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Tokyo • Criticism of the Japanese government's handling of the crisis at a radiation-spewing nuclear power plant increased Saturday. A new poll indicated three-quarters of the people disapprove, and a key adviser quit in protest.
A Kyodo News service poll released Saturday showed that Prime Minister Naoto Kan's support ratings were plunging. The poll reported that 76 percent of the respondents think Kan is not exercising sufficient leadership in handling the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear triple crisis, up from 63.7 percent in a survey in late March.
It also showed 23.6 percent of respondents think Kan should resign immediately, up from 13.8 percent in the previous survey. The nationwide telephone survey of 1,010 people eligible to vote was conducted Friday and Saturday. No margin of error was provided.
Toshiso Kosako, a professor at the University of Tokyo's graduate school and an expert on radiation exposure, announced late Friday that he was stepping down as a government adviser over what he lambasted as unsafe, slipshod measures. Kan appointed Kosako after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami struck northeastern Japan on March 11. The disaster left 26,000 people dead or missing and damaged several reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, setting off the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986.
In a tearful news conference, Kosako said he could not stay and allow the government to set what he called improper radiation limits of 20 millisieverts a year for elementary schools in areas near the plant.
"I cannot allow this as a scholar," he said. "I feel the government response has been merely to bide time."
Kosako also criticized the government as lacking in transparency in disclosing radiation levels around the plant, and as improperly raising the limit for radiation exposure for plant workers, Kyodo reported.
The prime minister defended the government's response as proper.
"We welcome different views among our advisers," Kan told parliament Saturday in response to an opposition legislator's questions.
A government advisory position is highly respected in Japan, and it is extremely rare for an academic to resign to protest government policy.
The science and education ministry has repeatedly defended the 20-millisievert limit for radiation exposure as safe.
Workers in the U.S. nuclear industry are allowed an upper limit of 50 millisieverts per year. A typical individual might absorb 6 millisieverts a year from natural and manmade sources such as X-rays.