March 29 (Bloomberg) -- France, which gets 80 percent of its energy from atomic power, wants threats from airplane crashes and terrorists excluded from safety checks planned on European reactors following the Fukushima nuclear accident

"If they are included then this can't be called `lessons learned from Japan,'" Andre-Claude Lacoste, head of the Autorite de Surete Nucleaire, said today in an interview after a briefing in Paris. "I will do what I can to keep risks from planes and terrorism out of the audits."

The Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire was set up as an independent monitoring agency, but I don't see how we can avoid noting its utter dependency on the French nuclear industry.

See, it's time to decide that nuclear in Europe is safe and has little to learn from Fukushima. As for plane crashes and terrorist attacks, we'll wait for them to happen before running stress tests and learning "lessons from plane crashes and terrorist attacks".

Radioactive water has not been confirmed to have overflowed into the Pacific from seaside underground trenches at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Tuesday.

The levels of water in the trenches, some 55 to 70 meters away from the shore, have been stable and the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., has taken measures to stop the water from flowing out, such as putting up sandbags and concrete blocks around the shaft, the nuclear regulatory body said.

Among the trenches connected to the Nos. 1-3 reactor buildings, water in the gutter linked to the No. 1 unit is just 10 centimeters below its ground-level hole.

TEPCO said water in the trenches is believed to have come both from the reactor's buildings and tsunami waves, which followed a magnitude 9.0 earthquake that hit northeastern and eastern Japan, including Fukushima Prefecture, on March 11.

(My Bold)

So this intensely radioactive water in the trenches is the result of both Tsunami and leaks, doesnt that make it worse if its that radioactive, and its already diluted? secondly, if the trench filled with the Tsunami, and then has had furter radioactive fluids leak into it, where has the top metre or two gone? surely trench 1 that is only 10cm below the surface has actually lost the least?

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

• They have been pumping seawater into the reactors (and, I presume, the spent fuel storage pools) and need to continue to do so in order to prevent overheating
  
• Is the topping-up required because of evaporation (boiling?) or because of leaks? Or both? In what proportion?
  
• Are they still hosing the reactors and/or reactor buildings externally too? Is this necessary for heat dissipation too?
  
• One of the reactors is cracked, therefore leaking
  
• Others may be leaking from cracked pipes or burnt-out gaskets
  
• Fuel rods are partially melted in some (all?) of the reactors, therefore the entire generation/cooling circuit contains fission products which would normally be confined inside the fuel rods themselves, and are now able to reach the outside world insofar as these circuits are leaking
  
• I have no idea if there are any pumps currently working on any of the cooling systems : if they were, then surely they would not need to continue adding water, as circulation would be sufficient to dissipate the heat (unless the topping up is required because of leaks...
  
• Perhaps they are afraid to run the pumps for fear of exacerbating leaks, or causing new ones?
  
• They need to evacuate the contaminated water somehow, they have been sandbagging figuratively, and now literally
  
• Prediction : they will announce barges within the next 12 hours (since this was first suggested on ET, what, 12 hours ago?)

Trace amounts of radioactive iodine and cesium believed to have come from Japan's quake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been detected in South Korea, the Education, Science and Technology Ministry said Tuesday.

The radiation level poses no risk to public safety and the environment, the ministry said.

Radioactive iodine has been detected in 12 radiation stations nationwide, including Seoul, while cesium was found only in Chuncheon, 85 kilometers west of Seoul, Yonhap News Agency reported Tuesday, citing the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety.

''Most of the readings taken from captured nuclides were so minute they were barely detectable by existing instruments, and it took 24 hours to get precise readings,'' president of the nuclear safety agency Yun Choul Ho was quoted as saying.

(Reuters) - Groundwater, reservoirs and sea water around Japan's earthquake damaged nuclear plant face "significant contamination" from the high levels of radiation leaking from the plant, a worrying development that heightens potential health risks in the region.

