Earthquakes, Typhoons Raise Nuclear Fears

TOKYO, Japan, October 25, 2004 (ENS) - At least 25 people have lost their lives and more than 2,100 others have been injured in a string of powerful earthquakes that have rocked the northern coast of the main Japanese island of Honshu, starting Saturday evening. Aftershocks are continuing this morning and the death toll continues to rise.

Felt across Niigata prefecture, the quakes have collapsed homes, opened large cracks in roads, and caused a bullet train to derail for the first time in its history, the Kyodo news agency said. No passengers were injured, but it could take weeks before the line is repaired. About 300,000 homes have been left without electricity.

The shaking has been felt as far away as Tokyo, 200 kilometers (125 miles) to the southeast.

Hundreds of aftershocks have come at short intervals since the initial quake, several jolts measuring above 6.0 in magnitude.

Across Niigata buildings have collapsed. (Photo courtesy IFRC)

The repeated quakes have broken water and sewage lines, uprooted trees and damaged bridges. Landslides across roads have cut off many communities. People are wandering the muddy roads with heavy bundles of their possessions seeking shelter.

Among the dead and injured are many children and elderly. An elderly Ojiya hospital patient died after the tremors dislodged an artificial respirator, and a second-floor supermarket crowded with customers collapsed. There is fear that further strong tremors could strike over the next few days.

Nagaoka Red Cross Hospital in Niigata treated 312 injured people and Tokyo, Saitama, Toyama, Niigata, Tochigi and Gunma chapters as well as the Japanese Red Cross medical centre at national headquarters deployed Red Cross hospital disaster relief teams.

Disaster Management Minister Yoshitaka Murata visited the stricken area on Sunday, and government relief workers have handed out bottled water and blankets.

This latest disaster comes hard on the heels of the country's deadliest typhoon in 25 years. Typhoon Tokage swept the archipelago on Wednesday, leaving at least 80 people dead, with 12 people still missing and over 340 injured.

Officials said the damage caused by the quakes was made worse because heavy rain from the typhoon loosened sections of the earth, which slid downhill when the temblors struck.

And on September 5, two earthquakes above a magnitude of 7.2 struck Honshu's southern coast. They are the sixth and seventh most powerful earthquakes anywhere in the world this year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Japan lies over four tectonic plates and is in one of the most earthquake active regions of the world.

Less than a week before that set of earthquakes, Typhoon Chaba sped across the archipelago causing 13 deaths, flooding homes, toppling trees and causing transport havoc.

In fact, 10 typhoons have hit the Japanese islands this summer and autumn, with devastating effects.

Amidst this destruction, Satomi Oba of the anti-nuclear advocacy group Plutonium Action Hiroshima fears far worse. There are seven nuclear reactors within 10 kilometers of the epicenter of the current earthquakes, Oba points out.

The most concerned nuclear power plant is Hamaoka, a boiling water reactor operated by the Chubu Electric Power Company, that Oba is trying to remind the government, is located almost on the border of the four moving plates. "Geologists warn that the area is the most likely to be hit by a tremendous earthquake in 30 years or so," says Oba.

Kashiwazaki nuclear power plant is close to the center of the ongoing earthquakes. (Photo courtesy Nuclear Safety Network)

In a special to the "Japan Times" in May, Leuren Moret wrote that many of Japan's reactors have been "negligently sited on active faults, particularly in the subduction zone along the Pacific coast, where major earthquakes of magnitude 7-8 or more on the Richter scale occur frequently."

Major earthquakes occur in Japan less than every 10 years. "There is almost no geologic setting in the world more dangerous for nuclear power than Japan - the third-ranked country in the world for nuclear reactors," Moret wrote.

Oba warns that the danger exists not just in the area of the current earthquake, but in many other places as well. "It is unthinkable," he writes, that on October 22 the Atomic Energy Commission decided continuing the national nuclear policy plan, which recommends reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rather than burying it."

The Rokkasho Nuclear Reprocessing Plant in Aomori Prefecture, located on the coast of the Pacific, is scheduled to start uranium testing shortly, and this plan frightens the anti-nuclear group. "Not far from the coast line of Rokkashomura, there is a huge active fault on the seabed that might cause a gigantic earthquake,"said Oba. "The Japanese citizens' groups are trying to stop the dangerous plan for reprocessing."