Japan admits twice as much radiation released

ELEANOR HALL: To Japan now where nearly three months after the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, Japan's nuclear authority has dramatically revised up its estimates of the amount of radiation emitted from the Fukushima nuclear plants in the week after the earthquake.

In a statement overnight, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency more than doubled its original estimate of the radiation in the atmosphere.

Plutonium has also been found for the first time in soil just a few kilometres from the plant. Tests have confirmed the plutonium came from the plant, but researchers say the levels are not a cause for alarm.

A short time ago I spoke to Tokyo correspondent Mark Willacy.

ELEANOR HALL: Mark this is an extraordinary admission from Japan's nuclear safety agency isn't it, that the earlier estimates of the danger were out by more than 100 per cent?

MARK WILLACY: Well the safety agency says that it was taking on board figures that were provided to it by TEPCO because they're based on basically water injection assumptions. Now that's quite technical but that water was pumped in to try and stop the meltdown - as we know now there were partial meltdowns in three of the reactors.

Now the nuclear safety agency is saying it's pushing up - it's doubling the amount of radiation released in the week after the crisis. It's more than doubling it to 770,000 terabecquerels. Now that probably doesn't mean much to people but it is quite a lot of radiation escaping into the atmosphere.

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http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2011/s3237652.htm

Japan bans entry into Fukushima evacuation zone

Japan has made it illegal to enter a 20km (12-mile) evacuation zone around the stricken Fukushima nuclear reactor.

People were urged to leave the area shortly after the 11 March earthquake and tsunami crippled the plant, but the order was not enforced by law.

Cooling systems were knocked out by the twin disasters and radiation has been leaking from the plant.

Brief re-entry will be allowed to the area's 80,000 former residents to collect belongings.

It is not clear how many people are living in the evacuation zone, but reports said police had counted at least 60 families.

After the disaster the government also declared a wider 10km zone around the 20km evacuation area where people should either stay indoors or leave.

It later recommended that people also evacuate that area as well.

"The plant has not been stable," said chief government spokesman Yukio Edano.

"We have been asking residents not to enter the area as there is a huge risk to their safety," he said. "Unfortunately, there are still some people in the areas."

"Today... we have decided to designate the area an emergency area based on disaster law."

Long wait

Most of the evacuees are living in sports hall and gymnasiums waiting to return home.

It could be a long wait, says the BBC's Roland Buerk in Tokyo, as the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), has said it aims to bring the reactors to a cold shutdown within nine months.

The evacuation zone will be reassessed then, adds our correspondent.

Residents would be allowed supervised visits of two hours to collect belongings, which would be screened for radiation contamination.

Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant are attempting to remove highly radioactive water from a reactor building to allow repair work to the cooling systems knocked out on 11 March.

Emergency workers have been unable to enter any of the damaged reactor buildings at the plant since then.

Nearly 14,000 people have been confirmed to have died in the earthquake and tsunami and more than 13,000 people are missing.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13153339

Eerie Hush Descends on Japan's Nuclear Zone

FUTABA, Japan—In the Coin Laundry, a dryer is still loaded with clothes: an orange hooded sweatshirt, a green worker's vest and two pairs of jeans, damp and smelling of mildew.

At Joe's Man restaurant near the train station, a menu lists the lunch specials, starting with bacon-and-eggplant pasta in a tomato-cream sauce. A flyer on the open doors of the Nishio clothes shop promotes a five-day "inventory clearance" sale. Over the road that runs through the town center, a white-and-blue sign proclaims: "Understanding Nuclear Power Correctly Will Lead to an Abundant Life."

But life, by and large, is what is absent in this town, just a few miles away from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Futaba, once home to 7,000 residents, is one of eight towns forced to evacuate the day after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami damaged the nuclear plant. In the following days, tens of thousands of residents living within 12 miles of the damaged reactors fled. Last Monday, the Japanese government expanded the mandatory evacuation zone to encompass more towns.

