Japan’s radiation sleuths toil with borrowed Geiger counters – TEPCO response characterized by ‘ineptitude, negligence’

By Shigeru Sato, Sachiko Sakamaki, and Tsuyoshi Inajima13 Jun 2011 Makoto Tonami starts his workday by slipping on a white surgical face mask and then drives around with a borrowed Geiger counter, taking radiation readings. Three months ago, he was sorting garbage claims in Minami Soma, a city north of the Fukushima nuclear plant. “It’s […]

Graph of the Day: Citizen-measured Radiation Levels in Japan, June 2011

By FishOutofWater, for Japan Nuclear Incident Liveblogs16 June 2011 […] A map of citizen-measured radiation levels shows radioactivity is distributed in a complex pattern reflecting the mountainous terrain and the shifting winds across a broad area of Japan north of Tokyo, which is in the center of the of bottom of the map. Radiation limits […]

Video: Japan prayers for disaster closure

By Hideyuki Sano18 June 2011 TOKYO (Reuters) – A rise in radiation halted the clean-up of radioactive water at Japan’s Fukushimi nuclear power station on Saturday hours after it got under way, a fresh setback to efforts to restore control over the quake-stricken plant. The power plant has been leaking radiation into the atmosphere ever […]

Fukushima nuclear plant: Contaminated water treatment system may not restart for another week, as trench water rises

By arevamirpal::laprimavera17 June 2011 More on the news that TEPCO halted the system due to higher than expected radiation level in the cesium absorption subsystem by Kurion: The radiation limit of 4 millisieverts/hour was reached in 5 hours, instead of one month as anticipated. New information from Jiji News Japanese (12:47PM JST 6/18/2011): The radiation […]

Image of the Day: Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant surrounded by floodwaters

By Nancy Gaarder, WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER17 June 2011 FORT CALHOUN, Neb. — Despite the stunning sight of the Fort Calhoun nuclear reactor surrounded by water and the weeks of flooding that lie ahead, the plant is in a safe cold shutdown and can remain so indefinitely, the reactor’s owners and federal regulators say. “We think […]

Europe braces for serious crop losses, blackouts as record dry season persists

By Jeremy Lovell, E&E European correspondent13 June 2011 LONDON — One of the driest spring seasons on record in northern Europe has sucked soils dry and sharply reduced river levels to the point that governments are starting to fear crop losses and France, in particular, is bracing for blackouts as its river-cooled nuclear power plants […]

China’s drought threatens farm income, drinking water, wildlife, and hydropower

By COCO LIU of ClimateWire14 June 2011 SHANGHAI — It is an annual tradition for Chinese to race dragon boats at the end of each spring, but this year, the tradition has run aground. Many streams and lakes along the Yangtze River have almost dried up. The world’s third-largest river — stretching from the Himalayas […]

Economy sends Japanese to Fukushima for jobs

By HIROKO TABUCHI8 June 2011 IWAKI-YUMOTO, Japan — Just after 6 a.m. in this still sleepy hot spring town, bleary-eyed workers emerged from their inns, ready to board buses to return to their daily battle to contain the crisis at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Some men are local technicians who have worked […]

Video: Workers enter Unit 3 reactor building at Fukushima nuclear plant, 15 June 2011

June 15 (NHK) – Tokyo Electric Power Company has released video footage taken last week of Number 3 reactor at its crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The video shows workers wearing protective suits enter the building through a cargo entrance. The roof of the facility was missing with the sky in view because of […]

Radiation in Japan: Nosebleed, diarrhea, lack of energy in children in Koriyama City, Fukushima

By arevamirpal::laprimavera15 June 2011 Once a malicious “baseless rumor” on the net, now it is written up in a regional newspaper with readership in Tokyo and Kanto area. Tokyo Shinbun (paper edition only, 6/16/2011) reports that many children in Koriyama City in Fukushima Prefecture, 50 kilometers from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, are suffering inexplicable […]

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