Japanese workers enter crippled nuclear reactor building

An aerial view of the the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.NEW: Ventilating the reactor building will allow employees to work there longerAn earthquake and tsunami hit the nuclear facility in March The company says it should take about three days to bring down the contamination

Tokyo (CNN) -- Workers entered a reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant Thursday for the first time since a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami damaged the facility, its operator Toyko Electric Power Co. said.

The workers went into the No. 1 reactor building shortly before noon to install air ducts for a ventilation system that will filter the air to reduce radioactive substances.

Once the radioactive contamination in the air is reduced, workers will be able stay in the building longer to install a cooling system that Tokyo Electric wants to use to do a cold shutdown of the reactor.

The company says it should take two to three days to bring down the contamination to levels suitable for workers to stay for extended periods when wearing protective suits, masks and air tanks.

Cooling systems at Fukushima Daiichi, about 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, were knocked out by the massive tsunami that struck Japan's Pacific coast after a massive earthquake March 11.

The disaster triggered the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl as the cores of reactors 1-3 overheated and spewed huge amounts of radioactive contamination across the surrounding area.

The buildings that house reactors 1 and 3 were blown apart by hydrogen explosions in the first days of the crisis. Another hydrogen buildup is believed to have ruptured a water reservoir beneath the No. 2 reactor.

In April, Tokyo Electric has laid out a six- to nine-month timetable for winding down the crisis and bringing the reactors to a complete shutdown.

The disaster has led to mandatory evacuations of about 78,000 people living within 20 km (12.5 miles) of the plant and orders to people living another 10 km away to remain sheltered, affecting another 60,000-plus.

Yoko Wakatsuki contributed to this report

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07.28 | 0 komentar | Read More

Inside Japan's nuclear 'hot zone'

'Hot zone' neighborhood frozen in timeThere is a 20-kilometer exclusion zone around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facilityA 9.0-magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami hit northeastern Japan March 11The twin disasters devastate the nuclear power plant

Minamisoma, Japan (CNN) -- The scene of sheer devastation left by powerful tsunami waves looked sadly familiar: trucks slammed into houses, uprooted trees and downed power lines soaked in muddy water, while time stood still inside abandoned homes with unmade beds and scattered stuffed toys.

It was the eerie combination of sounds that stood out as I surveyed a deserted village on this chilly Wednesday morning: Rustling of dangling tin sheets in gusty wind, my own breathing behind a face mask and the constant beeping of my Geiger counter.

My colleagues and I had just entered the 20-kilometer exclusion zone, a radius Japanese authorities drew around the Fukushima Daiichi power plant and ordered some 78,000 residents evacuated in the early days of the crisis, now the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

The March 11 twin disasters of a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the ensuing tsunami in northeastern Japan have resulted in the plant belching radioactive particles into the surrounding environment.

Driving for two hours on winding highways from the Fukushima train station, we had passed through rural Japan's alternating scenes of snow-covered mountains and green valleys in full bloom -- until we reached a checkpoint with a big "no-entry" sign and flashing red lights.

A friendly police officer, however, waved us through, after emphasizing the need to don face masks despite the relatively low reading on radiation.

Our shoes tightly wrapped in paper booties, we finally stepped onto the soil inside the so-called hot zone, some 18 kilometers north of the stricken nuclear plant. With parts of the ground still wet from days of rain, we avoided murky puddles to minimize the risk of cross-contamination.

The numbers on our Geiger counters fluctuated while the alarms -- with base level set low -- kept going off. Still, we faced no danger of being exposed to anything that would harm human health.

Cars zipped by occasionally as residents were allowed in to check on homes and businesses, but the only other sign of life appeared to be farm animals -- a few cows, horses and chickens -- left behind that have grown gaunt.

We noticed a lone young man in a blue jacket and jeans standing by a large pool of muddy water. Declining to reveal his name, the 34-year-old farmer told us, before the tsunami hit, the pool was a fertile rice field that his family had tilled for 150 years.

"I have lost my work and my home," he said, adding he had come back to retrieve some personal belongings. "And I am scared about my health."

He said he doesn't trust government officials who say risks from radiation are low for local residents. His father wants to return, but he has other plans for the future.

"I may have to face the prospect of leaving my father behind and live faraway from here to start a family," he said.

We wished the young farmer good luck and didn't linger long inside the exclusion zone as it started drizzling from the gloomy sky. As we exited the checkpoint, a news headline flashed on my phone: "Japan to enforce nuclear evacuation zone."

After removing face masks and paper booties, we drove past a line of shuttered storefronts and stopped at the centuries-old Senryu temple just outside the 20-kilometer perimeter.

Sweeping its immaculately kept ground -- complete with a sand garden and a fish pond -- was Shinkoh Ishikawa, a 58-year-old Buddhist monk who offers a rare sanctuary to a community ravaged by a succession of disasters.

The government had advised residents between the 20- and 30-kilometer zones to move away or remain indoors.

