More former Dimona employees with cancer sue for neglect

A view of Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/228936.html

The number of workers suffering from cancer who have filed lawsuits against the Dimona nuclear plant over the lack of proper safety measures is on the rise.

Victims say the high level of radioactive radiation that they were exposed to at Dimona is the main cause of the cancer that they are suffering from.

So far, over 60 people working at Dimona have filled lawsuit against the site's officials. The victims say officials had assured them that they were protected properly and that the level of harmful radiation was being monitored carefully, but now the opposite has been proven.

The victims are demanding 120,860,000 Shekel (about 32 million dollars) in compensation.

On Monday, 24 more people, diagnosed with cancer, filled lawsuits against the Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, accusing Dimona officials of deceiving them about their safety and protection.

Earlier this months, a lawsuit by 44 former Dimona workers told an Israeli court that they were sent to search for uranium ore across Israel without the necessary protection and that they were equipped only with goggles and masks that did not protect them from radiation.

The National Insurance, however, refused to recognize their cancer as work-related, claiming that the levels of radiation to which they were exposed were not the cause of their illness.

Dramatic increases in cancer cases, sterility and abnormal births south of the West Bank is said to be linked to a uranium leak at the Dimona nuclear power plant.

The nuclear reactor has become very old after 48 years, with experts warning of that the leakage could reach Jordan, Syria, Egypt and even Libya.

'Fukushima leaks equal 168 Hiroshimas'

A view of crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/195704.html

Japanese nuclear scientists say the amount of radioactive cesium-137 released from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the environment is 168 times that of Hiroshima bomb.

According to a government calculation published in the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper, the levels of cesium-137 leaked from the crisis-stricken plant has been estimated at 15,000 terabecquerels, AFP reported on Thursday.

That compares with the 89 terabecquerels released by "Little Boy" -- the nuclear bomb the United States dropped on Japan's western city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 as World War II was in its final stages.

Tokyo government, however, argued that the comparison was not valid since there is no logical comparison between Hiroshima bomb and Fukushima disaster.

"An atomic bomb is designed to enable mass-killing and mass-destruction by causing blast waves and heat rays and releasing neutron radiation," the Tokyo Shimbun daily quoted an unnamed government official as saying.

"It is not rational to make a simple comparison only based on the amount of isotopes released,” the official added.

An estimated 140,000 people died instantly in Hiroshima or succumbed to burns and radiation sickness soon after the attack and another 70,000 were injured.

Sixty-six years after the mass-killing and mass-destruction, the United States still refuses to apologize to Japan.

The Fukushima plant has leaked radiation into air, soil and the Pacific Ocean ever since it was hit by a 9-magnitude earthquake and a devastating tsunami on March 11.

The tremor triggered a nuclear crisis by knocking out power to cooling systems and the reactor meltdowns at the nuclear power plant on Japan's northeast coast.

The number of the dead and missing from Japan's March 11 quake and tsunami stands at over 28,000, according to the Japanese National Police Agency. The crisis has also displaced thousands of residents from around the plant as well.

Japan to fire top nuclear officials

Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Banri Kaieda

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/192263.html

Japan's Industry Minister Banri Kaieda plans to fire three senior nuclear officials amid criticisms leveled at the Japanese government over the ongoing nuclear crisis in the East Asian country.

"Regarding the personnel changes at the ministry of economy, trade and industry, we have been discussing that for about a month," Japan's minister of economy, trade and industry said on Thursday.

"We want to refresh and revitalize the ministry," he told reporters.

"I'll have new people rebuild the ministry," he went on to say.

The three officials are Vice Minister for Economy, Trade and Industry Kazuo Matsunaga, Head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency Nobuaki Terasaka and Head of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy Tetsuhiro Hosono.

The government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan has been severely criticized over its handling of the country's nuclear crisis which began following a destructive quake and the ensuing tsunami that hit Japan's northeastern coasts on March 11 and damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The double disaster and the nuclear fallout at the Fukushima Daiichi have been described as Japan's worst crisis since World War II as they left thousands of people dead and displaced many others.

Only 19 of Japan's 54 reactors are currently working and a lot more are expected to shut down for regular checks, forcing people to save power.

Radiation hits highest in Japan Nuclear plant

Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (file photo)

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/191866.html

Radiation at the quake-hit Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan reaches its highest levels since the outbreak of the nuclear crisis in March, a report says.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the operator of the damaged power station, said on Monday more than 10 sieverts per hour of radiation was recorded on the surface of a pipe located outdoors between reactor 1 and reactor 2 of the atomic facility, DPA reported.

