Most nuclear reactors in Japan would fail to achieve a stable condition in the event that all regular power sources are lost, even though plant operators have prepared new backup power sources as well as electric generators following the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Kyodo News found Monday.

The government's nuclear safety agency on Monday endorsed a report by Tokyo Electric Power Co. estimating radioactive substances 20,000 times the allowable annual limit were carried into the Pacific Ocean by contaminated water leaking from the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in early April.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency approved the report submitted by the plant operator last Thursday and said the leak would not cause immediate health hazards because radioactive materials would be diluted in seawater, while fishing had been banned in areas close to the atomic power station.

Can caesium and whatever else was in it accumulate on the seabed? In fish bellies?

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

Six Fukushima prefectural government workers dressed in protective outfits went into the no-entry zone within a 20-kilometer radius of the crisis-hit nuclear power plant in the northeastern Japanese prefecture Monday to begin work to cull starving livestock.

Ugh. Poor forgotten animals...

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

http://news.discovery.com/tech/nuclear-reactor-designs-future-110316.html

To wit, "The AP1000 reactor, designed by Westinghouse, can be shut down for three days without power. Instead of pumps, valves and human operators, the plant uses airflow, pressure changes and gravity to gradually cool the reactor." And on the fourth day? What then, Peter?

Well, just remember: "G.E. officials said the reactor design that failed in Japan, called the Mark 1, hasn't had a problem in 40 years of operation." In other words, 40 years is a really, really long time. You ask how, then, if 40 years is a "long time," then how can we so easily design a foolproof waste disposal site that lasts 10,000 years. Well, that's because 10,000 years is a short time. I know this is complicated, but you just don't understand the physics.

So, with that background firmly in place, it is clear that the obvious thing to do is put some of these new, perfectly safe nuclear plants right there in middle of the new 25 mile diameter nature preserve.

High levels of radiation were detected on the grounds of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant one month after hydrogen explosions spewed radioactive materials, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co. The findings were shown in a map depicting radiation levels that TEPCO released for the first time on April 24.
....

The air in an area to the northwest of the No. 3 reactor building had radiation levels of up to 70 millisieverts per hour. That building was damaged by a hydrogen explosion on March 14, three days after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami crippled the plant.

....

Radiation levels as high as 130 millisieverts per hour were confirmed around the No. 1 and No. 3 reactor buildings in late March. Because radiation decreases with the passage of time, subsequent testing found lower levels. But if the level of 70 millisieverts per hour continues to the northwest of the No. 3 reactor building, a worker who remains in that area for four hours will have been exposed to more than the upper limit of 250 millisieverts established for individuals engaged in work at the Fukushima plant.

....

On March 20, concrete rubble found west of the No. 3 reactor building had radiation levels of 900 millisieverts per hour. Even after that rubble was removed, radiation levels in the air measured between 10 and 30 millisieverts per hour. Another pile of rubble emitting radiation levels of 300 millisieverts per hour was found near the No. 3 reactor building.

I understand the criticism from a news coverage perspective, but from the perspective of ordinary life, what is there to do?  Go on as best one can, and try not to starve to death or freeze in the cold.  

Back at the Fukushima site, the head of the Dai-Ichi operation Masao Yoshida and two deputies, Masatoshi Fukura and Atsufumi Yoshizawa, set up a disaster control center in an earthquake-proofed bunker. Yoshida, 56, had taken up the position in June, his fourth stint at the 40-year-old atomic power station. Back at the Fukushima site, the head of the Dai-Ichi operation Masao Yoshida and two deputies, Masatoshi Fukura and Atsufumi Yoshizawa, set up a disaster control center in an earthquake-proofed bunker. Yoshida, 56, had taken up the position in June, his fourth stint at the 40-year-old atomic power station.

....

Yoshida had been vice chairman of the Japan Society of Maintenology, a group that studies how to safely extend the lifespan of nuclear power facilities.

....

Yoshida could get replacement electricity from 13 back-up diesel generators to run emergency water pumps for cooling reactors. Each generator is the size of a train locomotive and capable of delivering 6,000 kilowatt hours of power, enough to run 14,400 Japanese homes for that period. Again, the engineering was working.

