FEATURE – Long distance between Iraq – Japan does not justify environmental fears.

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com – The long distance between Iraq and Japan does not justify environmental fears against Iraq , experts said on Saturday, following such fears from the arrival of nuclear radiation from the Japanese Fokoshima Dishy nuclear reaction or the Region.   “The UN Environment Program must issue information about the seriousness of nuclear radiations from the   Japanese Fokoshima Dishy Reactor and the size of their future dangers on West Asia and the whole world, if that radiation won’t be halted,” an Iraqi environment researcher said.   The Chairman of the Ongoing Environment Centre in Baghdad ’s Technological University , Miqdad al-Khatib, said: “the distance between Japan and Iraq is huge, and we don’t know the power of those radiations, in order to estimate their impact on the Region, though such state must be observed in order to take precautions, if the issue would necessitate that.”   The said Japanese Reactor is situated in eastern Japan , and is part of six nuclear reactors, operating under light water, generating a huge electric power, considered the largest power generating reactors in the whole world.   The recent earthquake that struck Japan and caused a huge 10-metre-high Tsunami, had seriously damaged 4 Japanese reactors, suffering from the halting of the cooling system in those reactors, thing that forced the related Japanese bodies to use sea water to cool up the reactors, in an attempt to minimize their temperature, in order to avoid a huge nuclear catastrophe.   “The role the Iraqi Environment body and other institutions, assigned to follow-up environment affairs at present is based on issuing messages on the non-existence of such threats, as there are no preliminary information about this issue,” Khatib said.   He expressed conviction that “ Japan would be able to halt those radiations, despite the size of destruction that covered different areas of East Japan , due to the potentials it possesses and its high care for human beings and their rights.”   Meanwhile, the Iraqi Ministry of Sciences & Technology had expressed conviction that the said Japanese nuclear radiations “won’t reach Iraq or its surrounding states, due to the far distance between Japan and this area, as well as possibility of decreasing the percentage of the radiations of the Japanese reactors.   “The distance between Japan and Iraq makes us satisfied regarding the non-arrival of those radiations to Iraq and its neighboring states, and we have reached such feeling through our following up of the state, along with estimations by international experts about possibility to control those radiations,” the Ministry’s Undersecretary and Chairman of the Iraqi National Committee for Nuclear Power, Fuad al-Moussawi said.   FT / SKH