Politics Oct. 18, 2011 - 06:42PM JST ( 4 )

TOKYO —

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda visited Fukushima City on Tuesday to inspect ongoing work to decontaminate buildings and roads and encourage local residents suffering amid the nuclear crisis caused by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

It was Noda’s second trip to Fukushima since taking office last month. His first visit was on Sept 8, when he inspected Tokyo Electric Power Co’s stricken nuclear power plant and met 200 TEPCO workers.

The prime minister met with Fukushima Gov Yuhei Sato and discussed measures to dispose of soil and rubble tainted by radioactive materials—which is becoming a contentious issue since other prefectures do not wish to accept any debris from Fukushima due to radiation fears.

Noda told Sato that the government’s 3rd supplementary budget, which the government hopes to have enacted by Oct 28, will include 250 billion yen for decontamination work. He said that priority must be given to decontaminating areas where children are, such as schools, playgrounds and parks, TBS reported.

He also repeated what he said in his inaugural news conference as prime minister, that “there can be no revival of Japan without the revival of Fukushima. The whole world is waiting for this crisis to be contained. It is the biggest challenge facing Japan.”

The March 11 tsunami battered cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, 220 kilometers northeast of Tokyo, triggering reactor meltdowns and the spewing of radiation into the environment. The plant is about 60 kilometers from Fukushima City.

The government has said some areas close to the plant may be uninhabitable for years due to dangerous contamination, amid an erosion of public faith in how forthcoming officials have been about the consequences of the disaster.

Tens of thousands of people in a 20-kilometer radius and in some pockets beyond the plant have been evacuated, but many activists and scientists have called for a wider exclusion zone.

The visit was the start of a busy day for Noda. On Tuesday night, he will return to Tokyo and then head off to South Korea where he will have several issues to deal with—the return of several volumes of historic Korean royal texts taken out of the country during Japan’s 1910-45 colonization, a territorial row over islets in the Sea of Japan, a free trade pact, an exchange program and efforts to restart six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program.

Japan Today