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Actual Test Was Success Japan developed and successfully tested an atomic bomb three days prior to the end of the war. She destroyed unfinished atomic bombs, secret papers and her atomic bomb plans only hours before the advance units of the Russian Army moved into Konan, Korea, site of the project. Japanese scientists who developed the bomb are now in Moscow, prisoners of the Russians. They were tortured by their captors seeking atomic "know-how." The Konan area is under rigid Russian control. They permit no American to visit the area. Once, even after the war, an American B-29 Superfortress en...

The government on Thursday advised Koreans living or traveling in Japan to stay 80 km away from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. "The U.S. and the U.K. are recommending that their citizens who live within 80 km of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant evacuate the area. We are doing the same," Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan told reporters. Right after a massive earthquake hit Japan last Friday, the government advised Koreans to stay 20 to 30 km away from the plant. Amid fears of further radiation leaks, some countries are recommending their citizens leave Japan altogether and closing their...

Japan has asked nuclear superpower Russia to send a special radiation treatment ship used to decommission nuclear submarines to help in its fight to contain the world's worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl, Japanese media said late on Monday. Japanese engineers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have been forced to release radioactive waste water into the sea. At the same time they are resorting to desperate measures to contain the damage, such as using bath salts to try to locate the source of leaks at the crippled complex 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo. Three weeks after a 9.0...

Due to the Tohoku-Taiheiyou-Oki Earthquake which occurred on March 11th 2011, two TEPCO employees, who had been working at the turbine building of Unit 4 for site investigation, went missing. We had put all our strengths to search them, and approximately at 3:25 pm and at 3:53 pm, today, March 30th, 2011, those employees were found at the basement of the turbine building and we confirmed their death yesterday. We would like to offer our deep regret that our workers died while working at the plant and heartfelt condolences to the bereaved families. [Deceased Employees of TEPCO] Kazuhiko Kokubo (Age:...

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says there has been no change in the amount of radioactive water seeping from the Fukushima nuclear plant after a polymer absorbent was injected into a cracked pit. Tokyo Electric Power Company found on Saturday that contaminated water was leaking into the ocean from the 20-centimeter crack in the concrete pit. On Sunday, the utility firm used a polymer absorbent to try to stop the leak of radioactive water. The government's nuclear agency said the injection of the chemical began shortly after 1:40 PM, but it cannot confirm if there has been a decline...

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station says 3 of the plant's 6 reactors were shaken on March 11th by tremors exceeding forces they were designed to withstand. The Tokyo Electric Power Company, known as TEPCO, says reactor No.2 suffered the largest horizontal ground acceleration of 550 gals, which is 26 percent stronger than the reactor's design limit. TEPCO says the readings were 548 gals at the No.5 reactor, about 21 percent higher than its design limit; and 507 gals at the No.3 reactor, topping the capacity by about 15 percent. The power company says the strength of...

A U.S. simulation exercise conducted about 30 years ago of what would happen at a boiling-water reactor if all power sources were lost eerily matches what has unfolded at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. While the simulation demonstrated the dangers of losing all power sources, Japan's nuclear authorities took the optimistic position that power transmission lines and other power sources would be restored quickly. The simulation was conducted by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1981 and 1982. A report was later submitted to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which used the report's findings to establish safety regulations....

Russian veterans of nuclear disaster control stand ready to assist Japanese teams still fighting overheated reactors at the Fukushima plant As the catastrophe at the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant unfolds, Russia, with its proximity to Japan and vivid memories of the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl, is following developments more closely than most. The question on the minds of Russian experts, and much of the worldÂ’s population, is: how bad will this get before it gets better? The good news is that there appears to be no immediate threat of a Chernobyl-scale disaster for Japan and neighbouring countries, according to...

The mayor of Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, a city subject to a government directive for its residents to stay indoors to avoid radioactive fallout from a nuclear plant crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, has begun appealing to the world over the ''injustice'' of such an instruction. Speaking in a roughly 11-minute English-subtitled video posted on the video-sharing site Youtube on March 24, Katsunobu Sakurai said the government's directive has made life extremely difficult for local residents. ''Even volunteers and those delivering relief supplies have no choice but to enter (the city) at their own risk,'' said a grim-looking...

TOKYO – In planning their defense against a killer tsunami, the people running Japan's now-hobbled nuclear power plant dismissed important scientific evidence and all but disregarded 3,000 years of geological history, an Associated Press investigation shows. The misplaced confidence displayed by Tokyo Electric Power Co. was prompted by a series of overly optimistic assumptions that concluded the Earth couldn't possibly release the level of fury it did two weeks ago, pushing the six-reactor Fukushima Dai-ichi complex to the brink of multiple meltdowns. Instead of the reactors staying dry, as contemplated under the power company's worst-case scenario, the plant was overrun...

