Komsomolskaya Pravda: "Russia proposes increasing liquefied gas, coal supplies to Japan"
The government decided to offer increased liquefied gas and coal supplies to Japan at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The extraordinary meeting convened at Novo-Ogaryovo last Saturday to discuss the repercussions of the devastating earthquake and tidal wave in Japan. The first issue on the agenda was the explosion in the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant's reactor.
"Eleven nuclear generating units stopped working after the earthquake at 2:45 pm Tokyo time yesterday," Rosatom Chief Sergei Kiriyenko told Putin. "And it should be noted that automation continued to work normally, although the unit is old. The unit in question is the Fukushima Daiichi unit, which was built in 1971. It's 40 years old."
"This is a General Electric unit?" the prime minister asked.
"Yes," Kiriyenko continued. "The unit was built in the United States. It's 40 years old. There was an explosion at 3:32 pm Tokyo time. We received their data. We're getting data from the IAEA, directly from the Tokyo centre, and also from the World Association of Nuclear Operators. The data is identical. The Japanese data coincides with our own analysis that we conducted earlier."
"Is it objective data?" the prime minister asked.
"Yes, it's objective," Kiriyenko said. "It isn't a nuclear reaction. The explosion didn't occur in the reactor vessel or the containment, so the reactor vessel is intact by all accounts. But we still need to monitor the situation. We're monitoring it constantly."
"The early tsunami warning system was triggered at 8:47 am," First Deputy Emergencies Minister Ruslan Tsalikov said. "This is the system you tasked us with developing jointly with Rosgidromet and the Russian Academy of Sciences after the tsunami in Southeast Asia. We reported that the system was built and it worked yesterday. We received a signal at 8:47 am. The alert was sent at 8:52 am Moscow time. As soon as 9:40 am, the entire population was evacuated to a safe location – over 11,300 people from four towns in the Sakhalin Region."
Tsalikov added that the ministry is prepared to send rescue teams to Japan if the Japanese government requires additional assistance.
"Groups have been formed and properly equipped, including with protective equipment," he said.
"Have our partners (in Japan) already requested increased supplies?" Putin asked Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who is responsible for the energy sector.
"They've asked Gazprom to consider increasing LNG supplies," Sechin said. "We're working on this at the moment with Gazprom, and we're looking for ways to redirect two 100,000-ton fuel tankers to Japan that are performing other contracts. We could send up to 500,000 tons of liquefied natural gas this year if it's requested by our Japanese partners. We could negotiate with our Sakhalin-2 project partners and resolve the issue fairly quickly."
"We're willing to negotiate increased coal supplies, and we can quickly ramp up the supplies by three to four million tonnes," he added.
"Of course, we should do everything to help Japan in this situation," Putin said. "Everything must be done to be fully prepared to respond to such situations."
Alexander Gamov
