Japan Avoids Moving Up Deadline for Nuclear Plant's Stabilization
Thursday, Sept. 22, 2011

An accelerated time line floated this week by Japanese authorities for stabilizing the crippled Fukushima Daiichi atomic energy facility is not reflected in an updated schedule issued on Tuesday, the Asahi Shimbun reported

Government adviser Goshi Hosono on Monday said the facility might enter "cold shutdown" near the end of 2011, beating a January 2012 stabilization deadline.

"While we will not revise the period for achieving the objective, (Hosono's comment) means we want to make every effort to achieve the objective by the end of the year," Cabinet Office Parliamentary Secretary Yasuhiro Sonoda said on Tuesday. "We will do our utmost on restoring operations."

[link to www.globalsecuritynewswire.org]

- I'm mystified by this. How do you shut down an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction?