it, and that’s what’s so scary.” No matter what the government claims, Kato said, she will avoid buying meat, milk or produce from Ibaraki prefecture for a while.

Hoping to ward off that type of consumer behavior, Ibaraki officials released preliminary data late Friday showing that sweet potatoes, onions and cabbage all taken within about a mile of the plant passed radiation safety tests. Traces of the radioactive isotope cesium-137 were found in the soil, but no radioactive particles were found in tap water or dust.

Schools in the area around the plant will be permitted to reopen today, and train service has been restored.

Police on Friday went to the hospital bedside of Yutaka Yokokawa, 54, the least seriously injured of the three workers, and interviewed him for 30 minutes about the accident.

The contents of the interview were not disclosed. However, officials of plant operator JCO Co., a private company owned by Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., said the workers were preparing a special and unusual batch of concentrated uranium as fuel for the Joyo breeder reactor, and described the processing as “experimental.” The company had not conducted that type of processing since 1996, and the workers might have been performing their tasks for the first time, plant officials said.

Yokokawa has 40 times the normal amount of radiation in his body. The other two workers--Hisashi Ouchi, 35, and Masato Shinohara, 39--were found to have between 150 and 260 times the normal amount of radiation in their bodies.

The nuclear reaction occurred after the workers skipped a number of procedures and manually dumped 35.2 pounds of uranium into a tank designed to hold a maximum of 5.25 pounds.

Physicist Kobayashi said the primary cause of the accident was the design of the facility, which lacked basic safety precautions and should never have been approved for construction by its regulator, the Science and Technology Agency.

Asked whether the faulty design is common in Japanese fuel processing facilities, he replied, “I believe there are other such cases but because of industrial secrecy, we cannot find out what is going on inside these facilities.”

A key question is whether public outrage will be sufficient or sustained enough to pressure the government into reforming the long-criticized coziness between nuclear regulators and the facilities they are supposed to simultaneously inspect and protect. Activists say lax supervision is a big contributor to Japan’s poor nuclear safety record.

In keeping with Japanese tradition, JCO President Koji Kitani appeared about midnight Thursday at the shelter where evacuees had been taken and apologized. He got down on his knees and bowed until his head touched the floor, the Asahi newspaper reported.

But furious residents did not grant him even the customary appearance of forgiveness. Some shouted “Liar,” while others grilled him about the accident and demanded that he bring someone who knew what was going on at the site, the newspaper said.

“Every time they make a mistake like this, they bow their head to the public and pay a little penalty money and they think somehow it’ll all be OK,” said Jinzaburo Takagi, founder of the Citizens Nuclear Information Center, a watchdog group that has long demanded tougher regulation. “This is how they get away with it again and again.”

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Times staff writer John J. Goldman at the United Nations and researchers Chiaki Kitada and Makiko Inoue in The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.