"Religion is not something distant, it stays next to you," Ishikawa explained his decision to stay after seeing hundreds of bodies of tsunami victims cremated at the local funeral home without a proper Buddhist ritual. "I hope people understand that death is not the end of one's life, but a revolving step where lives meet again."

Lighting a candle in the temple's main hall where eight boxes of cremated remains lay on a table, Ishikawa chanted prayers for the dead. But it's the tough and cheerful nature of the locals, he said, that has given him the best hope even as the nuclear fallout continues to unfold.

"We will rebuild," he said. "I'm confident about that because we had done the same after the second world war."

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01.04 | 0 komentar | Read More

Nuclear crisis could last 2 to 3 more months, expert says

Industry group report says normal cooling may take 2 to 3 monthsTokyo Electric won't comment on the estimate Japan's government wants to see a timeline soon, adviser says

Tokyo (CNN) -- Japan will likely need two to three more months to bring an end to the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a nuclear industry official said Saturday.

Takashi Sawada, the deputy director of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, said Saturday that it was likely to take that long to restore normal cooling systems for the damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi.

The plant's coolant systems were knocked out by the March 11 tsunami, causing three reactors to overheat and producing what Japan's government has designated a top-scale nuclear accident.

Sawada's organization is an association of nuclear engineers, scientists and professors, and it issued a Friday report that he called "our best effort to imagine what the core looks like."

That report concluded that the zirconium alloy sheaths that surround the reactor's fuel rods ruptured in the three units, sending pellets of molten uranium tumbling to the bottom of the reactors. The pellets are since believed to have cooled and solidified at the reactor bases, according to the report.

The plant's owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, has said it can't provide a timeline for bringing the crisis to an end and would not discuss Sawada's assessment Saturday.

"We are trying to do our utmost at this moment," a company official told CNN.

But an adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the government wants to see some sort of plan by the end of April.

"We will set up a goal for the cooling process soon," the adviser, Goshi Hosono, said during an appearance on the BS Asahi satellite network Saturday morning.

Japanese nuclear regulators declared the Fukushima Daiichi accident a Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale this week, putting the crisis on par with the April 1986 fire and explosion at the Chernobyl plant in the former Soviet Union. While authorities said the amount of radioactivity released was only 10 percent of the amount that spewed from Chernobyl, it was far beyond the threshold for a Level 7 event.

More than 78,000 people who lived within 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) of the plant were ordered to flee their homes. Another 60,000-plus living in the next 10 kilometers were told to shelter indoors, And Japan's government ordered residents of several towns outside that danger zone that they would soon be evacuating due to the possibility of long-term health risks from radioactive particles released from the plant.

Tokyo Electric has said it has to drain highly radioactive water from the basements and service tunnels of the reactor units' turbine plants before it can work on restoring normal cooling systems. But workers are also pumping up to 7 tons (1,850 gallons) of water into the reactors every hour as an interim measure, and an unknown portion of that is leaking back into the plant.

At the plant on Saturday, workers continued preparations to start pumping water from the No. 2 turbine plant into a treatment facility for low-level radioactive waste. More than 9,000 tons of less-contaminated water that had been held there was dumped into the Pacific Ocean last week in what Japanese officials called an emergency measure to make room for fluid that had been leaking into the sea until April 6.

Crews have been laying fresh pipes to the treatment center and hope to start transferring water from unit 2 on Sunday, the company said. But its capacity could be only a fraction of the volume now sloshing around in the turbine building basements, and engineers are still pouring hundreds of tons of water into the reactors every day to keep them cool.

The treatment center could hold up to 30,000 tons of water, Tokyo Electric said -- but that could be only a fraction of the volume now sloshing around in the turbine building basements, the company said.

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05.03 | 0 komentar | Read More

Nuclear crisis could last 2 to 3 more months, expert says

Industry group report says normal cooling may take 2 to 3 monthsTokyo Electric won't comment on the estimate Japan's government wants to see a timeline soon, adviser says

Tokyo (CNN) -- Japan will likely need two to three more months to bring an end to the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a nuclear industry official said Saturday.

Takashi Sawada, the deputy director of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, said Saturday that it was likely to take that long to restore normal cooling systems for the damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi.

The plant's coolant systems were knocked out by the March 11 tsunami, causing three reactors to overheat and producing what Japan's government has designated a top-scale nuclear accident.

Sawada's organization is an association of nuclear engineers, scientists and professors, and it issued a Friday report that he called "our best effort to imagine what the core looks like."

That report concluded that the zirconium alloy sheaths that surround the reactor's fuel rods ruptured in the three units, sending pellets of molten uranium tumbling to the bottom of the reactors. The pellets are since believed to have cooled and solidified at the reactor bases, according to the report.

The plant's owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, has said it can't provide a timeline for bringing the crisis to an end and would not discuss Sawada's assessment Saturday.

"We are trying to do our utmost at this moment," a company official told CNN.

But an adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the government wants to see some sort of plan by the end of April.

