TEPCO halts water circulation due to leaks
The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has suspended using decontaminated water as a coolant because of leaky pipes.
Tokyo Electric Power Company began circulating recycled water through the No.1, 2 and 3 reactors at 4:20 PM on Monday.
But it halted the operation one and a half hours later after discovering water leaking from the pipes.
TEPCO has been attempting to run the decontamination system since June 14th. It has so far treated about 1,850 tons of the water...
Monday, June 27, 2011 20:40 +0900 (JST)
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/27_31.htmlYamaguchi Governor suspends nuclear plant project
The governor of Yamaguchi Prefecture in western Japan says he won't extend a permit for a land reclamation project to build a nuclear power plant. This, in effect, means the power plant project will not go ahead.
Sekinari Nii made the remark at the prefectural assembly on Monday, referring to the planned construction of the Kaminoseki plant on the coast of the Seto Inland Sea.
Chugoku Electric Power Company was seeking to construct the plant in the town of Kaminoseki, with its launch scheduled for 2018.
However, a land reclamation project in preparation for the construction has been suspended ever since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was hit by an accident in March...
Monday, June 27, 2011 13:27 +0900 (JST)
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/27_17.htmlWhales, plankton migrate across Northwest Passage
AMSTERDAM (AP) -- When a 13-meter gray whale was spotted off the Israeli town of Herzliya last year, scientists came to a startling conclusion: it must have wandered across the normally icebound route above Canada, where warm weather had briefly opened a clear channel three years earlier.
On a microscopic level, scientists also have found plankton in the North Atlantic where it had not existed for at least 800,000 years.
The whale's odyssey and the surprising appearance of the plankton indicates a migration of species through the Northwest Passage, a worrying sign of how global warming is affecting animals and plants in the oceans as well as on land.
"The implications are enormous. It's a threshold that has been crossed," said Philip C. Reid, of the Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth, England...
(Mainichi Japan) June 27, 2011
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/features/news/20110627p2g00m0fe063000c.htmlEngineers question meaning of nuclear power in wake of Fukushima crisis
Half a century since the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Engineering was founded, it continues to live on as the university's Department of Systems Innovation, Environment and Energy Systems. But since the ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant first emerged, what has been going through the minds of members of the first class to enter the department in 1962?
On the evening of April 15, seven men with graying hair sat at a table at a Japanese-style pub in the Shinbashi district of Tokyo for a reunion of the first class to enroll at the University of Tokyo's Department of Nuclear Engineering. Conversation naturally turned to the nuclear accident at the stricken Fukushima power plant.
"I should have been more vocal about the importance of anti-tsunami measures," Michio Yamawaki, now a professor emeritus at University of Tokyo, said with regret. Some of his classmates were abstaining from alcohol in solidarity with those in the Tohoku region, who were hit hardest by the March 11 earthquake, tsunami, and ensuing nuclear disaster, and have been forced to make many sacrifices. Still others were going out of their way to enjoy sake from the Tohoku region to support local businesses.
Most of the 15 members of the University of Tokyo's first class of nuclear engineering students -- including Hiroto Ishida, a former administrative vice minister at the Science and Technology Agency, and Shinzo Saito, a former president of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan (AESJ) -- have, since graduation, been involved in the field of nuclear energy. Of them, two have already passed away...
(Mainichi Japan) June 26, 2011
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/features/news/20110626p2a00m0na015000c.htmlReport: Policy may have increased damage
A Japanese government panel studying measures to counter earthquakes and tsunami pointed out that the current government disaster prevention policy might have increased damage during the disaster in March.
The panel members held a 4th meeting in Tokyo on Sunday and compiled an interim report.
The report says drastic changes must be made in national policy to cope with massive disasters like the one which hit northeastern Japan in March...
...Referring to the weakness of current national earthquake policy, the report blamed the government for not considering 4 previous major earthquakes...
Monday, June 27, 2011 05:46 +0900 (JST)
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/27_03.htmlRadioactive cesium from Fukushima expected to reach U.S. West Coast in 5 years
Radioactive cesium leaking from the tsunami-hit Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant is estimated to reach the West Coast of the United States in five years after its density declines considerably, according to a semi-governmental research institute.
The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) has compiled a map predicting how cesium-137 will spread throughout the Pacific Ocean in the long term. Cesium-137, whose half life is 30 years, is one of the radioactive substances leaking from the crippled nuclear power station.
It estimates that cesium-137 from the plant will spread in the shape of an ellipse -- as far as about 4,000 kilometers off the coast of Japan -- in one year. It then predicts the substance will reach Hawaii three years later and the U.S. West Coast five years from now. However, the agency says that by that time, its density will have declined significantly.
By September, half a year after the March 11 disaster, the amount of cesium-137 will have declined to around 0.08 becquerels per liter of sea water at most, an amount estimated in the ocean in the 1950s when the sea was contaminated with radioactive substances deriving from U.S. nuclear tests...
(Mainichi Japan) June 27, 2011
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110627p2a00m0na009000c.htmlHot spring water pouring out of quake-hit residential area of Fukushima Pref. city
IWAKI, Fukushima -- Hot spring water is pouring out of a quake-hit residential area here apparently as a result of shifts in the Earth's crust triggered by the March 11 earthquake.
Fifty-year-old Chie Azuma, who owns an apartment complex in the Uchigotakasaka district of Iwaki, noticed the sound of water flowing nearby after an aftershock registering a lower 6 on the 7-point Japanese intensity scale struck on the night of April 11.
Azuma went to the apartment the following morning because it had lost power, and found water leaking from the ground at the complex. Moreover, water was gushing down a pipe to a storm drain.
The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) examined the water and confirmed that it is identical in quality to water from the Yumoto hot spring about four kilometers south of the complex. The water is 27 degrees Celsius...
(Mainichi Japan) June 26, 2011
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110626p2a00m0na016000c.htmlTick tock
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