Nuclear and environmental scientists in the United States darkened their assessment of the risks markedly on Monday after operators at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant said that highly radioactive water has entered underground concrete tunnels extending beyond the reactor.

Sea water and fresh water used to cool the reactors, critically damaged by Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami, and spent fuel pools at the plant have been put in storage tanks there. But reports indicate these tanks are full or over-flowing with tainted water, experts said.

"It's just hard to see how this won't result in significant contamination of, certainly, sea water," said Edwin Lyman, a physicist and expert on nuclear plant design at the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists.

The compass of news the past few days has swung to a new North--to the rising measurements of radioactivity in the waters off Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant.   The transmission of radionuclides through the physical and biological webs of ocean and atmosphere is dynamic and far-reaching, since the contamination is carried by waves and winds and life itself. You can see an illustration of how this works that at my blog Deep Blue Home.   Radioactive pollution in the ocean is nothing new. We've been loosing the stuff offshore since 1944. Here's how.

(Reuters) - Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant seems to be in "slow recovery" from damage incurred this month from an earthquake and tsunami, the head of the U.S. Energy Department's nuclear program said on Tuesday.

"However, long-term cooling of the reactors and the pools is essential during this period, and has not been adequately restored to date, to the best of my knowledge,

European Tribune - Comments - Fukushima, No End In Sight

it has no choice but to keep pouring water into reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant to limit a huge meltdown

strikes me as a greater disclosure than actually intended.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

Seems the spreading radioactivity is severely disrupting supply chains.
Looming Loss of Billions - Automobile industry is Setting up Contingency Plans (German)

A summary of the most important points:
The global automotive industry is bracing for the impacts of supply disruptions. Could lead to losses of billions. Shipping companies are avoiding the ports of Tokyo and Yokohama which handle 40% of Japan's container freight. Hongkong's OOCL announced on Friday they will reroute their ships to Osaka. If radiation is detected on one of their ships, they will face month of delays due to inspections. A Japanese ship showed radiation in the Chinese port of Xiamen although it had kept at least 120km away from Fukushima at all times.

The infarction for supply chains is just a few days or weeks ahead. The first test will be a ship with 2,500 containers landing in Long Beach, CA on Friday. It's the first that set sails from Japan after the quake. It's arrival is a sign that the automobile factories in North America and Europe only have two weeks before the supply pipeline (from before the quake) is empty.

Japan is a premier source for car (consumer) electronics - 35% of the global market, chips are $7.3b annually. Top management in car companies is fearful since the lack of highly specialized parts from Japan could stop production. 20,000 individual parts are needed for a compact car alone. E.g. Hitachi Automotive produces 60% of the global supply of a part that measures air flow in motors. The factory north of Tokyo is now closed.

Merck produces the glossy pigment Xirallic 40km away from Fukushima. Production has been halted. Consequences: Chrysler has limited its retailers to ten colors. Ford eliminated some black and red tones.

Mayhem is brewing in the auto parts pipeline from Japan to the rest of the world. 40 suppliers of the three largest Japanese car companies have halted production due to quake damage, rolling blackouts, or radiation danger. Japan produces 13% of the world's cars. Toyota has closed 11 factories, Honda has 110 suppliers in the quake area, ten of them can't say when they will restart production.

According to iSuppli, if the affected suppliers can't restart production within six weeks then a third of production could be cut in the worst case. "It would be very difficult for every big manufacturer to escape this disaster." says Michael Robinet of IHS. IHS has marked the calender at the beginning of the third week in April. It could be the start of serious production delays.

As you know, most of the workers at 1F and 2F (Note -- possible reference to Fukushima Plant No. 2, or Daini) are local residents and victims of the quake. There are many workers whose houses were washed away.