At last! A useful specific.  Three 2000 kW Cummins Powered Generator Sets, 32246lbs each which are individually transportable by CH-53E helicopter which has 16,330 kg of underslung load capacity, would equal one of the failed diesel generators. Were this made an international priority I have trouble believing that a dozen of these could not have been transported to Fukushima in a week.

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

Japan's science ministry has for the first time released a map projecting estimated cumulative radiation exposure near the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The contour map shows the amount of annual cumulative radiation that a person would be exposed to by staying outdoors for 8 hours per day through March 11th, 2012.

It's based on readings at 2,138 points near the quake and tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi complex on or before last Thursday, including areas within 20 kilometers of the plant.

Do you want to see some fun info from Reactor 4?

http://atmc.jp/plant/rad/?n=4

5000 Sieverts / hour in the suppresion chamber.

Down to 4250 Sieverts / hour today

If you look at the web pages there are Hyperlinks for every reactor apart from number four, but the page exists if you alter the URL by hand to find a reading abou 100 times that of any other reactor

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

Another project to develop a robot for a nuclear accident started after a fatal accident at JCO Co. in Ibaraki Prefecture in 1999. After several billion yen was spent, the project was ended in one year on the grounds that the government did not want to give off a mistaken impression to the public.

"(Authorities) perhaps thought that people would think that they were anticipating a nuclear power plant accident if they had developed robots for accidents," Hirose said.

A cross-party group of senior Japanese lawmakers said Prime Minister Naoto Kan shouldn't raise taxes to pay for rebuilding from last month's earthquake, and called on the central bank to buy more government bonds instead.

"It's wrong to immediately raise taxes from a macro- economic standpoint, and we should use government bonds," Sakihito Ozawa, a former environment minister and member of Kan's Democratic Party of Japan, said at a press conference today in Tokyo. "The Bank of Japan should buy bonds in purchase operations to raise cash."

Ten legislators from the DPJ, the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party, the New Komeito Party, the Social Democratic Party, the Your Party and the People's New Party attended the briefing. They made no specific mention of pushing the BOJ to directly underwrite government debt, a suggestion Governor Masaaki Shirakawa and administration officials have rejected.

The process a French firm will use to clean Fukushima's radioactive water has been blamed for a leukemia cluster in France and for polluted beaches and irradiated waters from the English Channel to the Arctic Sea.

Areva SA has promised to remove up to 99.99 percent of the radioactive contaminants in 67,500 tons of water flooding the crippled Fukushima-Dai-ichi nuclear plant. It will use a co-precipitation method employed at its La Hague nuclear fuel reprocessing facility in Normandy.

That process has been documented in detail by a French nuclear expert and by the U.S. government, which has shunned France's fuel reprocessing method because of "a nonproliferation concern and environmental concerns," in the words of Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko.

Radiation readings at Japan's Fukushima Dai-Ichi station rose to the highest since an earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems, impeding efforts to contain the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

Two robots sent into the reactor No. 1 building at the plant yesterday took readings as high as 1,120 millisierverts of radiation per hour, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at Tokyo Electric Power Co., said today. That's more than four times the annual dose permitted to nuclear workers at the stricken plant.

Radiation from the station, where four of six reactors have been damaged by explosions, has forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people and contaminated farmland and drinking water. A plan to flood the containment vessel of reactor No. 1 with more water to speed up emergency cooling efforts announced yesterday by the utility known as Tepco may not be possible now.

The injection of increased amounts of coolant water into the damaged No. 1 reactor core at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has yielded positive signs, with both the temperature and pressure inside the reactor vessel falling as expected, the government's nuclear agency said Thursday.

The plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. began raising the amount of water Wednesday morning from 6 tons per hour to 10 tons in preparation for flooding the reactor's primary containment vessel to cool the fuel in a stable manner. The utility known as TEPCO will keep injecting the current amount until Thursday evening, it said.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said TEPCO initially planned to increase the amount of water to 14 tons per hour, but decided to keep pouring 10 tons per hour so as not to cause abnormalities.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday that one of its female employees was exposed to radiation doses far above the legal limit at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant -- the latest revelation of lax radiation management by the plant operator since the crisis erupted last month.