The plant has emitted radioactive material into the environment since 11 March when a massive earthquake and tsunami hit Japan's northeastern coasts.

The double disaster and the nuclear fallout at the Fukushima Daiichi have been described as Japan's worst crisis since World War II as they left thousands of people dead and displaced many others.

The crisis prompted the government of Japan to elevate the maximum annual limit for plant workers from 100 millisieverts to 250 millisieverts. The government also raised the severity level of the situation at Fukushima from 5 to 7 - the worst on an international scale -- weeks after the crisis.

Severity level of 7 had only been applied to the 1986 Chernobyl accident in Ukraine.

An explosion and ensuing fire in Chernobyl nuclear power plant resulted in a severe release of radioactivity into the environment, claiming the lives of at least 4,000 people.

Massive wildfire rages on in US

The Las Conchas fire burns near the Los Alamos Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M., Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/186996.html

A huge wildfire in north of the US state of New Mexico has grown larger, as fire officials try to keep it from spreading onto the Los Alamos nuclear lab, reports say.

The so-called Las Conchas, New Mexico's second largest wildfire on record so far, has burned nearly 93,000 acres of thick pine woodlands on the slopes of the Jemez Mountains since erupting.

The fire started on Sunday near the Los Alamos National Laboratory and comes second in comparison to the state's biggest blaze, the Dry Lakes Fire of 2003, which scorched more than 94,000 acres of the Gila National Forest in the southwestern US state of New Mexico, Reuters reported on Thursday.

Las Conchas, believed to have been sparked by a downed power line, has burned mostly in the Santa Fe National Forest and got near the Los Alamos weapons laboratory and the adjacent town with some 10,000 residents.

The US government sent a plane equipped with radiation monitors over the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory on Wednesday as a 110-square-mile wildfire burned at the lab's doorstep, putting thousands of scientific experiments on hold for days.

"We're seeing fire behavior we've never seen down here, and it's really aggressive," Los Alamos County Fire Chief Douglas Tucker told reporters, adding that earlier hopes of lifting evacuations in the area by this weekend had been dashed.

The Los Alamos complex contains 3 metric tons of highly radioactive weapons-grade plutonium, stored in concrete and steel vaults in the basement floor of a building near the center of the complex, with an air-containment system surrounding it.

Lab officials say those storage structures are fire safe and pose no threat to public safety.

By midday Friday, Las Conchas is expected to capture the dubious title of the largest single forest fire on record in New Mexico.

US nuclear plant hit by floodwater

The Fort Calhoun nuclear power station surrounded by water

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/186475.html

Floodwater from Missouri River has breached a berm at the Nebraska nuclear power, Fort Calhoun, allowing water to reach containment buildings and transformers.

The plant's officials were forced to shut down electrical power when water surrounded the main electrical transformers, but the flooding had no impact on reactor shutdown cooling or the spent fuel pool cooling, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said on Sunday.

The NRC added that the Fort Calhoun Station shut down in early April for refueling, and there is no water inside the plant, Huffington Post reported.

Head of NRC Gregory Jaczko visited the Fort Calhoun plant on Monday.

In a similar incident in Japan, Fukushima power plant was damaged when a massive earthquake and tsunami hit the country's northeastern coasts on March 11.

As a result of the flooding, partial meltdowns occurred at the nuclear power plant when the cooling systems for three reactors failed.

Thousands of Japanese people living within a 20-kilometer radius of the plant were evacuated and the government has declared a state of nuclear emergency for the five reactors.

The Japanese government initially attempted to play down the incident by not releasing accurate radiation data.

US army base transfer in Japan delayed

(L-R) Japan's Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Japanese Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hold a joint press conference at the Department of State June 21, 2011 in Washington।

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/185741.html

The United States and Japan have acknowledged dropping a 2014 deadline for the relocation of an American military base on the Japanese island of Okinawa.

“Completion of the FRF (Futenma Replacement Facility) and the Marine relocation will not meet the previously targeted date of 2014,” the US and Japan said in a joint statement following a high level meeting in Washington on Tuesday.

The meeting involved US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Japanese Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto and Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa, Reuters reported.

The future of the base has been a major source of friction between the United States and Japan.

