Japan Strains to Fix a Reactor Damaged Before Quake

The Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor — a long-troubled national project — has been in a precarious state of shutdown since a 3.3-ton device crashed into the reactor’s inner vessel, cutting off access to the plutonium and uranium fuel rods at its core.

Engineers have tried repeatedly since the accident last August to recover the device, which appears to have gotten stuck. They will make another attempt as early as next week.

But critics warn that the recovery process is fraught with dangers because the plant uses large quantities of liquid sodium, a highly flammable substance, to cool the nuclear fuel.

The Monju reactor, which forms the cornerstone of a national project by resource-poor Japan to reuse and eventually produce nuclear fuel, shows the tensions between the scale of Japan’s nuclear ambitions and the risks.

The plant, a $12 billion project, has a history of safety lapses. It was shuttered for 14 years after a devastating fire in 1995, one of Japan’s most serious nuclear accidents before this year’s crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Prefecture and city officials found that the operator had tampered with video images of the fire to hide the scale of the disaster. A top manager at the plant recently committed suicide, on the day that Japan’s atomic energy agency announced that efforts to recover the device would cost almost $21.9 million. And, like several other reactors, Monju lies on an active fault.

Even if the device can be removed, restarting the reactor will be risky, given its safety record and its use of highly toxic plutonium as fuel, said Hideyuki Ban, co-director of the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, a watchdog group, and a member of an advisory government committee on Japan’s long-term nuclear energy policy. The plant is 60 miles from Kyoto, a city of 1.5 million people, and the fast-breeder design of the reactor makes it more prone to Chernobyl-type runaway reactions in the case of a severe accident, critics say.

“Let’s say they make this fix, which is very complicated,” Mr. Ban said. “The rest of the reactor remains highly dangerous. And an accident at Monju would have catastrophic consequences beyond what we are seeing at Fukushima.”

Japan badly needs sources of energy. By closing the loop on its nuclear fuel cycle, Japan aims to reuse, recycle and produce fresh fuel for its 54 reactors.

“Monju is a vital national asset,” said Noritomo Narita, a spokesman here in Tsuruga for the reactor’s operator, the government-backed Japan Atomic Energy Agency. “In a country so poor in resources, such as Japan, the efficient use of nuclear fuel is our national policy, and our mission.”

Critics have been fighting the project since its inception in the 1970s. “It’s Japan’s most dangerous reactor,” said Miwako Ogiso, secretary general of the Council of the People of Fukui Prefecture Against Nuclear Power. “It’s Japan’s most nonsensical reactor.”

After promises of safety upgrades, as well as lavish subsidies and public works, the government has wooed local officials into allowing a restart of the reactor. In Fukui, the government had ready allies: with 14 nuclear reactors, it is Japan’s most nuclear-friendly prefecture. (Fukushima, in second place, has 10 reactors.)

Monju was reopened in May 2010, and just three months later, the 3.3-ton fuel relay device fell into the pressure vessel when a loose clutch gave way. In the two decades since the reactor started tests in 1991, the atomic energy agency has managed to generate electricity at the reactor only for one full hour.

In Monju, Japan is pursuing a technology that most countries have long abandoned. Decades ago, a handful of countries, including the United States, started exploring similar programs. But severe technical difficulties, as well as fears about the weapons-grade plutonium that the cycle eventually produces, have led most countries to scrap their programs.

But Japan has remained staunchly committed to the Monju project. The government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan has shielded it from the deep cuts in spending that it has required of other national projects since it came to power in September 2009.

Under a government plan, Japan would use technology developed at Monju to commercialize fast-breeder reactors by 2050.

Mr. Kan has recently hinted at an overhaul of Japan’s nuclear policy, though he has not commented specifically on the fate of the Monju reactor.

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Footnote in Majors, Sensation in Japan

A Japanese Google search for “red-headed Murton” produces 16,100 hits. A year ago, there were far fewer.

But Murton, the 29-year-old from Georgia with the noticeable hair, has created even more news with his bat; he set Japan’s single-season hits record last year with 214 in 144 games with the Hanshin Tigers. The record had been held by Ichiro Suzuki, who had 210 hits in 130 games, and who, in a twist, now holds the single-season record for hits in the major leagues, with 262 in 2004.

Suzuki is a model of consistency in the majors, but what about Murton in Japan? So far, he is doing reasonably well, hitting a home run in his first at-bat (he had 17 homers last year) and compiling a .275 average through Friday’s games. He had 28 hits, 4 behind the leader in Japan’s Central League.

“Obviously, most of the guys profiling to come over here are guys that are going to hit a lot of home runs, but I don’t have to hit as many as maybe other gaijin,” Murton said in a recent interview, using the word for foreigners.

“They expected me to be the player that they thought I was capable of being in all the facets of the game: play good defense, run the bases, hit for average and hit some home runs along the way, too,” Murton said. “That was a different style of player than they probably tried to go get in the past.”

The Boston Red Sox selected Murton in the first round of the 2003 draft. A year later, he was part of the four-team, eight-player trade that sent him and Nomar Garciaparra to the Chicago Cubs and brought Orlando Cabrera and Dave Roberts to the Red Sox. In ways big and small, the trade helped propel Boston to a World Series championship just months later.

Murton instantly became the sort of footnote to the trade that made for great baseball trivia questions, especially in Red Sox-happy New England.

He played 51 games for the Cubs in 2005 and batted .321. In 2006, he hit .297 in 144 games and drove in 62 runs with 13 homers. But he played less in 2007 and was traded to Oakland in the middle of 2008 and then to Colorado. In 2009, he split time between the Rockies and their Class AAA team in Colorado Springs, which was where Hanshin found him.

The sudden retirement of Hanshin’s leadoff hitter before the 2010 season led the Tigers to consider Murton for the top of the order. He became the rare foreigner to bat first in Japan and blossomed in the role.

In fact, among the Murton-themed merchandise Hanshin sells is a button bearing the Japanese expression so-ko-shu, meaning complete player. Each sound is represented by a character for speed, offense and defense. The button also has Murton’s cartoon image, complete with his red locks protruding from his cap and a smattering of red stubble on his cheeks and chin.

Across the top are those three characters plus a fourth, which represents study. Murton is depicted holding open a notebook, pencil in hand, with the caption: “All good kids should take notice of his habits.”

Indeed, Murton keeps a detailed notebook of pitchers and umpires, which he diligently updates. He said that to succeed, he needed to record what he was seeing.

“Last year was going to be my first year in Japan,” he said. “There was going to be a language barrier. A sinker to me might mean something different to them. Their terminology might be slightly different than how my brain processes it.

“I was like, if I can take my own notes and formulate my own game plan, then if there is a slight difference in terminology or definition, I’ll be able to formulate a better idea in my mind by writing it down myself.”

Murton’s note-taking allowed him to minimize the language barrier and begin his march to Japan’s hits record and a .349 average.

Murton’s love for swing repetition has also found a home in practice-happy Japan. “You can never say here in Japan, ‘I didn’t get enough,’?” Murton says. “If there’s more to be had, they’re going to give it to you. That aspect has been good for me. It allowed me throughout last year to grow as a player and to start to do some things maybe I hadn’t done in the past.”

Young Japanese players are notorious for taking extra batting work at the team hotel during spring training. They find space in the bowels of the hotel, on its roof or in a spare conference room.

