Activists Accuse Japan of Concealing Data on Nuclear Facilities

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RIA Novosti, PUBLISHED 30.04.2014

Anti-nuclear activists in Japan have accused the government of concealing sensitive information on nuclear facilities ahead of a law on state secrets that will enter into force later this year, Japan's leading newspaper Asahi Shimbun has reported.

“Going ahead of the law, the government started concealing information in an arbitrary manner,” said Kiyohiko Yamada, who studied the situation on the problem-plagued nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Aomori Prefecture, in the northern To-hoku region of Japan.

“I wonder whether the information I have collected is regarded as state secrets subject to the law and I will be punished,” said Yamada, who started monitoring the local Rokkasho reprocessing plant 25 years ago, which will extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel.

The law, which covers nuclear facilities, has been criticized as “vaguely worded and a potential tool to conceal embarrassing information among those in power,” the newspaper said.

Japan’s tough new law considers as state secrets many issues of national importance to Japan, likely to include the notorious Fukushima power plant. Violators of the law could face up to 10 years in jail.

In March 2011, Japan was hit by a massive 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, claiming more than 15,000 lives and causing a number of explosions at the Fukushima plant. In what has been dubbed the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, three of the plant’s reactors underwent a partial meltdown as radiation leaked into the atmosphere, soil and seawater.

Topics: NPP Fukushima Daiichi

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