Japan's Education Ministry has pulled an about-face, returning exposure limits for schoolchildren 1 millisievert a year. Officials will also pay for removing surface soil from affected schoolyards.[/h]The parents were furious: Why, they demanded, had Japanese officials raised the acceptable...
NEW YORK (Kyodo) -- A senior official of the U.S. nuclear regulatory agency said Thursday he had believed there was a "strong likelihood" of serious core damage and core melt in reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant in the days after the March disaster in Japan.
"There were numerous...
New readings show levels of radioisotopes found up to 30 kilometers offshore from the on-going crisis at Fukushima are ten times higher than those measured in the Baltic and Black Seas during Chernobyl.
"When it comes to the oceans, says Ken Buesseler, a chemical oceonographer at the Woods...
Radionuclides in seawater have been reported from the Fukushima plant's discharge canals, from coastal waters five to ten kilometers south of the plant, and from 30 kilometers offshore.
"Levels of some radionuclides are at least an order of magnitude higher than the highest levels in 1986 in...
Agony for Japan livestock farmers in nuclear crisis
By Shingo Ito (AFP) – 2 hours ago
FUKUSHIMA CITY, Japan — As more people are forced to leave their homes around the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, anger is growing in a farming community forced to make the agonising decision whether to...
A radiation alarm went off at Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima nuclear power plant before the tsunami hit on March 11, suggesting that contrary to earlier assumptions the reactors were damaged by the earthquake that spawned the wall of water.
A monitoring post on the perimeter of the plant...
Tokyo Electric Power Co. has made misleading statements about when it will stabilize its nuclear reactors crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, said Tetsuo Ito, head of the Atomic Energy Research Institute at Kinki University in western Japan.
The company, known as Tepco...
Japanese officials have found an Olympic swimming pool-sized pond of radioactive water in the basement of a unit at the Fukushima nuclear plant crippled by the March earthquake and tsunami.
The discovery has forced officials to abandon their original plan to bring the No 1 reactor under...
Japanese officials are readying a new approach to stabilizing a reactor at a nuclear plant crippled by an earthquake and tsunami after discovering a leak from the containment vessel of enough radioactive water to fill an Olympic swimming pool.
The discovery has forced officials to abandon...
There must be a large leak," Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the utility also known as Tepco, told a news conference on Thursday.
"The fuel pellets likely melted and fell, and in the process may have damaged ... the pressure vessel itself and created a hole," he added.
Since the...
* Post-Fukushima inspections found issues at U.S. plants * Plants must certify compliance with rules by June 10 * Additional certifications required in July * Industry says "well on its way" to providing answers * INPO president: "We cannot resort to business as usual"
(Adds industry quotes...