Nuclear Meltdown

Tokyo tap water unsafe for infants

(China Daily)
Updated: 2011-03-24 08:18

The shelves of a Tokyo convenience store are almost cleared of bottled water on Wednesday. [Photo/Agencies]

TOKYO - Tokyo on Wednesday warned that radioactive iodine over twice the safe level for infants had been detected in its tap water due to the disaster at a quake-hit nuclear plant northeast of Japan's capital.

Related readings:  Radioactive substance found in 11 types of vegetables  Experts pore over radioactive contaminants in Japan  China: no immediate threat from radioactive leaks  Japan's nuclear crisis will be overcome: IAEA

The revelation came after a US ban on imports of dairy and other produce from areas near the crippled Fukushima power station following the natural disaster, which Japan's government said could cost more than $300 billion.

The confirmed death toll from the earthquake and tsunami that battered Japan's northeast coast on March 11 rose to 9,452, and Japan holds out little hope for 14,715 officially listed as missing.

Japan has already banned farm produce from areas near the plant, which has suffered a series of explosions and fires since Japan's worst natural disaster in nearly a century.

In one area of Tokyo, a water sample contained 210 becquerels of iodine per kg, a city official said. That is more than double Japan's legal limit. Tokyo's stock market dived 1.6 percent on the news.

The government advised residents throughout the city to avoid using tap water to make infant milk formula until further notice.

The nuclear emergency has also led 25 embassies to temporarily shut their doors in Tokyo, Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto said on Wednesday.

Matsumoto provided the figure in an appearance before the lower house's foreign affairs committee.

As of Tuesday, "eight of them had transferred their functions outside Tokyo or Japan", a foreign ministry spokesman said by e-mail.

"The rest have had their staff stay home. They have been changing their working arrangement day by day," he said.

The Cabinet Office said on Monday the cost of the disaster could hit 25 trillion yen ($309 billion). That figure is double the cost of the Kobe quake and nearly four times more than Hurricane Katrina.

The total cost from collapse or damage to houses, factories and infrastructure such as roads and bridges was estimated at 16 to 25 trillion yen over the next three fiscal years, the office said.

The estimate does not account for wider issues such as how radiation affects food and the water supply, amid a deepening food scare.

Even so, with the cost of the destruction set to push down growth in the coming fiscal year, the upper estimate would put the disaster's monetary impact at more than double the 9.6 trillion yen of the 1995 Kobe earthquake.

Japan's estimate covers seven prefectures including the hardest-hit areas of Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima, as well as Hokkaido, Aomori, Ibaraki, and Chiba. The three hardest-hit account for up to 23 trillion yen of the total.

"The damage is far bigger than the Kobe quake," Japan's Economy Minister Kaoru Yosano told a press conference.

"It will take a long time to complete reconstruction."

The damage could hit Japan's growth by as much as 0.5 percent, although economists expect the nation's biggest reconstruction effort since World War II to give the economy a lift in the second half.

Agence France-Presse