One of the interesting features during the Fukushima reactor crisis were the fistfights that broke out in comments between the defenders of nuclear power and the opponents. The boosters argued that the worst case scenario problems were overblown, both in terms of estimation of the odds of occurrence and the likely consequences. The critics contended that nuclear power was not economical ex massive subsidies, that there was no "safe" method of waste disposal, and that nuclear plants were always subject to corners-cutting, both in design and operation, so the ongoing hazards were greater than they appeared.

Reader Crocodile Chuck passed along a story from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, "The Lessons of Fukushima", by anthropologist Hugh Gusterson. Here is the key section:

Japanese authorities shot water into a spent-fuel pool of the reactor No. 4 of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant Sunday for the first time since the reactor's cooling system failed following last week's powerful earthquake.

The operator also stepped up efforts to reactivate the cooling system of the reactors No. 1 and 2 as power cables were connected to them, but the International Atomic Energy Agency chief indicated it was premature to have an optimistic view on the future of the troubled plant.

The Ground Self-Defense Force sprayed about 80 tons of water from a vehicle into the pool for nearly one hour until 9:30 a.m., according to the Defense Ministry.

Kyodo news agency now reporting that TEPCO engineers have restored power at the No.2 reactor at the stricken Fukushima plant.

NHK public TV reporting that an 80-year-old woman and 16-year-old youth were found alive on Sunday under the rubble in the Japanese city of Ishinomaki in northeast Japan, nine days after the region was devastated by the massive earthquake and tsunami.

Jiji news agency reports that Japan's Kansai Electric Power to spend 50 billion yen ($619 million) to 100 billion yen ($1.2 billion) on tsunami protection measures.

A separate report from Kyodo news agency says that Kansai Electric plans to postpone the reopening of the Takahama and Mihama nuclear plants.

Police in Japan say 15,000 people may have been killed in a single prefecture, Miyagi, by the huge quake and tsunami which struck nine days ago.

The announcement came as the official death toll rose to 8,133, with 12,272 people missing

Some progress has been made in the effort to prevent Fukushima No.3 reactor from worsening, according to a Japanese government official.

Japan Health Ministry says radiation levels exceeded safety standards in Fukushima, Ibaragi prefectures

Japan nuclear operator says that it may take several days to connect power to No. 3 and No. 4 reactors

• Yokota continued receiving and delivering supplies vital to continuing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations throughout Japan to include delivering Marines and chemical suits to Yamagata, fuel to Sendai, medical supplies to Hanamaki and Sendai, a FARP mission to Yamagata, delivery of 5 pallets of Boron to Fukushima.
• USAF MC-130 delivered 72K  pounds of JP-8 to Yamagata
• USAF 5x C-130 delivered Boron to Hyakuri/blankets to Sendai/fuel to Misawa
• USAF MC-130: 5 pallets of water from Atsugi to Matsushima
• Royal Australian Air Force C-17 transported Japan Ground Self Defense Force pax/supplies/trucks from Kadena to Misawa
• Sendai Airport is now cleared, and expect to receive C-17s soon. USAF Spec Ops cleared the tsunami stricken airfield and brought it back on-line in less than one week.
• Yokota Aircraft (UH-1, C-12) are supporting DOE efforts to gather radiological data around the Fukushima nuclear plant. 
• Yokota delivered fuel bladders and gasoline to sustain Misawa AB ops.

: Temperatures at all spent fuel pools at Fukushima plant below 100 C: Kitazawa

The Fukushima power plants were required by regulators to withstand a certain height of tsunami. At the Daiichi plant the design basis was 5.7 metres and at Daini this was 5.2 metres.

 

Tepco has now released tentative assessments of the scale of the tsunami putting it at over 10 metres at Daiichi and over 12 metres at Dainii.

The plant sites were inundated, causing the loss of residual heat removal systems at both sites as well as emergency diesel generators at Daiichi.

• confirmed dead: 8,450
  
• registered missing: 12,909
  
• injured: 2,701
  
• buildings found completely destroyed (by earthquake & tsunami): 14,637
  
• buildings found burned down: 149

The Tokyo Electric Power Company has decided against releasing gases from the overheating No. 3 reactor in an attempt to reduce pressure inside the containment vessel.

TEPCO officials in Fukushima said on Sunday afternoon that pressure within the reactor containment vessel has begun to stabilize, and gases don't need to be released for the time being.

They say they will closely monitor the situation.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency announced earlier on Sunday that pressure inside the vessel is rising despite efforts to cool the reactor by spraying seawater inside it.

The agency said the pressure must be reduced to protect the containment vessel, which holds radioactive materials inside in the event of an accident.

(Reuters) - The U.N. atomic watchdog said on Sunday there had been some positive developments at Japan's disaster-hit nuclear power plant in the last 24 hours but that the overall situation remained very serious.

Graham Andrew, a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), also said radiation levels in major Japanese cities had not changed and remained below dangerous levels.

Radioactivity from the nuclear accident in Fukushima has not contaminated food grown outside Japan, the UN atomic watchdog says. Graham Andrew, a senior official of the IAEA said:

Radioactivity from this emergency - I say on the advice of (UN agencies) FAO and WHO - has not affected food produced in any other country.

The grey line at the top shows the moon illumination percentage (the top of the curve indicates a full moon, and the bottom a new moon), with the blue line showing the distance between Earth and the moon (the higher up the chart, the further away the moon is; the top of the curve indicates apogee and the bottom perigee). These metrics are shown here purely out of interest, to help you draw your own conclusions as to any correlation between the moon and earthquakes.

Tsunami survivor Kiyoshi Hiratsuka searched all day for his much beloved Harley Davidson in the ruins of his hometown, Onagawa. The once vibrant fishing town was obliterated when the devastating tsunami that followed the earthquake converted it into a landscape of death and destruction.

Residents say half of the town's 10.000 people are gone.

Digging in the rubble of what was once his home, Hiratsuka eventually found the handlebars of his Harley sticking out from the debris. The 37-year-old mechanic explained his relief to Associated Press news agency at finding the bike, saying he wanted to keep it as a memorial to the losses suffered by Japan.

Grey smoke found from No.3 nuclear reactor

A local branch of the Tokyo Electric Power Company says grey smoke was seen rising from the troubled No.3 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture.

The smoke was apparently coming from the southeast edge of the roof of the reactor structure at 3:55 PM on Monday.

The office informed local firefighters about this. The amount of smoke seems to be decreasing.

The reactor operator is evacuating its workers from the area.

The storage pool for spent nuclear fuel is located in the southeast area of the reactor structure.

Monday, March 21, 2011 17:17 +0900 (JST)

Meanwhile, this site aggregates all government radiation measurement data in English.

• The latest "...by prefecture" one shows that levels rose again in Ibaraki prefecture (neighbours Fukushima) this morning.
  
• The "...20 Km Zone..." ones have a map (page 7), with a lot more measuring points than in prior reports It's obvious that the most heavily contaminated area spreads along the mountains to the NW of the plant.

Indeed, nuclear plants are so slow and costly to build that they reduce and retard climate protection.