Washington and Tokyo agreed in 2006 to shift the US Marines' Futenma airbase in Okinawa to a less crowded area on the island, which is host to about half of the 47,000 US troops in the East Asian country.

But Tokyo has failed to win local backing for its plan to relocate the American base on the island.

Many of Okinawa's residents are demanding the removal of the military base from the island altogether.

Japan hosts some 47,000 US troops under a post-World War Two treaty.

Japan PM to step down in August

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/185756.html

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan is set to step down by the end of August as Japan continues to grapple with its ongoing nuclear crisis following the March earthquake and tsunami.

Kan is expected to resign in late August after securing parliamentary passage of the second extra budget and a bill needed for the government to issue deficit-covering bonds for fiscal 2011, Japan's Kyodo News announced on Tuesday.

The Democratic Party of Japan, which is headed by the premier, and major opposition parties including the Liberal Democratic Party agreed on the resignation date after several weeks of discussions.

In June, Kan survived a no-confidence vote for his mishandling of the post-quake nuclear crisis.

Ahead of the June vote in the parliament, Kan told his Democratic Party of Japan members that he felt responsible for resolving the country's nuclear crisis, adding that he would then leave office to give his place to the younger generation to rebuild the disaster-stricken country.

On March 11, a destructive 9-magnitude earthquake and an ensuing tsunami struck Japan's northern coasts, setting off a nuclear crisis by knocking out power to cooling systems of reactors at the Fukushima plant and causing a radiation leak.

The powerful quake and the massive tsunami that followed killed about 24,000 people and ravaged the Fukushima plant. The crisis has displaced about 80,000 residents from around the plant.

Clean-up suspended at Fukushima plant

A picture of Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant taken from the air after the March quake and tsunami (file photo)

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/185202.html

The operator of Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant has stopped the clean-up operation as radiation levels rose faster than expected.

"The level of radiation at a machine to absorb cesium has risen faster than our initial projections," Reuters quoted a spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) as saying on Saturday.

TEPCO started cleaning up radioactive water at the plant on Friday after engineers succeeded in fixing a series of glitches in the new clean-up system.

TEPCO officials warned on Friday that there will not be enough space at the plant to store more radioactive water by June 20 if they cannot remove the faults in the system.

Following Japan's twin disasters of earthquake and tsunami in March, TEPCO pumped large amounts of water into three reactors where the cooling systems had stopped working.

The halt in the cooling systems operation sparked meltdowns, explosions and radiation leaks.

The new system, which employs French and US technology, is to be used to decontaminate the nearly 110,000 tons of highly radioactive water that is stored at the plant. The decontaminated water can be re-used to cool the reactors.

In early April, the utility dumped around 10,000 tons of water with low-level contamination into the ocean, drawing criticism from China and South Korea.

Japan doubles radioactive leak estimate

An aerial view of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/183575.html

Japan has revised its initial estimate of the amount of radiation leak from the Fukushima nuclear plant nearly three months after it was hit by a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said on Tuesday the radiation released into the atmosphere has been more than double the amount originally thought, AFP reported.

The findings were released on the eve of the first meeting Tuesday of an independent 10-member academic and expert panel that will look into the causes of the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl a quarter-century ago.

The group's leader, a Tokyo University researcher on human error, Yotaro Hatamura, said at the meeting that "nuclear power has higher energy density and is dangerous. It was a mistake to consider it safe.”

Prime Minister Naoto Kan's special advisor on the nuclear crisis, Goshi Hosono, said Monday that the latest findings were unlikely to affect plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company's roadmap to bring all reactors to a stable "cold shutdown" by January 2012.

Plutonium has also been found for the first time in soil just a few kilometers from the Fukushima facility. But researchers say the levels are not a cause for alarm.

On March 11, a 9-magnitude earthquake, off the northeast coast of Japan's main island, unleashed a 30-foot (10-meter) tsunami wave, which knocked out power to the cooling system of the reactors at the Fukushima plant, causing a radiation leak.

The powerful quake and the massive tsunami that followed killed nearly 24,000 people. The crisis has displaced about 80,000 residents from around the plant.

Japan PM survives no-confidence vote

Despite securing himself a few more months, the embattled Japanese premier has lost his popularity in Japan

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/182839.html

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has survived a no-confidence motion in the East Asian country's parliament over his 'mishandling' of the post-quake nuclear crisis.

The lower house of parliament rejected the motion against the embattled premier, allowing him to continue his plans to handle issues related to March 11 earthquake, the ensuing tsunami, and the subsequent nuclear crisis in Japan, AFP reported.

