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TOKYO (AFP) - Japan abandoned plans to build 16-20 new nuclear power plants by March 2011, admitting a major accident that exposed hundreds of people to radiation had forced a cutback.
"It is doubtful if we can achieve it (the plan to build 16-20 plants by the financial year to March 2011)," said Takashi Fukaya, the minister for international trade and industry. "We have no choice but to revise the figures," he told a news conference.
Fukaya blamed an accident last September at a uranium plant in Tokaimura, 120 kilometers (70 miles) northeast of Tokyo, in which a critical reaction exposed 439 people to radiation and killed one worker. He also noted that Chubu Electric Power Co. had cancelled a plan to build two nuclear reactors along the Pacific coast near Ashihama following the Tokaimura disaster.
"There have been changes in the environment surrounding energy, such as the critical reaction accident at Tokaimura or the cancellation of a plan to build a nuclear power plant at Ashihama," Fukaya said.
It was not a question of simply basing Japan's energy policy on nuclear power, he said. "We have to place emphasis on audacious development of new energy sources and particularly on energy conservation." Japan relies on 51 nuclear reactors to supply about one third of its electricity.
Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi later confirmed the policy switch, according to Jiji Press news agency. "There may be a need for a review on the whole of our energy policy … with regard to both supply and demand," the prime minister was quoted as telling reporters.
Confidence in Japan's nuclear industry was shaken by the leak at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, which seriously injured three workers. It was classified as the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.
The industry took another battering when British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. admitted it had falsified some test data on mixed plutonium-uranium oxide nuclear fuel shipped to Japan last October.
One of the three nuclear workers involved in the Tokaimura accident, 35-year-old Hisashi Ouchi, died of radiation injuries in December. Another worker, Yutaka Yokokawa, 55, was released from hospital late last year. But the third worker, 40-year-old Masato Shinohara, was in a precarious state in intensive care last Friday.
"The patient is not in danger but his condition is unpredictable. He has developed pneumonia and internal bleeding continues in his lungs and stomach," said Tatsuo Nakada, spokesman for the Research Hospital of the University of Tokyo's Institute of Medical Science.
"The pneumonia stabilized after we administered antibiotics but we have placed him in intensive care as a precaution. On March 3, we cut his windpipe to install an artificial respirator," Nakada added. "His consciousness has been dulled due to doses of sedatives."
A nuclear industry analyst, who asked to remain anonymous, said electrical power companies had already factored in the cutback and no shortage of supply was expected.
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