Secret plan to dismantle TEPCO circulating within Japanese government

PanARMENIAN.Net - An aftershock jolted Japan on Saturday, April 16, hours after the country's nuclear safety agency ordered plant operators to beef up their earthquake-preparedness systems to prevent a recurrence of the nuclear crisis roiling the region north of Tokyo.

There were no initial reports of damage from the magnitude-5.9 aftershock, and there was no risk of a tsunami similar to the one last month that crippled the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, causing Japan's worst-ever nuclear plant disaster. Japan has been hit by a string of smaller quakes since the magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit the country on March 11.

Meanwhile, the newspaper Asahi Shimbun, citing no sources, reported that a secret plan to dismantle Tokyo Electric Power Co., which runs the radiation-leaking Fukushima plant, was circulating within the government. The proposal calls for putting TEPCO, the world's largest private electricity company, under close government supervision before putting it into bankruptcy and thoroughly restructuring its assets. Most government offices were closed Saturday, and the report could not be immediately confirmed.

In the wake of the nuclear crisis, the government ordered 13 nuclear plant operators to check and improve outside power links to avoid earthquake-related outages that could cause safety systems to fail as they did at the Fukushima plant, Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told reporters late Friday. The operators, including TEPCO, were to report back by May 16, AP reported.