Here's how. Each dollar spent on a new reactor buys about 2-10 times less carbon savings, 20-40 times slower, than spending that dollar on the cheaper, faster, safer solutions that make nuclear power unnecessary and uneconomic: efficient use of electricity, making heat and power together in factories or buildings ("cogeneration"), and renewable energy. The last two made 18% of the world's 2009 electricity (while nuclear made 13%, reversing their 2000 shares)--and made over 90% of the 2007-08 increase in global electricity production.

Those smarter choices are sweeping the global energy market. Half the world's new generating capacity in 2008 and 2009 was renewable. In 2010, renewables, excluding big hydro dams, won $151 billion of private investment and added over 50 billion watts (70% the total capacity of all 23 Fukushima-style U.S. reactors) while nuclear got zero private investment and kept losing capacity. Supposedly unreliable windpower made 43-52% of four (northern -CH) German states' total 2010 electricity. Non-nuclear Denmark, 21% windpowered, plans to get entirely off fossil fuels. Hawai'i plans 70% renewables by 2025.

In contrast, of the 66 nuclear units worldwide officially listed as "under construction" at the end of 2010, 12 had been so listed for over 20 years, 45 had no official startup date, half were late, all 66 were in centrally planned power systems--50 of those in just four (China, India, Russia, South Korea)--and zero were free-market purchases. Since 2007, nuclear growth has added less annual output than just the costliest renewable--solar power --and will probably never catch up. While inherently safe renewable competitors are walloping both nuclear and coal plants in the marketplace and keep getting dramatically cheaper, nuclear costs keep soaring, and with greater safety precautions would go even higher. Tokyo Electric Co., just recovering from $10-20 billion in 2007 earthquake costs at its other big nuclear complex, now faces an even more ruinous Fukushima bill.

Since 2005, new U.S. reactors (if any) have been 100+% subsidized--yet they couldn't raise a cent of private capital, because they have no business case. They cost 2-3 times as much as new windpower, and by the time you could build a reactor, it couldn't even beat solar power. Competitive renewables, cogeneration, and efficient use can displace all U.S. coal power more than 23 times over--leaving ample room to replace nuclear power's half-as-big-as-coal contribution too--but we need to do it just once. Yet the nuclear industry demands ever more lavish subsidies, and its lobbyists hold all other energy efforts hostage for tens of billions in added ransom, with no limit.

In the past, i've often differed with Amory about the methods to finance renewables (he loved big utility involvement, and despite that being current reality, i believed it would ultimately hurt renewable development.) But you can't quarrel with his numbers here. Reading from his blog post in total, i get a sense of hidden anger that it's taken so long, though perhaps that's because we've been fighting for sun and wind since the 70's, and that gets wearing.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

Status of the Nuclear Reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

None of the six reactors at the plant have operated since the earthquake. But explosions have damaged four of the buildings, and fuel in the reactors and spent fuel stored in the buildings is in danger of melting and releasing radioactive materials. Last updated March 20, 5:40 PM ET.

Finnish nuclear autroritory STUK has informed Japanese nuclear authotorities that according their studies conducted 20 yrs ago using sea water for cooling in nuclear plants can be only temporary solution. As sea water boils, the saline liquid will condensate and eventually create salt crystals. If crystallation happens extensively, there will not be way of cooling down the reactors. www.yle.fi

The Yomiuri Shimbun

About 90 percent of the people known to have died in Rikuzen-Takata, Iwate Prefecture--one of the worst-hit cities in the March 11 disaster--drowned in the tsunami that followed the earthquake, a forensic expert has disclosed.

Hirotaro Iwase, a professor of forensic medicine at Chiba University, conducted postmortem examinations on 126 disaster victims in the city between Sunday and Wednesday.

More than 80 percent of the 8,000 households of the Pacific coast city, which had a pre-quake population of 23,000, are believed to have been swept away by the huge tsunami. The exact number of fatalities still unknown.

Tokyo Electric Power Company says some of the nuclear fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has apparently been damaged, as higher levels of radioactive materials have been detected in the vicinity.

The utility on Monday released the results of a radiation survey carried out at the plant on Saturday.

Officials detected in the air 5 radioactive materials that are generated by nuclear fission.

The level of iodine 131 was 5.9 milibecquerels per cubic centimeter. That's about 6 times the permissible level for workers without protective masks.

The density of the other substances was also higher than usual, but within safety standards.

The utility says the radiation is likely to have come from the damaged reactors, and added that it will check radiation levels daily.

This piece was originally posted on The Daily ACK.

Over the weekend I came across some data on levels of radiation in Japan collected by the Japanese government, and helpfully translated into English by volunteers.

The data was somewhat stuck in PDF format. However, Gemma Hobson, Pete Warden, and I transcribed, mostly by hand, some of the more helpfully formatted files into CSV format (16KB) making it acceptable for Pete's OpenHeatMap service. The map embedded below shows our first results.

After connecting the transmission line on Sunday, engineers found on Monday that they still did not have enough power to fully run the systems that control the temperature and pressure in the building that houses the reactor" www.nytimes.com

Serious allegations against TEPCO - Die Welt translate.google.com

TOKYO -- The operator of Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant told safety regulators less than two weeks before disaster struck that it had failed to carry out some scheduled inspections at the facility.

In a report submitted to Japan's nuclear safety agency on February 28, Japan's largest power utility, Tokyo Electric Power Co, said it had failed to inspect 33 pieces of equipment in the six reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex.

The equipment missed in scheduled inspections included a motor and a backup power generator for the No. 1 reactor, the firm said in a report available on a company Website.

(Reuters) - The World Health Organisation said on Monday that radiation in food after an earthquake damaged a Japanese nuclear plant was more serious than previously thought, eclipsing signs of progress in a battle to avert a catastrophic meltdown in its reactors.

..."Quite clearly it's a serious situation," Peter Cordingley, Manila-based spokesman for the World Health Organisation's (WHO) regional office for the Western Pacific, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"It's a lot more serious than anybody thought in the early days when we thought that this kind of problem can be limited to 20 to 30 kilometres ... It's safe to suppose that some contaminated produce got out of the contamination zone."

However, he said there was no evidence of contaminated food from Fukushima reaching other countries.

Plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said radiation had been found in the Pacific nearby, perhaps not surprising given crews have been dousing the reactors with sea-water ever since the accident.

Radioactive iodine in the sea samples was 126.7 times the allowed limit, while caesium was 24.8 times over, Kyodo news agency said. That still posed no immediate danger, TEPCO said.

"It would have to be drunk for a whole year in order to accumulate to one millisievert," a TEPCO official said, referring to the standard radiation measurement unit. People are generally exposed to about 1 to 10 millisieverts each year from background radiation caused by substances in the air and soil.

You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.

Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.

TOKYO (Reuters)- When the massive tsunami smacked into Fukushima Daiichi, the nuclear power plant was stacked high with more uranium than it was originally designed to hold and had repeatedly missed mandatory safety checks over the past decade.

The Fukushima plant that has spun into partial meltdown and spewed out plumes of radiation had become a growing depot for spent fuel in a way the American engineers who designed the reactors 50 years earlier had never envisioned, according to company documents and outside experts.

