U.N. chief to Fukushima evacuees: Hang in there

FUKUSHIMA, Japan (AFP) ― U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon on Monday pledged the world body’s solidarity with Japan after its quake, tsunami and nuclear disaster and encouraged radiation evacuees to “hang in there”.

Traveling in the disaster-struck northeast, Ban became one of the most senior foreign leaders to visit the region close to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi atomic power plant, which is still leaking radiation.

“I came here to express my solidarity, the United Nations’ solidarity for the government of Fukushima, and particularly for affected people in Fukushima,” Ban told prefectural governor Yuhei Sato.

“Particularly this Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident has given us great lessons,” he said. “We need to carefully review to improve our safety and improve our capacity tools in such an emergency response.”

Some 85,000 people have fled the region around the plant after the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl 25 years ago.

Joined by his wife, Ban visited a shelter where more than 300 evacuees, mainly from Minamisoma city and a 20-kilometer no-go zone around the plant, have lived in cramped conditions for the past five months.

“You will hang in there,” Ban said in Japanese to the evacuees, who live in tiny spaces separated by cardboard partitions.

Ban ― who arrived in Japan Sunday ― then visited Fukushima Minami High School, where he also gave words of encouragement to some 100 teenagers, telling them, “the entire world and the United Nations are behind you”.

The U.N. chief was scheduled later to visit tsunami-ravaged Haragama beach in Soma city, 40 kilometers north of the Fukushima plant, which was hit by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and a massive tsunami on March 11.

Five months on from the disaster, Japan’s government and the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company are struggling to stabilize three reactors at the plant following a series of meltdowns and explosions.

Japan wants to bring all reactors to stable “cold shutdown” by January.

But lethal radiation hotspots were detected inside the crippled plant last week, with radiation so high that it threatens to prevent emergency workers from making progress in the effort to control the crisis.

TEPCO has also faced a series of technical glitches affecting a system to decontaminate radioactive runoff water used to cool the reactors.

At the meeting with Ban, Fukushima governor Sato asked him for cooperation from the world body.

“Five months have passed since the disaster, and amid this ordeal Fukushima’s people are making their utmost effort to build a new Fukushima,” he said. “I would like to ask you, secretary-general, and the United Nations to especially remember Fukushima and cooperate with us.”

Later in the day, Ban will travel to Tokyo to meet Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto.

The U.N. chief is also expected to request that Japan dispatch troops from its Self-Defense Forces for a peacekeeping operation in South Sudan.