The motion was defeated by a margin of 152 votes against 293, despite growing calls for Kan's resignation.

The embattled premier was expected to survive the motion as his Democratic Party of Japan controls the powerful lower house of parliament.

On Wednesday, Japan's largest opposition party, the Liberal Democratic Party, along with two smaller opposition groups submitted the no-confidence motion to the parliament.

Ahead of Thursday's vote in the parliament, Kan told his Democratic Party of Japan members that he felt responsible for resolving the country's nuclear crisis, adding that he would then leave office to give his place to the younger generation in order to rebuild the disaster-stricken country.

New leak seen at Japan quake-hit plant

An aerial picture of Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant (file photo)

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/181961.html

A new leak of radioactive water has been found at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant, adding to the woes of the Asian country's nuclear crisis.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the operator of the plant, said on Thursday that up to 57 tons of contaminated water has leaked from a storage facility, Reuters reported.

The environmental group, Greenpeace, has criticized the Japanese government's assessment of the contamination level, saying, “Radioactive hazards are not decreasing through dilution or dispersion of materials, but the radioactivity is instead accumulating in marine life.”

“Our data show that significant amounts of contamination continue to spread over great distances from the Fukushima nuclear plant,” the group added.

Greenpeace has also accused TEPCO of covering up the actual severity of the disaster in the Asian country.

More questions were raised on Thursday when TEPCO changed an initial report about how it tried to tackle the Japanese crisis.

The company said it continued to inject seawater into reactor number one immediately after the tsunami. Earlier, the firm had said they had stopped the injection under pressure from Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has launched a ten-day investigation into the nuclear crisis since Monday.

Kan told G8 leaders on Thursday that Japan will lessen its reliance on nuclear power and will instead increase its share of green energy to 20 percent of total power supply by 2020.

A 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck northeastern Japan on March 11, setting off a nuclear crisis by knocking out power to cooling systems of reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and causing radioactive leaks.

UN starts study on Japan nuclear crisis

Workers wearing protective suits enter Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant No.2 reactor building in Fukushima Prefecture on May 18

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/180934.html

The United Nations has launched a study on the implications of the accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday that the body will undertake a systematic study on the health, safety and security impact of the accident at Fukushima plant, which was hit by an earthquake and tsunami in March, Reuters reported.

Ban said that the UN would present the findings at a high-level meeting on the implications of the crisis scheduled to be held during the annual UN General Assembly meeting in September.

The report "will address a variety of areas, including environment, health, food security, sustainable development and the nexus between nuclear safety and nuclear security," the UN chief said in a statement.

"It will also present system-wide views on how to improve disaster risk preparedness," he added, noting, "In producing this study, it is my intention to highlight the need to strengthen the capacity of the relevant international organizations, particularly the IAEA, recognizing its central role."

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Health Organization and the World Food Program are among the UN agencies which will be carrying out the study.

On March 11, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, off the northeast coast of Japan's main island, unleashed a 23-foot (7-meter) tsunami and was followed by more than 50 aftershocks for hours.

The massive earthquake and ensuing tsunami set off a nuclear disaster by knocking out power to the cooling systems of reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and caused radiation leaks.

Japan confirms meltdown for first time

Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/180226.html

The operator of Japan's Fukushima plant has admitted for the first time that a partial meltdown occurred in the station within hours after the March 11 twin disasters.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) announced on Monday that based on new data, most of the fuel rods in the reactor No.1 had melted and fallen to the bottom of the reactor's pressure vessel only 16 hours after a massive quake and tsunami hit the plant.

"Because there is similar damage to the fuel rods at the No. 2 and 3 reactors, the bottoms of their pressure vessels could also have been damaged," senior TEPCO official Junichiro Matsumoto said.

Matsumoto added that the company plans to carry out similar analysis on the two reactors.

The massive March 11earthquake and ensuing tsunami in Japan's northeastern coast set off a nuclear disaster by knocking out power to the cooling systems of reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and caused radiation leaks.

The government initially ordered the evacuation of people living in a 20-kilometer (12.4-mile) radius around the plant, and told people residing between 20 and 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from the plant to remain indoors.

On Sunday, Japan began widening evacuation zone around the plant and transferred about 4,000 residents of Iidate-mura village and 1,100 people in Kawamata-cho town to public housing, hotels and other facilities in nearby cities.

