*** Fukushima *** and other nuclear-----updates and links

Highest radiation found at Fukushima No.1 reactor
The highest level of radiation to date has been detected inside the No.1 reactor vessel at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Tokyo Electric Power Company said it used endoscopes and dosimeters to examine the interior of the reactor on Tuesday. Internal measurements were made for the first time since the accident in March last year.

The utility detected a record level of 10,300 millisieverts per hour. The measurement was taken 20 centimeters above the surface of a contaminated water puddle in the reactor's suppression chamber. This high level of radiation would be fatal for humans within 50 minutes. No broken parts were identified in the containment vessel during the survey.

1,000 millisieverts per hour was detected about 4 meters above the water surface. The figure is 10 times higher than measured in the No.2 and No.3 reactors.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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TEPCO to drop nuclear exports
Tokyo Electric Power Co. is to abandon plans to export its nuclear power plant expertise as it struggles to cope with the Fukushima disaster, according to news reports.

The turnaround by one of the world’s largest utilities would be a blow to Japan’s once-proud policy of promoting its nuclear technology, the Mainichi Shimbun daily said on Thursday.

Tokyo Electric, known as TEPCO, will withdraw from a scheme to supply and run two nuclear reactors at a plant in Vietnam, the paper said.
[link to www.japantoday.com]
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New TEPCO chairman says restarting reactors essential for turnaround
New Tokyo Electric Power Co. Chairman Kazuhiko Shimokobe on Thursday called for reactivation of the utility's idled nuclear reactors in Niigata Prefecture from next April as a "building block" in the company's turnaround plan compiled following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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Hokkaido says 35 meter tsunami possible
Officials from Japan's northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido say an almost 35-meter high tsunami could hit its east coast if a massive earthquake occurs in the Pacific.

The Hokkaido prefectural government revised its forecast sharply upward on Thursday.

Prefectural officials say that a 20-meter or higher tsunami could hit 11 municipalities, mainly in the eastern part of the prefecture.

They say a tsunami higher than 30 meters could hit 3 of the municipalities. They say waves reaching one town could be 34.6 meters high and inundate most of the town's center.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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largest nuke holding facility is there............. just saying........

New TEPCO execs meet Fukushima governor
The governor of Fukushima Prefecture has asked Tokyo Electric Power Company to ensure safe decommissioning of its crippled nuclear reactors and compensate those affected by the nuclear accident.

Governor Yuhei Sato met TEPCO Chairman Kazuhiko Shimokobe and President Naomi Hirose at a prefectural government office on Thursday, one day after the 2 were appointed to the posts at a shareholders meeting.

Shimokobe apologized for difficulties that last year's accident at the utility's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has caused residents in the prefecture.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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NISA "sorry" for withholding US radiation maps
Japanese government officials have said they're sorry to communities around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant for failing to release maps showing dangerous radiation areas. The maps were provided by the United States immediately after the nuclear disaster began last year.

Officials from the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency on Thursday apologized to Kawauchi Village Mayor Yuko Endo. All residents of the village were forced to evacuate after the government designated it a no-entry zone.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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Alarm activated by error at Oi nuke plant, no impact on reactivation
An alarm was erroneously activated Thursday at the Oi nuclear power station in Fukui Prefecture, where one reactor is slated to be reactivated Sunday night, officials of plant operator Kansai Electric Power Co. said.

The alarm sounded for five minutes at around 4 p.m. after a worker in the control room of the plant's Nos. 3 and 4 reactors inadvertently switched off a monitor used to indicate short circuits. Preparatory work to restart the No. 3 unit has not been affected by the incident, the Osaka-based utility said.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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TEPCO / KEPCO shareholders vote to keep nuclear power
Shareholders of Japan’s electricity companies voted on Wednesday to stick with nuclear power despite rising public opposition after the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in March last year.

The votes against abandoning nuclear power at the annual general meetings of utilities including Kansai Electric Power Co and Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), the company at the centre of last year’s Fukushima disaster, come days before the country’s first reactors are due to come back online.

