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High radiation detected at Japan's Fukushima plant Press Trust Of India Posted on Mar 27, 2011 at 12:25pm IST Fukushima: Japanese authorities on Sunday detected radioactivity 10 million times higher than normal in water in one of the six reactors at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant forcing evacuation of workers, as the government warned that the crisis was far from over. The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), said the radioactive materials tested 10 million times more than the usual level in water at the No.2 reactor complex, over two weeks after the devastating magnitude-9 quake and tsunami struck...

Saturday, March 26, 2011 Hard To Tell When Nuclear Crisis Would End: Edano TOKYO (Kyodo)--Japan's top government spokesman Yukio Edano said Saturday he finds it difficult to predict when the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant would end. In an attempt to enhance the government's capacity to address the nuclear problems since the March 11 killer earthquake and tsunami, the chief Cabinet secretary said Sumio Mabuchi, a former minister of land, infrastructure, transport and tourism, has become Prime Minister Naoto Kan's special adviser. Mabuchi, who replaced Manabu Terata, was appointed to mainly be in charge of dealing...

Saturday, March 26, 2011 Freshwater Injected, High-Radiation Water Leaks In Nuke Crisis TOKYO (Kyodo)--Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Friday it has begun injecting freshwater into the No. 1 and No. 3 reactor cores at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to enhance cooling efficiency, although highly radioactive water was found leaking possibly from both reactors as well as the No. 2 reactor. The latest efforts to bring the troubled reactors at the plant under control are aimed at preventing crystallized salt from seawater already injected from forming a crust on the fuel rods and hampering smooth water circulation, thus diminishing...

FUKUSHIMA: Reactor Core #3 Is Probably Damaged; Radiation May Increase; Japan Advises Locals To Flee Gus Lubin Mar. 25, 2011, 4:18 AM Reactor core #3 is probably damaged, Japan's nuclear safety agency said Friday following the hospitalization of several plant workers yesterday. Elevated radiation could be coming from a damaged reactor core or from cooling water. Either way radiation could increase. Spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama told a press conference: ''At present, our monitoring data suggest the (No. 3) reactor retains certain containment functions, but there is a good chance that the reactor has been damaged," according to Kyodo. The government is...

TOKYO – Japanese nuclear safety officials said Friday that they suspect that the reactor core at one unit of the troubled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant may have breached, raising the possibility of more severe contamination to the environment. "It is possible that somewhere at the reactor may have been damaged," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the nuclear safety agency. But he added that "our data suggest the reactor retains certain containment functions," implying that the damage may have occurred in Unit 3's reactor core but that it was limited.

Thursday, March 24, 2011 3 Workers Exposed To High Radiation, 2 Sustain Possible Burns TOKYO (Kyodo)--Three workers were exposed to high-level radiation Thursday while laying cable at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and two of them were taken to hospital due to possible radiation burns to their feet, the nuclear safety agency and the plant operator said. The three men in their 20s and 30s were exposed to radiation amounting to 173 to 180 millisieverts at around 12:10 p.m. while laying cable underground at the No. 3 reactor's turbine building. The two hospitalized are workers of plant operator Tokyo...

Restoration Under Way At Nuke Plant, Radiation Fear Spread To Tokyo TOKYO (Kyodo)--Work to restore power and key cooling functions was disrupted again Wednesday at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after smoke caused workers to evacuate, while fear of radioactive pollution spread to Tokyo with an alert not to give tap water to infants. The plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501) said it learned at around 4:20 p.m. that black smoke was seen rising at the No. 3 reactor building, leading to evacuation of workers from the four troubled reactors, but added about an hour later that it...

UPDATE AS OF 2 P.M. EDT, SATURDAY, MARCH 19: Radiation doses at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant continue to decrease. Radiation dose rates at the site boundary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant ranged from 1 millirem to 3 millirem per hour on March 18. Eighteen locations were monitored in a 30-kilometer to 60-kilometer radius of the plant. The highest radiation dose rate at any of those locations was 14 millirem per hour. Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) is installing high voltage cables from a nearby transmission line to reactors 1 and 2 at Fukushima Daiichi. Power is...

UPDATE AS OF 10:00 A.M. EDT, SATURDAY, MARCH 19: At a March 19 news conference, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said that sea water injection is continuing at reactors 1, 2 and 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Preparations were being made to spray water into the used fuel pool at reactor 4, and an unmanned vehicle sprayed more than 1,500 gallons of water over seven hours into the used fuel pool at reactor 3, Edano said. He also said he believed that the situation at the reactor 3 fuel pool is stabilizing. Some reactor cooling capacity...

ASIA NEWSMARCH 19, 2011. Bid to 'Protect Assets' Slowed Reactor Fight By NORIHIKO SHIROUZU, PHRED DVORAK, YUKA HAYASHI and ANDREW MORSE TOKYO—Crucial efforts to tame Japan's crippled nuclear plant were delayed by concerns over damaging valuable power assets and by initial passivity on the part of the government, people familiar with the situation said, offering new insight into the management of the crisis. Meanwhile, a regulator who was inspecting the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power complex when the quake hit offered The Wall Street Journal one of the first eyewitness accounts of the havoc at the site, describing how the temblor took...