TEPCO has been struggling to stop radioactive leaks from the plant's damaged reactors for months.

On Thursday, the company said that new measurements taken this week indicate that water pumped into the pressure vessel had quickly leaked out from the reactor one building.

The company has also reported another spill of contaminated water despite efforts to stop spills into the Pacific.

Japan warned against flooding N-plant

A view of Fukushima nuclear power plant

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/179786.html

Japan has been warned against plans to flood a damaged reactor containment vessel at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Experts say flooding a reactor whose pressure vessel has been leaked might cause a potentially dangerous radiation leak in the plant

In the No.1 reactor, uranium fuel rods partially melted after they were fully exposed during the 11 March quake and tsunami, and keeping the leaked fuel cool is going to be very difficult, the facility's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said.

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said it believed partially melted fuel had fallen to the bottom of the pressure vessel, which holds the reactor core together, and may have leaked into its concrete base, known as the dry well.

Greenpeace has urged TEPCO to abandon plans to flood the container with water, given the likelihood that melted fuel has damaged it.

Shaun Burnie, nuclear adviser to Greenpeace Germany, said, "Flooding a reactor that has fuel [that has fallen] through the pressure vessel is not a good idea."

In April, the Japanese agency raised the severity level of the situation at Fukushima from 5 to 7 -- the worst on an international scale.

According to the agency, the amount of radiation emissions at the Fukushima plant was equivalent to 10 percent of that in the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

A destructive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and an ensuing tsunami struck Japan's northern coasts on March 11, setting off a nuclear crisis by knocking out power to cooling systems of reactors at the Fukushima plant and causing radioactive leaks.

Engineers are pumping water into the reactors to cool them as they work to restore the damaged cooling systems.

TEPCO has said that it may take up to nine months to achieve a cold shut-down at the plant.

Japanese call for end to nuclear power

Japanese demonstrators protesting the country's nuclear policy in Tokyo, May 8, 2011

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/178732.html

Thousands of Japanese people have taken to the streets in Tokyo, calling for a change in the government's energy policy and an end to nuclear power.

On Saturday, thousands of demonstrators rallied in Tokyo, carrying banners that read "Nuclear is old!" and "We want a shift in energy policy!" one day after Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan called for the shutdown of Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Honshu island.

Seismology experts forecast there is a 90-percent chance of a major quake in 30 years hitting the Chubu region, the central area of the country's largest island, Honshu, which encompasses the Hamaoka nuclear power plant.

The Hamaoka complex in Shizuoka Prefecture of the Chubu region is based near a major fault line 200 kilometers (124 miles) southwest of the capital Tokyo.

Kan said the plant should be shut down until protective measures are taken against natural disasters.

"I'm happy to see the prime minister finally taking action," one of the demonstrators Manami Inoue, 28, said.

"I feel so frustrated because no politicians have made their stance clear -- whether they are for nuclear or against nuclear. They keep saying nuclear is dangerous but never say they are against it," AFP quoted another demonstrator Shinji Matsushita as saying.

Opposition to nuclear power in Japan has grown since the destructive earthquake and tsunami on March 11 set off nuclear problems by knocking out power to the cooling systems of reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant and leading to radiation leakage.

The operator of Fukushima power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), has since been struggling to stop radioactive leaks from the plant's damaged reactors.

TEPCO announced earlier in April that it would manage to reduce radiation leaks from the Fukushima plant within three months and to also cool reactors and control the radiation within six to nine months.

Japan, US drop Okinawa base relocation

US Marines' Futenma airbase in Okinawa, Japan.(file photo)

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/178664.html

Japan and the United States have cancelled a formerly-approved plan for relocating the controversial American airbase on Okinawa Island by 2014.

According to Japanese media, Washington and Tokyo will discuss a new timeframe for the relocation of US Marines' Futenma airbase, Reuters reported on Friday.

The issue of US military bases on the southern Japanese island has long strained relations between the two countries. Last year, Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan promised to implement a 2006 agreement to shift the American airbase to a less populated part of Okinawa.

The failure to implement the 2006 deal sustained a hefty blow to Kan's predecessor Yukio Hatoyama, who was forced to resign in 2010 after facing public pressure and outrage over the issue.

The two sides had agreed in 2006 to transfer the facility from the residential district of Ginowan to the coastal and less populated area of Henoko in Nago, Okinawa.