Murton was asked if he ever wanders into one of those gatherings.

“No,” he said laughing. “I’ll stand in front of my own mirror sometimes or go out on the balcony and take some swings if I feel the need be. But those guys, it’s another level.”

In some ways, Murton is reminiscent of another foreigner famous in Japan more than 30 years ago. Charlie Manuel, a former outfielder in Japan who is now the Phillies’ manager, is still affectionately referred to as Aka Oni, or Red Devil, for the color his face would turn when he became angry during his career with the Kintetsu Buffaloes and Yakult Swallows from 1976 to 1981.

Manuel wowed Japan with his power, smacking 37 or more homers in four straight seasons. He outhomered Sadaharu Oh, the career home run leader, 166 to 152, during those four years.

Manuel found success in Japan after spending 13 seasons in the American major and minor leagues. He arrived when he was 32 and finished his career here.

Murton will turn 30 in October and will have to decide what to do when his contract runs out after the season. Does he stay where he has thrived or try the major leagues one more time? Meanwhile, he keeps piling up base hits.

 

Japan 'to review energy policy'

 10 May 2011 Last updated at 10:10 ET  Mr Kan said Japan should look more closely at renewable energy sources Japan is to reconsider plans to increase its reliance on nuclear power in the wake of the crisis at the Fukushima plant.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Japan had to start from scratch with its energy plans following the disaster.

The plant has been leaking radiation since the 11 March earthquake and subsequent tsunami damaged cooling systems to the reactors.

Operator Tepco has asked for government help to compensate those affected.

More than 80,000 local residents living within a 20km (12 mile) radius of the plant have been evacuated from their homes.

Agriculture and businesses have been hit and there is no timescale yet for allowing residents to return, although a small group were allowed inside the no-go zone briefly on Tuesday to gather belongings.

Total compensation claims are not yet known, but analysts say they may be more than $100bn (￡61bn).

'Big incident'

Nuclear plants currently supply about 30% of Japan's electricity.

Addressing a news conference, Mr Kan described nuclear power as a "major pillar" of Japanese society, along with fossil fuels.

But he said other forms of energy would also be key in the future.

"The current basic energy policy envisages that over 50% of total electricity supply will come from nuclear power while more than 20% will come from renewable power in 2030," he said.

Access to the no-go zone is banned, but trips are being arranged for residents to gather necessities

"But that basic plan needs to be reviewed now from scratch after this big incident."

"Better safety must be ensured in nuclear power while renewables need to be promoted."

He said greater focus would also be placed on ways of conserving energy, turning Japan into an "energy-saving society".

Mr Kan also said he would not take his prime minister's salary until the plant was under control and would be paid only as a member of parliament.

Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company) has said that it may take up to nine months to achieve a cold shut-down at the nuclear plant, which workers are struggling to stabilise.

Cooling systems were knocked out, causing fuel rods to overheat. There were subsequently explosions at four reactors operating at the time of the earthquake.

Engineers are pumping water into the reactors to cool them as they work to restore the damaged cooling systems.

Mr Kan's comments came hours after Tepco said it had presented a formal written request for assistance to Economy Minister Banri Kaieda.

In a statement, the company said it faced "an extremely severe situation" in terms of raising funds and that it needed state help so that "fair and prompt" compensation could be paid to local residents.

It has promised to restructure and executive salaries have already been reduced.

Nuclear Physicist from University of Surrey, Professor Paddy Regan describes Japan's energy profile

Japan's biggest power utility also faces billions of dollars in extra fuel costs to make up for reactor closures at Fukushima.

Shares in Tepco - which serves an area that accounts for 33% of Japan's economy - have plunged since the earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

On Tuesday, Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda hinted that the government would give Tepco some form of support.

"They can't be allowed to face bankruptcy," said Penn Bowers, an analyst at CLSA in Tokyo. "I think everyone understands they can't be allowed to fail."

Japan Reaffirms Nuclear Energy Use

TOKYO — Japan remains committed to nuclear power despite the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, Prime Minister Naoto Kan indicated Sunday, as workers moved closer to repairing the crippled plant by opening the doors of a damaged reactor building.

The view on Sunday from an observation deck at the Hamaoka nuclear plant, which the government wants to shut down until protections can be built.

Japan's Prime Minister reaffirmed the country's commitment to nuclear energy on Sunday, although the Hamaoka plant near Tokyo will be temporarily shut down.

The move is intended to air out the building that houses Reactor No. 1 to ensure that radiation levels are low enough to allow workers to enter. The plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said the procedure would release little radiation into the atmosphere because an air filtering system installed last week had already removed most of the dangerous particles.

Eight hours after the doors were opened, workers entered the building to test radiation levels. The next step is to begin replacing the reactor’s cooling system, which was destroyed by the tsunami on March 11.

The company has said it will take at least six months to stabilize the plant, in which three of the six reactors were damaged by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami. Hydrogen explosions spewed radiation into the atmosphere, causing the worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl accident in Ukraine.

Despite the crisis in Japan, Mr. Kan indicated Sunday that his government was not rethinking the nation’s energy policy. There had been speculation that the government might seek to shut down more nuclear plants after Mr. Kan requested last week that the Hamaoka nuclear plant in central Japan be temporarily closed because of safety concerns.

Mr. Kan told reporters on Sunday that he would not seek to close any more of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors. He said the Hamaoka plant, 125 miles west of Tokyo, was “a special case” because it sat atop a major fault line. Government seismologists say there is an almost 90 percent chance of a major earthquake on the fault line within the next 30 years.

Critics have long warned of a possible accident at the Hamaoka plant, which is upwind of Tokyo. Mr. Kan asked that the plant be closed until a tsunami-resistant wall could be built and backup systems could be installed to strengthen the plant against earthquakes.

The Hamaoka plant’s operator, the Chubu Electric Power Company, accepted the prime minister’s request on Monday. The company’s board did not reach a decision at a meeting on Saturday, when some board members expressed concern about summer power shortages if the plant were shut down.

The utility company supplies power to central Japan, including Aichi Prefecture, the home of Toyota. In Tokyo, residents face the prospect of electricity shortages because of the loss of the power supplied by Fukushima Daiichi and other plants in earthquake-damaged northern Japan.

Despite the setbacks, Yoshito Sengoku, the deputy chief cabinet secretary, said Japan was not reconsidering its dependence on nuclear power, which supplies about a quarter of the nation’s electricity.

 

After Disaster Hit Japan, Electric Cars Stepped Up

WITH deep-tread tires and ample ground clearance, a rugged 4-wheel-drive Hummer or Jeep might seem the best choice for navigating through the wrecked cities of northeastern Japan. The areas pummeled by the earthquake and tsunami in March would surely be inhospitable for an electric vehicle.

Yet in the days and weeks after the horrific one-two punch of natural disasters, wispy battery-electric cars — engineered for lightness and equipped with tires designed for minimal rolling resistance — proved their mettle.

These welterweight sedans, including models from Mitsubishi and Nissan, turned out to be the vehicles that got through — not because of any special ability to claw their way over mountains of debris, but because they were able to “refuel” at common electrical outlets.

With oil refineries out of commission and clogged roadways slowing deliveries, finding gasoline had become a challenge. Shortages were so acute that Japan’s Self-Defense Forces had to truck in gasoline; donations of diesel fuel were accepted from China.