Here it is:

TEPCO : Press Release | Regarding instructions received concerning the investigation of causes and development of preventive measures regarding radiation exposure exceeding designated dose limits to those persons at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station

On April 27th, NISA received from you the report stating that the /mean dose exposure from January 1st to March 31st (4th quarter) to the individual (female) who was working after the occurrence of the Tohoku - Pacific Ocean Earthquake is exceeding the dose limit (5mSv/3month) set down in Article 6-1-3 of Regulation of Provision Concerning the Installment, Operation etc. of Practical Generation Reactors based on Article 9-1-1 of Regulation Concerning the installment, Operation etc. of Practical Generation Reactors (The Ministry of International Trade and Industry Order No.77 of 1978). For this reason, we strictly warn and instruct you to investigate the causes, develop preventive measures and verify the dose management system at Fukushima Daiichi Power Station and develop countermeasures based on this verification, and report it to us no later than May 2nd 2011.

Checking the actual regulation (pdf, before-lat page), indeed the limit is lower for non-sterile females:

For female (except for those who diagnosed as sterility and those who notified will for no pregnancy to the reactor establisher with document and those who are specified in next Paragraph), 5mSvs per three-month starting April 1, July 1, October 1 and January 1, except for determined in two preceding subparagraphs

In the verifying process, we have confirmed that there were some mistakes in the part of the data measured by Containment Atmospheric Monitoring System (CAMS)^*1. The data measured by CAMS is important as it is used to estimate the core damage ratio^*2 of Unit 1 to 3 of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Therefore, we have reported it to Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) today.

Only the wet well radioactivity level estimates changed. The resulting core damage ratio estimates for No. 2 and 3 increased by 5% (to 35% resp. 30%), that for No. 1 decreased by 15% (from 70 to 55%).

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

- Full-scale implementation of spraying anti-scattering agent was
  carried out in the area of about 5,000 m2 on the ocean-side of Unit 3
  using an unmanned crawler dump. (From 13:30 till 17:00 April 26th)
- Removal of rubble (amounts equivalent to 2 containers) using
  remote-control heavy machineries was carried out. (From 9:00 till
  16:00 April 26th).

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/japan-power-crisis-could-benefit-coal-etfs-2011-04-28

Tokyo Electric Power Company now says it is unlikely that water is leaking from the spent fuel rod pool of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant's No.4 reactor.

Water is being injected into the pool to replace coolant that is evaporating due to the high temperature of its 1,535 spent fuel rods.

Despite sporadically injecting 140 to 210 tons of water a day, the company says the water level in the storage pool is still 10 to 40 centimeters lower than estimated.

HOUSTON, April 27 (Reuters) - Severe storms and tornadoes moving through the U.S. Southeast dealt a severe blow to the Tennessee Valley Authority on Wednesday, causing three nuclear reactors in Alabama to shut and knocking out 11 high-voltage power lines, the utility and regulators said.

Fukushima Prefecture has decided to protect pets left by owners in the 20-kilometer-radius no-entry zone around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant by keeping them in a temporary shelter and providing health care.

Ten veterinarians and others in two groups sent by the prefecture were in the Odaka district in Minami-Soma and Katsuraomura within the no-entry zone with the consent of both municipalities' mayors Thursday afternoon, wearing protective suits and masks and carrying dosimeters to measure radiation.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan has "definitely improved" but still requires close monitoring.

Commission members met on Thursday in Washington to assess the nuclear emergency in Japan.

One of the members said that US nuclear experts continue to provide support in Japan, adding that private US companies have joined the effort.

The commission members will meet again on May 12th and issue a short-term analytical report on the Fukushima plant.

A committee of India's environment ministry has refused to grant permission for the construction of 4 nuclear reactors. It cited the need for emergency safety measures to be reassessed following the accident in Japan.