I myself have had to stay in the disaster measurement headquarters the entire time ever since the earthquake occurred, and have been fighting alongside my colleagues without any sleep or rest. Personally, my entire hometown, Namie-machi, which is located along the coast, was washed away by the tsunami. My parents were washed away by the tsunami and I still don't know where they are. Normally I would rush to their house as soon as I could. But I can't even enter the area because it is under an evacuation order. The Self-Defense Forces are not conducting a search there. I'm engaged in extremely tough work under this kind of mental condition...I can't take this any more!

The quake is a natural disaster. But Tepco should be blamed for contamination caused by the radioactive materials released from the nuclear plants.

It seems to me local residents' feelings are heightened so much that the unspoken sentiment is that the quake occurred because of Tepco.

Am I off-base here?

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

At least part of the molten core, which includes melted fuel rods and zirconium alloy cladding, seemed to have sunk through the steel "lower head" of the pressure vessel around reactor two, Lahey said.

"The indications we have, from the reactor to radiation readings and the materials they are seeing, suggest that the core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel in unit two, and at least some of it is down on the floor of the drywell," Lahey said. "I hope I am wrong, but that is certainly what the evidence is pointing towards."

The major concern when molten fuel breaches a containment vessel is that it reacts with the concrete floor of the drywell underneath, releasing radioactive gases into the surrounding area. At Fukushima, the drywell has been flooded with seawater, which will cool any molten fuel that escapes from the reactor and reduce the amount of radioactive gas released.

Lahey said: "It won't come out as one big glob; it'll come out like lava, and that is good because it's easier to cool."

I think we're going to have to experience a lot of decomplexification before new narratives can grow.

you are the media you consume.

Among the litany of violations at U.S. nuclear power plants are missing or mishandled nuclear material, inadequate emergency plans, faulty backup power generators, corroded cooling pipes and even marijuana use inside a nuclear plant, according to an ABC News review of four years of Nuclear Regulatory Commission safety records.

And perhaps most troubling of all, critics say, the commission has failed to correct the violations in a timely fashion.

"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has very good safety regulations but they have very bad enforcement of those regulations," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear scientist with the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists.

Here is a fun one:
The image is too big, so here is the link:
http://www.npl.washington.edu/monitoring/webfm_send/15

Some kids wanted to see the arrival of the radioactive debris.
So they made a collector of the physics building air inlet!
The green line is the lead shielding all by itself: nothing.
The red line is the day before: March 16 2011: nothing.
Blue line is March 17 2011: Very nice, clear signal for Iodine 131.
This is a spectrogram of particle energies:
The vertical axis is how dense the signal was.
The horizontal axis is how energetic the particle was.
Different materials have different sets and amplitudes of peaks.

This is an exquisitely sensitive instrument.
It demonstrates the fact of the arrival of the debris.
The amount of debris is vanishingly small.

The experiment:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1103/1103.4853v2.pdf
http://www.npl.washington.edu/monitoring/

All things that radiate radiation radioactively:
http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/

Nuclear power in the US is largely an eastern phenomenon. In the West (by which I mean west of the Great Plains 

<snip>

If you assume that no new nukes will be built, and existing nuclear licenses will not be renewed, the East is looking at (in really round numbers) 25% of their current power output disappearing in the the next 20 years or less. That's an enormously bigger problem to handle than the West will have if its eight reactors are decommissioned on schedule. I suspect that the eastern states will face either very sharp price increases or relatively draconian conservation programs (two ways of achieving the goal) in order to meet that decrease in power output. I expect to see some painful regional frictions when eastern politicians attempt to impose the conservation and/or price pain uniformly across the entire country.

The latest research on the March 11 tsunami that slammed into Ofunato city in Iwate Prefecture, northern Japan shows that it was nearly 30 meters high.

A joint research team from Yokohama National University and University of Tokyo surveying the Ofunato city shoreline made the discovery.

They found fishing equipment scattered on the high cliff of the city's Ryori Bay and have determined the tsunami reached as high as 29.6 meters.