Yet in Sendai, about 250 miles northeast of Tokyo, and other cities ravaged by the earthquake, electricity returned within days. Taking stock of the situation, the president of Mitsubishi Motors, Osamu Masuko, offered dozens of his company’s egg-shaped i-MiEV (pronounced “eye-meeve”) electric cars to affected cities.

Despite their image as light-duty runabouts best suited for trips to a nearby shopping mall, the electric vehicles were immediately put to use. They were pressed into service ferrying supplies to refugee centers, schools and hospitals, and taking doctors, city workers and volunteers on their rounds.

While the i-MiEVs could not help out with tasks like hauling building materials or towing stranded vehicles, the assistance from Mitsubishi was much appreciated. In all, 89 i-MiEVs went to the recovery effort, including 34 to Miyagi Prefecture, 33 to Fukushima Prefecture and 18 to Iwate Prefecture.

“There was almost no gas at the time, so I was extremely thankful when I heard about the offer,” said Tetsuo Ishii, a division chief in the environmental department in Sendai, which also got four Nissan Leaf electric cars. “If we hadn’t received the cars, it would have been very difficult to do what we needed to.”

Mr. Ishii and other officials in Sendai assigned the cars strategically. Two were used to bring food and supplies to the 23 remaining refugee centers in the city, while two others served doctors. Education officials have been using another two vehicles to inspect schools for structural damage. Others helped deliver supplies to kindergartens around the city or were loaned to volunteer groups.

Once the most pressing needs are met, the city may use the cars to help in the cleanup of damaged homes, as fuel shortages still limit the availability of trucks. For now, though, the cars are driven an average of 30 to 45 miles each day, about half the distance that they can be driven on a full charge.

“One charge is perfect for us, because it allows us to drive around during the day with no trouble,” Mr. Ishii said. “We’re not that big of a city.”

Most of the cars, he said, returned each night to city hall, where they were recharged at 200-volt outlets. Fast-charging stations, which replenish batteries to 80 percent of capacity within 30 minutes, are used where available. Standard 100-volt outlets can also be used, but the recharge then takes more than 12 hours.

Slightly over five feet high and less than five feet wide, the i-MiEV is cozy, to say the least, and at just 2,400 pounds it is relatively light. Its battery, the size of a tatami mat and weighing about 400 pounds, is under the floor, which helps give the car a lower center of gravity.

The cars’ unexpected sturdiness and utility has pleased Mr. Masuko, who, like other automobile executives, has been battling skeptics who see electric vehicles as expensive and impractical.

“I am most impressed when I hear the words, ‘I felt electric vehicles were unreliable at first, but now, the vehicles are being integrated into daily life,’?” he wrote in an e-mail. “I am so glad I heard that our electric vehicles are contributing to the recovery of the affected areas.”

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Japan Asks Another Nuclear Plant to Shut Down Its Reactors

The plant is 120 miles southwest of Tokyo, about 40 miles closer than the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which has been spewing radioactive material since a magnitude-9.0 quake and a tsunami devastated the country’s northeast coast on March 11.

Safety activists say the problems at the plant include inadequate protections against tsunamis; its operator has said it relies on sand dunes to block waves.

Mr. Kan’s decision to suspend operations at the Hamaoka plant was made relatively quickly by the standards in Japan, where leaders generally prefer to build a consensus before announcing such policy changes.

But Mr. Kan has faced withering criticism for his handling of the Fukushima disaster, including accusations that a slow government response in the early hours of the crisis made it worse.

In explaining his decision on Friday, he said it was “the result of considering the tremendous repercussions a major accident at Hamaoka would have on the entire Japanese society.”

The government’s own experts have estimated that there is a close to a 90 percent chance of an earthquake of about magnitude 8.0 hitting the area within the next 30 years. Much less severe earthquakes have damaged at least one nuclear plant in Japan in recent years.

In 2009, Hamaoka’s operator, the Chubu Electric Power Company, decommissioned the site’s two oldest reactors after deciding that upgrading them to withstand earthquake risks would be too costly. Those reactors were built in the 1970s, around the same time as those at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The power company argued that the remaining three reactors, built in the 1980s, were safe enough to withstand a major earthquake. But the crisis at the Fukushima plant has heightened concerns over the risks posed by quakes and tsunamis to the nearly 50 nuclear reactors in operation in Japan.

Mr. Kan said that Chubu Electric would be asked to strengthen its defenses before a restart could be authorized. The company said that constructing an adequate sea wall would take about two years.

“More than anything, I have the safety and security of the Japanese people in mind,” Mr. Kan said.

To brace for any shortfall in electricity, he called for Japanese citizens to do even more to conserve energy.

Offices and factories in eastern Japan have already dimmed lights and altered operating hours after the government requested that they reduce their energy use by 15 percent this summer. The three operating reactors at Hamaoka have a combined capacity of about 3,500 megawatts, or about 7 percent of Japan’s nuclear power generating capacity.

“I am certain that with an even stronger energy-saving effort by both local residents and the entire Japanese nation, we will overcome the power shortage,” he said.

One of the three remaining reactors at Hamaoka had already been shut down for scheduled inspections. The company released a statement late Friday saying it would “promptly consider” Mr. Kan’s request.

Environmental groups, including Greenpeace, quickly lauded Mr. Kan’s decision and urged the Japanese government to consider halting operations at all of the reactors in Japan, which is prone to earthquakes.

“Greenpeace welcomes Prime Minister Kan’s request to close Hamaoka, one of the most dangerous nuclear reactors in Japan,” said Junichi Sato, the organization’s executive director in Japan.

“The government must continue to close and decommission existing plants and cancel all new reactors,” he said. “Only then can the Japanese people feel their government is truly putting their safety first.”

But Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a seismologist at Kobe University who has long argued for more stringent seismic standards for Japan’s nuclear power plants, said that simply halting operations at the Hamaoka plant was not enough. The reactors would remain vulnerable to quakes and tsunamis while they cooled down, he said, as would the spent fuel rods stored at the plant. “Work must be carried out immediately to make sure the plant is protected,” he said.

He also said that the government had moved too slowly in recognizing the risks posed by earthquakes to the country’s nuclear reactors. In 2006, Mr. Ishibashi urged a government committee on which he served to adopt more stringent earthquake guidelines for nuclear power operators. He later resigned when his calls were ignored.

“If Japan had faced up to the dangers earlier, we could have prevented Fukushima,” he said.

At the Fukushima plant, workers have been struggling to bring the plant’s damaged reactors and fuel rod pools under control since the March 11 tsunami knocked out all power to the plant and shut down crucial cooling systems. Three of the reactors subsequently overheated and suffered hydrogen explosions. The plant is operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, known here as Tepco.

Tepco has said it will take at least six to nine months to bring all of the plant’s reactors to a stable state known as a cold shutdown.

Another nuclear plant operated by Tepco, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station on the coast of the Sea of Japan, was damaged in a magnitude-6.6 earthquake in 2007. Fire broke out at one of the reactors, though it was quickly put out, and Tepco officials said there had not been a widespread release of radioactive material.

The plant was shut down for almost two years for repairs and inspections. Since then, four of its seven reactors have been restarted.

