Tepco Will Start Compensating Evacuees From Near Fukushima Nuclear Plant
Tepco Will Start Compensating Evacuees From Near Nuclear Pla
Haruyoshi Yamaguchi/Bloomberg
Evacuees from Futaba town, Fukushima prefecture use computers and telephones at an evacuation center in Saitama City, Japan. Tokyo Electric Power Co . said it will start compensating residents evacuated from areas around its crippled nuclear power station, as the government pledged support for the company’s aid plans.
Evacuees from Futaba town, Fukushima prefecture use computers and telephones at an evacuation center in Saitama City, Japan. Tokyo Electric Power Co . said it will start compensating residents evacuated from areas around its crippled nuclear power station, as the government pledged support for the company’s aid plans. Photographer: Haruyoshi Yamaguchi/Bloomberg
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it will start compensating residents evacuated from areas around its crippled nuclear power station, as the government pledged support for the company’s aid plans.
Tepco, as the company is called, will begin distributing claim forms today and payments will be made as soon as possible, spokesman Tetsuya Terasawa said at a briefing in Tokyo. Initial compensation totaling about 50 billion yen ($602 million) was promised by the utility last week.
Tepco faces compensation claims of as much as 11 trillion yen for the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986, Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch said last month. The company is pumping contaminated water from trenches around reactor buildings damaged by explosions after last month’s earthquake and tsunami so it can restore cooling systems and stop the radiation leaks that forced residents to evacuate.
Japan’s government will aid Tepco’s efforts to compensate those affected by the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said today.
“Our broad policy to provide support as necessary is clear,” Edano said. “But what must be done urgently is to pay 1 million yen per household to evacuees and then make the first compensation payments for businesses.”
Giving Support
No specific plans have been decided, Edano told reporters today in Tokyo. The government may contribute several trillion yen to create a fund to help Tepco, the Yomiuri newspaper said today, citing an unidentified person familiar with the plan.
“The government’s method for giving support for Tepco’s compensation hasn’t advanced to the kind of specifics that have been reported,” Edano said.
While Tepco executives are considering ways to streamline the company, no specific proposals have been put forward, Terasawa said, adding he hadn’t heard of support from the government. No decision has been made on the number of job losses, he said.
The utility plans to cut salaries for executives and eliminate jobs, President Masataka Shimizu said on April 15, when he offered 1 million yen per family and 750,000 yen for each single-person household within 30 kilometers (19 miles) of the nuclear plant.
About 50,000 households will receive the aid, he said. Payments should go out before Japan’s Golden Week holidays that begin on April 29, Edano said at the time.
“Our top priority is for them to think quickly and act quickly,” he said today.
Pumping Operation
Tepco shares fell 0.5 percent today to 445 yen. They are down nearly 80 percent since the earthquake and tsunami struck on March 11, leaving almost 28,000 people dead or missing.
The Fukushima plant, 220 kilometers north of Tokyo, has six reactors, three of which were shut for maintenance when the tsunami washed ashore, knocking out backup generators.
The company has been pouring millions of liters of water to cool the other three reactors and spent fuel after the accident, which has flooded basements and trenches near the reactors. Some highly contaminated water leaked into the sea and the utility has dumped less toxic fluids into the ocean.
Engineers pumped 210,000 liters (55,000 gallons) of highly radioactive water from the No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima Dai- Ichi nuclear plant by 7 a.m. today, Terasawa said.
Avoiding Leaks
An operation to remove 10 million liters of the contaminated water, which is emitting radiation as high as 1,000 millisieverts per hour, to a storage unit started yesterday.
The company is using an 800 meter (2,600 foot) hose to pump the water out and is limiting the flow rate to avoid building pressure, that could cause a leak of contaminated water in other areas of the plant. The operation is expected to take 26 days, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager, said yesterday.
The water will be decontaminated by a water treatment unit that Areva SA (CEI) plans to deliver by the end of next month, the French company said yesterday in a statement.
The treatment unit, which separates and recovers radioactive particles, can process 50,000 liters (13,200 gallons) of water per hour, Areva Chief Executive Officer Anne Lauvergeon said yesterday at a briefing in Tokyo.
“The contaminated water must be treated rapidly as it is preventing Tepco from repairing the power plant’s power supply and cooling systems,” Areva said in the statement. The unit “will sharply reduce the radioactivity levels of the treated water, which could be reused in the power plant’s cooling systems.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Yuji Okada in Tokyo at yokada6@bloomberg.net; Michio Nakayama in Tokyo at mnakayama4@bloomberg.net; Tsuyoshi Inajima in Tokyo at tinajima@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Amit Prakash at aprakash1@bloomberg.net
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