fukushima disaster

Japan has admitted the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster is on par with the one at Chernobyl. At the same time, Japan’s science and technology ministry reports strontium, a heavy radioactive metal that is a catalyst for leukemia, has been detected around the crippled reactors. In addition to...

The mayor of the isolated Japanese city of Minamisoma, Katsunobu Sakurai, speaks to DAVID McNEILL LIKE MOST Japanese men, Katsunobu Sakurai read apocalyptic comic-book stories about the future when he was a boy. He never expected to live through one of those stories. A common plot sees a...

Experts warn that the situation will take months to stabalise and a large area could remain uninhabitable [REUTERS] Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that was heavily damaged by the tsunami from the massive March 11 magnitude 9.0 earthquake continues to spread extremely high levels...

Confused and often conflicting reports out of Fukushima 1 nuclear plant cannot be solely the result of tsunami-caused breakdowns, bungling or miscommunication. Inexplicable delays and half-baked explanations from Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and...

Link Removed Evaluation of the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Nuclear Facility. The document paints a grim picture of evolving threats to the afflicted facility. • mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to...

April 4 (Bloomberg) -- The crisis unfolding at the stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant north of Tokyo is likely to hurt the nuclear power industry’s credibility more than the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, UBS AG said. The accident in the former Soviet Union 25 years ago “affected one reactor in a...

Link RemovedEvacuees rest at a shelter after being transferred from an elder care facility in Kesennuma, northern Japan. Photograph: Masami Kawakita/AP Of all the grim headlines to have emerged from Japan in recent weeks, this one on the Kyodo newswire was particularly disturbing: "Up to 1,000...

“Unexpected Situation” is the phrase repeatedly used to rationalize deaths of tens of thousands of people caused by the recent disaster. This man-made calamity, I repeat, the worst man-made calamity is being rationalized with the single phrase, which still leaves hundreds of thousands...

Link RemovedYes it’s true; Homer Simpson has been fired from his job at the nuclear power plant in Springfield and moved to Germany to work in a stinking coal mine. OK so he didn’t really move, but because of the disaster in Japan and the struggles to contain radiation levels around the nuclear...

Link RemovedAs dangerously high levels of radiation spread beyond the Fukushima exclusion zone in Japan, there are fears the race to contain the nuclear crisis has been lost and meltdown has already taken place. Radiation measured at a village 40 kilometres from the Fukushima nuclear plant now...

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RADIATION levels that can prove fatal were detected outside reactor buildings at Japan’s Fukushima No.1 plant for the first time, complicating efforts to contain the worst disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. Water in an underground trench outside the No.2 reactor had levels exceeding one sievert...

The, Japanese so far have no idea how to deal with all the highly radioactive water, used to cool the, reactors down . It is also feared that the water may have now got into the ocean and soil via tunnels under the reactors . If so every effort to cool the plant down is leading to higher and...