First 24 hours shaped Japan nuclear crisis

By ERIC TALMADGE and MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press1 July 2011 FUKUSHIMA, Japan – When Unit 2 began to shake, Hiroyuki Kohno’s first hunch was that something was wrong with the turbines. He paused for a moment, then went back to logging the day’s radioactivity readings. He expected it to pass. Until the shakes became jolts. […]

Beyond Japan’s Fukushima exclusion zone, children don’t play outside

By Peter Ford, Staff writer, Christian Science Monitor27 June 2011 Ichiro Monakata sits at a small table in his cramped and dusty village store and swats flies all day. Sometimes, for a change, he goes into a backroom to watch the daytime soaps on his television. “You can see nobody comes here,” he laughs ruefully. […]

Video: Japan’s radiation dilemma: Leave or live in fear – ‘Why isn’t our government protecting us?’

FUKUSHIMA, June 28 (CBS News) – For ten years, Akiko Murakami has lived a suburban dream — growing flowers, as she raised four sons, in a leafy corner of Fukushima city. But now she wonders if it’s safe to stay here. CBS News reporter Lucy Craft brought a Geiger counter, which measures radiation, to her […]

Pensioners to aid nuclear plant clean-up on worker shortage

By Shigeru Sato and Yuji Okada23 June 2011 Yasuteru Yamada, a 72-year-old former anti-nuclear activist, will lead a band of pensioners to the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant early next month to help clean up the site of Japan’s worst atomic disaster since World War II. Yamada, a retired Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd. (5405) plant engineer, is […]

Radioactive urine from 15 Fukushima residents – ‘It will be difficult for people to continue living in these areas’

June 27 (Kyodo) – More than 3 millisieverts of radiation has been measured in the urine of 15 Fukushima residents of the village of Iitate and the town of Kawamata, confirming internal radiation exposure, it was learned Sunday. Both are about 30 to 40 km from the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, which has been […]

Experts urge great caution over radiation risks – ‘So many people in Japan are now saying that they can’t trust their own government’

By TOMOKO OTAKE, Staff writer26 June 2011 In order to address public concerns over post-3/11 food safety, the government should be more forthcoming in the monitoring and disclosure of data regarding radiation contamination of soil, Akira Sugenoya, mayor of Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, told this reporter recently. Sugenoya, a medical doctor, speaks from experience, having […]

‘Safety Myth’ exposed Japan to nuclear crisis

By NORIMITSU ONISHI24 June 2011 SHIKA, Japan — Near a nuclear power plant facing the Sea of Japan, a series of exhibitions in a large public relations building here extols the virtues of the energy source with some help from “Alice in Wonderland.” “It’s terrible, just terrible,” the White Rabbit says in the first exhibit. […]

Mountains of radioactive rubble pile up in Fukushima

By Takemichi Nishibori, Yoshinori Hayashi, Yukiko Nagatomi, and Ryo Inoue25 June 2011 IWAKI, Fukushima Prefecture – Rubble, some of it potentially radioactive, continues to be a headache for municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture although the government has finally come up with standards to deal with it. Rubble has piled up since May 2, when the Environment […]

Survey shows disappointment, anger among Fukushima evacuees

June 25 (Asahi Shimbun) – Disappointment toward Tokyo Electric Power Co. for its failure to guard the safety of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and anger at the central government’s inept handling of the accident. Those are the two major themes that emerge from the results of an interview survey of 407 evacuees […]

Are babies dying in the Pacific Northwest due to Fukushima? A look at the numbers

[Answer: No.] By Michael Moyer 21 Jun 2011 A recent article on the Al Jazeera English web site cites a disturbing statistic: infant mortality in certain U.S. Northwest cities spiked by 35 percent in the weeks following the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The author writes that “physician Janette Sherman MD and […]

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