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Japan to Halt 3 Nuclear Reactors Over Quake Fears

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

TOKYO (AP) — Japan's prime minister said Friday he instructed a utility to halt all three reactors at a power plant in central Japan because of safety concerns in the event of a major earthquake and tsunami.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the measure was to ensure safety, citing experts' forecast of a 90 percent probability of a major quake striking the central region within 30 years.

The government has asked operator Chubu Electric Power Co. to suspend two running reactors and a third shut for a regular inspection at its coastal Hamaoka nuclear plant in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo.

"If an accident occurs at Hamaoka, it could create serious consequences," Kan said.

Kan's action followed a safety review of all Japan's nuclear plants after the radiation crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, which was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that also left more than 25,000 people dead and missing on the northeast coast.

The Hamaoka plant is the only one where operations have been ordered halted until the utility can implement safety measures. The plant is about 155 miles (250 kilometers) west of Tokyo.

The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant lost its power and cooling systems, triggering fires, explosions and radiation leaks in the world's second-worst nuclear accident.

Radiation leaks from the Fukushima plant have forced 80,000 people living within a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius to leave their homes. Many are staying in gymnasiums and community centers.

Residents in Shizuoka have long demanded suspension of the Hamaoka reactors.

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Japan Announces Emergency Budget for Rebuilding

The $48.5 billion budget is likely to be followed by more spending as Japan takes on the gargantuan task of rebuilding the section of its Pacific coastline ravaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Parliament is expected to pass the budget next week.

At least 14,133 people have been found dead, an additional 13,346 remain missing and more than 130,000 are living in evacuation centers. Government estimates put the total damage from the quake and tsunami at $300 billion.

The nuclear crisis set off by the tsunami has added to the human and economic toll. On Friday, the government banned residents from a 12-mile evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, where several reactors have suffered explosions and radiation leaks. A previous order urged but did not require evacuation from that zone; the government still recommends that residents leave if they are within 19 miles of the plant.

“We all share the hope that reconstruction does not mean a return to where we were, but the building of a brighter future,” Prime Minister Naoto Kan said at a news conference.

“I feel it was my fate to be prime minister at a time of great adversity,” said Mr. Kan, whose handling of the crises has been criticized sharply in Parliament and in the country at large.

Japan has rebounded from other catastrophes: The 1923 Great Kanto earthquake killed as many as 140,000 people and caused widespread destruction in Tokyo. It also is thought to have wiped out almost 40 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. In comparison, the death toll from the March 11 quake and tsunami is far lower, and the economic damage is likely to add up to just a few percent of G.D.P.

Still, Japan faces different challenges now, which could weigh heavily as it rebuilds: a rapidly aging population, a long-stagnant economy and public debt that is already at twice the size of its economy, thanks to profligate public works projects of the 1990s. That debt burden adds serious obstacles to financing the great reconstruction. Raising taxes, for which there appears to be a measure of public support, will dampen already tepid personal consumption levels. Issuing more government bonds will add to the ballooning deficit.

Mr. Kan’s grip on leadership also appears to be weakening under the withering criticism, including charges that he bungled the initial response to the nuclear crisis, causing it to worsen.

The president of Fukushima Daiichi’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, visited an evacuation center on Friday. “I have no words to express my regret,” the president, Masataka Shimizu, told the evacuees after making his way through cardboard beds and blankets. Television cameras in tow, he knelt and bowed deeply — the ultimate posture of apology in Japan.

Some refugees bowed back, but others heckled him. “We all just want to go home,” one told him quietly.

 

Japan Considers Tightening Access Around Nuclear Plant

The national government is reviewing with local governments the possibility of establishing a “caution zone” around the power plant with a radius of 12 miles said Yukio Edano, the chief secretary of Japan’s cabinet. Such a zone would be legally enforceable, in contrast with the current evacuation, which is technically voluntary.

As most radiation releases from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station have been stopped, some families have been re-entering the area in recent days to remove belongings and some journalists have been exploring it. Dozens of families never left after the initial evacuation was ordered in stages nearly six weeks ago, following an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

Growing activity in the evacuation area has prompted concern among evacuees that their homes may be robbed while they are away. Nuclear power experts have been debating whether the continued movement of people, livestock and vehicles in the area will make it harder to decontaminate after the nuclear power plant has been fully stabilized.

Noriyuki Shikata, a senior government spokesman, said on Tuesday that the government did not have the legal authority to prevent people from entering and leaving the evacuation zone, nor the legal authority to evict those who stayed behind. Media reports have suggested that as many as 200 households are still occupied in the zone, mainly elderly people who refuse to live at evacuation centers in gymnasiums or farmers who refuse to abandon their livestock.

Plans for a caution zone were reported by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, which said that the government also intended to allow residents to make brief trips into the zone to recover essentials from their homes.

The Sankei Shimbun newspaper reported on its Web site on Wednesday morning that residents of Minami-Soma city, which lies partly inside the northern side of the evacuation zone, were being given fliers warning that a legally enforceable caution zone could be created.

A spokesman for the Fukushima Prefecture police, whose jurisdiction encompasses the evacuation zone, said that the police have done spot checks on 3,378 addresses in the area during the past three weeks and found people at 63 sites; those people were asked to leave. According to the Japanese cabinet, there were 78,200 residents of the area inside the 12-mile radius before the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident.

Mr. Edano, the second-ranking government official in Japan, said at a follow-up news conference on Wednesday afternoon that Prime Minister Naoto Kan would travel on Thursday to Fukushima to meet the prefecture’s governor and visit evacuation centers in two cities in the prefecture. Mr. Edano declined to predict whether a caution zone would be imposed.

Decontamination of a large area after a nuclear accident consists of very carefully mapping the “hot spots” where wind and rain may have concentrated radioactive fallout. Contaminated objects are then sent to a specially lined landfill; even the dirt may have to be dug up if contamination is high enough.

Michael Friedlander, a former nuclear power plant operator in the United States and nuclear emergency specialist who now lives in Hong Kong, said in interviews last week and this week that it was very important to prevent unnecessary activity in the evacuation zone. He contended car tires and other movement could result in smearing around the radioactive dust from the invisible hot spots, making it necessary to decontaminate other areas as well or leaving other areas with low levels of contamination.

But Michael Corradini, the chairman of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin, said that with power crews already setting up electricity transmission lines across the evacuation zone to the damaged power plant, and with heavy repair equipment being brought in as well to the power plant, the movement of private individuals and their vehicles would probably not have much additional effect in spreading out the hot spots.

Another 62,400 people lived between 12 and 19 miles from the power plant. People living inside the larger area were initially told to stay indoors, but have since been asked to leave voluntarily, along with residents of five other communities outside the zone that also received some radioactive fallout because of wind and rain patterns. The cabinet has not released an estimate for the population of the other five communities.

After the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, the former Soviet Union established a more stringently enforced exclusion zone with an initial radius of about 19 miles. The exact boundaries of the zone were later adjusted to reflect actual patterns of fallout. Wind and rain had pushed particularly heavy fallout to the north of the reactor that caught fire.

Japan has been fortunate in that weather patterns appear to have pushed much of the radiation straight east and out to sea, with the exception of one plume that fell on land to the northwest of the reactor.