In southern India, the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant is located on the coast of Tamil Nadu state. Two new reactors are currently under construction and 4 additional reactors were planned for the future.

A committee of the environment ministry has been tasked to assess the effects of nuclear power facilities. On April 5th, the committee decided not to grant coastal clearance for the construction of 4 new reactors.

SFP #4 underwater video !!!!!!! http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/news/11031...s/110428_1.zip
We can see that upper parts of fuel sets are melted

TOKYO -(Dow Jones)- The water in the basement of the No. 4 reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is now five meters deep following frequent water-spraying with outside equipment to cool its spent fuel pool, the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Agency said Monday.

The No. 4 reactor was not operating at the time of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and there were no fuel rods in use, therefore there is no risk of overheating, unlike units Nos. 1-3.

"Removing water from the No. 4 reactor building is not high on our priority list," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman and deputy director general of the agency.

TOKYO (Dow Jones)--A special adviser to the Japanese government on radiation safety resigned Friday, saying that he was dissatisfied with the handling of the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The Japan Coast Guard released Thursday 6-1/2 hours of video footage of the March 11 tsunami, taken at the second Regional Coast Guard headquarters Sendai Air Station and its Kesennuma Coast Guard Station in Miyagi Prefecture.

Footage taken at the Sendai Air Station, located next to Sendai Airport, showed dozens of cars and a few airplanes swept onto the runways by the tsunami.

Data released on April 28, 2011 by TEPCO is now unequivocal in showing ongoing criticalities at Unit 2, with a peak on April 13. TEPCO graphs of radioactivity-versus-time in water under each of the six reactors show an ongoing nuclear chain reaction creating high levels of "fresh" I-131 in Unit 2, the same reactor pressure vessel (RPV) with a leak path to reactor floor, aux building, and outdoor trenches, that is uncontrollably leaking high levels of I-131, Cs-134, Cs-137 into the Pacific Ocean.

Railway companies have yet to develop a clear plan for the restoration of tracks and stations along the coast of the Tohoku region that were swept away by the tsunami that followed the massive quake in March.

Tohoku Shinkansen bullet trains resumed full operations between Tokyo and Shin-Aomori stations on Friday, but railway lines operated by East Japan Railway Co. and semipublic companies remain crippled nearly two months after the disaster.

Plans for rebuilding the railways are in limbo because if the reconstruction of disaster-hit residential areas sees them relocated to higher ground, the railway routes might also have to change.

The government tentatively decided Saturday to cut salaries of national public servants by about 10 percent to fund reconstruction programs in areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake, government sources said.

If implemented, the move would reduce the state's personnel costs by about 300 billion yen. The plan would be presented to civil servant labor unions for negotiation after the Golden Week holiday period. Bills to revise laws concerning public servant reenumeration would be submitted to the Diet during the current ordinary session.

If the salary revision is made without the recommendation of the National Personnel Authority, it would be the first time since the authority was established in 1948. Usually, the authority recommends changes to public employees' reenumeration to the Cabinet and the Diet every summer.

This system has served as an alternative to basic labor rights for national civil servants, which are limited by law. Along with the pay cut, the government plans to abolish this system in the current Diet session as part of reforms to the national civil servant system. In its place, state employees would gain the right to make labor agreements with the government through labor unions.

A vice president of Tokyo Electric Power Company says he believes the nuclear crisis at Fukushima nuclear power plant is a man-made disaster.

TEPCO vice president Norio Tsuzumi visited Iitate village in Fukushima Prefecture on Saturday and apologized to about 1,000 villagers who gathered to hear him speak.

When he was asked if he thinks of the nuclear crisis a man-made disaster or a natural disaster, he said personally he thinks it is a man-made disaster.

Japan's Health Ministry says it has detected a minute amount of radioactive materials in breast milk in 7 mothers in central and northeastern Japan. The ministry says the amount does not pose a danger to their babies' health.

The ministry on Saturday released the results of a study conducted in Fukushima, Tokyo and other 3 prefectures in Kanto region from last Sunday through Thursday.

