The governor of Japan's Fukushima prefecture called Wednesday for all 10 of the area's reactors to be scrapped as it attempts to recover from an ongoing nuclear crisis.
Yuhei Sato said he would include the demand in the prefecture's reconstruction plan to be compiled by the end of this year following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that sparked the nuclear disaster.
The Fukushima prefectural assembly has already adopted a petition to seek the decommissioning of the 10 reactors housed at Fukushima's Daiichi and Daini plants, both run by Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO).
"I decided to stipulate the reactor decommissioning in the reconstruction plan so that young people can live here without worries," Sato told a news conference.
The Daiichi plant suffered the most damage after the earthquake and tsunami knocked out its cooling system. Some of its reactors went into meltdown and caused the world's worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
It continues to leak radiation, although TEPCO and the government insist the reactors will all be brought to cold shutdown by the end of the year.
Source: AFP Asian Edition