At the time of the March 11 earthquake, the reactor buildings at Fukushima held the equivalent of almost six years of the highly radioactive uranium fuel rods produced by the plant, according to a presentation by Tokyo Electric Power Co to a conference organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

White smoke was reported seen emanating from unit 2 on 21 March at 9:22 UTC. Grayish smoke was reported seen emanating from unit 3 at 6:55 on 21 March, and this was reported to have 'died down' two hours later. All workers at units 1 through 4 evacuated after the smoke at unit 3 was seen. The IAEA is seeking further information at this time on the status of workers at the site.

Japanese authorities have also reported that water has been sprayed over the Common Spent Fuel Pool; this started on 21 March at 1:37 UTC. The IAEA is seeking further information on this development and will report further as updates are received from Japan.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said fuel rods at its Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant have been damaged, releasing five kinds of radioactive material and contaminating seawater for the first time.

The acknowledgements from the utility indicate poisons emanating from the plant may be spreading through the air and sea, raising concern over the safety of seafood from the coast of northeastern Japan and agriculture in the region.

The decay of radioactive fuel rods, composed of uranium and plutonium, was suspected by company officials five days after the March 11 magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami off the main island of Honshu.

The disclosures on the spread of radiation were made in a press briefing after midnight Tokyo time and in a press release this morning.

Iodine-131 was detected at 127 times normal levels from sample water taken at 2:30 p.m. yesterday, while cesium-134 levels were 25 times normal and cesium-137 was at 17 times normal, Tepco said on its website.

Radioactive substances have been detected in sea water samples taken near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Tokyo Electric Power Company checked the amount in a bucket of water that was taken from an area 100 meters south of the plant water outlet on Monday afternoon.

It said the water contained higher levels of radioactive materials. Iodine 131 was 126.7 times higher than the legal level, cesium 134 was 24.8 higher, and cesium 137 was 16.5 times higher. Cobalt 58 was below the legal limit.

The electric company said it only conducted the test once and cannot tell the effects on marine life and sea water in the area. The company said it will carry out more tests in wider areas.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011 05:08 +0900 (JST)


"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

A special vehicle has been brought in to spray water on an overheated pool of spent nuclear fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The vehicle is equipped with a long arm that should allow operators to accurately direct water at the targets. Such truck is normally used to pour concrete during the construction of high-rise buildings.

The Self Defense Forces, which control the water spraying operations, say that workers laid iron sheets to reinforce the ground near the No.4 reactor building. The vehicle arrived on Tuesday morning.

External power connected to all 6 Fukushima Daiichi reactors (Kyodo news)

A small radiation spike could be observed in Ibaraki prefecture over the last two hours. Very likely due to rain.

NISA coming under scrutiny reports the BBC saying "no proper inspections for 10 years" from bbcworld

(Reuters) - Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa on Tuesday reiterated that the central bank will take appropriate action when necessary with an eye on developments in the economy and financial markets.

Shirakawa declined to comment on whether the government should issue bonds to finance disaster relief, but stressed that the central bank should not directly underwrite government debt.

Japan's nuclear agency says the spent nuclear fuel pool at reactor 2 is filled with water.

(Reuters) - Miniscule amounts of radioactive particles believed to have come from Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant have been detected as far away as Iceland, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.

They stressed the tiny traces of iodine -- measured by a network of international monitoring stations as they spread eastwards from Japan across the Pacific, North America and to the Atlantic -- were far too low to cause any harm to humans.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), a Vienna-based U.N. body for monitoring possible breaches of the atom bomb test ban, has 63 stations worldwide for observing such particles, including one in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik.

A Tokyo Electric Power Co. executive apologized Tuesday to citizens who have been evacuated from Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, since the March 11 massive earthquake and tsunami triggered a crisis at a nuclear power plant located in Okuma and neighboring Futaba.

Executive Vice President Norio Tsuzumi made the apology when he visited a gymnasium in Tamura in the prefecture where the citizens including Okuma Mayor Toshitsuna Watanabe have stayed since they were ordered to leave their town due to the crisis at the power utility's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

''We are sorry to have caused you too much trouble,'' the TEPCO executive told the evacuees

Panoramic image of the destruction in Kesennuma, Japan

Lighting has been restored at one of the control rooms at Japan's crippled nuclear plant, domestic media reported on Tuesday, bringing the operators a step closer to reviving the plant's cooling systems to stop radiation.

Workers in Japan are still pouring seawater on overheating nuclear reactor rods at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in an effort to decrease the risk of further meltdowns. (Read Mother Jones' detailed and regularly updated explainer on the current situation.) Here's what they're up against, as Kate Sheppard and Josh Harkinson explained shortly after the emergency began:

The magnitude-9.0 earthquake rocked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station at 2:46 p.m. on 11 March, but the real emergency began an hour later. A wall of water swept across the site, washing away power lines and the fuel tanks for the emergency backup generators designed to take over if grid power failed. Inside the control room of the unit 1 reactor, the lights went out and the 1970s-vintage analogue gauges drifted to zero.

It will probably be years before anyone knows exactly what happened inside the three reactors at Fukushima Daiichi that seem to have partially melted down in the wake of the tsunami. But from press reports, public statements and interviews with experts, it is possible to work out the most likely scenario. And already it is clear that decisions made in the initial 24 hours by the handful of operators in the control room probably averted a much greater nuclear catastrophe than the one that now faces Japan.

TEPCO has now hooked up power lines to all six of the plant's reactors, the AP reports. But the company added that workers need to check all of the cooling systems for damage before switching the power on, a process that could take days or even weeks. TEPCO also said today that more water injections are needed to cool down reactor units 1, 2, and 3. 

In the Blue Marble today, Mojo's Joe Kloc has produced an illustration of GE's Mark 1 reactor in the mode of a NY subway map. And Kate Sheppard highlights a speech given last August by the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency in which he said that nuclear plants "need not be far from urban areas." Oops.

Death toll: A total of 9,199 people were confirmed dead by Japan's National Police Agency as of 1400 GMT on Tuesday, while 13,786 were reported missing.

Number of people evacuated: A total of 263,915 people are in shelters around the country as of 1400 GMT on Tuesday after being evacuated, the National Police Agency of Japan said.

The government expanded the evacuation area around a quake-stricken nuclear plant in northeastern Japan to a 20-km (12 miles) radius from 10 km on March 12. Since then, around 177,500 residents have evacuated from the zone.

The government has also told people within 30 km of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, some 240 km north of Tokyo, to stay indoors.

Such as Windscale, for those with long memories.

At the site you can enlarge.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

A week last Friday, in response to the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the Science Media Centre dropped every other story and started issuing comments from experts on earthquakes and tsunamis, warning them to prepare for days of back-to-back interviews. We forewarned our public health experts that the media interest would soon turn to them and planned to line up our trauma experts and psychologists.

Then there were explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Suddenly, this was the only game in town as far as the media was concerned.  

By the following Tuesday, there was only one earthquake expert sitting alongside five nuclear scientists at our emergency briefing - and none of the 40 reporters who crammed into the SMC were interested in him. In just a few days, the main story had changed from the actual catastrophe of Japan to the imminent threat of a nuclear 'apocalypse', 'meltdown' and 'another Chernobyl'.

