Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Diplomats in Japan to be relocated if radiation threat rises: MOFA

Taipei, March 30 (CNA) Taiwan's diplomats stationed in Japan could be relocated to the western city of Osaka if the Tokyo area sees higher concentrations of radiation from a crippled nuclear power plant, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) official said Wednesday.

The ministry will relocate Taiwanese diplomats and other personnel posted in Tokyo and Yokohama to Osaka if the radiation level in the region exceeded 300 microsieverts per hour, Deputy Foreign Minister Thomas Ping-fu Hou said in a session of the Legislative Yuan's Foreign and National Defense Committee.

Hou was responding to an appeal by ruling Kuomintang Legislator Lin Yu-fang, who urged the MOFA to consider relocating Taiwan's diplomatic mission after 25 countries had done the same.

The MOFA official said the ministry has been monitoring the official reports of radiation contamination released by Japanese authorities and would move personnel if the threat grew.

A sievert (Sv) is a unit to evaluate the biological effect on human body. A microsievert is one millionth of a sievert.

A person typically would be exposed to 0.035 microsievert per hour in downtown Tokyo from background radiation. Radiation levels in the city were reported to be 0.120 microsievert an hour Saturday before falling to 0.115 microsievert an hour on Sunday, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Currently there are 110-120 people in Taiwan's representative offices in Tokyo and Yokohama and 20 in its Osaka office, according to Huang Ming-lung, secretary-general of the MOFA's Association of East Asian Relations. (By Chris Wang) Enditem/ls