TOKYO (MNI) - Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) has succeeded Saturday in restarting an emergency diesel generator and resuming the cooling functions in Reactors 4 and 5 in its Fukushima nuclear power facility as work continued to bring power to the other reactors. Reactors 4 and 5 at the plant are set away from the other four reactors, which sustained the most damage in the massive quake and tsunamis on March 11. Meanwhile, workers have succeeded in attaching a power cable to the crisis-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant and are now working inside to ensure success when they switch on...

UPDATE AS OF 11:20 A.M. EDT, FRIDAY, MARCH 18: Reactors 1, 2 and 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are in stable condition, with workers continuing to provide seawater cooling into the reactors. Containment integrity is believed to be intact on reactors 1, 2 and 3, and containment building pressures are elevated but are within design limits. Site radiation doses have been decreasing since March 16. Radiation dose rates are fluctuating based on some of the relief operations, such as adding cooling water to the used fuel pools. Recent readings at the plant boundary are about 2 millirem...

MARCH 18, 2011 U.S. and Tokyo Spar on Depth of Crisis After Its Dire Warning Exposes Split, Washington Boosts Ability to Gather Information on Radiation Levels and Plants By JONATHAN WEISMAN And STEPHEN POWER WASHINGTON—U.S. officials stood by their dire warnings about the risks posed by radiation leaking from a crippled Japanese nuclear complex, but after challenges from Japanese regulators conceded their information is "inconclusive." U.S. officials said Thursday they were ramping up their ability to collect their own information about radiation levels and the condition of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The Energy Department has delivered to Japan...

http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20110318D17JFA19.htm Friday, March 18, 2011 Efforts To Cool Spent Nuclear Fuel Seen Having Limited Impact TOKYO (Nikkei)--Self-Defense Forces helicopters and police water cannons sprayed water on a crippled nuclear reactor Thursday in a desperate attempt to stop the overheating of spent fuel rods, but a more effective cooling method is needed to contain the situation. Separately, workers have been scrambling to restore power at the plant by installing cables connected to Tohoku Electric Power Co.'s (9506) power grid. SDF helicopters dropped a total of about 30 tons of water in four trips on the Fukushima Daiichi power plant's No. 3...

If there is one person outside Japan who knows what the crisis workers at the Fukushima nuclear plant are going through now it is 64-year-old Andriy Chudinov. One of the first Chornobyl trouble-shooters to get to the disaster site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986 and a rarity in that he survived, Chudinov looks back on those traumatic events with calmness, sadness and resignation. He generously applauds the workers who are fighting to bring Japan’s quake-damaged nuclear reactors under control. “These are good guys. After all, they have had it even worse than we did. They had a...

New Power Line Installed At Fukushima Daiichi Plant: Govt TOKYO (Nikkei)--Japanese officials have installed cables to supply electricity from Tohoku Electric Power Co.'s (9506) power grid to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a step they hope will help inject water more efficiently into the facility's crippled reactors that are at the center of Japan's nuclear crisis, the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said at a news conference Thursday night. Officials will try to connect the cable to the plant's No. 2 reactor on Friday, the agency said. The No. 2 reactor's containment vessel was partly damaged in its...

Reuter's Breaking Headline only at this time...

High temperatures inside the building that houses the plant's No. 4 reactor may have caused fuel rods sitting in a pool to ignite or explode, the plant's owner said. By Tuesday afternoon, Edano said radiation readings -- which had reached dangerously high levels at the plant earlier -- had decreased. "We have to monitor the situation closely, but the high concentration of radioactive material is not emitting constantly from the No. 4 reactor right now," he said. Edano said readings at the gate at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday (2:30 am. ET) were 596.4 microsieverts per hour -- compared to a high...

Loud noises were heard at Fukushima Daiichi 2 at 6.10am this morning. A major component beneath the reactor may be damaged. Confirmation of loud sounds this morning came from the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA). It noted that “the suppression chamber may be damaged.” It is not clear that the sounds were explosions. Also known as the torus, this large doughnut-shaped structure sits in the centre of the reactor building at a lower level than the reactor. It contains a very large body of water to which steam can be directed in emergency situations. The steam then condenses and...

Along with reliable sources such as the IAEA and WNN updates, there is an incredible amount of misinformation and hyperbole flying around the internet and media right now about the Fukushima nuclear reactor situation. In the BNC post Discussion Thread – Japanese nuclear reactors and the 11 March 2011 earthquake (and in the many comments that attend the top post), a lot of technical detail is provided, as well as regular updates. But what about a layman’s summary? How do most people get a grasp on what is happening, why, and what the consequences will be? Below I reproduce a...