nuclear safety

The president of the power company behind Japan's nuclear disaster has stepped down in disgrace after taking responsibility for the crisis. Masataka Shimizi was criticised for his apparent inaction during the early days of the earthquake and tsunami disaster when the Fukushima Daiichi plant...

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...

Defenders of nuclear power in Japan have clung to one fact since the earthquake and tsunami on March 11: the Fukushima Daiichi atomic plant suffered little damage in the magnitude-9 earthquake, and it was the huge tsunami waves that knocked out the power stations’ back-up generators. Now, a...

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...

So it turns out that there *was* a meltdown around reactor #1. Quite a lot of people suspected this from the visual evidence, but TEPCO and the Japanese government denied, denied, denied. Accusations that those arguing for a meltdown were all internet conspiracy theorists (which also occurred...

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...

Reuters) - 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...

Plant operator Tepco reveals meltdown and breach of pressure vessel, with Greenpeace warning against pumping water in. Greenpeace has urged Tepco to abandon plans to flood the container with water, given the likelihood that melted fuel had damaged it. Shaun Burnie, nuclear adviser to Greenpeace...

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...

New evidence suggests that nuclear chain reactions at the Fukushima power plant didn't end when the generators were initially shut down, following the March 11 earthquake. Technology Review explains why Tetsuo Matsui, a researcher at the University of Tokyo, thinks conditions inside two of...

TOKYO (Dow Jones)--Eight workers and a government inspector entered the reactor building of the quake-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex's No. 1 unit early Monday to survey conditions inside, another step toward bringing the complex's three damaged reactors under control since they began...

TO CALL it a hot ticket might, in the circumstances, seem a tad tasteless. But no session at this year’s International Conference on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants, held in the south of France, was as well attended as the late-running special plenary hastily arranged to provide an update on...

residents of Japan have good cause to mistrust the media, TEPCO officials, and members of their government when it comes to assurances about radiation levels, plutonium dispersal, and the related health risks. Americans also have good cause to mistrust these same sort of assurances issued to...

77-year-old Michio Ishikawa of the Japan Nuclear Technology Institute on the situation at Fukushima I Nuke Plant, as he appeared on Asahi TV on April 29. As I watched the video, I started to like Mr. Ishikawa, who continues to believe in the safety of nuclear power generation. He didn't mince...

Furious parents in Fukushima have delivered a bag of radioactive playground earth to education officials in protest at moves to weaken nuclear safety standards in schools. Children can now be exposed to 20 times more radiation than was previously permissible. The new regulations have prompted...

proponents of reactors have spent some $645 million in the last decade lobbying Congress for more subsidies. ….A critical moment is coming soon, when Obama goes to Congress to request an additional $36 billion in loan guarantees for new nukes in his 2012 budget.With them, America’s atomic...