France says it will send 3 more nuclear experts to Japan to help with efforts to remove highly radioactive water from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

Two other French experts are already in Japan and holding talks with the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company. The 5 are from French-based AREVA, one of the world's biggest nuclear energy firms.

They will help eliminate the polluted water that is hampering efforts to restore the plant's cooling functions.

Viewers in Austria, Germany and Switzerland won't be hearing much about the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant for the foreseeable future.

Television stations in those countries are pulling or editing episodes of "The Simpsons" that contain jokes about nuclear disasters or radiation effects.

Executive producer Al Jean was supportive of the decision, but also added that Homer Simpson will continue to work at the plant.

Radioactive water found in and outside reactor buildings is delaying work to restore the cooling functions of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Lighting was switched on again in the control room of the No.4 reactor on Tuesday. Workers also connected an external power source to the display panel of the first reactor's control room, allowing it to show the status of some equipment.

The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, believes it is highly likely that the water in an underground tunnnel next to the No.2 reactor's turbine building has the same source as a puddle in the basement.

The firm says the radioactive levels on the surface of the tunnel water are almost as high as those for the water in the basement.

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

WHAT WAS THE CAUSE OF THE HIGH Cl-38 RADIOACTIVITY IN THE FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI REACTOR #11
F. Dalnoki-Veress
March 28 2011
I have been totally consumed the last few weeks by one thing, day and night, and those are the events unfolding in Japan. I keep on alternating between complete disbelief and acceptance of the gravity of the situation, but mostly disbelief. And I am not the only one. Most of the nuclear physicists and engineers with whom I have spoken since the incident cannot - will not - believe that it is possible that some of the fuel that is melting could somehow produce little pockets that could go critical. I believed them for the longest time until the following came on the Kyodo news website (relevant text italicized below for emphasis) and I did the following analysis.

We had an oddly bloodless discussion this morning of the unfolding events at Fukushima.  One thing that struck me about the panel, with perhaps Mark Hibbs excepted, was the gap in perception between nuclear industry and the public at large.  The panel seemed to view this as an unfortunate inconveneince for the coming nuclear renaissance.  To me, at least, that seems like the captain of the Titanic wondering whether he's still going to make his dinner reservations.

As reported earlier on Zero Hedge, the next step for TEPCO is most likely nationalization. While this is likely great for bondholders (if an American bailout model is consumed where there is no creditor impairment), it is not that hot for shareholders, who may lose most/all of their investment. Not surprisingly, we have just heard from Reuters that TEPCO shares are now suspended following the earlier nationalization reports: "Tokyo Electric shares were untraded due to a glut of sell orders at 626 yen, down 10 percent from Monday's close. The stock has lost 70 percent since the earthquake and tsunami." And so, the rules change in the middle of the game once again. Only this time it was visible from a mile away.

The water has filled trenches extending from the turbine buildings at the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactors and is also lying in pools in the basements of the three reactors' turbine buildings. It is thought that the water in the trenches flowed from the basements.

Dealing effectively with the contaminated water is vital to containing the spread of radiation. It has to be removed to allow the operation to cool the fuel rods in the reactor cores to move forward. Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the plant's operator, said it was planning to pump the contaminated water into storage tanks on the grounds of the plant. That will involve shifting thousands of tons of radioactive water.

The trenches have a capacity of about 13,300 tons, but as much as 10,000 tons of contaminated water may already have poured into them. The trenches house electrical cables and pipes providing seawater to cooling pumps and are normally kept dry, allowing workers to inspect the equipment.

At least they are no longer referring to the radioactive water as "puddles", though I did not see any references to 1 Sievert radiation levels. The article does provide useful detail as to the existing facilities at the plant.

TEPCO officials are putting priority on removing the water from the turbine buildings.

....

TEPCO workers will first have to move that relatively uncontaminated water to condensate storage tanks outside of the buildings. Those tanks themselves already contain some water.

