WC costs 1.06 Crores(Highest) only in Chennai

CHENNAI: When the World Cup euphoria is over, and the Board of Cricket Control in India sits down to square away the accounts, they will have to set aside Rs 1.60 crore to Chennai police. That's the bill for all the anti-aircraft guns, crouching commandos, and hovering choppers deployed by the city police during Chennai matches. "We have prepared the bills to be sent to BCCI," a police officer said.

Following the terror threat, city police prepared a detailed bandobust scheme to give extensive security for the players during the matches. The players were escorted to the hotel from Chenani airport by armed policemen in a tourist bus. The security at the hotel was also tight. One whole floor was cordoned off by the police where the players were stayed. Players had the cautious eyes of cops watching over them even during net practice.

City police arrived at the figure of Rs 1.6 crore based on the number of policemen deployed inside and outside the stadium for player security. This included armed policemen escorting the players from the hotel to the stadium, as well as those who provided security in the hotel.

For the Indian Premier League (IPL) matches conducted in MAC Stadium in 2010, city police had collected Rs 1.06 crore from IPL office bearers. "This is routine for the city police. For the world cup, we will collect the money from BCCI," city police commissioner T Rajendran told TOI.

Five international cricket matches including the India - West Indies match was held in the MAC Stadium, apart from a practice match held prior to the world cup, which started on March 19, 2011. During the India - West Indies match, city police roped in coast guard and defence personnel for security. The defence personnel were armed with anti-aircraft guns and placed inside the stadium premises. "The sharp shooters were there to quickly bring down suspicious aircraft flying above," a police officer said.

Philippines detects radiation from Japan

MANILA (AFP) - Small amounts of radiation from Japan's damaged nuclear plant have been detected in the Philippines, the government said Tuesday, while emphasising the traces posed no danger to humans.

"We have detected the isotopes, but we would like to ask the public not to panic," Tina Cerbolis, a spokeswoman for the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute, told AFP.

"These are very tiny amounts in the air."

The institute released an advisory notice Tuesday saying the radiation was from Japan's nuclear power plant at Fukushima, which has been leaking since being damaged by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

"Environment radiation monitoring around the world, including (in) the Philippines has detected very tiny amounts of radioactive isotopes, which appeared to be coming from the Fukushima nuclear power plant and which pose no human health hazards," the advisory said.

China and South Korea, which are nearer to Japan, also reported on Tuesday that small amounts of radioactive iodine-131 had been detected in their territories, while similarly warning they were not harmful to humans.

The nearest major Philippine coastline to the stricken plant is about 2,500 kilometres (1,500 miles) to its southwest, with the Philippine capital Manila around 500 kilometres further.

Highly toxic plutonium is Seeping out from Japan's Nuclear Plants

OSAKA: Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Tuesday said his government is in a "state of maximum alert" over the crisis at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, Jiji Press reported.

Kan told a lower house budget committee meeting that the situation "continues to be unpredictable" and that the government "will tackle the problem while in a state of maximum alert," Jiji reported.

Radiation worries have disrupted efforts to restart the cooling system of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which was battered by a huge earthquake and tsunami on March 11 that left more than 28,000 people dead or missing.

Highly toxic plutonium is seeping from the damaged nuclear power plant in Japan's tsunami disaster zone into the soil outside, officials said Tuesday, further complicating the delicate operation to stabilize the overheated facility.

Plutonium has been detected in small amounts at several spots outside the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant for the first time, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. Safety officials said the amounts were not a risk to humans but support suspicions that dangerously radioactive water is leaking from damaged nuclear fuel rods — a worrying development in the race to bring the power plant under control.

``The situation is very grave,'' Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters Tuesday. ``We are doing our utmost efforts to contain the damage.'' A tsunami spawned by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake March 11 destroyed the power systems needed to cool the nuclear fuel rods in the complex, 140 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo. Since then, three of the complex's six reactors are believed to have partially melted down, and emergency crews have grappled with everything from malfunctioning pumps to dangerous spikes in radiation that have sent workers fleeing.

Radiation seeping from the plant has made its way into produce, raw milk and even tap water as far away as Tokyo, prompting some nations to halt imports from the region. Residents within a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius of the plant have been urged to leave or stay indoors. The troubles have eclipsed Pennsylvania's 1979 crisis at Three Mile Island, when a partial meltdown raised fears of widespread radiation release. But it is still well short of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which killed at least 31 people with radiation sickness, raised long-term cancer rates and spewed radiation across much of the northern hemisphere.

A series of missteps and accidents, meanwhile, have raised questions about the handling of the disaster, with the government revealing growing frustration with TEPCO. The Yomiuri daily newspaper reported that the government was considering temporarily nationalizing the troubled nuclear plant operator, but Edano and TEPCO officials denied holding any such discussions.

The nuclear crisis has complicated the government's ability to address the humanitarian situation facing hundreds of thousands left homeless by the twin disasters. The official number of dead surpassed 11,000 on Tuesday, police said, and the final figure is expected to top 18,000.

The urgent mission to stabilize the Fukushima plant has been fraught with setbacks. Workers succeeded last week in reconnecting some parts of the plant to the power grid. But as they pumped water into units to cool the reactors down, they discovered pools of contaminated water in numerous spots, including the basements of several buildings and in tunnels outside them. The contaminated water has been emitting radiation exposures more than four times the amount the government considers safe for workers and must be pumped out before electricity can be restored to the cooling system. That has left officials struggling with two crucial but sometimes-contradictory efforts: pumping in water to keep the fuel rods cool and pumping out — and then safely storing — contaminated water.

Nuclear safety official Hidehiko Nishiyama called it ``delicate work.'' He acknowledged that cooling the reactors took precedence over concerns about leakage. ``The removal of the contaminated water is the most urgent task now, and hopefully we can adjust the amount of cooling water going in,'' he said, adding that workers were building makeshift dikes with sandbags to keep contaminated water from seeping into the soil outside.

The discovery of plutonium, released from fuel rods only when temperatures are extremely high, confirms the severity of the damage, Nishiyama said. Of the five soil samples showing plutonium, two appeared to be coming from leaking reactors while the rest were likely the result of years of nuclear tests that left trace amounts of plutonium in many places around the world, TEPCO said.

Plutonium is a heavy element that doesn't readily combine with other elements, so it is less likely to spread than some of the lighter, more volatile radioactive materials detected around the site, such as the radioactive forms of cesium and iodine. ``The relative toxicity of plutonium is much higher than that of iodine or cesium but the chance of people getting a dose of it is much lower,'' says Robert Henkin, professor emeritus of radiology at Loyola University's Stritch School of Medicine.

``Plutonium just sits there and is a nasty actor.'' When plutonium decays, it emits what is known as an alpha particle, a relatively big particle that carries a lot of energy. When an alpha particle hits body tissue, it can damage the DNA of a cell and lead to a cancer-causing mutation. Plutonium also breaks down very slowly, so it remains dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.

``If you inhale it, it's there and it stays there forever,'' said Alan Lockwood, a professor of Neurology and Nuclear Medicine at the University at Buffalo and a member of the board of directors of Physicians for Social Responsibility, an advocacy group.