Japan's TEPCO Seeks French Help over Fukushima Nuclear Crisis

A handout made available by the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency on 25 March 2011 shows the control room of the second reactor of TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi (No. 1) atomic power plant. EPA/BGNES

Japanese energy company TEPCO has asked France's Areva and EDF for help over the continuing crisis in the Fukushima nuclear power plant triggered by March 11 earthquake.

France's Industry Minister Eric Besson said he was pleased that Tokyo Electric Power, Tepco, had asked for assistance with the 'extremely critical' situation at Fukushima.

Besson said, as cited by RFI, that three groups would be involved in providing assistance to Japan's Fukushima plant - French energy giant, EDF, nuclear group Areva and the atomic agency commission.

EDF, which manages France's 58 nuclear reactors,  announced on 18 March that the three groups were set to send Japan 130 tonnes of specialized equipment including robots able to intervene in the case of a nuclear accident. But a spokesman for Besson said Tepco's latest request is a separate issue.

The head of France's nuclear safety agency ASN. says that airborne nulcear contamination has spread well beyond the 30 kilometre exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant. Andre-Claude Lacoste told journalists that it would not be surprising to find some contamination well beyond a radius of 100 metres.

Last week, the Japanese government asked people still living between 20 and 30 kilometres from the plant to leave voluntarily. RFI points out that workers trying to restore systems to cool overheating fuel rods are trying to work around puddles of dangerously radioactive water discovered inside reactor number two. Experts fear that highly-contaminated water could be seeping into the soil or nearby sea.

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