Many of the wind gauges and other meteorological equipment close to the site were destroyed by the tsunami and earthquake. Masanori Shinano, a technical counselor at Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission, said last week that the government had needed to estimate wind direction to calculate the total radiation released by the accident. The agency looked at weather forecasts for those days around the Fukushima area, which are generated from computer models using other weather stations, and concluded from the forecasts that the wind was mainly blowing out to sea during the days of the greatest release of airborne radioactive material.

The commission, a panel of independent experts, estimates that the total radiation released by the Fukushima accident was one-sixth of that at Chernobyl. Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which has a history of being close to the nuclear industry, estimates that the total release was a tenth of Chernobyl’s.

Ken Ijichi, Moshe Komata and Kantaro Suzuki contributed reporting.

 

U.S. Engineers Cite Lengthy Cleanup in Japan

Lake Barrett, the senior Nuclear Regulatory Commission engineer at Three Mile Island during the early phases of the cleanup said by comparison, “it was a walk in the park compared to what they’ve got.”

The Fukushima Daiichi reactors are similar to those in Pennsylvania — “the cores are probably really similar, partially melted,” Mr. Barrett said — but engineers pointed out several key differences in the aftermath of the accidents. In Japan, four separate reactors are damaged, and fixing each one is complicated by the presence of its leaking neighbors. It will also require a major infusion of equipment to replace parts far from the reactor’s core, like pumps and switchgear that were destroyed by the tsunami.

In the short term, weather is a factor: according to engineers who managed the American cleanup, which ran from 1979 to 1993, Tokyo Electric Power has only a few weeks to patch up the three smashed secondary containments before the coming rainy season, when downpours could wash more contamination into the environment. And the company will have to carefully watch that the number of workers with the necessary skills do not burn out under the size of the task, or absorb so much radiation that they have to quit.

Still, Mr. Barrett and others say that the mess at Fukushima Daiichi can be contained, cleaned up and even securely wrapped up for long-term disposal. The plant may benefit from past experience, because it is the second major accident worldwide in a big water-cooled reactor, they say.

The first task, they agree, is to fill the reactors and the spent fuel pool with water that can be pumped out again, cooled and then returned to the reactors. That would sharply reduce the possibility of generating new hydrogen and new explosions, and would go a long way toward declaring that the plants were stable, a point that the N.R.C. observed recently that Fukushima Daiichi had not reached.

Right now the reactors are in “feed and bleed” mode, adding clean water and cooling the fuel by letting that water boil off or dribble out, but such bleeding allows radiation leakage. “Whatever you bleed is letting cesium out,” said Mr. Barrett, referring to the radioactive isotope. Cooling with recirculating water could end releases of radioactive materials, but will require new pumps and possibly new piping, experts said.

Before that new equipment can be installed, engineers will have to clean up the water in the basements of the reactor buildings, the turbine buildings and other structures. At Three Mile Island, water in the reactor building and the primary auxiliary building gave radiation doses as high as 1,000 rem an hour, said Ronald L. Freemerman, a Bechtel engineer who was the project manager of the cleanup. That meant a worker would hit the N.R.C.’s annual limit in about a minute. The water can be pumped through filters that will strain out the radioactive elements.

Engineers from Three Mile Island laid out the three next steps:

First, decontaminate the walls and floors, to hold down the potential radiation dose. “They have to economize on how they expose these people,” Mr. Freemerman said, or the company will run out of trained workers.

Second, rebuild the secondary containments of units 1, 2 and 4, and fix or replace the heavy cranes just beneath their ceilings. That would allow workers to defuel the reactor. That step alone took five years at Three Mile Island, where no buildings had to be rebuilt.

Third, peek inside the reactor vessel and figure out what tools will be needed to remove the wrecked fuel in the core. Three Mile Island was a surprise, Mr. Freemerman said, because so much of the core had melted and flowed beneath a support made of five plates of thick steel. Another veteran of the cleanup, Michael McGough, said only then did they realize they would need new remote-controlled tools to cut through the metal, to get to the material below.

Mr. McGough’s technicians worked from a trailer outside the containment vessel, manipulating a cutting tool that was operating under about 40 feet of water. They also used long-handled picks and scoops to break apart the fused mass of ceramic fuel pellets and metal. “Basically we dug our way down through that debris until we got everything removed,” Mr. McGough said.

At Three Mile Island, technicians then painstakingly loaded debris into shielded casks, under water to shield themselves from radiation, and then brought the casks to the surface. Eventually about 150 tons of radioactive rubble was shipped to an Energy Department laboratory in Idaho Springs, Idaho, where it still sits, waiting, as all used American fuel does, for a final resting place.

Japan may have another option if the wrecked core isn’t too thoroughly mixed with other materials. It already has a reprocessing plant, where old fuel is chopped up, dissolved in acid, and then sorted, with its plutonium being removed, and the uranium sorted out for possible re-use. But that process is likely years away.

 

Water Pumping Begins at Japan Nuclear Reactor

 

The Japanese government, meanwhile, said it was considering a plan to further restrict access to the evacuated area within 12 miles of the plant, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Some families have been re-entering the area to remove belongings, and dozens of people have never left.

At the plant itself, the Tokyo Electric Power Company said that it planned to pump 10,000 metric tons of water into a storage building at a rate of 480 tons a day, which would take nearly three weeks. The company is still working on ways to remove an additional 57,500 tons of heavily contaminated water at the same building, next to Reactor No. 2, and at other nearby buildings.

The cautious pace of the pumping and the volume of water to be moved are further signs of the complexity of the undertaking that faces Tokyo Electric. Removing the water is one of the 63 tasks that the company outlined Sunday in its plan to fully shut down the stricken reactors, halt all releases of radioactive material and restore reliable cooling and electricity roughly by the end of the year.

Michael Friedlander, a former senior nuclear power plant operator in the United States, said that while the pumping might be proceeding slowly, a faster pace could prove dangerous.

“If a pipe breaks and you’re pumping hundreds of gallons a minute, you’re going to make a huge mess,” he said.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, the deputy director general of Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said that the heavily contaminated water that had accumulated in basements and trenches at the site is two million times as radioactive as the less contaminated water that workers pumped into the ocean from April 4 to April 10. Workers pumped 10,393 tons of the less contaminated water into the ocean in order to make room in storage areas for the far more highly radioactive water from inside the reactor buildings.

Pumping contaminated water into the ocean has provoked considerable dismay from Japanese fishermen and from nearby countries, particularly South Korea and China. Mr. Nishiyama said Tuesday that Japan had no plans and no need to do so anymore.

Plans are being made for the installation of water-purification equipment and heat exchangers so that the same water can be pumped repeatedly through the reactors.

Anne Lauvergeon, the chief executive of Areva, France’s nuclear-power equipment provider, said at a news conference in Tokyo on Tuesday evening that it would probably take until the end of May to set up a water treatment station at the plant. Once running, she said, it should be able to handle 50 metric tons of water an hour and should almost entirely remove the radiation.

The technology, called “co-precipitation,” uses chemical agents to remove radioactive elements from water. The treatment station itself will be provided by Veolia Water, a British water and waste management service. Areva and Tokyo Electric have not discussed the cost of the services, Ms. Lauvergeon said.

Areva, together with Veolia Water, will also provide three lines of desalination equipment to enable Tokyo Electric to convert seawater into fresh water for cooling the reactors. Fresh water provides better cooling; the spaces between the fuel rods have started to become congested with salt from seawater.

