Toshio Okazaki, the administrative vice minister for science and technology, has tendered his resignation, officials said.

Prime Minister Keizo Obuichi was expected to accept.

Caption: Clean food and a job is all Suzuki-san wants A local woman inspects her soybean field 06 October, 1999 following Japan's worst nuclear accident which occured near her residence at Tokaimura village, Ibaraki prefecture, 100km north east of Tokyo. She will not be harvesting her crop of soybean due to the fear of radiation contamination. Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno - Copyright AFP Photos

"He has determined that a new personnel lineup is necessary to rehabilitate the country's science and technology administration" after the accidents, said the country's science and technology minister, Hirofumi Nakasone.

"Vice minister Okazaki is very talented and indispensible for the science and technology agency but I will have to respect his wishes," he told reporters.

The main opposition Democratic Party demanded Nakasone also take responsibility for the failures.

"The government should not shirk its own responsibility by simply chopping off the administrative vice minister," said Shigefumi Matsuzawa, the party's chief policy coordinator on science.

The accidents have dented Japan's pride as one of the world's safest and most scientifically advanced nations.

On September 30, a leak at a uranium processing plant at Tokaimura, some 120 kilometers (75 miles) northeast of Tokyo, exposed at least 69 people to radiation and forced more than 320,000 local residents to shelter at home for more than a day.

The accident happened when three workers illegally used steel buckets to pour uranium into a precipitation tank, setting off a critical chain reaction.

One of the workers received 17,000 times the average annual safe dose of radiation and remains in critical condition.

On Monday, aerospace technicians had to explode a 230 million dollar H-2 rocket carrying a broadcast satellite when it veered off course after an engine failure after lift-off.

Okazaki joined the science and technology agency in 1966 after graduating from Osaka University and was made vice minister last year after serving as head of the atomic energy bureau and deputy vice minister.

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