Japan
Japanese authorities evacuated workers on Sunday from a reactor building they were working in after high doses of radiation were detected at a crippled nuclear power plant, the plant’s operator said. Tokyo Electric Power Co said radiation 10 million times the usual level was detected in water that had accumulated at the No. 2 reactor’s turbine housing unit.
Reuters 27th March 2011 more >>
Radioactive iodine in sea-water off Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant rose to 1,850 times the usual level from 1,250 times measured on Saturday, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said on Sunday.
Reuters 27th March 2011 more >>
Abnormally high levels of radioactive materials have been found in the sea near the troubled plant, the government said, fanning concerns over the safety of fishery products in the region. According to the government’s nuclear safety agency, evidence of water having flowed through an ordinary drainage outlet has been found at the No. 2 reactor building, with a radiation level of about 15 millisieverts per hour detected. The outlet is believed to lead to the sea. Japan’s top government spokesman Yukio Edano said at a press conference Saturday that it was difficult to predict when the ongoing crisis at the plant — triggered by the catastrophic March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami — would end. Asked about the prospects for the crisis, Edano described the current situation as ‘‘preventing it from worsening,’’ adding that ‘‘an enormous amount of work’’ is required before it will settle down.
Kyodo News 27th March 2011 more >>
RADIATION levels are soaring in the sea near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Contaminated water was still being pumped from the plant into the sea yesterday despite tests revealing radioactive iodine levels 1,250 times higher than normal. Radioactive water was found in buildings housing three of the six reactors at the crippled plant.
Express 27th March 2011 more >>
Daily Mail 27th March 2011 more >>
Telegraph 26th March 2011 more >>
AMERICAN naval barges loaded with 500,000 gallons of freshwater have been sent to the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Japan in the latest bid to stabilise its reactors.
Scotland on Sunday 27th March 2011 more >>
Japan’s government has revealed a series of missteps by the operator of a radiation-leaking nuclear plant, including sending workers in without protective footwear in its faltering efforts to control a monumental crisis.
Belfast Telegraph 26th March 2011 more >>
London Evening Standard 26th March 2011 more >>
Seventeen workers have been exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation, including three last week who stood for 40 minutes in pools of water with radiation 10,000 times above safety limits. The accident raised fears of a leak in one of the six reactor cores and deepened criticism of the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s safeguards for workers.
Observer 27th March 2011 more >>
A group of Greenpeace radiation experts has started on Saturday monitoring locations around the evacuation area that surrounds the crisis-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, “in order to assess the true extent of radiation risks” to the local population. “Since the beginning of the Fukushima nuclear crisis, the authorities have consistently appeared to underestimate both the risks and extent of radioactive contamination. We have come to Fukushima to bear witness to the impacts of this crisis and to provide some independent insight into the resulting radioactive contamination”, said Greenpeace team leader and radioactivity safety advisor Jan van de Putte in a statement.
Pan Orient News 26th March 2011 more >>
Greenpeace International 26th March 2011 more >>
MoX is more difficult to control than uranium fuel. The risk of accidental criticality are different. You have the same kinds of problems, they are just more intense with plutonium. And when plutonium is dispersed into the wind you want to be pretty much anywhere else. There are four kinds of carcinogenic isotopes released when a nuke plant blows: iodine-131, cesium-137, strontium-90 and plutonium-239. Plutonium is not only the most lethal of the four it also hangs around the longest. It’s half life is a whopping 24,000 years, and since radioactive contamination is dangerous for 10 to 20 times the length of the isotope’s half.life, that means plutonium emitted in Fukushima today will still be around in close to half a million years.
Time 17th March 2011 more >>
Imlications
Monbiot wrote this while firefighters were risking their health and possibly their lives to protect citizens. He wrote this while the nuclear plant was radiating, the levels climbing around it, and still no prospect of an end to the leaks. He wrote this while the people of Fukushima looked on from emergency shelters as their livelihoods were destroyed, possibly for generations, and while tap water in Tokyo was forbidden to babies. Meanwhile, at the time of writing, the plutonium threat in reactor No 3 is still not under control.
Guardian 26th March 2011 more >>
Letter from Mike Childs: Nuclear power is a gamble we don’t need to take. Studies show that the UK can meet its energy needs and tackle climate change without resorting to nuclear power or burning fossil fuels – all that is lacking is the political will. Over the years, the nuclear industry has survived on massive subsidies from UK taxpayers while cleaner forms of energy have been starved of cash. If the government goes ahead with its plans to build new reactors this pattern will be repeated again. No nuclear power plant has ever been built without state funding and ministers are already planning ways to pump more money into the industry, despite promising not to.
Observer 27th March 2011 more >>
Letter Keith Parker: the UK government’s approach, to establish the facts, learn the lessons, and apply them to the UK’s situation and conditions, is the correct course of action. We will not be complacent. But it must be remembered too that the UK government’s approach is aimed at securing our future supplies of low-carbon energy. Both the UK government and the industry are clear that new nuclear build will go ahead in the UK to secure our long-term environmental and security of supply needs into the future.