At the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, temporary hoses are being used to move the water in the storage tanks to a storage tank for a suppression pool located further from the two turbine buildings. That work began Monday.

There are two suppression pool storage tanks south of the No. 4 reactor. Those tanks are used for all of the reactors at the Fukushima plant and their total capacity is 6,800 tons. There is currently only room for about 4,000 tons of water.

Edano: Cover may be used to stop radiation

Japan's top government spokesman says the government and experts are considering whether to cover the reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant with a special material, to stop the spread of radioactive substances.

...Edano said monitoring for plutonium contamination may be extended to areas outside the plant compound since trace amounts of the element were found in soil on the plant grounds.

Edano said consumption and shipping restrictions on farm products will be lifted once their safety is consistently confirmed.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011 12:56 +0900 (JST)

High radiation levels in waters off Fukushima

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says radioactive iodine in excess of 3,300 times the national limit was found in seawater near the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Tuesday afternoon. This was the highest measured in waters off the plant.

The level of radioactive iodine-131 found 330 meters south of a water outlet of the plant was 3,355 times regulated standards at 1:55 PM on Tuesday.

The outlet is used to drain water from the plant's No. 1 to No. 4 reactors.

Radioactive iodine-131 measured 50 meters north of the water outlet of the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors was 1,262 times the regulated standards at 2:10 PM on Tuesday.

This was also the highest reading at this location.

An agency official told reporters on Wednesday morning that people in a 20-kilometer radius area from the troubled plant have been ordered to evacuate and the radioactive substance will be significantly diluted in the ocean by the time people consume marine products. The official added that efforts need to be made to prevent the contaminated water from flowing into the sea.

Airborne radiation levels continue to decline in most prefectures, including Fukushima and nearby Ibaraki.

Municipalities measured the radiation levels between 00:00 AM and 9:00 AM on Wednesday.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011 12:23 +0900 (JST)

Japanese Rules for Nuclear Plants Relied on Old Science

Fukushima engineer confesses to participating in criminal coverup, says flawed steel in Reactor 4 has always been a 'time bomb'

US stores spent nuclear fuel rods at 4 times pool capacity

The Future of Fukushima Prefecture

Top government spokesman Yukio Edano suggested Wednesday that all of the reactors at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant should be scrapped.

Asked if all six reactors must be decommissioned, Edano said in a news conference, ''I believe it is very clear from the viewpoint of society. That is my perception.''

His remarks came after Tsunehisa Katsumata, chairman of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., told a separate news conference, ''We have no choice but to scrap reactors 1 to 4 if we look at their conditions objectively.''

Following the devastating March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami that hit northeastern and eastern Japan, four of the six reactors at the nuclear power plant northeast of Tokyo have lost their cooling functions and leaked radioactive materials into the air and sea.

The No. 5 and 6 reactors, which have been relatively less problematic than the other four, are already in a state of cold shutdown.  

Japan's agriculture ministry is to check soil around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant for radiation, before the start of rice planting next month.

Levels of radioactive cesium-137 as high as 2,200 times the normal figure have been detected in soil about 40 kilometers northwest of the plant.

Cesium-137 stays in the environment for a long time, as it has a half-life of 30 years.

The agriculture ministry is preparing to check soil of 150 paddies located more than 30 kilometers from the plant.
Inspectors are to examine samples of soil 15 centimeters underground for radioactive cesium.

The chief of the Tokyo Electric Power Company says he cannot now present a road map for resolving the serious accident at the firm's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, as many factors remain unclear.

TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata made the remark at a news conference on Wednesday.

He said a large volume of underground water with a high concentration of radioactive substances beneath the facility is hampering his firm's all-out efforts to cool reactors of the plant. He stressed the need to quickly restore the plant's cooling system.

NHK-World just announced that smoke could be seen rising from the Fukushima Daini (yes Daini) plant as of 6pm Japan time (about 1hr ago). No further info given. Edit: Reactor 1 turbine building said to be source of smoke at Daini.

Can't see anything on their site myself

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

Workers rushed to pump out radiation-polluted water that has been filling up the basement of the No. 1 reactor's turbine building and the tunnel-like trench connected to it, but they found out Tuesday a tank accommodating the water from the building had become full, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

The engineers also newly spotted water polluted with low-level radiation at a building designed for radioactive waste disposal at the plant, where the trench water is meant to be transferred. They nonetheless finished laying hoses to discharge the trench water, according to the agency.

The Japanese and US governments are working together to tackle trouble at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The Japanese government has set up 4 working groups led by Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Tetsuro Fukuyama and prime ministerial advisor Goshi Hosono.

The groups include members of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency and related ministries; US military forces stationed in Japan; and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The groups are discussing measures to prevent radiation from leaking outside the plant and ways to handle damaged fuel rods.

The industry ministry ordered utility companies Wednesday to act within a month to prepare for a possible loss of power at their nuclear reactors when hit by unexpectedly large tsunami waves, as concerns are growing over the safety of nuclear power plants following the March 11 quake that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi complex.

They are instructed to secure vehicle-mounted power sources, deploy fire trucks that would supply water to the reactors, work out a procedure on how to deal with an emergency situation by using such vehicles, and carry out drills.

The measures are part of efforts to prevent a recurrence of the ongoing nuclear crisis at the plant in northeastern Japan, where the power grid and most of the emergency diesel generators were knocked out by the magnitude-9.0 quake and ensuing tsunami, resulting in the loss of the reactors' key cooling functions.

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda said that the emergency measures are the ''first step'' to enhance safety at the country's nuclear reactors after the quake and that the government is also working to compile a set of drastic measures.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan is looking into the feasibility of separating the country's nuclear safety agency from the industry ministry, government sources said Wednesday, as his government reviews the way it handles nuclear energy in the wake of Japan's worst nuclear accident.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which is responsible for the administration of nuclear safety issues, is currently under the wing of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The ministry has been actively promoting nuclear power, a point which critics say compromises the agency's role to ensure nuclear safety.

• status report, which is more detailed than TEPCO's
  
• overview per plant, with graphics, current water level, pressure etc. readings, and the detailed history for each plants
  
• major parameters table, which brings some data we haven't seen before. For example, the radiation level in the dry well of the reactors: it ranges from 28.6 Sv/h (No. 3; on 24 March, it was 57.9 Sv/h!) to 40.5 Sv/h (No. 2).

The EPA is closing ranks with the nuclear power industry:

       EPA officials, however, refused to answer questions or make staff members available to explain the exact location and number of monitors, or the levels of radiation, if any, being recorded at existing monitors in California. Margot Perez-Sullivan, a spokeswoman at the EPA's regional headquarters in San Francisco, said the agency's written statement would stand on its own.

        Critics said the public needs more information.

        "It's disappointing," said Bill Magavern, director of Sierra Club California. "I have a strong suspicion that EPA is being silenced by those in the federal government who don't want anything to stand in the way of a nuclear power expansion in this country, heavily subsidized by taxpayer money."

The EPA has considered, off and on since 1992, significantly raising allowable radiation exposures. Since 2010 it has been on again, if hue and cry over Fukushima fall out doesn't derail their plans.

And now, the EPA is considering drastically raising the amount of allowable radiation in food, water and the environment.

As Michael Kane writes:

   In the wake of the continuing nuclear tragedy in Japan, the United States government is still moving quickly to increase the amounts of radiation the population can "safely" absorb by raising the safe zone for exposure to levels designed to protect the government and nuclear industry more than human life. It's all about cutting costs now as the infinite-growth paradigm sputters and moves towards extinction. As has been demonstrated by government conduct in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of Deepwater Horizon and in Japan, life has taken a back seat to cost-cutting and public relations posturing.The game plan now appears to be to protect government and the nuclear industry from "excessive costs"... at any cost.

