Photo: Vima Newspaper
Greek nationals in Tokyo were invited to return to Greece or to evacuate to at least 500 km away from the Fukoshima nuclear plant. The Greek Embassy in Tokyo has sent an e-mail message, said Soula Ketenidou who lives in Tokyo in an interview on Radio Vima. The e-mail says that the liquid in the fourth reactor of the NPP is low and a new explosion is possible, something that will cause chain explosions in the remaining reactors.
According to other Greeks who have returned from Tokyo already, the situation at the airports in Tokyo and Osaka is normal and there is no panic. The Greek Foreign Ministry confirmed that it urged the evacuation from Japan. Deputy Foreign Minister Dimitris Dolis announced that the Greek state provides air tickets to all Greek citizens who have found themselves in Japan these days. According to diplomatic office data, 130 Greeks live in the remote Asian country that suffered from first the devastating earthquake and then from the unprecedented tsunami, which destroyed the cooling systems of the Fukoshima nuclear power plant and actually has brought the country to the brink of nuclear disaster.
"There are no safe nuclear power plants," said in turn the bio-pathologist Maria Sotiropoulou, president of the Greek medical organization against the nuclear threat. In her opinion, long-term health effects on the Japanese people will be very serious. She said she doubted the veracity of the International Atomic Energy Agency official statements.
Although nuclear power plants meet about 30 percent of the European Union energy needs, nuclear energy has never been Greeks’ favourite. They were among the strongest advocates of the closing down of the first and second blocks of Kozloduy NPP and now Greek media constantly focus on the "nuclear ring" around Greece and the threat it poses to the ecology of the Balkan Peninsula.