"We will set up a goal for the cooling process soon," the adviser, Goshi Hosono, said during an appearance on the BS Asahi satellite network Saturday morning.

Japanese nuclear regulators declared the Fukushima Daiichi accident a Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale this week, putting the crisis on par with the April 1986 fire and explosion at the Chernobyl plant in the former Soviet Union. While authorities said the amount of radioactivity released was only 10 percent of the amount that spewed from Chernobyl, it was far beyond the threshold for a Level 7 event.

More than 78,000 people who lived within 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) of the plant were ordered to flee their homes. Another 60,000-plus living in the next 10 kilometers were told to shelter indoors, And Japan's government ordered residents of several towns outside that danger zone that they would soon be evacuating due to the possibility of long-term health risks from radioactive particles released from the plant.

Tokyo Electric has said it has to drain highly radioactive water from the basements and service tunnels of the reactor units' turbine plants before it can work on restoring normal cooling systems. But workers are also pumping up to 7 tons (1,850 gallons) of water into the reactors every hour as an interim measure, and an unknown portion of that is leaking back into the plant.

At the plant on Saturday, workers continued preparations to start pumping water from the No. 2 turbine plant into a treatment facility for low-level radioactive waste. More than 9,000 tons of less-contaminated water that had been held there was dumped into the Pacific Ocean last week in what Japanese officials called an emergency measure to make room for fluid that had been leaking into the sea until April 6.

Crews have been laying fresh pipes to the treatment center and hope to start transferring water from unit 2 on Sunday, the company said. But its capacity could be only a fraction of the volume now sloshing around in the turbine building basements, and engineers are still pouring hundreds of tons of water into the reactors every day to keep them cool.

The treatment center could hold up to 30,000 tons of water, Tokyo Electric said -- but that could be only a fraction of the volume now sloshing around in the turbine building basements, the company said.

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06.32 | 0 komentar | Read More

Nuclear crisis could last 2 to 3 more months, expert says

Industry group report says normal cooling may take 2 to 3 monthsTokyo Electric won't comment on the estimate Japan's government wants to see a timeline soon, adviser says

Tokyo (CNN) -- Japan will likely need two to three more months to bring an end to the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a nuclear industry official said Saturday.

Takashi Sawada, the deputy director of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, said Saturday that it was likely to take that long to restore normal cooling systems for the damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi.

The plant's coolant systems were knocked out by the March 11 tsunami, causing three reactors to overheat and producing what Japan's government has designated a top-scale nuclear accident.

Sawada's organization is an association of nuclear engineers, scientists and professors, and it issued a Friday report that he called "our best effort to imagine what the core looks like."

That report concluded that the zirconium alloy sheaths that surround the reactor's fuel rods ruptured in the three units, sending pellets of molten uranium tumbling to the bottom of the reactors. The pellets are since believed to have cooled and solidified at the reactor bases, according to the report.

The plant's owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, has said it can't provide a timeline for bringing the crisis to an end and would not discuss Sawada's assessment Saturday.

"We are trying to do our utmost at this moment," a company official told CNN.

But an adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the government wants to see some sort of plan by the end of April.

"We will set up a goal for the cooling process soon," the adviser, Goshi Hosono, said during an appearance on the BS Asahi satellite network Saturday morning.

Japanese nuclear regulators declared the Fukushima Daiichi accident a Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale this week, putting the crisis on par with the April 1986 fire and explosion at the Chernobyl plant in the former Soviet Union. While authorities said the amount of radioactivity released was only 10 percent of the amount that spewed from Chernobyl, it was far beyond the threshold for a Level 7 event.

More than 78,000 people who lived within 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) of the plant were ordered to flee their homes. Another 60,000-plus living in the next 10 kilometers were told to shelter indoors, And Japan's government ordered residents of several towns outside that danger zone that they would soon be evacuating due to the possibility of long-term health risks from radioactive particles released from the plant.

Tokyo Electric has said it has to drain highly radioactive water from the basements and service tunnels of the reactor units' turbine plants before it can work on restoring normal cooling systems. But workers are also pumping up to 7 tons (1,850 gallons) of water into the reactors every hour as an interim measure, and an unknown portion of that is leaking back into the plant.

At the plant on Saturday, workers continued preparations to start pumping water from the No. 2 turbine plant into a treatment facility for low-level radioactive waste. More than 9,000 tons of less-contaminated water that had been held there was dumped into the Pacific Ocean last week in what Japanese officials called an emergency measure to make room for fluid that had been leaking into the sea until April 6.

Crews have been laying fresh pipes to the treatment center and hope to start transferring water from unit 2 on Sunday, the company said. But its capacity could be only a fraction of the volume now sloshing around in the turbine building basements, and engineers are still pouring hundreds of tons of water into the reactors every day to keep them cool.

The treatment center could hold up to 30,000 tons of water, Tokyo Electric said -- but that could be only a fraction of the volume now sloshing around in the turbine building basements, the company said.

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10.52 | 0 komentar | Read More