She also said that Areva was not preparing an overall plan to decommission the troubled plant, though she said the company was prepared to cooperate with any long-term process to eventually dismantle Fukushima Daiichi. Toshiba and Hitachi have submitted competing plans to dismantle the plant; the work could take decades.

In a further effort to improve cooling, Mr. Nishiyama said Tuesday that a decision had been made to flood the primary containment vessels of the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors with enough water to cover up the sides of the reactor pressure vessels up to the level of the uranium fuel rods.

This was not done sooner because only now have workers been able to determine that the primary containment vessels are sufficiently watertight. The vessel at the No. 2 reactor is damaged and leaking gases, and the leak or leaks need to be plugged before it can be flooded, Mr. Nishiyama said.

The No. 2 reactor has posed some of the greatest challenges in recent days, including another leak that spewed radioactive water until plugged two weeks ago.

Robots entered Reactors Nos. 1 and 3 on Sunday and measured the radiation inside. But when two robots entered Reactor No. 2 on Monday, the steam inside was so dense that a robot mounted with a camera was unable to get a clear image of a radiation sensor carried by the other robot, Japanese officials said.

Ken Ijichi, Moshe Komata and Kantaro Suzuki contributed reporting.

 

Japan Considers Clampdown on Returnees to Nuclear Zone

 VOA News ?April 20, 2011

Japanese officials say they are considering steps to legally enforce an exclusion zone within 20 kilometers of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

More than 60,000 people were evacuated from the zone shortly after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that knocked out cooling systems at the plant. But Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Wednesday that some residents and others have been venturing back in spite of a government advisory to stay away.

Edano said the government is talking to local officials about ways to legally enforce the restriction. Press reports said Prime Minister Naoto Kan will likely announce the measures during a visit to the region on Thursday and that the restrictions could go into effect as early as this week.

At the plant, engineers have been working since Tuesday to pump more than 10,000 tons of highly radioactive water out of the basement and utility tunnel at one of the six reactors. Officials said water levels in the tunnel -- which had been rising about two centimeters a day -- were down about one centimeter Wednesday morning.

A French company, Areva, has contracted to build a facility at the plant capable of decontaminating 50 tons per hour of water so it can be recycled to keep the plant's nuclear fuel rods from overheating. Officials hope to have the facility in operation by the beginning of June.

Officials with the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant's operators, released the first photographs from inside two of the badly damaged reactor buildings on Wednesday. The pictures were taken by remote-controlled robots sent in to measure radiation levels to determine whether humans can safely go back inside.

Japan's NHK Television said the robots' access to one of the buildings was hampered by debris. At another building, the interior was so steamy that the camera lens immediately fogged up.

The Kyodo news agency quoted a doctor who has examined some of the men struggling to stabilize the plant saying the men are at risk of depression or death from overwork. The doctor said the workers, some of whom lost their own family members in the tsunami, are pushing themselves out of a sense of moral responsibility.

Despite the problems, an official at the International Atomic Energy Agency said Tuesday in Vienna that radiation levels leaking from the plant are coming down steadily. IAEA expert Denis Flory said that unless something unexpected happens, he does not expect total radiation leaking into the environment to increase much beyond current levels.

The Japanese government has for the first time set radiation safety levels for school playgrounds in the prefecture surrounding the plant. It said normal playground activities should be allowable if radiation remains at current levels.

National police said late Tuesday that the confirmed death toll in the earthquake and tsunami has now topped 14,000, with more than 13,600 others still missing. It said more than 90 percent of the victims recovered so far died from drowning, and that more than 65 percent of them were over age 60.

 

The Lede: Cousins of Roomba Deployed in Japan

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
A video report on the use of robots and drones at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan.

As The Associated Press explains, the PackBot robots sent in to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to measure radiation levels there were made by an American company, iRobot, which also makes the Roomba, a robot vacuum cleaner.

Last month, Tim Trainer, a vice president at iRobot, told NPR that his company’s robots were developed to tackle “dull, dirty and dangerous missions,” which includes everything from cleaning gutters to looking for improvised explosive devices.

The iRobot Web site has several promotional videos showing the PackBot being put through its paces in the field. The robot also features in this YouTube skit, which might not have succeeded in getting the PackBot a any offers from Hollywood, but does give a sense of how it works:

More commonly used for dangerous tasks like bomb disposal or measuring radiation levels, Packbot robots have also dabbled in comic acting.

As Martyn Williams, a technology journalist based in Tokyo, has reported, the Packbots are just one of several remote-controlled devices being used to clear debris and survey the crippled plant.

On his blog, Mr. Williams has also posted some recent video of the ruined upper levels of the reactor buildings, shot in the past week by T-Hawk drone helicopters.

Readers interested in seeing more of those images can visit the press page of the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Web site, where many of the photographs and video clips of the reactor buildings shot recently by the robots and drone helicopters can be downloaded.

This video, for instance, shows a water sample being taken from the pool that holds spent fuel rods in the No. 4 reactor building last week:

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Japan Still Struggling to Control Crippled Nuclear Plant

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。 Japan Still Struggling to Control Crippled Nuclear Plant | News | English/* Voice of America ?

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April 17, 2011 Latest News: Select Your LanguageAfan OromoAlbanianAmharicArmenianAzerbaijaniAzeriBanglaBosnianBurmeseCantoneseChineseCreoleCroatianDariEnglish WorldwideFrenchGeorgianGreekHausaIndonesianKhmerKhmer (English)KinyarwandaKirundiKoreanKurdiKurdishLaoLearning EnglishMacedonianMandarinNdebelePashtoPashto - DeewaPersian PortugueseRussian SerbianShonaSomaliSpanishSwahiliThaiTibetanTibetan (English)TigrignaTurkishUkrainian UrduUzbekVietnameseZimbabwe - EnglishNewsProgramsVideoLearning EnglishLive Streams:Latest Newscast|Africa Live|Global LiveNews USA Africa Americas Asia Europe Middle East Arts and Entertainment EconomyMore TopicsEducationEnvironmentHealthNews AnalysisReligionScience and TechnologySports Web FeaturesSpecial ReportsPhoto GalleriesGoing Green Money In MotionNow You KnowOff the Beaten PathThe LinkInteractive YouTubeFacebookTwitter Web ServicesPodcastsRSSMobileNewsletterWebcastsLinks About the USEditorialsRFE/RLRFAPronunciation Guide NewsNewsRSS FeedJapan Still Struggling to Control Crippled Nuclear Plant Steve Herman|Tokyo?April 16, 2011

Photo: VOA - S. HermanPolice herd marchers along the curb as the streets arenot blocked off for the demonstration in Tokyo, Japan, April 16, 2011

Share ThisFacebookYahoo! BuzzRelated ArticlesVOA Correspondent Reaches Crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear PlantJapan Nuclear Plant Operator to Pay Damages Japan's Kan Faces Calls to Quit Over Handling of Disasters

Small and peaceful anti-nuclear protests continue to be staged in Japan. The demonstrations are being held as troubles continue at and around the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant in the northeastern part of the country. It has been leaking radiation into the air and sea since it was severely damaged by a magnitude 9.0 quake and resulting tsunami more than a month ago.

