An official in a full radiation protection suit scans an evacuated woman and her dog with a Geiger counter to check radiation levels in Koriyama city in Fukushima prefecture, about 60 km west from the crisis-hit nuclear plant, on Wednesday. Ken Shimizu / Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON / JAKARTA / CARACAS - US President Barack Obama on Tuesday defended the use of nuclear energy despite the calamity in Japan where a nuclear power plant leaked radiation in the wake of a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

The president told Pittsburgh television station KDKA that all energy sources have their downsides but that the United States - which gets 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear power - needs to look at the full array of them.

The president said facilities in the US are closely monitored and built to withstand earthquakes, even though nothing is failsafe. Proponents of nuclear power fear their efforts to win over the public to the safety of their industry have been dealt a tremendous blow by the disaster in Japan.

"I think it is very important to make sure that we are doing everything we can to insure the safety and effectiveness of the nuclear facilities that we have," the president said in a second TV interview on Tuesday, with KOAT in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

"We've got to budget for it. I've already instructed our nuclear regulatory agency to make sure that we take lessons learned from what's happening in Japan, and that we are constantly upgrading how we approach our nuclear safety in this country," he said.

The president said he's been assured that any radiation release from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant along Japan's northeastern coast would dissipate before reaching the US.

At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said that the US was not recommending that US citizens leave Tokyo over radiation concerns.

Carney said that US officials have determined that its citizens in Japan should follow the same guidance Japan is giving to its own citizens.

Nonetheless, Austria said it is moving its embassy from Tokyo to Osaka, and France recommended that its citizens leave the Japanese capital.

The US embassy in Tokyo has told Americans to avoid traveling to Japan.

Plants 'will be safe'

Indonesia says four nuclear reactors it plans to build near a volatile fault will be safe and more modern than the Japanese plant critically damaged by an earthquake and tsunami.

Ferhat Aziz, a spokesman for Indonesia's Nuclear Energy, says the nation of 237 million badly needs alternative energy sources.

The four reactors will be built on Bangka Island by 2022. Bangka is near Sumatra, the heavily populated island where a 2004 earthquake caused the massive tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen nations.

Aziz insists the Indonesian reactors will be safe, saying they will use technology 40 years more modern than the Fukushima plant leaking radiation in Japan.

Both countries are on the "Rim of Fire", an arc of active faults encircling the Pacific Basin.

Venezuela suspends program

Venezuela is suspending development of a nuclear power program following the catastrophe in Japan, President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday.

The South American country had hoped that a planned Russian-built nuclear power plant would provide 4,000 megawatts and be ready in about a decade.

But Chavez said events in Japan after last Friday's earthquake and the tsunami that followed it showed the risks associated with nuclear power were too great.

"For now, I have ordered the freezing of the plans we have been developing ... for a peaceful nuclear program," he said.

"I do not have the least doubt that this (the potential for a nuclear catastrophe in Japan) is going to alter in a very strong way the plans to develop nuclear energy in the world."

Venezuela signed a deal with Russia last October that moved Chavez's government a step closer to its longtime goal of developing nuclear power like Brazil and Argentina.

AP-Reuters

(China Daily 03/17/2011 page11)