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Stabilizing reactors by year's end may be impossible: Tepco Kyodo Stabilizing the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant by the end of the year may be impossible, senior officials at Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Sunday, throwing a monkey wrench into plans to let evacuees return to their homes near the plant. The confirmation of core meltdowns hitting reactors 1 through 3, accompanied by breaches to the critical pressure vessels that hold the nuclear fuel, has led officials to believe that "there will be a major delay to work" to contain the situation, one official said. Tepco, the...

Radioactivity in No. 1 Reactor Basement Water 10,000 Times Normal Fukushima, May 30 (Jiji Press)--Tokyo Electric Power Co. <9501> said Monday that the amounts of radioactive materials in water at a reactor building of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant were about 10,000 times the normal levels for water inside a nuclear reactor. The water, recently found in the basement of the No. 1 reactor building of the nuclear power plant, contained 30,000 becquerels of iodine-131 per cubic centimeter, 2.5 million becquerels of cesium-134 and 2.9 million becquerels of cesium-137. On May 13, Tokyo Electric Power employees entered the...

70,000 more should evacuate after Fukushima: Watchdog AFP | May 24, 2011, 05.30pm IST PARIS: Seventy thousand people living beyond the 20-kilometre no-go zone around Fukushima should be evacuated because of radioactivity deposited by the crippled nuclear plant, a watchdog said. Updating its assessment of the March 11 disaster, France's Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) highlighted an area northwest of the plant that lies beyond the 20-km (12 mile) zone whose inhabitants have already been evacuated. Radioactivity levels in this area range from several hundred becquerels per square metre to thousands or even several million bequerels per...

Radioactive debris hampers efforts to cool reactor The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is facing the new challenge of removal of highly radioactive debris in order to proceed with efforts to stabilize the Number 3 reactor. Tokyo Electric Power Company on Friday found debris releasing 1,000 millisieverts per hour in an area south of the Number 3 reactor building. It is the highest level of radiation found in debris left outside. Materials emitting 900 millisieverts of radiation per hour have also been found in the plant's compound. These materials are believed to be part of the large...

Kan halted seawater injection / Operations stopped for 55 minutes over fears of 're-criticality' The Yomiuri Shimbun The injection of seawater into the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant was stopped for nearly an hour soon after the Great East Japan Earthquake, at Prime Minister Naoto Kan's request, government sources have revealed. The prime minister feared that injecting seawater might cause re-criticality to occur inside the reactor, the sources said. Criticality refers to a self-sustaining chain reaction of nuclear fission in uranium atoms. Re-criticality is when a system achieves criticality despite mechanisms being in place...

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Friday that it found additional technical issues with Westinghouse Electric Corp.'s new AP1000 nuclear power reactor design, prompting critics to call for a suspension of the agency's license review process. The commission raised questions regarding the shield building situated over the reactor in the AP1000 design, as well as the peak accident pressures expected within the containment unit. The agency said it would consider what impact the technical issues will have on scheduled AP1000-related application reviews after its staff examines Westinghouse's response. As far back as October 2009, the commission had raised concerns about...

Gov't crisis center kept in dark over data on radiation dispersal TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The government crisis management center was not informed about data on the predicted dispersal of radioactive substances caused by the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, top government spokesman Yukio Edano said Friday. Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano told a news conference that the premier's office received a fax of the computer-simulated estimates about the dispersal of radioactive materials in the early hours of March 12, a day after the powerful earthquake and tsunami that triggered the nuclear crisis, but this remained in the hands...

Over 100,000 Tons of Polluted Water Seen at Fukushima N-Plant Tokyo, May 18 (Jiji Press)--The total amount of radiation-contaminated water at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s <9501> crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan is estimated to top 100,000 tons, the company said Wednesday. The amount includes some 7,500 tons of water that have already been removed from the No. 2 and No. 3 reactor buildings, company officials said. At present, the combined amount of radioactive water at the power plant's No. 1 to No. 6 reactor facilities, including the basements of the reactor buildings and turbine buildings,...

A layman's guide to the situation at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant BY RYOMA KOMIYAMA STAFF WRITER /snip Q: What happens if fuel rods melt? A: Melted fuel rods cannot be easily cooled by water because they are completely deformed. They become like a chunk of concrete. Cooling them requires the continued injection of water. In this case, intense heat from melted rods on the bottom made holes in the metal pressure vessel, causing the contaminated water to leak. Q: What are these holes like? A: There are several of them. Their total size is about the same...

N-reactor cooling failed before tsunami The Yomiuri Shimbun An emergency cooling system of the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant malfunctioned after the March 11 earthquake and before the tsunami hit, data released by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. have revealed. According to a large cache of data concerning plant operations from March 11 to 14 released Monday by TEPCO, the No. 1 reactor's isolation condenser, which operates on direct-current power, began to malfunction shortly after the Great East Japan Earthquake struck the Tohoku and Kanto regions. /snip According to the data, the No....