Observer 27th March 2011 more >>
David Cameron has ordered a review and Mike Weightman, the chief nuclear inspector, is expected to publish his findings by September. Executives hope the review will cause a delay of weeks rather than months or years. Others are less convinced. Richard Nourse, head of Novus Modus, a renewable energy investing firm, said: “It’s easy to forget that not long ago nuclear was seen as a dinosaur technology. It has been rehabilitated through several years of hard graft, through focusing attention on its low-carbon benefits, the benefits for energy security and its affordability. However, public acceptability is key to building new plants, and this [the Japan disaster] could easily undo all that work.” Campaigners such as Greenpeace and developers of alternatives such as solar power are using the incident in Japan as evidence that nuclear is a bad option. But the government had made its intentions clear before Fukushima. Around Christmas it published the highly anticipated Electricity Market Reform, a package of measures calling time on the free-market model that has dominated the industry for the past two decades. Andy Cox, energy partner at KPMG, said: “The carbon floor certainly feels weighted towards building new nuclear plants and will put upward pressure on prices. In coal, for example, our analysis shows that at a carbon price floor above £25, coal starts to look difficult.” RWE Npower, meanwhile, is struggling under a mountain of loans and is understood to have launched a review of its British business. Horizon Nuclear Power, the joint venture it set up with Eon last year to build up to six reactors, is casting about for another partner to share the financial burden.
Sunday Times 27th March 2011 more >>
Radwaste
Dr Helen Wallace who wrote the scientific review “Rock Solid” has said: “This waste is extremely radioactive and very hot so it’s going to significantly change the water flow deep underground; the corrosion of materials and the repository will release large quantities of gas which have to escape somehow. The waste will remain dangerous for many generations.”
101 uses for nuclear power 26th March 2011 more >>
Hunterston
NUCLEAR families will be welcome. A plan has been hatched to create a theme park with outdoor water slides and adventure courses on the site of one of Scotland’s decommissioned atomic power stations. Hunterston A, on a scenic stretch of the North Ayrshire coast, was shut down in 1990 with “defuelling” successfully completed five years later. Now a veteran councillor, supported by local tourism businesses, wants the area turned into a visitor attraction.
Scotland on Sunday 27th March 2011 more >>
Scotland
Competing visions for the use of nuclear power in Scotland will be a “major” issue of the Holyrood election, SNP leader Alex Salmond says. He spoke out after Labour pledged to remove the presumption against “new nuclear” for the future. Mr Salmond, whose party opposes that plan, said Labour’s position is “an absurdity”.
Wishaw Press 26th March 2011 more >>
PA 26th March 2011 more >>
Chernobyl
As Japan struggles with its nuclear plant crisis, the site of the biggest atomic disaster in history remains a grim, radioactive monument
Observer 27th March 2011 more >>
Germany
Munich’s mayor, Christian Ude, has ambitious plans. He wants Munich to be the first city with over a million inhabitants to be powered 100 per cent by renewable energy by 2025. According to a documentary aired by the public broadcaster, ZDF, renewable energy is competitive and claimed that “Green” electric power in Munich is already less expensive than nuclear power or the energy mix offered by electricity utilities. The Bavarian capital plans to invest €9bn in water power and other renewable energies. Munich is also investing in offshore windparks in the North Sea and in solar plants in Andalusia, Spain. Everybody contributes to making Munich a green city. Even the elephants in the local zoo are called on to donate their biomass.
Independent 27th March 2011 more >>
Baden-W rttemberg in south-west Germany is one of Europe’s richest regions. For almost 58 years, it has been governed by Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). But from 6pm tonight, when the first results from the state’s elections start to come in, this region of plenty might well be heading into the clutches of the opposition. If the pollsters are correct, the risk-averse burghers of Baden-W rttemberg – with their locally assembled Mercedes in their garages and their jobs for life – may end up electing, by a narrow vote, Germany’s first Green regional prime minister.
Observer 27th March 2011 more >>
In Germany, protesters have staged what they said was the country’s biggest ever demonstration against nuclear power. More than 200,000 people took part, in four cities. Nuclear energy has become a major political issue in Germany since the crisis in Japan and could influence a big regional election on Sunday. The party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is perceived to be pro-nuclear energy, could lose the state of Baden-Wuerttemburg for the first time in six decades.
BBC 26th March 2011 more >>
Russia
Russian Environmental groups Ecodefence and Groza yesterday held a protest in front of the building of Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, unfurling a 10-meter banner reading “No to New Nuclear Power Plants” and another inviting Rosatom employees to drink iodine, the element causing a run on Japanese drug stores for its prophylactic abilities against cancer causing agents in early radiation exposure.
Bellona 24th March 2011 more >>