Most broadcasters had one or two reporters focusing on the earthquake, compared to five or six talking about the threat from the nuclear plant. The personal stories that usually have me in tears for days after a tragedy like this were comparatively rare, as journalists competed to summon the most alarming language possible to describe the nuclear 'meltdown'. Terrifying headlines talked of a deadly radiation cloud descending on Tokyo, before drifting across the oceans to menace the United States. 

TOKYO -- Just a month before a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant at the center of Japan's nuclear crisis, government regulators approved a 10-year extension for the oldest of the six reactors at the power station despite warnings about its safety.

The regulatory committee reviewing extensions pointed to stress cracks in the backup diesel-powered generators at Reactor No. 1 at the Daiichi plant, according to a summary of its deliberations that was posted on the Web site of Japan's nuclear regulatory agency after each meeting. The cracks made the engines vulnerable to corrosion from seawater and rainwater. The generators are thought to have been knocked out by the tsunami, shutting down the reactor's vital cooling system.

AOL News: What was your first reaction when you heard about Fukushima?
Manzurova: It felt like déjà vu. I felt so worried for the people of Japan and the children especially. I know the experience that awaits them.

But experts say Fukushima is not as bad as Chernobyl.
Every nuclear accident is different, and the impact cannot be truly measured for years. The government does not always tell the truth. Many will never return to their homes. Their lives will be divided into two parts: before and after Fukushima. They'll worry about their health and their children's health. The government will probably say there was not that much radiation and that it didn't harm them. And the government will probably not compensate them for all that they've lost. What they lost can't be calculated.

What message do you have for Japan?
Run away as quickly as possible. Don't wait. Save yourself and don't rely on the government because the government lies. They don't want you to know the truth because the nuclear industry is so powerful.

The second team, currently on its way to Japan, will join a first team which went there last Thursday, Graham Andrew, special assistant to IAEA director general, said at a press briefing.

One of the teams will undertake measurements in Fukushima Prefecture, where the crippled nuclear power plant is located, and the other one in Tokyo and its surrounding areas, according to Andrew

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Fukushima Engineer Says He Covered Up Flaw at Shut Reactor No. 4

March 23 (Bloomberg) -- One of the reactors in the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant may have been relying on flawed steel to hold the radiation in its core, according to an engineer who helped build its containment vessel four decades ago.

Mitsuhiko Tanaka says he helped conceal a manufacturing defect in the $250 million steel vessel installed at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 4 reactor while working for a unit of Hitachi Ltd. in 1974. The reactor, which Tanaka has called a "time bomb," was shut for maintenance when the March 11 earthquake triggered a 7-meter (23-foot) tsunami that disabled cooling systems at the plant, leading to explosions and radiation leaks.

"Who knows what would have happened if that reactor had been running?" Tanaka, who turned his back on the nuclear industry after the Chernobyl disaster, said in an interview last week. "I have no idea if it could withstand an earthquake like this. It's got a faulty reactor inside."

The government estimated Wednesday the economic cost from the March 11 earthquake on seven affected prefectures to be up to 25 trillion yen ($309 billion), while warning that Japanese exports and industrial output could halt their recoveries due to the disaster.

The destruction of social infrastructure, housing and corporate facilities in the areas could cost between 16 trillion yen and 25 trillion yen, according to the Cabinet Office. This could push the nation's economic growth rate lower by 0.5 percent.

The actual result may be worse as this projection ruled out any negative effect of power supply shortages spawned by the nuclear plant crisis in Fukushima Prefecture. But the office also suggested that downward pressure on the economy could be offset by reconstruction work, which normally brings about a surge in domestic demand.

Japan's major banks are considering extending loans up to 2 trillion yen to Tokyo Electric Power Co. as early as by the end of March, sources close to the matter said Wednesday.

The move is aimed at helping the utility raise funds for measures to boost electricity supply following a quake-triggered accident at its nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture.

Among banks, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. is expected to provide loans of about 600 billion yen, Mizuho Corporate Bank some 500 billion yen and the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ about 300 billion yen, the sources said.

In addition, Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corp., Sumitomo Trust & Banking Co., Chuo Mitsui Trust and Banking Co. and Shinkin Central Bank are also considering extending loans as Tokyo Electric is likely to have requested loans from each of them last week, the sources said.

The utility firm had procured funds mostly through issuing corporate bonds, but it has apparently decided to ask banks for loans as conditions to issue corporate bonds have become severe following the nuclear power plant accident.

The plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it learned at around 4:20 p.m. that black smoke was seen rising at the No. 3 reactor building, leading to evacuation of workers from the four troubled reactors, but added about an hour later that it was receding.

...

It also turned out that the surface temperatures of the No. 1 and No. 3 reactor vessels have topped the maximum levels set by their designers, now that they can be measured due to battery-based backup power, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

In Tokyo, the metropolitan government said radioactive iodine exceeding the limit for infants' intake was detected in water at a purification plant, apparently due to the ongoing crisis at the power station crippled by the March 11 massive quake and tsunami.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan warned consumers Wednesday against eating leaf vegetables such as spinach harvested in Fukushima Prefecture in the first measure involving food consumption to be taken since radioactive materials far exceeding legal limits were found in vegetables there.

...

If a person eats 100 grams of the vegetable with the largest detected amount of radioactive materials for about 10 days, it would be equal to ingesting half the amount of radiation a person typically receives from the natural environment in a year, the ministry said.

The ministry detected 82,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium, 164 times the limit under the food sanitation law, in ''kukitachina'' leaves from Motomiya on Monday, along with 15,000 becquerels of radioactive iodine, which is more than seven times the limit, it said.

Are the 82,000 becquerels "per 100 grams"?

So, in what may be my last act of "advising", I'll advise you to cut the jargon. -- My old PhD advisor, to me, 26/2/11

The deteriorating public finances of Japan will not weigh down the government's spending on reconstruction from the March 11 earthquake, Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Tuesday, as Tokyo makes headway toward creating a huge set of extra budgets.

...

The quake, the largest recorded in Japan, and ensuing tsunami devastated the nation's northeastern area at a time when the government is struggling to restore its fiscal health, with the gross public-sector debt approaching 200 percent of gross domestic product, the worst among major developed countries.

Koichiro Gemba, minister of national policy, said the government may need to create three different supplementary budgets for fiscal 2011 to finance reconstruction work.

(Reuters) - The earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeast Japan this month have left some parts of the region without cigarettes, Japan Tobacco Inc said on Wednesday, a blow to smokers in a country where the habit is still popular.

A spokesman for the company told Reuters that some of its distribution centres in the region had been hit by the disasters, and some brands were out of stock in some regions.

Brands made by Japan Tobacco, the world's third-largest tobacco manufacturer, include Benson & Hedges, Camel and Winston.

The company could not say what impact the disasters would have on sales, the spokesman said, adding that it was unlikely to have a big effect on its sales forecasts for the year.

The move came after Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara on Monday lodged a protest with Prime Minister Naoto Kan over the ''forcing'' of Tokyo Fire Department members dispatched to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to engage in an hours-long water-spraying mission and referring to ''punishment'' if they refused the task.

According to Ishihara, Kan apologized over the matter. Ishihara said that he did not know who actually said so, but sources close to the metropolitan government said Kaieda made the remarks.