On Sunday, the nuclear complex's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said it aims to get the crippled plant under control with a so-called cold shutdown that brings down pressure and temperatures inside the reactors in six to nine months. Japan Trade Minister Banri Kaieda said some of the evacuees may be able to return after that but acknowledged it wouldn't be possible for all of them to come back then.

Futaba Mayor Katsutaka Idogawa, meanwhile, said it will be "years" before the residents of his town can return. The utility on Friday said it would begin initial compensation payments of up to ¥1 million, or about $12,000, to residents from an 18-mile zone around the plant—an offer some evacuees called an insufficient, short-term sop.

Police have established road blocks on Route 6, the main surface road running north and south through the zone. Authorities have declared evacuation mandatory for the area up to 12 miles from the plant and advised people who are six miles beyond that to stay inside. Police cars, ambulances or fire trucks occasionally patrol the towns inside the mandatory zone. While it isn't illegal to enter the area, it's strongly discouraged.

"What are you doing here?" a fireman asked a reporter walking in the street. From the passenger seat, another firefighter held up a radiation monitor. "You are not supposed to be here. It's dangerous," he said. "Please leave soon."

Some locals are evading the road blocks, traveling into the area by narrow side streets to gather possessions—confronting the possibility of never returning to live in Futaba.

On Thursday, a woman who identified herself as Ms. Takasaki rushed in and out of a beautiful, traditional Japanese home. She said her family is living with relatives in Fukushima City, about 60 miles inland. She had traveled to Futaba with her husband, daughter and father-in-law to pack as many of their possessions as they could in 30 minutes.

She wore a clear rain poncho, a face mask and sunglasses. Her shoes were covered with clear plastic bags, taped around her ankles.

"We're in a big hurry," she said as she carried boxes of clothes to the open trunk of a sedan, handing a stranger an armful of winter coats to carry to the car. "But since this is probably the last time we'll come back here, there are things we needed to get."

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In Japan, Aftershocks Are Also Felt From Within

TOKYO — Aguri Suzuki, a 44-year-old real estate agent, says she sometimes thinks the ground is shaking even when it is not. When she sees a tree branch swaying in the wind, she worries there has been an earthquake.

Doctors here say they are seeing more people who are experiencing such phantom quakes, as well as other symptoms of “earthquake sickness” like dizziness and anxiety.

And it is no wonder. As if the threat of radiation from a crippled nuclear power plant were not enough, Tokyo and the region to its northeast have been under a constant barrage of aftershocks since the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that set off a devastating tsunami on March 11. Two earthquakes were felt in Tokyo on Wednesday morning, three on Tuesday, a large one on Monday and a very large one of magnitude 7.1 last Thursday.

Over all, there have been 400 aftershocks of magnitude 5.0 or greater in northeastern Japan since March 11. That is as many sizable quakes in one month as Japan typically experiences in two and a half years, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

The quakes are complicating efforts to control the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. For instance, the quake on Monday knocked out cooling at the Fukushima plant for nearly an hour.

Every time a sizable quake occurs, the first question on many people’s minds is whether the nuclear plant has been further damaged and whether a new cloud of radiation is on the way. A spokesman for the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant’s owner, is then hustled onto television to reassure viewers.

Government officials are becoming concerned that in the rush to cool the reactors and prevent hydrogen explosions, the plant’s vulnerability to another tsunami has been overlooked.

“A week ago we thought the major risk was a hydrogen explosion,” a senior official in the office of the prime minister said Tuesday. “I think the major risk at the moment is an aftershock and tsunami.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/world/asia/14quake.html?src=mv#h[]

Japanese Declare Crisis at Level of Chernobyl

TOKYO—The Japanese government raised its assessment of the monthlong crisis at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to the highest severity level by international standards—a rating only conferred so far upon the Chernobyl accident.

Japan's nuclear regulators said the plant has likely released so much radiation into the environment that it must boost the accident's severity rating on the International Nuclear Event scale to a 7 from 5 currently. That is the same level reached by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union, which struck almost exactly 25 years ago, on April 26, 1986.

