nuclear safety

Radioactive water accumulating in Japan’s crippled Fukushima plant may start overflowing from service trenches in five days, potentially increasing the contamination from the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. Link Removed - Invalid URL Electric Power Co. has been manually pumping water...

TEPCO claim that two workers at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant may have exceeded the government’s radiation exposure limit, adding to the health concerns of those working to stabilise the facility. The government and TEPCO have come under fire for not disclosing enough information about...

TOKYO, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Cooling system at a reactor of the crippled Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant stopped from Saturday, the plant's operator said Sunday. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the pumps to cool the nuclear reactor and fuel pool have stopped at the No. 5 unit, and the operator...

Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is not fully prepared for heavy rain and winds of a typhoon heading towards the country, officials admit. Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), which runs the plant, said some reactor buildings were uncovered, prompting fears the storm may carry radioactive...

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese nuclear regulators trusted that the reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi were safe from the worst waves an earthquake could muster based on a single-page memo from the plant operator nearly a decade ago. In the Dec. 19, 2001 document — one double-sized page obtained by The...

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...

As a team from the Link Removed - Invalid URL visits Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s crippled nuclear plant today, academics warn the company has failed to disclose the scale of radiation leaks and faces a “massive problem” with contaminated water. The utility known as Tepco has been pumping...

China Syndrome “might just have happened at Fukushima” — Molten fuel may have “melted through everything into the earth. China Syndrome refers to a scenario in which a molten nuclear reactor core could could fission its way through its containment vessel, melt through the basement of the power...

Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University: "No One Knows How Fukushima Could Be Wound Down" As the Corium May Be Melting Through the Foundation "So says Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, in a telephone interview on May 19 with independent video-journalist Tetsuo Jinbo of...

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...