Ishihara also said that equipment broke down because of the continuous mission, which involved spraying water toward the troubled No. 3 reactor building for 13 hours at a time.

The plant's operator--Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco--considered using seawater from the nearby coast to cool one of its six reactors at least as early as last Saturday morning, the day after the quake struck. But it didn't do so until that evening, after the prime minister ordered it following an explosion at the facility. Tepco didn't begin using seawater at other reactors until Sunday.

...

Government efforts also were plagued with delays. Japan's military, the Self-Defense Forces, didn't participate in cool-down efforts in a big way until Wednesday, after four of the six reactors had suffered damage and the remaining two showed signs of heating as well. A military spokesman said forces didn't move in because they weren't requested by Tepco. A Tepco spokesman declined to comment on the issue specifically, saying in general the company is in contact with the government.

...

Authorities apparently were unaware that water had stopped going into the cooling system of the No. 2 reactor. They began using seawater Monday evening, but the loss of its cooling system led to an explosion early Tuesday.

Radiation could affect people outside 30km zone

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano says computer forecasts show that radiation leaking from a nuclear plant could pose a hazard to people outside its 30-kilometer zone.

Edano said at a news conference on Wednesday that a computer forecast system has shown that radiation levels in some areas outside the 30-kilometer zone would exceed 100 millisieverts, which is the level that could affect the human thyroid if a person is exposed to it outdoors for 24 hours.

Edano cited a lack of data and the need for more precise calculations, and said there is no need for immediate evacuation or to seek shelter indoors.

TEPCO: Black smoke rises from No.3 reactor

The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, says black smoke was seen rising from the No.3 reactor building at the quake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant at around 4:20 PM on Wednesday.

TEPCO told reporters that it received a report 1 hour later that the smoke had gradually cleared.

The company said that the level of radiation near the main gate of the plant, 1 kilometer west of the No.3 reactor, was 265.1-microsieverts-per-hour at 5 PM. They added there had been no major change in the levels after the smoke was observed.

The lingering resentment among many South Koreans against former colonial ruler Japan has softened significantly since a powerful earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern Japan and triggered a nuclear crisis this month, according to a newspaper poll released Wednesday.

The Maeil Business Newspaper said 27.1 percent of respondents to a post-quake poll said bad feelings toward Japan have ''vanished considerably'' while 45.6 percent said South Korea should provide more disaster-relief assistance to Japan.

The poll result is in sharp contrast to previous opinion surveys that had constantly shown that Japan, which ruled the Korea Peninsula between 1910 and 1945, is one of the most hated countries in the world.

Maeil said feelings of sympathy toward Japan were particularly conspicuous among elderly Koreans.

Also, 64.2 percent of the respondents in the poll, conducted Friday through Sunday, said South Koreans should learn from the ''public discipline and law-abiding spirit'' the Japanese have shown after the triple disaster.

A tsunami wave that hit a coastal city in Iwate Prefecture after the March 11 massive earthquake is estimated to have reached 23.6 meters in height, a government-commissioned field survey by the Port and Airport Research Institute showed Wednesday.

The tsunami wave measured in the city of Ofunato was lower than the domestic record of 38.2 meters marked in the 1896 Meiji Sanriku Earthquake Tsunami, and 34.9 meters logged in the wake of the 2004 earthquake off the Indonesian coast of Sumatra.

However, Kazuhiko Toda, a researcher at the institute, said the height of the March 11 tsunami was marked under the condition where breakwaters and other counter-tsunami facilities have been set up, so it may have been greater in power than the one in 1896.

The Tokyo metropolitan government warned Wednesday that infants should not drink tap water in Tokyo's 23 wards and five of its suburban cities as radioactive iodine exceeding the limit for them was detected in water at a purification plant.

The amount of the substance was 210 becquerels per 1 kilogram of water at the plant in the Kanamachi district of Katsushika Ward, which serves the cities of Musashino, Mitaka, Machida, Tama and Inagi as well as central Tokyo, above the limit of 100 becquerels for infants but below 300 becquerels for older people, the metropolitan government said.

The detection came amid the country's worst nuclear crisis that has led to radiation leaks at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, located about 220 kilometers northeast of Tokyo, triggered by the devastating earthquake and tsunami earlier this month.

The welfare ministry decided Wednesday to find out how many children lost their parents in the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan and to support them by dispatching caseworkers to the afflicted areas, ministry officials said.

While it is estimated that more than 100 children became orphans as a result of the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, ''the latest disaster has caused wide-scale damage and we are concerned that a greater number of children have lost their parents,'' a Health, Welfare and Labor Ministry official said.

Municipal governments on the coast severely damaged by the quake-triggered tsunami have lost the ability to function properly and are incapable at present of checking the situation regarding orphaned minors, according to the ministry.

Here| are some of the latest facts and figures from today's U.N. update on the situation in Japan's quake and tsunami-hit areas:

- More than 24,000 people are feared dead or missing: 9,408 deaths have been confirmed so far, and 14,716 people remain missing

- The government has yet to release an estimate of the total number of people affected by the disaster

- The number of people in evacuation centres in and outside the affected areas has dropped to 261,000, nearly 57,000 less than on Tuesday. The total includes 83,778 people evacuated from the 20km zone around the Fukushima nuclear power plant

- Growing numbers of people are relocating to unaffected prefectures. Nearly 30,000 evacuees have already moved to 437 municipalities in 43 prefectures

- The governor of Miyagi estimates it will take six months to a year for all the displaced to be accommodated in temporary homes

Reuters - Japan earthquake | Page 236 | Liveblog live blogging | Reuters.com

At the No. 2 reactor, workers have been unable to replace a pump to help revive its internal cooling system since Friday as high-level radiation amounting to at least 500 millisieverts per hour was detected at its turbine building, the spokesman said.

(note this quote has a milli micro mix up according to later comments)

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

(Reuters) - One of the workers struggling to avert a disaster at Japan's crippled nuclear plant was exposed to a high radiation dose that may increase the risk of cancer, a U.N. atomic agency official said Wednesday.

Japanese authorities have also told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) two prefectures near the crippled plant -- Chiba and Ibaraki -- were advised to monitor seafood products, the official, Graham Andrew, said.

High levels of radioactive iodine and cesium were measured close to water discharge points at the Fukushima power plant, "before dilution by the ocean," he told a news conference.

-We detected iodine, cesium and tellurium in the air collected at the site of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on March 20th, 21st and 22nd.

Tellurium is underlined as a new thing that has shown up, now it doesnt vapourise till around 850 centigrade, so it could be that that isn't good news.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

An NHK helicopter crew has confirmed what appears to be steam rising from No. 1, 2, 3 and 4 reactor buildings at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

This is the first time that steam has been seen coming out of the No.1 reactor.

The helicopter crew was filming from a location more than 30 kilometers from the plant shortly before 7:00 AM on Thursday.

A northeast China port did not turn away a Japanese cargo plane over radiation concerns and the aircraft left on its own, provincial authorities said Wednesday.

Earlier media reports said a Japanese cargo plane of All Nippon Airways arrived at Dalian, a port city in northeast China's Liaoning Province, on March 16 from an airport near Tokyo. But it was denied entry due to excessive radiation detected from its cargo.

