Fukushima I

Fukushima Reactor 4 poses massive global risk

Date: Saturday May. 19, 2012 8:20 PM ET

More than a year after a devastating earthquake and tsunami triggered a massive nuclear disaster, experts are warning that Japan isn't out of the woods yet and the worst nuclear storm the world has ever seen could be just one earthquake away from reality.

Fukushima Reactor 4: The Most Important Story Nobody's Talking About

Written by Damien Gillis Monday, 21 May 2012 17:33

"It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No. 4 reactor."
-Former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland Mitsuhei Murata to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Fukushima Daiichi’s Unit 4 Spent-Fuel Pool: Safe or Not?

By Phred Dvorak - The Wall Street Journal - May 21, 2012, 7:48 PM JST

Questions have been bubbling recently over how safe Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant—in particular the pool atop Unit 4, where some 1,535 fuel rods are stored—would be if another big earthquake hit.

Full story: http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/05/21/fukushima-daiichis-unit-4-spent-fuel-pool-safe-or-not

NISA, Tepco knew in '06 of Fukushima tsunami threat

Kyodo - Wed, 16 May 2012

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency and Tokyo Electric Power Co. were aware at least by 2006 that the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant was at risk of having its power knocked out by massive tsunami, NISA officials said Tuesday.

Full story: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120516a5.html

Fukushima owner is nationalized

Nature News Blog

It was as inevitable as cherry blossoms blooming in springtime: sooner or later, Japan had to nationalize the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the owner of the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Today the government announced a ¥1 trillion (US$12.5 billion) plan to bail out the country’s largest utility, and at least temporarily take control.

The Fukushima nuclear plant's slow recovery offers lessons to the US

Despite the Japanese PM's optimistic assessment of Fukushima, experts have new worries about the plant's recovery

guardian.co.uk,

The Worst Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts Are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb

Via AlterNet - By Brad Jacobson
 
Experts say acknowledging the threat would call into question the safety of dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants in the U.S.

Concerns mount over the growing threat from Fukushima’s spent fuel - will the experts’ warning call be heard?

Via Bellona - Vladimir Slivyak, 06/05-2012 - Translated by Maria Kaminskaya:

MOSCOW - More than a year since the catastrophic nuclear and radiation disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, concerns loom ever larger over the site as experts warn with increasing worry of the unstable condition of the cooling pond at Unit 4, where spent nuclear fuel holds ten times the amount of radioactive cesium that was blown into the atmosphere with the 1986 reactor explosion at Chernobyl. Russia would be well served to join their call for action – will it?

Speech for Nagasaki Day Ceremony in London by Kick Nuclear's Dan Viesnik

Nagasaki Day Ceremony, Battersea Park Peace Pagoda, London
– Tuesday 9th August, 2011

Notes from speech by Dan Viesnik (Kick Nuclear and Trident Ploughshares)

- 66 years since manmade nuclear disasters at Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- 5 months since nuclear disaster at Fukushima, the worst since Chernobyl, 25 years ago

- Russian ambassador to Japan, in Hiroshima for a ceremony to remember the annihilation of the city in 1945, said that while Hiroshima was a disaster caused by humans, the Fukushima nuclear crisis is “a disaster by natural causes.” [1]

Joint Statement on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster On the Occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

(Endorsed by 87 Japanese NGOs)

April 26, 2011

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, precipitated by the huge earthquake and ensuing tsunamis that hit eastern Japan on March 11, has created fear of radiation exposure and radioactive contamination not just in Japan, but throughout the world.