The ministry says breast milk samples from a mother in Iwaki City of Fukushima Prefecture contained 3.5 becquerels of radioactive iodine per kilogram and 2.4 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogra

The Tokyo Electric Power Company says it going to implement new measures at the disaster-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to protect it from any other tsunami or aftershocks. The work will be completed by late July.

A utility official told reporters on Saturday that it is going to build 12-meter-high temporary levees consisting of stone-filled baskets to protect the plant from any tsunami.

The power company will also fill in the pits leading down to the 4 tunnels on the ocean side of the Number 2 and Number 3 reactors with concrete to prevent highly radioactive water from leaking into the sea.

As a measure to protect the plant from aftershocks, TEPCO will set up a steel pillar at the bottom of the spent-fuel storage pool of the Number 4 reactor, and reinforce it with concrete.

More on 77-year-old Michio Ishikawa of the Japan Nuclear Technology Institute on the situation at Fukushima I Nuke Plant, as he appeared on Asahi TV on April 29.

As I watched the video, I started to like Mr. Ishikawa, who continues to believe in the safety of nuclear power generation. He didn't mince his words, and said what they are doing at Fukushima I Nuke Plant is not working. That surprised some, including the host of the show, as Ishikawa is known as a strong proponent for the nuclear power generation and the nuclear industry.

I watched the segment (video No.2 out of 11) where he discussed the situation at Fukushima I Nuke Plant, particularly about the condition of the reactor core.

The Japanese government is about to begin releasing data projecting the spread of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that it initially withheld for fear of causing panic.

The data in question is in a computer system called SPEEDI that predicts the spread of radioactive substances based on actual radiation measurements at various locations and weather conditions.

A joint task force of the government and Tokyo Electric Power Company says about 5,000 undisclosed bits of data will be released from Tuesday.

Nearly 10 years after Japan's top utility first assured the government that its Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was safe from any tsunami, regulators were just getting around to checking out the claim. The move was too little, too late.

But even if there had been scrutiny years before the fury of an earthquake-powered wave swamped the six atomic reactors at Fukushima on March 11, it is almost certain the government wouldn't have challenged the unrealistic analysis that Tokyo Electric Power Co. had submitted in 2001. An Associated Press review of Japan's approach to nuclear plant safety shows how closely intertwined relationships between government regulators and industry have allowed a culture of complacency to prevail.

Regulators simply didn't see it as their role to pick apart the utility's raw data and computer modeling to judge for themselves whether the plant was sufficiently protected from tsunami. The policy amounted to this: Trust plant operator TEPCO - and don't worry about verifying its math or its logic.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) is struggling to carry out its plans to fill the containment vessel of the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant's No. 1 reactor with water to control radiation emissions, it has emerged.

Workers have already pumped in more than enough water to fill the containment vessel, but they have not actually seen a rise in the water level. Furthermore, when workers increased the amount of water pumped into the containment vessel, pressure inside the vessel fell, threatening a hydrogen explosion. As a result, workers had to once again reduce the amount of water. When pressure inside the containment vessel falls to a level near regular atmospheric pressure, oxygen can enter the container from outside and react with hydrogen inside to produce an explosion.

	一歳児甲状腺の内部被ばく 561;価線量	■	成人の外部被ばくによる実 177;線量
	（3月12日午前6時から3月24日午Ò 69;0時までの積算線量）	■	（3月12日午前6時から3月24日午Ò 69;0時までの積算線量）
	（3月12日午前6時から4月6日午࠺ 9;0時までの積算線量）	■	（3月12日午前6時から4月6日午࠺ 9;0時までの積算線量）
	（3月12日午前6時から4月24日午Ò 69;0時までの積算線量）	■	（3月12日午前6時から4月24日午Ò 69;0時までの積算線量）

The Left hand column are the links to SPEEDI radiation calculations for cumulative dose on march 26, april 6th and april 24th for Children, the right hand column for Adults. the calculations were run on March 12th. The Japanese government is releasing these charts now, they didnt earlier to prevent panic.

