Amid Japan’s struggles with its nuclear disaster, the nation’s leader issued a call for a clean-energy push to reduce its future reliance on nuclear power.
As reported by Agence France-Presse, Prime Minister Naoto Kan told a parliamentary committee that Japan should take the lead internationally in developing less dangerous sources of power. “Taking this as a lesson, we have to lead the world in clean energy, such as solar and biomass, and make it a major pillar of a new Japan,” Kan said.
A spokesman for Kan also said that clean energy would form a major plank of his recovery plan for Japan’s northeastern region, which was devastated by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami earlier this month. Nuclear power currently is the source for one-third of the nation’s energy. Japan also has the third-highest number of nuclear plants in the world, after France and the United States.
Meanwhile, as the The Washington Post reports, containment crews continued their work at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the radiation-spewing facility that has been the focus of the concern since its cooling systems were knocked out by the tsunami. The challenges prompted a warning from Kan that the country remains on “maximum alert.”
As a part of the clean-up effort, workers pumped chilled water into the reactors using fire trucks and generators, to cool the heated fuel rods. They also stacked sandbags around the mouths of subterranean channels, to block the radioactive water within from contaminating nearby groundwater or seawater.
Under orders from nuclear regulators, scientists have stepped up their tracking of radiation in the area. On Monday, plutonium was discovered in soil around the plant.
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