IAEA radiation team arrives in Fukushima

A team of radiation experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency has visited Fukushima Prefecture to exchange views with members of the Japanese government decontamination task force. The 12-member IAEA team has been in Japan since Friday to give advice on ways to effectively clean up radioactive substances, at the request of Environment Minister Goshi Hosono. The team includes IAEA experts on radiation protection and radioactive waste as well as Russian experts with knowledge of the 1986 Chernobyl accident, Japan''s (NHK World) website reported. The team arrived in the prefecture on Sunday morning and exchanged views with prefectural officials and members of the government decontamination task force. The head of the Japanese task force, Masaru Moriya, said it is essential to make living space safe through decontamination, as tens of thousands of people are still living in shelters. Moriya said he hopes members of the IAEA team will give advice from a technical viewpoint based on their knowledge of and experience in decontamination. The IAEA team''s leader, Juan Carlos Lentijo, said the team will inspect demonstration experiments for decontamination and try to make a useful report to Japan and the rest of the world. Lentijo is general director at Spain''s nuclear regulatory authority. The team will later visit Minami Soma City to inspect areas for the government''s model decontamination projects. For the remaining 2 days, the team will also visit Date City and Iitate Village.