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Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update (6 April 2011, 15:15 UTC) Japanese authorities have informed the IAEA that TEPCO has been authorized to begin injection of nitrogen into the primary containment vessel (PCV) of Unit 1 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Injection of nitrogen is intended to displace oxygen inside the containment vessel, thereby reducing a risk of explosion due to the combustible combination of hydrogen and oxygen. IAEA Briefing on Fukushima Nuclear Accident (6 April 2011, 14:00 UTC) Presentation: Summary of Reactor Status On Wednesday, 6 April 2011, the IAEA provided the following information on the current status of...

Japan seeks Russian help to end nuclear crisis By Chizu Nomiyama and Shinichi Saoshiro TOKYO | Mon Apr 4, 2011 6:32pm EDT TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan has asked nuclear superpower Russia to send a special radiation treatment ship used to decommission nuclear submarines as it fights 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...

Japan to Cover Reactor 1-4 With Special Cloth The Japanese government announced Sunday that reactors 1 through 4 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant will be covered with a special cloth to reduce the amount of radioactive particles being released into the atmosphere. A forty-five meter high frame will be constructed within a month or two to support the cloth covering the reactors. In waters around the plant, radioactive material has been detected in the Pacific Ocean some 40-kilometers away from the nuclear plant while contaminated seawater containing more than 3-thousand times the legal limit of iodine has been recorded....

(Update) Tokyo Electric Starts Dumping Low-Level Radioactive Water into Sea Fukushima, April 4 (Jiji Press)--Tokyo Electric Power Co. <9501> on Monday evening started dumping water tainted with low-level radiation at its stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan into the sea to secure space to store highly radioactive water. The amount of water to be released into the Pacific Ocean will total some 11,500 tons--10,000 tons currently stored at a nuclear waste processing facility and 1,500 tons in drainage pits at the plant's No. 5 and No. 6 rectors, the company said. It will take some five...

Editor's note: This is the second of two parts: Yesterday's segment shared Motorola's and Apple's experiences doing business with China. Click here to read it. Westinghouse Electric Co. is sharing important technical information about its next-generation nuclear reactors with China with the hope that it will create business -- and not a competitive monster. China has 13 nuclear reactors, 25 under construction, and many more planned, said Westinghouse spokesman Vaughn Gilbert. China will spend an estimated $120 billion during the next nine years, a sum expected to more than double by 2030. The Cranberry-based company says it's confident that in...

Chemical, sawdust, newspaper mix used to plug leak at nuclear plant By the CNN Wire Staff April 3, 2011 -- Updated 1015 GMT (1815 HKT) Tokyo (CNN) -- Workers on Sunday poured a chemical compound mixed with sawdust and newspaper into a crack at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility that's been a conduit for highly radioactive water leaking into the Pacific Ocean, a utility company official said. This follows an unsuccessful attempt a day earlier to use concrete to plug the 2-meter-deep (6.5-foot-deep), concrete-lined basin, where authorities had found water gushing directly into the sea via a roughly 20-centimeter...

Sunday, April 3, 2011 Govt Says Several Months May Be Required Before Radiation Leaks Stop TOKYO (Kyodo)--The government expects that several months may be required before radioactive particles stop being released from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, its top spokesman said Sunday. ''If we apply methods considered to be normal, I believe that it will be something like that,'' Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference, when asked whether at least several months would be required before the plant crippled by the devastating March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami is brought under control. ''While it may not be...

IAEA Briefing on Fukushima Nuclear Accident (2 April 2011, 12:00 UTC) Presentations: Summary of Reactor Status, 2 April 2011, 12.00 UTC On Saturday, 2 April 2011, the IAEA provided the following information on the current status of nuclear safety in Japan: 1.Current Situation Overall at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the situation remains very serious. In preparation for transferring water in the basement of the Unit 1 turbine building to the condenser, water in the condenser storage tank is being transferred to surge tank of the suppression pool since 31 March 03:00 UTC. Water in the trench was transferred to a...

APRIL 1, 2011, 2:35 P.M. ET. Energy Secretary Chu Says Reactor Core Is Damaged By STEPHEN POWER WASHINGTON—Japanese authorities are "making headway" in their effort to stabilize the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Friday. But radiation levels in at least one of the reactor buildings are "significant," and most of the core of one of the reactors has been damaged, he added. "There's still great concern" about the plant, Dr. Chu said to reporters at a breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor. "There's a lot of radioactivity in the reactor buildings, and that impedes...

URGENT: Gov't eyes injecting nitrogen into reactor vessels to prevent blasts TOKYO, April 1, Kyodo The government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. are considering injecting nitrogen into containment vessels of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant's reactors to prevent hydrogen explosions, government sources said Friday. ==Kyodo

Friday, April 1, 2011 Groundwater At Nuclear Plant 'Highly' Radiation-Contaminated: Tepco TOKYO (Kyodo)--More signs of serious radiation contamination in and near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were detected Thursday, with the latest data finding groundwater containing radioactive iodine 10,000 times the legal threshold and the concentration of radioactive iodine-131 in nearby seawater rising to the highest level yet. Radioactive material was confirmed from groundwater for the first time since the March 11 quake and tsunami hit the nuclear power plant on the Pacific coast, knocking out the reactors' key cooling functions. An official of the plant operator Tokyo Electric...