A spokesman with Liaoning Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau said the plane insisted to leave because of a tight schedule while the customs were carrying out standard procedures involving radioactive goods.

Dalian Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau reported to higher authorities after detecting excessive radiation from the container. The bureau was waiting for further notice when the plane took flight, the spokesman said.

Nuclear engineers have become increasingly concerned about a separate problem that may be putting pressure on the Japanese technicians to work faster: salt buildup inside the reactors, which could cause them to heat up more and, in the worst case, cause the uranium to melt, releasing a range of radioactive material.

Richard T. Lahey Jr., who was General Electric's chief of safety research for boiling-water reactors when the company installed them at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, said that as seawater was pumped into the reactors and boiled away, it left more and more salt behind.

He estimates that 57,000 pounds of salt have accumulated in Reactor No. 1 and 99,000 pounds apiece in Reactors No. 2 and 3, which are larger. The big question is how much of that salt is still mixed with water and how much now forms a crust on the uranium fuel rods.

Crusts insulate the rods from the water and allow them to heat up. If the crusts are thick enough, they can block water from circulating between the fuel rods. As the rods heat up, their zirconium cladding can rupture, which releases gaseous radioactive iodine inside and may even cause the uranium to melt and release much more radioactive material.

So they need to get fresh water and get the pumps working. How hard can that be?

A Japanese nuclear safety regulator said on Wednesday that plans were under way to fix a piece of equipment that would allow freshwater instead of seawater to be pumped in.

The emergency cooling system pump and motor for a boiling-water reactor are roughly the size and height of a compact hatchback car standing on its back bumper. The powerful system has the capacity to propel thousands of gallons of water a minute throughout a reactor pressure vessel and storage pool. But that very power can also be the system's Achilles' heel.

The pump and piping are designed to be kept full of water. But they tend to leak and develop alternating pockets of air and water, Mr. Friedlander said. If the pump is turned on without venting the air and draining the water, the water from the pump would hit the alternating pockets with enough force to blow holes in the piping. Venting the air and draining the water requires a technician to reach a dozen valves, sometimes using a ladder. The water is removed through a hose to the nearest drain, usually in the floor, that leads to machinery designed to remove radiation from the water.

The process takes a full 12 hours in a reactor that is operating normally, Mr. Friedlander said. But even then, the water in the pipes tends to be radioactively contaminated because the valves that separate it from the reactor are not entirely tight.

Backlash from the reactor is likely to be an even bigger problem when the water inside the reactor is much more radioactive than usual and is under extremely high pressure.

Electrical connections from an outside source have been made to all six reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 plant.

Work is continuing to prepare for transmitting electricity to equipment at the No. 1 to No. 4 reactors.

However, work at the No. 2 reactor is stymied by water-soaked equipment and high radiation levels in the building housing the turbines.

Although an aftershock with an intensity of upper 5 on the Japanese scale of 7 was recorded in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, south of the nuclear plant on Wednesday morning, it did not affect the reactors.

TEPCO officials also said the temperature in the core of the No. 1 reactor had risen to about 400 degrees, above the design limit of 302 degrees. The amount of seawater supplied to the core was increased early Wednesday from 2 cubic meters an hour to 18 cubic meters an hour.

The Self-Defense Forces were also planning to conduct surveillance of the No. 1 reactor from Wednesday afternoon by using a vehicle designed to protect against chemical exposure.

A statement from the ISRN (Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety) at 8 am this morning in Paris (France) on the reactor 3: "IRSN analyzes the potential causes of loss of containment of reactor No. 3. One hypothesis
discussed by IRSN is the possibility of a rupture of the reactor vessel followed by an interaction between the corium (a mixture of fuel and molten metal) and concrete at the bottom of containment. " www.irsn.fr/FR/Actualites_presse/Actualites/Documents/IRSN_Seisme-Japon_Point-situation-24032011-08h .pdf

NEWS ADVISORY: 17 workers so far exposed to radiation over 100 millisieverts: TEPCO

Kyushu Electric Power Co. said Thursday it has decided to delay rebooting two nuclear reactors at its Genkai nuclear power plant in Saga Prefecture that it had suspended for servicing in view of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Toshio Manabe, the regional utility's president, told a news conference his company has decided to postpone rebooting the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors from their originally scheduled times of late March and early April.

...

Manabe said the situation at the Fukushima plant is not heading toward stability and that a string of accidents there since the massive March 11 earthquake that hit the region have prompted the government to start reviewing steps to ensure safety at nuclear power plants.

The government is reviewing whether to continue its current directive for people living 20 to 30 kilometers away from a troubled nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture to remain indoors, with an eye on possibly recommending they relocate further away to make their everyday life easier over the long term, the top government spokesman indicated Thursday.

...

Edano emphasized that a revised order of the kind must be dealt with cautiously so as not to create a misperception that danger from the radiation leaks is spreading.

Opposition lawmakers have been pressing the government and ruling party during their meeting Thursday to address the concerns of residents who are being isolated in the 30-km range and called for their evacuation in the same manner as those within the 20-km range.

Nonetheless, Japan will draw important, expensive, and likely painful lessons from this accident in the coming months. The precarious balance of power in nuclear decision making between central government bureaucrats, utility companies, and local politicians will not make it easy for Japan to translate what it learns into actions.

Any future decisions to extend the lifetimes of Japan's nuclear power plants after 40 years of licensed operation should take into account the forthcoming technical evaluation of the Fukushima accident.

Japan should candidly review the willingness of Japanese authorities, not long before this month's accident, to permit the oldest reactor at Fukushima to operate for an additional 10 years after its 40-year license expired this year.

...

(Mark Hibbs is a senior associate in Carnegie's Nuclear Policy Program, based in Berlin. Before joining Carnegie, he was an editor and correspondent for nuclear energy publications for over 20 years.)

The Tokyo metropolitan government the same day began distributing 240,000 plastic bottles of drinking water for infants under the age of 12 months in the wake of the discovery March 22 that water at a water purification plant for tap water in Tokyo contained radioactive iodine at levels higher than allowed for infants.

Japan's science ministry says levels of radioactive substances up to twice recommended limits were detected in waters 30 kilometers off the quake-damaged Fukushima nuclear plant.

The ministry conducted a survey on Wednesday in 8 locations over a distance of 70 kilometers from north to south in the Pacific Ocean. Radioactive iodine-131 and radioactive cesium-137 were detected at all locations.

Levels of radioactive iodine-131 were from 1.05 to 1.92 times higher than the limit. Readings for radioactive cesium-137 were all below the limit, but about 10,000 times higher than a similar survey last year.

WASHINGTON -- The threat of the release of highly radioactive spent fuel at a Japanese nuclear plant has revived a debate in the United States about how to manage such waste and has led to new recriminations over a derailed plan for a national repository in Nevada.

More than 27,000 people are officially dead or missing after the earthquake and tsunami that struck northeastern Japan on March 11th.

According to the National Police Agency, 9,811 people are confirmed dead as of 9 PM on Thursday.

The agency says it has received reports of 17,541 people missing.

Most of the dead and missing are from the 3 hardest hit prefectures of Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima.

Self-Defense Force personnel said it is possible that many bodies have been left behind in disaster-hit locations in the prefecture, as troops faced difficulty entering areas placed under evacuation orders due to the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Fukushima Prefecture currently accounts for around 8 percent of the death toll.