Radioactive substance detected in green tea leaves in Ibaraki towns MITO -- Higher levels of radioactive cesium than the national provisional limit were detected in green tea leaves harvested in Daigo and Sakai in northern Ibaraki Prefecture, the prefectural government announced May 16. The government said radioactive cesium of 894 becquerels per kilogram was detected in green tea leaves picked May 15 in Sakai and that of 570 becquerels per kilogram in Daigo in green tea leaves picked May 14, compared with the official interim limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram. The prefectural government ordered the two towns May 16...

TEPCO: Meltdown at No. 1 reactor started much earlier than initially reported The meltdown at the No. 1 reactor of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant started only five-and-a-half hours after the March 11 tsunami struck, hours earlier than Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s earlier estimate. TEPCO originally said the meltdown began on March 12, and implemented measures to contain the crisis based on this assumption. It had said the water level in the core started to drop around 9:30 p.m. on March 11, and the fuel rods became fully exposed just before 9 a.m. on March 12. But new...

Japan Promises to Shut Down Fukushima Reactors By Year's End Steve Herman | Seoul May 16, 2011 Japan says it will shut down reactors at the Fukushima-1 power plant by the end of the year. The announcement comes despite revelations that a natural disaster in March damaged the nuclear facility worse than earlier believed. Serious troubles continue to beleaguer the operators of the Japanese nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture that was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami. But Prime Minister Naoto Kan told parliament Monday the damaged reactors will be shut down sometime this year. Kan says the timeline...

TEPCO to move radioactive water from No.3 reactor The operator of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it will start transferring highly radioactive water from the No.3 reactor building to a temporary storage facility as early as Tuesday. Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, estimates that there is about 22,000 tons of highly radioactive water in the reactor's turbine building and in a connecting tunnel. The utility says the water in the basement of the turbine building was about 1.4 meters high as of Monday morning, a rise of more than 20 centimeters over the past 2 weeks....

Meltdown may have occurred also at Nos. 2, 3 reactors TOKYO, May 16, Kyodo An adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Monday that the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant had failed to inject water into the Nos. 2 and 3 reactors for more than six hours after the March 11 massive earthquake and ensuing tsunami. Goshi Hosono, tasked with handling the nuclear crisis, said at a press conference that Tokyo Electric Power Co. had not been able to cool down the reactors' cores due to loss of external power for a long time after the quake,...

Radiation seen as too high immediately after temblor Quake hurt reactors before tsunami: data Kyodo High radiation readings taken in the No. 1 reactor building the night of March 11 suggest it was the quake rather than the loss of cooling that critically damaged the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, a utility source said Saturday. The belated disclosure could trigger a review of quake-preparedness at nuclear facilities across the country. Many have been focusing on increasing defenses against tsunami, which knocked out the plant's poorly placed emergency power generators. On March 11, the nuclear plant shut down automatically just after...

Evacuation begins from widened no-go zone near Fukushima plant PTI | 05:05 PM,May 15,2011 Fukushima, May 15 (Kyodo) Residents in Kawamata and Iitate began leaving their homes today after their living areas were included in an evacuation radius the government widened last month around the radiation-leaking Fukushima nuclear power plant. Kawamata Mayor Michio Furukawa met with some 50 residents in the first group of evacuees, including babies and toddlers, telling them, "I know you are worried but we will overcome difficulties together."

Original plan to cool Fukushima nuclear reactor to be scrapped TOKYO (Kyodo) -- An adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan indicated Sunday that a plan to flood and cool the No. 1 reactor's containment vessel at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant with water will be abandoned as holes have been created by melted nuclear fuel at the bottom of the pressure vessel. Goshi Hosono, tasked with handling the nuclear crisis, told TV programs, however, that the government will keep intact the "road map" devised by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. to bring the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors...

Trouble delayed cold shutdown of Hamaoka nuke reactor SHIZUOKA, Japan, May 15, Kyodo Chubu Electric Power Co. said Sunday that cooling system trouble delayed the 'cold shutdown' of the No. 5 reactor at its Hamaoka power plant in Shizuoka Prefecture for about two hours earlier in the day, while ruling out any external release of radioactive substances.

Meltdown occurred at Fukushima No. 1 reactor 16 hrs after March 11 quake TOKYO, May 15, Kyodo A nuclear fuel meltdown at the No. 1 reactor of the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi power plant is believed to have occurred around 16 hours after the March 11 quake and tsunami crippled the complex in northeastern Japan, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Sunday.