Nearly three-quarters of Japanese companies support abandoning nuclear power after last year's Fukushima disaster, although a majority set the condition that alternative energy resources must be secured, a Reuters poll showed on Friday.

The poll offers fresh evidence of the deep public distrust of nuclear power, the role of which the government is reconsidering after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that wrecked the Fukushima nuclear plant, triggering a radiation crisis that caused mass evacuations and widespread contamination.

The radiation released in the first days of the Fukushima nuclear disaster was almost 2-1/2 times the amount first estimated by Japanese safety regulators, the operator of the crippled plant said in a report released on Thursday.

Tokyo Electric Power said its own analysis conducted over the past year put the amount of radiation released in the first three weeks of the accident at about one-sixth the radiation released during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Spikes in radiation caused by the Fukushima nuclear disaster were below cancer-causing levels in almost all of Japan, but infants in one town appear to be at a higher risk of developing thyroid cancer, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

In a preliminary report, independent experts said that people in two locations in Fukushima Prefecture may have received a radiation dose of 10-50 millisieverts (mSv) in the year after the accident at the power station operated by TEPCO.

Radiation doses received after the Fukushima nuclear accident last year were below international reference levels in all but two locations in Japan and below the level seen as "very small" in neighbouring countries, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

The preliminary report by independent experts found that, using conservative assumptions, people in two locations of relatively high exposure in Fukushima prefecture may have received a dose of 10-50 millisieverts (mSv) in the year after the accident at the power station operated by TEPCO.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) may have sold off land contaminated with chemical weapons and radioactive material buried at an RAF base in North-East Scotland, according to reports.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) is already investigating radioactive contamination at RAF Kinloss, believed to be from Second World War aircraft coated in radium and buried at the site.

JAIPUR: The department of telecommunication (DoT), government of India, in its letter to the state government has made it clear that the emission level from the cellphone towers in Jaipur is well within the limit and indicates that it poses no threat to human life.

Addressed to the chief secretary, the letter says, "Radiations in the city are within safe limits and absolutely follow the international standards". It added that no excessive radiations emitting from the towers were found by the DoT. GS Sandhu, principal secretary, urban development and housing confirmed the development. "We have received the communication from the DoT and it stated that radiations under the safe limit".

The overconfidence shown by Indian officials on nuclear safety is unfounded and alarming
MV Ramana, Physicist, Program On Science and Global Security, Princeton University

MUMBAI: In view of the growing number of mobile towers in villages, Maharashtra government will formulate guidelines for rural areas after studying effects of radiation. The urban development department has prepared a set of guidelines for which views and opinions of rural development, public health, medical education department were sought.

There have been complaints that people living in the vicinity of radio magnetic waves generated from the mobile towers are facing health hazards.

The Delhi high court on Wednesday slapped costs of `15,000 each on the city government and the DDA for their failure to file replies on a PIL seeking appropriate safety measures in Mayapuri scrap market following the 2010 radiation exposure incident.

Irked over the failure to file their responses on three different occasions since April 2011, a bench of Delhi HC Acting Chief Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw also summoned the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) vice-chairman and principal secretary of the environment ministry, Delhi government, on May 23, the next date of hearing.