People living in a 20-kilometer radius of the plant have been under directives to evacuate and those within 20 km to 30 km have been advised to stay indoors.

SDF rescue workers deployed in Fukushima have thus focused on assisting the evacuation of residents, including bed-ridden hospital patients, rather than searching for the missing, they said.

The Defense Ministry says temperatures at 4 nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant have fallen below 20 degrees Celsius.

The ministry has been using helicopters to take infrared surveys of the surface temperatures of facilities at the stricken plant since Saturday.

The 30-minute survey, which was done from around 7 AM on Thursday, also found that the storage pool for spent fuel at the No. 3 reactor has cooled to about 30 degrees.

The ministry says the surface temperature of the No. 1 reactor was 13 degrees Celsius, that of No. 2 stood at 13 degrees, No. 3 at 11 degrees, and No. 4 at 17 degrees.
All readings were down from a day earlier.

Electricity supply has been restored at the control room of the No.1 reactor of the quake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, says lights in the control room were switched on again before noon on Thursday, 2 days after lights were turned on in the control room of the No.3 reactor. Work to restore outside power sources was suspended on Wednesday after dark smoke billowed from the No.3 reactor building.

Workers at the reactor continued efforts to launch a test run of a pump to supply fresh water using outside power sources. But the pump remains unusable as it's not known how much water is left in the reactor tank.

TEPCO, meanwhile, says three people working in a turbine building near the No.3 reactor were exposed to 173 to 180 millisieverts of radiation. Operations have been halted on the reactor's first floor and basement.

Pumps were inspected at the No.2 and 4 reactors.
Inspectors are said to be facing difficulty at the No.2 reactor due to high levels of radiation.

With all the focus placed on the Japanese radiation leak as well as the toxic plume of radioactive particles (possibly containing uranium and plutonium) heading for the United States, another potential disaster is receiving virtually no attention.

Of course, attention should be paid to the Japanese situation. Nevertheless, it seems the continent of North America is being hit from two sides in terms of radiation danger.

On March 16, a report was released by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) stating that Canada's Ontario Power Generation has released radioactive water into Lake Ontario via a leak in the Pickering A nuclear generating station.

As a result of what appears to be a pump seal failure, tens of thousands of litres of radioactive water escaped the generating station on Monday and ended up in Lake Ontario.

This is concerning for a number of reasons, but it is especially concerning considering the fact that Lake Ontario is the main source of drinking water for millions of people.

Kan pledges full disclosure of reactor information

Japan's prime minister has promised his British counterpart maximum transparency and accuracy when providing information about the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant.

Naoto Kan talked with David Cameron over the telephone on Thursday.

Cameron expressed sympathy for people in Japan's disaster-hit northeastern and said his country offered whatever assistance is needed.

He also said he admires the Japanese people for their calm responses and strong spirits.

Kan expressed gratitude for the rescue work of about 80 British workers in disaster-hit Iwate Prefecture.

He then briefed Cameron the ongoing situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and promised to provide accurate information about the accident.

Thursday, March 24, 2011 21:11 +0900 (JST)

NHK WORLD English

Japanese authorities have detected a concentration of a radioactive substance 1,600 times higher than normal in soil at a village, 40 kilometers away from the troubled nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture.

The disaster task force in Fukushima composed of the central and local governments surveyed radioactive substances in soil about 5 centimeters below the surface at 6 locations around the plant from last Friday through Tuesday.

The results announced on Wednesday show that 163,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium-137 per kilogram of soil has been detected in Iitate Village, about 40 kilometers northwest of the plant.

Bq/kg (essentially a volumetric unit) for soil, as opposed to Bq/m², doesn't seem to be used often. I failed to find a similar data for the area around Chernobyl (I did find it for Chernobyl fallout other countries, but it's little surprising that the values are mostly well below 163 kBq/kg, except for a 200 kBq/kg reading in Sweden which may be a hot spot), that's when I quoted meat which led to a sidetrack about absorbed radiation from ingested radioactive material. I now found some Chernobyl area data, albeit in a 1998 paper: there are three locations east of Pripyat with Cs-137 levels between 120 and 130 kBq/kg, but the Red Forest sample was 1,472 kBq/kg.

As for limits, after some search, I found Council Directive 96/29/Euratom, which lists Cs-137 with a 10 kBq/kg limit.

As for the Fukushima fallout in Bq/m² units, I couldn't find any Japanese government data. However, I just read in taz that the IAEA posted some earlier this week:

Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log

Measurement of gamma dose rate and beta-gamma contamination were taken on 20 March at more locations. The dose-rate results ranged from 2-160 microsieverts per hour, which compares to a typical natural background level of around 0.1 microsieverts per hour. High levels of beta-gamma contamination have been measured between 16-58 km from the plant. Available results show contamination ranging from 0.2-0.9 MBq per square metre.

Now this can be compared with Chernobyl (with the quibble that this seems to be total radioactivity including the shorter half-life elements, the numbers below are caesium-137 only). According to the map Migeru posted, the threshold for the Permanent Control Zone was 15 curie/km², and for the Closed Zone, 40 curie/km². The first equals 0.555 MBq/m², the second 1.48 MBq/m².

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Water which three workers were exposed to at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant contained radioactive materials 10,000 times the normal level, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Friday.

The finding underlines the possibility that part of the fuel in the No. 3 reactor of the plant or the spent fuel stored in the pool in the reactor building may be damaged.

The three, who are from a company cooperating with TEPCO, were involved in work to restore power to the No. 3 reactor, which has lost cooling function. They were working in the basement of the reactor's turbine building when they were irradiated.

Two of the three have been hospitalized due to possible burns caused by beta rays which can cause major skin damage. They were not wearing boots at the time and therefore their feet were soaked in the water.

TEPCO said almost no water was present during an on-site inspection the previous day and also that the level of radiation was low during the inspection.

''Because of this, the workers were believed to have continued their work even after their dosimeters' alarm went off, assuming a problem with the machine,'' a TEPCO official said.

VIENNA/OSLO, March 23 (Reuters) - The release of two types of radioactive particles in the first 3-4 days of Japan's nuclear crisis is estimated to have reached 20-50 percent of the amounts from Chernobyl in 10 days, an Austrian expert said on Wednesday.

The calculations published by Austria's Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics may add to growing concern in Japan and elsewhere over the contamination of food products such as milk and vegetables in areas near the Japanese reactor site.

On Tuesday, France's IRSN radiation protection and nuclear safety institute estimated that leaks of radiation from the Fukushima plant crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami represented about 10 percent of those from Chernobyl, the world's worst nuclear disaster, in 1986.

Children living outside the zone where residents have been urged to stay indoors following the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant have not had their thyroids affected by leaked radioactive materials, the government said Friday.

The announcement was based on the government's checkups Thursday on 66 children aged 1 to 15 in Kawamata, Fukushima Prefecture, which is located northwest of the plant and outside the state-set indoor evacuation zone -- within 20 kilometers to 30 km radius of the plant

Asahi Shimbun, quoting Japan NRC, says #Fukushima event has become a Level 6 on INES scale. Courtesy Steve Herman reporter for VOA japan #W7VOA

Workers are checking if there is any damage to equipment at the No.1 to No.4. reactors. Lights in the No.2 reactor's control room are expected to be switched on again on Friday.

