Posted on 08/02/2008 9:26:18 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
TOKYO: A U.S. nuclear-powered submarine may have leaked a small amount of radiation as it stopped by Japan in the spring and was then deployed throughout the Pacific Ocean, the Japanese government said Saturday.
The Japanese government said that it was informed Friday by the U.S. Navy that the submarine, the USS Houston, may have discharged an amount of radiation that was too small to be considered harmful.
The chief government spokesman, Nobutaka Machimura, said at a news conference that the radioactive amount - estimated at less than half a microcurie - was too insignificant to "affect the human body or the environment."
The submarine spent a week in March in Sasebo, in western Japan, before cruising to Guam and then Hawaii, where the leak was discovered during an inspection late last month, the Japanese government said.
The announcement came as the Japanese government and U.S. military have been trying to ease public resistance to the stationing in September of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington, in Yokokusa, southwest of Tokyo. The scheduled arrival of the George Washington, which will replace the diesel-powered USS Kitty Hawk, has caused protests in Japan, the only country to have been attacked with nuclear weapons.
The announcement also was an embarrassment for the government of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who reshuffled his cabinet Friday in a bid to raise his low approval ratings. Government officials learned of the leak Saturday from television reports even though the U.S. Navy had informed the Japanese Foreign Ministry a day earlier.
"I, too, came to know about it this morning on television," the foreign minister, Masahiko Komura, said at a news conference Saturday.
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
LOL. Beat me to it!
Oops.
Eh. We’ve done worse.
Of course Democrats could spin this story as 'America nukes Japan again'!
Japanese nuclear power reactors have killed more people than US nuclear subs
Not the first time.
We had to do that in response to the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor.
And spewed more radiation into the environment than any US reactor (almost)
Pot, meet kettle
Brace yourselves for a spate of articles attempting to frighten people away from nuclear energy.
Not Navair, but related to the GW story.
Click on pic for past Navair pings.
Post or FReepmail me if you wish to be enlisted in or discharged from the Navair Pinglist.
The only requirement for inclusion in the Navair Pinglist is an interest in Naval Aviation.
This is a medium to low volume pinglist.
Diesel-powered? Yeah, right.
Oil (no resemblence to diesel fuel) fired steam turbines.
Someone mentioned ‘nukin’ Japan...
NEVER FORGET...If there were NO Pearl Harbor, chances are pretty good there wouldn’t have been a Hiroshima..
As to referring the ‘Hawk’ as diesel powered, at least the idjuts didn’t call her a ‘battleship’....
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