"Based on the cumulative data we've gathered, we can finally give an estimate of total radioactive materials emitted,'' Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said at a press conference Tuesday.

Even as they upgraded their assessment of the situation, Japanese officials went to lengths to say that the problem they are struggling to contain isn't anywhere near the disaster of Chernobyl.

"It is quite different from Chernobyl," said Mr. Nishiyama. "First, the amount of released radiation is about a tenth of Chernobyl," he said, adding that while there were 29 deaths resulting from short-term exposure to high doses of radiation at Chernobyl, there were no such deaths at Fukushima.

"At Chernobyl, the nuclear reactor itself exploded," he said, adding that at the Fukushima plant, the pressure vessel and the containment vessel were largely intact.

Still, Fukushima Daiichi operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. warned Tuesday that since the Fukushima Daiichi plant is still releasing radioactive materials, the total level of radiation released could eventually exceed that of Chernobyl, a spokesman said.

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Japan Nuclear Plant Plugs Highly Radioactive Leak

Workers at Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant on Wednesday finally halted a leak that was sending a tide of radioactive water into the Pacific and exacerbating concerns over the safety of seafood, the operator said.

It was a rare bit of good news for the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex and the coastal areas surrounding it, where high levels of seawater contamination have angered fishermen and prompted the government to set limits for the first time on the amount of radiation permitted in fish.

But in a sign that workers still face several challenges before the overheating reactors are stabilized, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it plans to inject nitrogen gas into one of the reactors. Nitrogen can prevent highly combustible hydrogen from exploding — as it did three times at the compound in the early days of the crisis.

There is no immediate possibility of an explosion, but the "nitrogen injection is being considered as a cautionary measure," said spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

TEPCO said the process could begin as early as Wednesday evening in Unit 1 — where pressure and temperatures are the highest — according to spokesman Junichi Matsumoto. The same measures will eventually be taken at the other two troubled reactors.

The 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that followed are believed to have killed as many as 25,000 people. Hundreds of miles (kilometers) of coastline have been destroyed and the country's fishing industry devastated.

Since the crush of water flooded the plant and knocked out cooling systems, workers there have been desperately trying to cool overheated reactors. The effort has required spraying large amounts of water and allowing it to gush out wherever it can escape, sometimes into the sea.

While officials have said the crack in a maintenance pit plugged early Wednesday was the only one found, they have not explicitly ruled out that radioactive water is leaking into the sea from another point.


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Japanese nuclear plant continues to leak radioactive water into ocean

Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are unable to plug a leak of radioactive water. Meanwhile, Japan's prime minister says it will take months to resolve the problems at the plant. Red Cross says aid payments will begin soon.



Radioactive water continued to seep into the sea Monday after a failed attempt to seal the leak at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant using an absorbent polymer, sawdust and shredded paper.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials think the leak has been coming from an 8-inch crack in the concrete pit holding power cables near reactor No. 2. On Monday, Tepco said it would use a dye to try to trace the path of the leak, Kyodo News reported. Radiation levels in the pit water are an estimated 1,000 millisieverts per hour, a high but not immediately lethal dose.

Engineers also planned to begin injecting nitrogen gas into reactors No. 1, 2 and 3 in an attempt to prevent possible explosions from the buildup of hydrogen gas. Explosions at the three reactors in the first four days after the magnitude 9 earthquake and accompanying tsunami March 11 badly damaged the reactor buildings and disabled the cooling pumps that provided water to the reactors. Government officials say it may take months to fully restore the cooling systems.

Japan's official death toll from the disaster topped 12,000 on Sunday, as about 25,000 U.S. and Japanese troops finished an intensive three-day recovery effort. The search located 78 bodies, but more than 15,000 people are still officially listed as missing. About 160,000 survivors remain in shelters.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-japan-reactor-damage-20110403,0,1606193.story?track=rss

Japan says battle to save nuclear reactors has failed

Japanese officials have conceded that the battle to salvage four crippled reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant has been lost.