Japanese Plant Had Barebones Risk Plan By PHRED DVORAK And PETER LANDERS TOKYO—Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s disaster plans greatly underestimated the scope of a potential accident at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, calling for only one stretcher, one satellite phone and 50 protective suits in case of emergencies. Disaster-response documents for Fukushima Daiichi, examined by The Wall Street Journal, also contain few guidelines for obtaining outside help, providing insight into why Japan struggled to cope with a nuclear crisis after an earthquake and tsunami devastated the facility. The disaster plans, approved by Japanese regulators, offer guidelines for responding to smaller...

US Marines being sent to Japan for nuclear response 2011-03-31 11:36 by Olivia Hampton WASHINGTON, March 31, 2011 (AFP) - The US military on Wednesday ordered a Marine unit specializing in emergency nuclear response to deploy to Japan to assist local authorities in addressing the massive crisis, officials said. Some 155 Marines from the service's Chemical Biological Incident Response Force are scheduled to leave the United States on Thursday and arrive in Japan Friday, a US defense official told AFP. The CBIRF team, trained in identifying chemical agents, monitoring radiation levels and decontaminating personnel, would not participate in the frenzied...

Contaminated water at crippled nuke plant estimated at thousands of tons Workers at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant are now struggling to drain thousands of metric tons of radioactive water from the basements of its turbine buildings. According to the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)'s plan, the radioactive water that has accumulated in the turbine buildings is being pumped into condensers situated in the same structures. Condensers are devices that convert steam piped from the cores back into water. Six to 18 tons of radioactive water per hour has been pumped from the basement of the No....

Stricken nuclear plant faces staffing difficulties * * * The prolonged crisis at the quake-stricken nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture is increasingly wearing down front-line workers, as the exhausting and dangerous work shows no signs of letting up. Companies supplying the workers say safety fears have grown, particularly since three workers were exposed to high levels of radiation last Thursday from leaked water at the No. 3 reactor of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

Smoke Seen Rising from Fukushima No. 2 Nuke Plant Fukushima, March 30 (Jiji Press)--Tokyo Electric Power Co. <9501> said Wednesday smoke was seen rising from a building near a reactor of its Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power plant temporarily. Smoke was confirmed to be rising from the turbine building of the No. 1 reactor at around 5:56 p.m. (8:56 a.m. GMT), the operator of the plant said, adding that it could no longer observe any smoke. Officials said the smoke apparently came from a circuit breaker for a pump used to send water condensed from dews on turbine pipes. No...

Japan on 'maximum alert' over nuclear plant by Huw Griffith Tue Mar 29, 4:01 pm ET SENDAI, Japan (AFP) – Japan said Tuesday it was on "maximum alert" over a crippled nuclear plant where radioactive water has halted repair work and plutonium has been found in the soil. The earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan's northeast coast and left about 28,000 dead or missing also knocked out reactor cooling systems at the Fukushima plant, which has leaked radiation into the air and sea. Prime Minister Naoto Kan conceded the situation at the coastal atomic power station remained "unpredictable" and pledged...

Robots designed to deal with nuclear accidents await duty in Europe while Japan asks: Where are ours? By Brian Vastag, Sunday, March 27, 8:09 PM Inside a nondescript warehouse south of Mannheim, Germany, a dozen robots, ranging in size from a low-slung inspection bot no bigger than a toy wagon to a 22-ton Caterpillar excavator, stand ready to respond to a nuclear emergency. With their electronics hardened to withstand radiation, the versatile machines can handle fuel rods as well as monitor doses that would kill a human engineer. A similar robotic quick-response squad is housed near the Chinon nuclear power...

Plutonium detected in soil at Fukushima nuke plant TOKYO, March 29, Kyodo Plutonium has been detected in soil at five locations at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Monday. The operator of the nuclear complex said that the plutonium is believed to have been discharged from nuclear fuel at the plant, which was damaged by the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami. While noting that the concentration level does not pose a risk to human health, the utility firm said it will strengthen monitoring on the environment in and around the nuclear plant. Meanwhile,...

Japan asks French nuclear sector for help Japan has asked the French nuclear sector for help in dealing with the Fukushima nuclear plant for the first time since disaster struck earlier this month, French Energy Minister Eric Besson said on Monday. Skip related content This reflects growing unease about efforts by the Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) to control the six-reactor Fukushima Daiichi complex after it was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami. "Japan explicitly asked EDF, Areva and France's nuclear research body (CEA) to help them," Besson said adding this was the first time Japan had done so.