Kansai executives sat stony faced on a podium while shareholders, including the mayor of Osaka, urged them to ditch nuclear power.
[link to www.japantoday.com]
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Unit 1 Torus Inspection: Analysis & New Additional Images

June 27th, 2012 | Add a Comment
[Translate]

The SimplyInfo team has been reviewing TEPCO’s latest effort to inspect unit 1 at Fukushima Daiichi. Work was done by putting a scope through a pipe penetration hole in the floor down into the torus room

[link to www.simplyinfo.org]

Ohi nuclear power plant to restart on Sunday
Kansai Electric Power Company, the operator of the Ohi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture, will restart the No.3 reactor on Sunday night for the first time in 15 months.

The company has been cleaning cooling water pipes, checking for water leaks and making other preparations. The government decided on the resumption on June 16th.

The reactor will be resumed at 9 PM on Sunday in the presence of senior vice industry minister Seishu Makino.

This will be the first reactor to be restarted since the earthquake and tsunami in March of last year.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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Protests over nuclear plant restart continue
A crowd rallied in front of the Prime Minister's Official Residence in Tokyo on Friday to protest the restart a nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture, central Japan.

Protesters have been gathering every Friday since late March. Their activities are organized by a coalition of anti-nuclear groups in and around Tokyo.

The organizers say more and more people are getting in on the action through social media and word of mouth.

A cross-section of Tokyo residents formed a line several hundred meters long.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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2 workers exposed to radioactive tritium at Indian nuclear plant
Two workers at a nuclear power plant in northern India's Rajasthan state were exposed to high doses of radioactive tritium last week, the Press Trust of India news agency reported Friday.

The victims are being kept under observation, the PTI report said.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]

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The Rise of Nuclear Fear–How We Learned to Fear the Radiation
[link to blogs.scientificamerican.com]
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Hiroshima Megadeath First Top Secret Reports

PDF / 15 pages / .5 MB

[link to cryptome.org]
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Gov't puts on table nuclear reliance options ranging from zero to 25%
The government on Friday set out three future scenarios for Japan's reliance on nuclear energy of zero, 15 percent and 20 to 25 percent by 2030 as it seeks to decide a new energy policy in August in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster.

"I expect a public debate on the issue. Based on that, the government will decide in August on the future energy direction that Japan should take," Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda told a meeting of ministers involved in energy and environmental issues.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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U.S., 4 other nuclear powers to pledge not to use nukes against ASEAN countries
The United States and four other nuclear powers that are permanent members of the U.N. Security Council will pledge not to use nuclear weapons against any of the ASEAN member countries in a protocol expected to be signed next month in Cambodia, ASEAN sources said Friday.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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Has any of our nuclear expers consulted with Chuck Norris? I'm sure he could just eat the spent fuel for breakfast, and get rid of it.

Too late... Chuck is contanimated... lol...
[link to pdblacknoir.files.wordpress.com]

Tens of thousands protest Japan nuclear restart
Tens of thousands of people rallied outside the Japanese prime minister’s residence in Tokyo Friday in one of the largest demonstrations held against the restart of nuclear reactors.

The protesters, carrying placards which read “Rise up against the restart” and “The nuclear era is over,” lined the streets around Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s residence in central Tokyo as police watched on, according to an AFP photographer.
[link to www.japantoday.com]
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Just did a geiger reading. Ran .42 uSv/hr then .32 uSv/hr, the 3rd one was .26 uSv/hr

3 New Energy Policy Options
The Japanese government has presented three options of future energy policy for public debate, hoping to finalize by August the extent of Japan's reliance on nuclear power.

The government has been reviewing its energy policy in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident last year. On Friday, ministers in charge of energy came up with options for the year 2030, together with projections of greenhouse gas emissions and ways to deal with spent nuclear fuel.

The first plan would eliminate nuclear power altogether. Greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by 23 percent from 1990. Spent nuclear fuel would not be reprocessed, but be disposed of directly.