    *

    In 1992, the EPA produced a PAGs manual that answers many of these questions. But now an update to the 1992 manual is being planned, and if the "Dr. Strangelove" wing of the EPA has its way, here is what it means (brace yourself for these ludicrous increases):

        * A nearly 1000-fold increase for exposure to strontium-90;
        * A 3000 to 100,000-fold hike for exposure to iodine-131; and
        * An almost 25,000 rise for exposure to radioactive nickel-63.

    The new radiation guidelines would also allow long-term cleanup thresholds thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has ever judged safe in the past.

A Russian airline has partially suspended flights between Japan and the Russian Far East to cope with a sharp drop in passengers after the powerful earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan on March 11th.

Vladivostok Air has stopped its weekly flights between the Japanese city of Niigata on the Sea of Japan and Khabarovsk for the time being. It also plans to suspend weekly flights between Niigata and Vladivostok starting Saturday.

Fukushima is going to dwarf Chenobyl. The Japanese government has had a level 7 nuclear disaster going for almost a week but won't admit it.

The disaster is occurring the opposite way than Chernobyl, which exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactions are getting worse. I suspect three nuclear piles are in meltdown and we will probably get some of it.

If reactor 3 is in meltdown,  the concrete under the containment looks like lava. But Fukushima is not far off the water table. When that molten mass of self-sustaining nuclear material gets to the water table it won't simply cool down. It will explode - not a nuclear explosion, but probably enough to involve the rest of the reactors and fuel rods at the facility.

Pouring concrete on a critical reactor makes no sense - it will simply explode and release more radioactive particulate matter. The concrete will melt and the problem will get worse. Chernobyl was different - a critical reactor exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactor cores are still melting down. The ONLY way to stop that is to detonate a ~10 kiloton fission device inside each reactor containment vessel and hope to vaporize the cores. That's probably a bad solution.

TEPCO reports three workers checking the condition of a seawater pipe got wet, soaking themselves through to their underwear. The seawater in the pipe was tested and found to not have any contamination. The report also says they were wearing anti-contamination suits (anti-Cs), just to be safe. Anyone working on a water system should be wearing water-proof anti-Cs, so their clothing underneath cannot get wet. I see a problem here with worker radiological safety...do you?

Workers are still struggling to resolve the problems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant where the disposal of radioactive water is hindering cooling efforts.

The chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Company, Tsunehisa Katsumata told reporters on Wednesday that it is uncertain when cooling functions can be restored to stabilize the situation at the plant.

He also said he doesn't think residents who have had to evacuate their homes near the plant will be able to return for several weeks.

Radioactive iodine and cesium have been found in
water coming from a tunnel outside the turbine building of the No.1 reactor and in the basement of the turbine buildings of reactors No.1 to 4.

The UN nuclear watchdog has decided to dispatch a marine environment expert to Fukushima to analyze seawater surrounding the troubled nuclear power plant.

Participants at an International Atomic Energy Agency meeting in Vienna on Wednesday agreed to send an additional staff member from the Marine Environment Laboratory in Monaco to Japan this week.

The decision is in response to a request by the Japanese government. It comes as seawater near the Fukushima Daiichi power plant has been found to contain high levels of radiation.

The specialist will join Japanese experts on board a survey ship on Saturday to assess the radiation levels in waters surrounding the power plant.

  Teams working on the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are going to use a synthetic resin to try and prevent radioactive dust from becoming airborne or being washed into the sea.

The hydrogen explosions earlier this month at the Number One and Three reactors spread contaminated dust and debris over a wide area.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company will begin sprinkling synthetic resin in certain places from Thursday. The resin is water-soluble and it is hoped that it will contain the contaminated dust.

TEPCO will use 9000 liters of synthetic resin to produce a 60000 liter solution. It will be sprinkled around the Number four and six reactors using water trucks.