However, that plan is also facing strong opposition from local residents who see the base as a source of crime, accidents and noise.

Former US National Security Adviser James Johns says the best possible choice is the integration of Futenma air base with another US base in Kadena town in southern Okinawa.

Johns said in a Friday meeting in Washington with Mikio Shimoji, secretary general of Japan's ruling party, that the relocation plan was not feasible on account of expected environmental destruction in the area.

Pacific radiation levels keep rising

A view of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/178145.html

The levels of highly radioactive water keep rising on the Pacific seabed in close proximity to Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), said on Tuesday that the seabed samples collected three kilometers from Minamisoma and another three kilometers from Naraha, both in Fukushima Prefecture, contained 98 to 190 becquerels of radioactive iodine per kilogram and 1,200 to 1,400 becquerels of radioactive cesium, Kyodo news agency reported.

The high levels of radioactive materials were detected from samples collected last Friday from the seabed at points 20-30 meters deep.

TEPCO said that the radioactive substances may have gone down into the sea after being released into the air from the plant, or may have been carried by contaminated water that seeped from the plant.

The Fukushima plant has leaked radiation into air, soil and the Pacific Ocean ever since it was hit by a 9-magnitude earthquake and a devastating tsunami on March 11.

The tremor triggered a nuclear crisis by knocking out power to cooling systems at the nuclear power plant on Japan's northeast coast.

TEPCO has announced that it will manage to reduce radiation leaks from its Fukushima plant within three months and will also cool reactors and control the radiation within six to nine months.

In early April, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency raised the severity level of the situation at Fukushima from 5 to 7 -- the worst on an international scale.

According to the agency, the amount of radiation emissions at the Fukushima plant was equivalent to 10 percent of that in the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

An explosion and ensuing fire in Chernobyl nuclear power plant resulted in the release of radioactivity into the environment, claiming the lives of at least 4,000 people.

The number of the dead and missing from Japan's March 11 quake and tsunami now stands at over 28,000, according to the Japanese National Police Agency.

Putin slams Japan over nuclear crisis

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/177585.html

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has criticized Japan's nuclear industry for poor handling of the Fukushima disaster and the building of nuclear power plants in seismic zones.

“The Japanese have a unique situation. I don't know why they build their plants in seismic zones. The whole of Japan is a seismic zone,” AFP quoted Putin as saying on Saturday during a meeting of physicists in Penza, south of the capital Moscow.

The Russian premier said he thought that Japanese authorities should have quickly supplied the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant with extra power to pump water and cool it down.

“They should have brought in new power generators from other areas of the country in time, but they did not and that's what caused problems,” Putin said in a speech published on his official site.

“And you know, these are old facilities, American reactors dating back to the 1970s,” he added.

Radiation leaks at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have sparked new concerns over the potential risks of nuclear power.

On March 11, an 8.9-magnitude earthquake, off the northeast coast of Japan's main island, unleashed a 23-foot (7-meter) tsunami and was followed by more than 50 aftershocks for hours.

The twin disasters have claimed the lives of more than 28.000 people.

The quake is now considered Japan's deadliest natural disaster since the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which claimed the lives of more than 142,000 people.

Russia currently hosts 10 nuclear stations whose 32 reactors produced 169.4 billion kilowatts in 2010.

Nuclear aide to Japan premier resigns

Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan has been under fire over the recent nuclear crisis in the country

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/177439.html

A senior nuclear adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has submitted his resignation, alleging the government had ignored his advice on radiation limits and failed to follow the law.

Toshiso Kosako, a Tokyo University professor, who was named last month as an aide to Kan, said the Japanese government had only taken ad hoc measures to contain the crisis at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, Al Jazeera reported.

In a tearful press conference, he said the government and its commissions had taken "flexible approaches" to existing laws and regulations, and ignored his advice after he was named an adviser on March 16.

"I cannot help but to think [the prime minister's office and other agencies] are only taking stopgap measures... and delaying the end" of the nuclear crisis, he told reporters.

The expert criticized the government's handling of the crisis and said their action was knee-jerk.

Kosako went on to say that he could not stay on and allow the government to set what he said were improper radiation limits for elementary schools near the crippled plant.

“The expert was particularly critical of the government's nuclear radiation exposure limit. His biggest attack was the government limit for children, which he said was 20 times too high in Fukushima Prefecture."

The expert said the radiation limit for children should have been much lower as they are being exposed to radiation, and that” his recommendations were ignored.”