The Fukushima office of Tokyo Electric Power Company says the surface temperature of the No.1 reactor dropped to about 205 degrees Celsius on Friday morning. It had risen to about 400 degrees, exceeding the safety limit of 302 degrees.

TEPCO also says the pressure inside the container vessel of the No.1 reactor dropped to 0.31 megapascals from 0.385 on Thursday morning.

In the turbine building of the No.3 reactor, work is under way to drain the highly radioactive water that 3 staff members were exposed to on Thursday. Its radiation level was 10,000 times higher than those for water inside the reactor.

Japan's damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima has been emitting radioactive iodine and caesium at levels approaching those seen in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Austrian researchers have used a worldwide network of radiation detectors - designed to spot clandestine nuclear bomb tests - to show that iodine-131 is being released at daily levels 73 per cent of those seen after the 1986 disaster. The daily amount of caesium-137 released from Fukushima Daiichi is around 60 per cent of the amount released from Chernobyl.

The difference between this accident and Chernobyl, they say, is that at Chernobyl a huge fire released large amounts of many radioactive materials, including fuel particles, in smoke. At Fukushima Daiichi, only the volatile elements, such as iodine and caesium, are bubbling off the damaged fuel. But these substances could nevertheless pose a significant health risk outside the plant.
....

The level of radionuclides leaking from Fukushima Daiichi has been unclear, but the CTBT air samplers can shed some light, says Gerhard Wotawa of Austria's Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics in Vienna.

For the first two days after the accident, the wind blew east from Fukushima towards monitoring stations on the US west coast; on the third day it blew south-west over the Japanese monitoring station at Takasaki, then swung east again. Each day, readings for iodine-131 at Sacramento in California, or at Takasaki, both suggested the same amount of iodine was coming out of Fukushima, says Wotawa: 1.2 to 1.3 × 10¹⁷ becquerels per day.

The agreement between the two "makes us confident that this is accurate", he says. So do similar readings at CTBT stations in Alaska, Hawaii and Montreal, Canada - readings at the latter, at least, show that the emissions have continued.

The Japanese government has encouraged people living within 20 to 30 kilometers of the troubled nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture to leave voluntarily, with concerns over access to daily necessities rather than resident safety prompting the advice, top government spokesman Yukio Edano said Friday.

The chief Cabinet secretary told a news conference that the government told heads of affected municipalities within 20 to 30 km of the plant that it is encouraging people to voluntarily move farther away and will give its full support in helping them relocate.

With many residents living between 20 and 30 km of the Fukushima Daiichi complex already voluntarily evacuating and more wanting to leave the area, Edano said it is ''preferable'' for people to leave of their own accord, given the difficulties they were encountering in their daily lives.

''The distribution of goods is stalled, and it is rather difficult to maintain their daily living over a long period of time,'' he said, adding that the government will provide logistical assistance in terms of transportation and facilities to accept those moving more than 30 km from the plant.

while China said two Japanese travelers arriving in the country were found to have exceedingly high radiation levels.

No one in Japan, other than the three workers at the reactor have been reported exposed to high radiation.

"Tests showed that the two travelers seriously exceeded the limit," China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said, referring to radiation levels.  

A bigger ship lifted by the tsunami in Sendai harbour:

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

The government plans to set safety standards that nuclear plant operators should clear before restarting reactors after their regular checkups, industry minister Banri Kaieda said Friday, apparently heeding public concerns amid the ongoing nuclear crisis.

Kaieda made the remarks after Kyushu Electric Power Co. said Thursday it has decided to delay rebooting two nuclear reactors at its Genkai nuclear power plant in Saga Prefecture that have been had suspended for servicing in view of the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The company serving the Kyushu region in southwestern Japan originally planned to resume operations of the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors in late March and early April.

The economy, trade and industry minister said that Kyushu Electric's latest decision is ''reasonable'' and added that the government hopes to announce what he calls a safety guideline for the resumption of such reactors possibly next week.

China's quarantine authorities have by Friday banned imports of food produced in the five Japanese prefectures of Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma and Chiba in the wake of the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex.

Now according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, those prefectures hold the following percentages of the national population and are self sufficient (in calories) to the following extent (Source pdf)

Fukushima 1.6% population  85% sufficient
Ibaraki   2.3% population  70% sufficient
Tochigi   1.6% population  74% sufficient
Gunma     1.6% population  32% sufficient
Chiba     4.8% population  29% sufficient

So the banned areas are around 6% of the national food supply

From the same report, the country only produces 41% of its consumed food so in effect it's a fraction short on 15% of the countrys food production out of use

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

U.S. Pacific Command YOKOSUKA, Japan (Mar. 25, 2011) - Barge YOGN-115, carrying 1.04 million litres (275,000 gallons) of fresh water, departs Commander, Fleet Activities Yokosuka (CFAY) to support cooling efforts at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. CFAY port operations cleaned and filled two barges, totaling nearly 1.89 million litres (500,000 gallons) of fresh water. (SOURCE: US Pacific Command on Facebook)

Two weeks after the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, more than 240,000 people were still sheltering in some 2,000 evacuation centers as of Friday while the official death toll topped 10,000.

Direct damage from the disaster, including destroyed houses and roads, is estimated to cost a total of between 16 trillion to 25 trillion yen, while radiation leaks at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi power plant have caused widespread anxiety.

According to the National Police Agency, more than 27,500 people were either confirmed dead or remain unaccounted for as of 6 p.m. Friday -- 10,066 deaths and 17,452 missing.

The full extent of loss of life remains unclear, partly because search efforts in Fukushima Prefecture have been hampered by the nuclear emergency, while local police in Miyagi Prefecture have suggested it is likely that more bodies will be recovered from the sea.

High-level radiation detected Thursday in water at the No. 3 reactor's turbine building at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant appears to have originated from the reactor core, the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Friday.

But no data, such as on the pressure level, have suggested the reactor vessel has been cracked or damaged, agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama emphasized at an afternoon press conference, backing down from his previous remark that there is a good chance that the reactor has been damaged. It remains uncertain how the leakage happened, he added.

A day after three workers were exposed Thursday to water containing radioactive materials 10,000 times the normal level at the turbine building connected to the No. 3 reactor building, highly radioactive water was found also at the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors' turbine buildings.

Kitazawa: US to help avoid salt damage in reactors

Japan's defense minister says the government plans to switch from seawater to fresh water to cool the crippled reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, with the support of US forces.

Toshimi Kitazawa told reporters on Friday that the United States urged Japan to quickly switch to fresh water, and offered to help do so.

...The US forces and Japan's Self-Defense Forces have drawn up plans to anchor off the Fukushima coast US Navy barges capable of carrying large amounts of water, and send water via pipelines to the plant.
The US military is also to provide a high-powered pump to send water through the pipelines, and Japanese SDF vessels are to be mobilized to refill the barges with water.

The US vessels have already left their base in Yokosuka, near Tokyo. The US forces and SDF hope to set up the pipelines and other systems for the operation as soon as next week.