The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco], said the reactors would be scrapped, and warned that the operation to contain the nuclear crisis, now well into its third week, could last months.

Tepco's announcement came as new readings showed a dramatic increase in radioactive contamination in the sea near the atomic complex.

The firm's chairman, Tsunehisa Katsumata, said it had "no choice" but to scrap the Nos 1-4 reactors, but held out hope that the remaining two could continue to operate. It is the first time the company has conceded that the at least part of the plant will have to be decommissioned.

But the government's chief spokesman, Yukio Edano, repeated an earlier call for all six reactors at the 40-year-old plant to be decommissioned. "It is very clear looking at the social circumstances," he said.

Tens of thousands of people living near the plants have been evacuated or ordered to stay indoors, while the plant has leaked radioactive materials in to the sea, soil and air.

On Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] suggested widening the 30-kilometre exclusion zone around the plant after finding that radiation levels at a village 40 kilometres from the plant exceeded the criteria for evacuation.

"We have advised [Japanese officials] to carefully assess the situation, and they have indicated that it is already under assessment," Denis Flory, a deputy director of the IAEA, said.

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, was due to arrive in Tokyo on Thursday to show support for the Fukushima operation and for talks with his Japanese counterpart, Naoto Kan. Sarkozy, the current G8 chair, is the first foreign leader to visit Japan since the 11 March earthquake and tsunami.

An emotional Kastumata apologised for the anxiety the crisis has caused.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/31/japan-battle-save-nuclear-reactors-failed

New Problems at Japanese Plant Subdue Optimism

The Japanese electricians who bravely strung wires this week to all six reactor buildings at a stricken nuclear power plant succeeded despite waves of heat and blasts of radioactive steam.

The restoration of electricity at the plant, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, stirred hopes that the crisis was ebbing. But nuclear engineers say some of the most difficult and dangerous tasks are still ahead — and time is not necessarily on the side of the repair teams.

The tasks include manually draining hundreds of gallons of radioactive water and venting radioactive gas from the pumps and piping of the emergency cooling systems, which are located diagonally underneath the overheated reactor vessels. The urgency of halting the spread of radioactive contamination from the site was underlined on Wednesday by the health warning that infants should not drink tap water — even in Tokyo, 140 miles southwest of the stricken plant — raised alarms about extensive contamination.

“We’ve got at least 10 days to two weeks of potential drama before you can declare the accident over,” said Michael Friedlander, who worked as a nuclear plant operator for 13 years.

Nuclear engineers have become increasingly concerned about a separate problem that may be putting pressure on the Japanese technicians to work faster: salt buildup inside the reactors, which could cause them to heat up more and, in the worst case, cause the uranium to melt, releasing a range of radioactive material.

“A meltdown is looking less likely, but a lot of radiation has been released in the reactor buildings and may continue to seep out,” said a Western nuclear power executive who asked not to be quoted by name because he did not want to risk his broad contacts in Japan. “What we might have is a slow-moving contamination problem rather than a fast-moving contamination problem.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/world/asia/24nuclear.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

South Korea to send boron to stabilize Japan reactor

South Korea said on Wednesday it would send some of its reserve boron to Japan after a request from Tokyo for the metalloid, which being is mixed with seawater to limit damage to Japan's crippled nuclear reactors.

An economy ministry official said South Korea would send 52.6 tons of boron to Japan from its reserves of 310 tons.

Tokyo has requested supplies of the key material, vital for stopping fission nuclear reactions, after its own stockpile has been largely used up at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Boron is the main material that goes into control rods used to halt or slow down fission reactions at nuclear reactors. Japan has mixed large amounts of boron with seawater and poured them into the reactors as an emergency measure.

A sample of the metalloid would be sent to Japan immediately for assessment, the ministry official said.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/16/us-japan-quake-boron-idUSTRE72F0KG20110316