US Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy didn’t let a little radioactivity scare her away from visiting the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant Wednesday — and she even brought her son along on the tour.
Kennedy, wearing a yellow hardhat, face mask and white radiation suit with her name on the front, ventured inside a damaged reactor building to watch workers remove fuel-rod assemblies from a cooling pool.
“We stand ready to help in any way we can,” said Kennedy, 56, who was accompanied by her 21-year-old son, Jack Schlossberg, who had his own personalized radiation suit during the three-hour visit.
Kennedy, daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, drew crowds of smiling workers when she arrived at the facility.
“It’s good that she’s here because the situation at the plant needs to be reported worldwide,” said a man who works as a driver for plant workers after hitting his annual radiation-exposure limit in his former job at the site.
Kennedy said in a statement later that the US “will offer our experience and capabilities, in particular, toward the near-term resolution of ongoing water-contamination issues.”
The Kennedys were given a tour by Masuda Naohiro, an executive of Tokyo Electric Power Co., and were taken through the central control room for the Unit One and Unit Two reactors.
The nuclear power station was wrecked in March 2011, when a 9.0 magnitude earthquake triggered a massive tsunami that swamped the plant on the coast north of Tokyo, causing of one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters.
Radioactive water still poses a long-term risk at the plant, and experts say it could take more than 30 years to clear it up.
The plant also has been plagued by a series of accidents this year, including a 100-ton leak of radioactive water from storage tanks.
Row upon row of huge blue and gray tanks that store contaminated water are lined up while pink, white and purple azalea bushes are in full bloom nearby. Overgrown plants curl onto the streets while pipes snake across the site where cranes still stand.
Up to 5,000 workers are on site each day, according to a power company spokesman.
Overseas companies including some from the US are eager to get in on the cleanup work and the decommissioning of the six reactors at the wrecked plant, but most contracts have gone to Japanese companies.