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

TOKYO, April 21 (Reuters) - Japan's Fukushima Daini nuclear plant, the companion of the crippled Daiichi plant 10 kilometers away that is still leaking radiation, has cleared a key milestone toward stabilising, regulators said on Thursday, although the outlook for a restart remains uncertain.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said on Thursday it reduced the evacuation zone around the four-reactor, 4,400 megawatt Daini plant after engineers had repaired the cooling systems and maintained the plant in a "cold shutdown" for several weeks.

A monitoring system at Japan's damaged nuclear plant failed in the power outage which took out the plant's cooling systems after the March quake and tsunami, depriving authorities of vital data to predict contamination, a news report said on Tuesday. The loss of data from the Emergency Response Support System (ERSS) probably delayed the evacuation order around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant around 250 kilometres north-east of Tokyo, Kyodo News agency quoted an anonymous source as saying. The ERSSmonitors pressures and temperatures in and around the reactors, and runs predictions to assess how much radioactive material might be released in various failure scenarios. It is meant to provide that data to another system, which then calculates how that radioactive material might spread to contaminate the surrounding area in the event of an accident. The government drew criticism last week for not implementing that second system, known as the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI), quickly or thoroughly enough.

The plant has been leaking radioactive materials into the air and sea since it was hit by the March 11 quake and tsunami. Critics have said information on the likely contamination from several fires and explosions at the plant was not available until April. And when the government did calculate models for the radioactive material's spread, it sent that data to the United Nations weeks without informing the Japanese public, reports said.

TOKYO, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Radiation readings that are 100-1,000 times the normal level have been found on the Pacific seabed near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, local media reported Tuesday.

The high levels of radioactive materials were detected from samples taken Friday from the seabed at points 20-30 meters deep, Kyodo News reported, citing the plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co

Tokyo Electric Power Company is developing a device to remove radioactive substances from seawater. It hopes to install it in the Pacific Ocean near the troubled Fukushima nuclear plant at the end of May.

TEPCO says it will fill a metal container with zeolite, a mineral that absorbs radioactive materials. The company will use a pump to continuously inject seawater into the container.

Radiation levels have remained high in the waters around the Fukushima plant even after TEPCO managed to plug a leak of contaminated water 4 weeks ago. On Monday, 5,800 times the national limit of radioactive iodine was detected in samples collected near a water intake for the Number 2 reactor.

Nearly two months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, many disaster-stricken areas have made little progress in repairing water, electricity and other vital lifelines, causing stress and physical hardship to survivors.

In Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, about 73,000 utility customers, including households, have no tap water, and electricity has not been restored to about 120,000 such customers. These figures include structures that were destroyed or washed away by the tsunami that followed the Great East Japan Earthquake. Disaster survivors still without water and power have pressed officials to repair the vital services as quickly as possible.

Before the disaster, some areas relied on wells for their water. The tsunami flooded some of these wells with seawater or blocked them with debris. Desalinization and debris removal are huge tasks, and in these areas, the completion of repairs cannot even be forecast.

"The hardest thing for me is that I can't bathe every day," said a 17-year-old girl, nearly in tears, who was living in a shelter in Minami-Sanrikucho, Miyagi Prefecture. "Honestly, I don't even want to go out in public."

Tokyo Electric Power Co. has activated a system to purify the radiation-contaminated air in the No. 1 reactor building of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the company said.

Thirteen workers entered the No. 1 reactor building Thursday to start up the system. It was the first time workers had entered the building since a hydrogen explosion on March 12, the day after the Great East Japan Earthquake.

On Friday, the amount of water injected into the reactor pressure vessel was increased from 6 tons per hour to 8 tons per hour, TEPCO said.

TEPCO plans to complete a so-called water coffin operation, in which the No. 1 reactor's containment vessel will be filled with water in about 20 days to stabilize the reactor.

Critics say Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan's call to shut down the reactors at the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant is too sudden.

Kan said on Friday that he had asked the plant's operator to stop the reactors until necessary safety measures are completed.

He pointed out that the plant has an 87 percent chance of being hit by a magnitude 8 earthquake in the next 30 years.

oh right, we already called it with the title of this diary.

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