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Japan's nuclear policy unaffected by accident

TOKYO, Thursday (AFP) Japan's deadliest nuclear plant accident, which occurred this week, has fuelled public concern about nuclear power but Tokyo, with few energy options, is unlikely to drop its reliance on this source of energy, officials and analysts say. Four workers were killed Monday and seven others injured, two critically, when steam escaped from a ruptured pipe at a plant operated by Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO) in Mihama 350 kilometres (220 miles) west of Tokyo.

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency was quick to point out that the accident - the first directly involving operations at a running nuclear power plant that caused fatalities - did not involve a radiation leak.

KEPCO later admitted that the pipe that caused the leak in a turbine room had not been properly inspected for 28 years.

Environmental groups, including Greenpeace Japan, have argued that the latest fatalities underlined the need for Tokyo to abandon its nuclear programme and shut down its ageing nuclear plants to avoid another tragedy.

The world's worst nuclear accident involving radiation since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster also occurred in Japan: in September 1999 two workers were killed at the Tokaimura uranium fuel-reprocessing plant northeast of Tokyo.

About 320,000 people were evacuated in the incident. Public mistrust deepened further in summer 2002 when Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the world's largest private electricity company and provider of a third of Japan's electricity, was found to have falsified safety reports since the late 1980s. "Japan has had a lot of nuclear plant-related scandals.

The public has become very sensitive about the issue," said Masaharu Fujitomi, chief of the Asia Pacific Energy Research Centre, a government-affiliated body.

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