The operator of the crippled nuclear power plant in Fukushima has begun dropping into the Pacific Ocean sandbags filled with an absorbent to try to reduce the danger from radiation. The bags are filled with zeolite, better known as the active material sprinkled in cat litter boxes to absorb odors. In this case, zeolite is meant to take up cesium that has been detected at high levels along the Fukushima coast.

On shore, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, known as TEPCO, is still struggling, more than a month after the Fukushima-1 plant was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami, to restore automatic cooling facilities for several reactors.

In Tokyo on Saturday, several hundred demonstrators peacefully marched past a TEPCO building. Some were dressed as vegetables, others were adorned with or carried produce.

The protesters chant "vegetables are more important than nuclear power. We don't need nuclear plants, we don't need radiation."

One of the participants, Naomi Saito from neighboring Saitama prefecture, lamented the small number of people who have taken to the streets in protest since March 11.? But Saito said she understands why that is the case in a resource-poor country heavily reliant on atomic energy where more than 50 nuclear plants have been built in the past 45 years.

"We're all in a very dangerous situation because of atomic [power]. But other Japanese think nuclear [power] is very important, so I feel very sad," said Saito.

Japan's government on Saturday ordered 13 nuclear plant operators to inspect and reinforce outside power links to avoid earthquake-triggered outages similar to one on March 11 in Fukushima.

The urgency of that directive was highlighted when a 5.9 magnitude earthquake jolted eastern Japan on Saturday.

Radiation leaking from the Fukushima plant has forced tens of thousands of people in the prefecture to flee their homes. It has also contaminated crops and fishing waters, and regenerated global concern about the safety of nuclear power plants.

Listen? Email? Print? Comments?Comments (8)16-04-2011Vaméri(US)

Radiation leak crisis in not under firm control yet, the ground is still shaking due to aftershocks. But no new troubles reported on top of crisis. It looks like OK for everybody else except Japanese themself. Chinese and Korean can stop crying foul now.

16-04-2011Joe(USA)

Banning nuclear power in Japan is like banning electricity in Japan. With no electricity, Japan basically dies. So, don't be so quick to eliminate nuclear. For the future, an alternate safe, clean cheap and efficient source of energy should be used. For now, Japan must concentrate on fixing, securing and minimizing.

16-04-2011Bert Savage(Canada)

Containment seawalls should be immediately increased to the 45' ft. Level around all nuke plants that are vulnerable.

16-04-2011claudia(colombia)

I feel for the Japanese people. How could the world nuclear authorities allow such a small country on a big fault line have so many nuclear plants?

16-04-2011wizardteo(malaysia)

using zeolite, I call this as "mass vacuum" ,new word? means in mass quantity to vacuum the radioactive, so is safe for live to continue. At the same time, I would like every1 to pray together with me the restoration so situation an restore to before the radioactive crisis at japan and politic stabil at the west asia.

17-04-2011sue(england)

Japanese people, please try to find an alternative to nuclear energy there is NO safe nuclear energy! You of all nations understand the devastation of the nuclear devil. We in Britain don't want any more reactors built, (there is no where to put the waste products) Japan is amazing at inventing new technology, invent something that will save the world..please. We are thinking of you constantly.

17-04-2011Robin Davies(Japan)

I doubt Japan's economic success since the war would have been so great without nuclear power. So do you play with God or not? As man has learnt how, I still believe he may as long as he understands the overwhelming power of his opponent. No problem IF you are 120% sure you have been humble enough. Make reactors yes, but build them to stand earthquakes of magnitude 11 or 12 and tsunami of more than 35 or 40 metres. Then you can play with God.

17-04-2011Sugi pula(Romania)

Invest in solar stocks people !!

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Japan Nuclear Disaster Put on Par With Chernobyl

Sergey Ponomarev/Associated PressCars destroyed in Iwate Prefecture by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. A search went on for bodies in Iwate on Sunday.

TOKYO — Japan has decided to raise its assessment of the accident at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to the worst rating on an international scale, putting the disaster on par with the 1986 Chernobyl explosion, the Japanese nuclear regulatory agency said on Tuesday.

Officials, monks, military officers and other emergency workers observed a moment of silence on Monday in Natori, Japan.

The decision to raise the alert level to 7 from 5 on the scale amounts to an admission that the accident at the nuclear facility, brought on by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, is likely to have substantial and long-lasting consequences for health and for the environment. Some in the nuclear industry have been saying for weeks that the accident released large amounts of radiation, but Japanese officials had played down this possibility.

The new estimates by Japanese authorities suggest that the total amount of radioactive materials released so far is equal to about 10 percent of that released in the Chernobyl accident, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of Japan’s nuclear regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Mr. Nishiyama stressed that unlike at Chernobyl, where the reactor itself exploded and fire fanned the release of radioactive material, the containments at the four troubled reactors at Fukushima remained intact over all.

But at a separate news conference, an official from the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric and Power, said, “The radiation leak has not stopped completely and our concern is that it could eventually exceed Chernobyl.”

On the International Nuclear Event Scale, a Level 7 nuclear accident involves “widespread health and environmental effects” and the “external release of a significant fraction of the reactor core inventory.” The scale, which was developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and countries that use nuclear energy, leaves it to the nuclear agency of the country where the accident occurs to calculate a rating based on complicated criteria.

Japan’s previous rating of 5 placed the Fukushima accident at the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. Level 7 has been applied only to the disaster at Chernobyl, in the former Soviet Union.

“This is an admission by the Japanese government that the amount of radiation released into the environment has reached a new order of magnitude,” said Tetsuo Iguchi, a professor in the department of quantum engineering at Nagoya University. “The fact that we have now confirmed the world’s second-ever level 7 accident will have huge consequences for the global nuclear industry. It shows that current safety standards are woefully inadequate.”

Mr. Nishiyama said “tens of thousands of terabecquerels” of radiation per hour have been released from the plant. (The measurement refers to how much radioactive material was emitted, not the dose absorbed by living things.) The scale of the radiation leak has since dropped to under one terabecquerel per hour, the Kyodo news agency said, citing government officials.

.

The announcement came as Japan was preparing to urge more residents around the crippled nuclear plant to evacuate, because of concerns over long-term exposure to radiation.

Also on Monday, tens of thousands of people bowed their heads in silence at 2:46 p.m., exactly one month since the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami brought widespread destruction to Japan’s northeast coast.

The mourning was punctuated by another strong aftershock near Japan’s Pacific coast, which briefly set off a tsunami warning, killed a 16-year-old girl and knocked out cooling at the severely damaged Fukushima Daiichi power station for almost an hour, underscoring the vulnerability of the plant’s reactors to continuing seismic activity.

On Tuesday morning, there was another strong aftershock, which shook Tokyo.

The authorities have already ordered people living within a 12-mile radius of the plant to evacuate, and recommended that people remain indoors or avoid an area within a radius of 18 miles.

The government’s decision to expand the zone came in response to radiation readings that would be worrisome over months in certain communities beyond those areas, underscoring how difficult it has been to predict the ways radiation spreads from the damaged plant.

Unlike the previous definitions of the areas to be evacuated, this time the government designated specific communities that should be evacuated, instead of a radius expressed in miles.

Moshe Komata and Kantaro Suzuki contributed reporting.