IAEA Briefing on Fukushima Nuclear Accident (27 March 2011, 13:30 UTC) 1. Current Situation The situation at the Fukushima Daiichi plant remains very serious. The restoration of off-site power continues and lighting is now available in the central control rooms of Units 1, 2 and 3. Also, fresh water is now being injected into the Reactor Pressure Vessels (RPVs) of all three Units. Radiation measurements in the containment vessels and suppression chambers of Units 1, 2 and 3 continued to decrease. White "smoke" continued to be emitted from Units 1 to 4. Pressure in the RPV showed a slight increase...

OSAKA (AFP) - Extremely high levels of radiation were detected in water leaking from reactor two of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, forcing the evacuation of workers, its operator said Sunday. A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said the level of radiation found in the leaked water in the turbine room was 10 million times higher than it should be for water inside the reactor, indicating damage to the fuel rods. "We detected 1,000 millisieverts per hour of radiation in a puddle of water at the reactor number two. This figure is 10 million times higher than water usually...

Amid the heroic efforts of workers fighting the crisis at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, reports are emerging about the shoddy safety management of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. Three workers were exposed to high doses of radiation at the turbine building for the No. 3 reactor. Two of them were taken to a Fukushima hospital before all three were transferred Friday to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba. "Safety management has long been lax at TEPCO's nuclear power plants," said a nuclear engineer who knows how TEPCO operates.

The level of radioactive iodine detected in seawater near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant was 1,250 times above the maximum level allowable, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Saturday, in a development that indicates contamination from the ruined reactors is spreading. Tokyo Electric Power Co. meanwhile admitted it neglected to alert workers when it detected high radiation in a reactor building nine days ago. The iodine-131 in the seawater was detected at 8:30 a.m. Friday, about 330 meters south of the plant's drain outlets. Previously, the highest amount recorded was about 100 times above the permitted level.

The experts were assigned to examine each nuclear power plant, but what they focused on was largely predetermined by NISA, based on such factors as geography and the historical record, according to a member of the group. For example, at the Hamaoka facility in Shizuoka prefecture, to the southwest of Tokyo, the reviewers were asked to look closely at the risks posed by both earthquakes and tsunamis. That power plant is located along a major fault line. But at Fukushima Daiichi, along the northeast coast, the review panel was instructed to focus on earthquakes because a major tsunami was considered...

A researcher said Saturday he had warned two years ago about the possible risk of a massive tsunami hitting a nuclear power plant in Japan, but Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant crippled by the March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami, had brushed off the warning. According to the researcher, Yukinobu Okamura, and the records of a government council where he made the warning, TEPCO asserted that there was flexibility in the quake resistance design of its plants and expressed reluctance to raise the assumption of possible quake damage citing a lack of sufficient...

The Fukushima Daiichi Incident 1. Plant Design 2. Accident Progression 3. Radiological Releases 4. Spent Fuel Pools 5. Sources of Information Dr. Matthias Braun PEPA4-G, AREVA-NP GmbH

TOKYO — New signs emerged on Friday that parts of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are so damaged and contaminated that it will be harder to bring the plant under control soon. [...] Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, mentioned damage to the reactor vessel on Friday as a possible explanation of how water in the adjacent containment building had become so radioactive. A senior nuclear executive who insisted on anonymity but has broad contacts in Japan said that there was a long vertical crack running down the side of the reactor vessel...

The hydrogen explosions that shattered the tops of two reactor buildings at the Fukushima 1 nuclear complex followed the venting of hydrogen and steam by plant operators desperate to prevent a far greater disaster: a high-pressure explosion of the primary reactor containment shell and radioactivity release, a former senior U.S. nuclear official concludes. [...] Bill Borchardt, NRC executive director for operations, was asked at an NRC meeting Monday whether the Fukushima Mark I units had hardened venting systems. "That we're not clear on. I'm not sure. I can't really answer that question." [...]

<p>Each day at the stricken Fukushima power plant seems to bring a new piece of troubling news—today, reports surfaced that three workers at the Fukushima plant had been hospitalized after radiation levels reported at the plant spiked to "10,000 times above normal." There were also reports that the No. 3 reactor vessel had been damaged, which if true would result in a serious leak of radiation at the only reactor at the site that contains the especially-toxic MOX fuel.</p>