Under the second proposal, nuclear power would generate 15 percent of all electricity, and greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by 23 percent.

The third proposal calls for nuclear power allocation of 20 to 25 percent. Earth-warming gas emissions would be reduced by 25 percent.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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Cooling system for Fukushima Daiichi No. 4 reactor fuel pool shuts down
The cooling system for the spent fuel pool at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant's No. 4 reactor automatically shut down Saturday, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

The utility known as TEPCO has been unable to activate a backup cooling system for the pool, officials of the plant operator said later in the day, adding it is unlikely the temperature will rise rapidly.

TEPCO believes a part of power unit of the system's heat exchanger is causing the problem and the company will try to get the system running again on Sunday.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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OPINION: Japan's reprocessing program and proliferation in East Asia

By Masa Takubo and Frank von Hippel
PRINCETON/TOKYO, June 27, Kyodo

If the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant operates as designed for 40 years, it will separate more plutonium than the Soviet Union and the United States together produced for nuclear weapons during their Cold War. If other countries follow Japan's example, the risk of nuclear-weapon proliferation will increase.

Japanese government officials and other reprocessing proponents argue, however, that since Japan is the only non-weapon state allowed to separate plutonium it should not give up this hard-won right and that, if Japan reprocessed the spent fuel of other countries in the region, the danger of proliferation would be reduced.

It is true that, in 1988, the United States gave its "prior consent" for Japan to reprocess spent fuel that had U.S. content or had been irradiated in U.S.-designed reactors, but it gave the European Union and Switzerland the same approval.

Also, Belgium, Germany and Italy had pilot reprocessing plants like Japan. Because of the failure of plutonium breeder reactor programs, however, these countries decided to stop plutonium separation.

Today, only Japan and four weapon states -- China, France, India and Russia -- continue to insist on reprocessing. The U.S. gave up commercial reprocessing permanently in 1982 and recently, Britain too finally decided to abandon reprocessing.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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Live protests

[link to globalrevolution.tv]

Antinuclear protesters block road to Oi plant ahead of restart
A group of about 100 antinuclar protesters on Saturday blocked a road outside the front gate of the Oi nuclear plant in western Japan, ahead of the planned reactivation of a reactor there on Sunday.

The protesters, part of 650 people who took part in a rally against the reactivation, sought to block the entrance to the plant in Fukui Prefecture with more than a dozen vehicles in an attempt to prevent workers from entering the facility.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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Small amount of cesium detected in Fukushima children's urine
A small amount of radioactive cesium was found in the urine samples from 141 infants and young children living in Fukushima Prefecture, where the crippled nuclear power plant is located, among 2,022 of those surveyed, a Japanese research group said Saturday.

Three urine samples contained more than 10 becquerels of cesium per kilogram, including a case with 17.5 becquerels. Ten becquerels or less of cesium was found in the samples of the other 138, the Yokohama-based Isotope Research Institute said.

The urine samples also contained about an average 64 becquerels of radioactive potassium.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]

Poor kids...
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Thread: Cooling system for Fukushima Daiichi No. 4 reactor suspended

Of course Reactor 4 is not SFP4. So some stories say that reactor 4 is not loaded, or perhaps not fully loaded.

We know that it's cap was off at the time of the explosion.

Sounds like controversy of opinions on that.

What do you all think?

Last Edited by ehecatl on 06/30/2012 03:42 PM

Ohi nuclear plant to go back line on Sunday
One of the reactors at the Ohi nuclear power plant in central Japan on Sunday will go back online.

It will be the first to do so since reactors went offline due to safety concerns after the Fukushima accident last year.

The company plans to start lifting control rods in the No.3 reactor at 9:00 PM in the presence of senior vice industry minister Seishu Makino and Ohi Town Mayor Shinobu Tokioka.

The reactor is expected to reach criticality, starting a self-sustaining chain reaction, early on Monday.

The utility says the reactor will start generating power on Wednesday, and begin operating at full capacity 4 days later.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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My "normal" average is .09 - .15, so this is quite a spike/