 

In Japan, Aftershocks Are Also Felt From Within

 

Doctors here say they are seeing more people who are experiencing such phantom quakes, as well as other symptoms of “earthquake sickness” like dizziness and anxiety.

And it is no wonder. As if the threat of radiation from a crippled nuclear power plant were not enough, Tokyo and the region to its northeast have been under a constant barrage of aftershocks since the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that set off a devastating tsunami on March 11. Two earthquakes were felt in Tokyo on Wednesday morning, three on Tuesday, a large one on Monday and a very large one of magnitude 7.1 last Thursday.

Over all, there have been 400 aftershocks of magnitude 5.0 or greater in northeastern Japan since March 11. That is as many sizable quakes in one month as Japan typically experiences in two and a half years, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

The quakes are complicating efforts to control the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. For instance, the quake on Monday knocked out cooling at the Fukushima plant for nearly an hour.

Every time a sizable quake occurs, the first question on many people’s minds is whether the nuclear plant has been further damaged and whether a new cloud of radiation is on the way. A spokesman for the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant’s owner, is then hustled onto television to reassure viewers.

Government officials are becoming concerned that in the rush to cool the reactors and prevent hydrogen explosions, the plant’s vulnerability to another tsunami has been overlooked.

“A week ago we thought the major risk was a hydrogen explosion,” a senior official in the office of the prime minister said Tuesday. “I think the major risk at the moment is an aftershock and tsunami.”

Hidehiko Nishiyama, the deputy director general of Japan’s nuclear regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said at a news conference on Wednesday evening that three measures are being considered that would allow electricity and cooling at the plant to remain intact even after a tsunami measuring 15 meters, or 49 feet. Right now the site can withstand a tsunami of only about 18 feet, he said. One measure is to interconnect the external power lines that have been built to the power plant, so that if one power line is broken, the others can still carry electricity to the various reactors.

A second measure is to put a generator on a small hill inside the plant site, and the third is to place a fire pumper engine on the hill that could send water into the reactors and spent fuel pools even if electricity was interrupted.

Japan, which sits atop four colliding tectonic plates, has a long history of earthquakes and some sophisticated technology to deal with them.

A detection system transmits warnings of some pending quakes a few seconds in advance to television broadcasters and to many cellphones. In recent weeks it has not been unusual to see nearly all the people in a restaurant or a train suddenly look at their cellphones at the same time.

Yurekuru, a free app for the iPhone that delivers such warnings (its name might be translated as “the shaking is coming”), now has 1.5 million users, compared with only 100,000 before the March 11 quake, according to RC Solution, the app’s developer.

Geologists say the frequency of the aftershocks has declined since March 11 and will continue to decline, but will still remain higher than normal for a long time. “There is an increased frequency and it will last for at least five or ten years,” said Ross S. Stein, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., who has studied the situation in Japan.

The March 11 quake was so strong that a Japan Coast Guard monitoring instrument on the floor of the Pacific Ocean near the epicenter moved 24 meters, or about 79 feet, eastward. The city of Sendai, whose airport was inundated by the tsunami, moved about 13 feet, according to Shinji Toda, a professor at Kyoto University.

Such large movements have shifted stresses in the earth, increasing the likelihood of quakes on some fault lines while reducing the likelihood on others, including the one involved in the 1923 Tokyo earthquake.

But over all, Dr. Stein said, the risks have increased. “There’s this very broad turn-on of seismicity that extends 300 miles from the rupture zone,” he said.

Satoko Oki, an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo’s earthquake research institute, said that an aftershock of the March 11 quake could reach magnitude 8.0.

There is some precedent. The 2004 quake of magnitude 9.1 near Sumatra, Indonesia, which spawned a tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people, was followed three months later by one measuring 8.6 and later by four more huge ones.

But the 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile in early 2010 has not yet produced an aftershock larger than 7.1, Dr. Stein said.

To be sure, the spate of earthquakes has not caused the same panic and mass exodus as the fears of radiation in the first week after the nuclear crisis began. Still, with levels of radiation in the Tokyo air having sharply fallen since then, some people interviewed on the street said they worried about the aftershocks more than radiation.

Dr. Hideaki Sakata, director of the Mejiro University Clinic, who is treating Ms. Suzuki, said that feeling the ground shaking when it is not is similar to the continued feeling of swaying when one first gets off a boat onto solid ground.

Dr. Kazuhiro Soeda, an ear, nose and throat specialist in Utsunomiya, outside Tokyo, who also treats patients having trouble dealing with the aftershocks, said: “People are getting too sensitive. This is something we’ve never experienced before.”

Makiko Inoue, Kantaro Suzuki and Ken Ijichi contributed reporting.

 

Powerful earthquake rattles Japan

11 April 2011 Last updated at 08:05 ET The BBC's Roland Buerk in Otsuchi: "We felt the earthquake, a rocking side-to-side"

A powerful earthquake has hit north-east Japan, exactly one month after the devastating earthquake and tsunami.

The 7.1-magnitude tremor triggered a brief tsunami warning, and forced workers to evacuate the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

The epicentre of the quake was in Fukushima prefecture, and struck at a depth of just 10km (six miles).

It came as Japan said it was extending the evacuation zone around the nuclear plant because of radiation concerns.

The cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were damaged in last month's disaster. Workers have been struggling to prevent several reactors from overheating, and avert a large-scale release of radiation.

The plant's operator, Tepco, said power used to pump water to cool three damaged reactors had been cut briefly but early indications suggested the plant had not sustained any further damage.

The zone around it will be widened to encompass five communities beyond the existing 20-km (12-mile) radius, following new data about accumulated radiation levels, officials said.

Top government spokesman Yukio Edano said the new evacuations would take place over the coming month, from areas including Iitate village, which lies 40km from the power station, and part of the city of Kawamata.

"There is no need to evacuate immediately," he told a news conference, but added that there were concerns about long-term health risks.

'Standing together'

The latest tremor struck shortly after the country stopped to observe a minute's silence to remember the nearly 28,000 dead or missing in the 11 March disaster.

Silence in Minamisanriku to mark one month since the devastating earthquake and tsunami

Survivors in shelters marked the moment the quake and tsunami hit at 1446 (0546 GMT) with bowed heads.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan thanked people around the world for their support.

In an open letter carried in seven newspapers around the world, he said that the support had brought hope and inspired courage at a desperate time.

"Through our own efforts and with the help of the global community, Japan will recover and come back even stronger. We will then repay you for your generous aid," he wrote.

"With this in our hearts, we now stand together dedicated to rebuilding the nation."

The official death toll from the disaster is 13,130, while 13,718 remain unaccounted for. More than 150,000 people have been made homeless.

The prime minister has also tried to reassure survivors that the fishing industry - which many in the area rely on for their livelihoods - would resume as soon as possible.

The tsunami wrecked boats and piers, closing down large-scale fishing operations.

But the damage to the nuclear plant has also hit the fishing industry, as public and international buyers ditch Japanese food products over fears of contamination.

Workers have been feeding water into three reactors at the plant to cool fuel rods.

They are continuing to inject nitrogen into the No 1 reactor to prevent another blast caused by a build-up of hydrogen gas.

They have also been releasing water with low levels of radioactivity into the sea so that they can transfer highly radioactive water to a sealed area on site.

Officials have warned it will be several months before the situation at the nuclear facility is brought fully under control.

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