Sunday, March 13, 2011

Tsunami alert: new quake shakes Japan as battle waged against nuclear meltdown

Kyodo News reported that some 2,000 bodies were found off the coast of Miyagi prefecture, and Japan Meteorological Agency said that another three meters wave moves toward the coast following the television reports of a tsunami is not know.

A wave of several tens of centimeters to greater than anticipated, the Japanese Meteorological Agency officials said in a live broadcast shown on public broadcaster NHK, reported that the three meters high wave from a fire department helicopter was taken care of Fukushima prefecture.

North Sea was reportedly out of Honshu Island, an event that happens before the giant waves hit, and the former residents were ordered to higher ground in Iwate Prefecture seen retreating and sirens sounding in the town of Soma are.

Tsunami alert after an earthquake comes - on a Friday, many of the nine massive earthquake shaking. This was a 5.8-magnitude, U.S. Geological Survey said, and hit at a depth of 18 km from Ibaraki, Japan, shaking tall buildings in the capital.

Tsunami alert
Meanwhile Fukushima nuclear plant operator said TEPCO reactor had survived an explosion, Jiji Press reported.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary said Yukio Edano TEPCO nuclear plant officials advised that the container vessel head was still safe.

He said he was released the data and information into the water injection plant and the pressure recorded by it within an acceptable range was still.

Operators of sea water injection was stopped in the first reactor, radiation levels and the pressure increases.

The government warned that an explosion caused by the formation of hydrogen in the building of the reactor was possible.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Japanese officials said that another nuclear plant in Onagawa "range site" level of radioactivity had returned to normal.

Tsunami alert
UN nuclear Commission said earlier that the Tohoku Electric Power Co., which Onagawa management was to determine why the radiation measurements were in Miyagi Prefecture "Plant level in the environment to be more" in the region hardest hit by natural disasters.

"The current view is that the Japanese authorities Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power levels increased due to a release of radioactive material can be" the IAEA said.

"Investigations at the site indicate that an emission of radioactivity from Onagawa one of three units."

However, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant emergency continues, about 250 kilometers northeast of Tokyo. 210 000 tsunami survivors sent to nearby areas.

Radioactive substances released during the explosion on Saturday and possibly with iodine and cesium 131 -137 fatal found, an indication that the uranium fuel rods in the plant's No. 1 reactor was damaged.

Other nuclear complex cooling system pumps, Tokai Daini plant failed after the earthquake. But half normal pump was operated as a reactor, said the utility, Japan Atomic Power Company.

Daiichi and Daini plant backup system Friday when the tsunami through the reactor chambers to pump water to keep cool was to destroy them, began to overheat.

In all six reactors were cool to the problems, the government said, as an emergency measure and seawater was pumped through two of them.

All of the reactors at 55 nuclear facilities in Japan, automatically shut down all of the earthquake shook the area.

Approximately 210 000 survivors of the tsunami near Fukushima nuclear power complex in the form of a mass evacuation was still last night.

1000 bodies found

Tsunami alert
Officials said the body of the soil around 1000 on Friday, the worst hit by the tsunami will move from 10,000 in Miyagi Prefecture north of Tokyo debris along the coast, but the death toll had been fired recovered, police said. Approximately 2.5 million homes were without electricity and 1.4 million without water.
Tsunami alert
A total of 380 000 people have been evacuated to shelters after more than 20,000 buildings were destroyed along the beach outside.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) 1973 102 Australians, including in the affected areas said it was 5:30 today confirmed as safe.

There are 234 earthquake and tsunami affected areas in Japan in 2948 with registered Australian registered.

Australia are the registered and unregistered safe, a DFAT spokesman confirmed.

A total of 6797 calls on Friday have been well received by the Consular Emergency Centre.

Australian Ambassador to Japan Murray McLean said it was difficult to know exactly how many Australians were affected by the earthquake.

"We really honest, do not know how many Australians were in Japan the day of the big earthquake," he told ABC.

"Numbers are unstable."

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said DFAT 25-year-old Melbourne man Jason Briffa, whose mother was afraid that since Friday afternoon before the earthquake was not exposed no information about.

But he said DFAT officers were working with Japan to Mr Briffa, who worked as an English teacher in Sendai looks.

"We base the bottom of every Australian we have not been able to identify to spare no effort to track," Mr Rudd told the Nine Network this morning.

Giant released yesterday by shaking rumble through the region and the tsunami warning was still current in different parts of the coast.

Hundreds of exposure to radiation

Approximately 160 people exposed to dangerous radiation were close to power plants, Japanese Agency for Nuclear and Industrial Safety at least three plant workers said, with symptoms of severe radiation sickness. A power plant worker operating a crane on the site, was slain and wounded eight others.

Japanese public broadcaster nuclear emergency warning broadcasts, which date from the plant to stay indoors, no drinking water, in contact with the skin around their mouths and noses covered in wet towels to ward off pollution was rather telling. Some people with iodine tablets radiation sickness response is issued.

Australian Nuclear Safety Agency, ARPANSA, said a 20-km exclusion zone around the plants outside was no immediate danger.

Australian nuclear experts told the Herald that contingency Japanese officials believe is under control if there is enough water reactors can be pumped through the next few days the uranium fuel rods used in the base to cool.

A complete meltdown - a central ability to control temperature of the collapse - and dangerous contaminants in the environment of uranium and large, comprehensive health risk can bring.

Experts say, however, that even a full recession, probably much less Chernobyl, where a reactor exploded and a cloud of radiation over much of Europe to the disaster in 1986 will be crucial. Unlike people in Fukushima, the reactor was placed in a sealed container.

Significant radiation is unlikely to build

Ziggy Switkowski, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation [ANSTO] a few months ago, the president said it was unlikely that a significant build up of radiation.

"Contribution any nuclear fleet this [disaster], I hope in the worst case there is little to do," he told this morning, Fairfax Radio Network.

"This is not to deny that people are concerned and are apparently concerned about the integrity of the nuclear network is not," Dr Switkowski said.

"Japanese reactors are probably as good as you can get around the world, but the magnitude 9 earthquake, the well may test the limits of your design."

Japan has 55 reactors spread over 17 campuses across the country.

100,000 troops involved in relief

Extensive rescue one million soldiers crescent on the northern coast of Tokyo and Chiba prefectures, including Miyagi is included in the focus.

Iwaki, the inhabitants were so because of concerns over supplies. The city had no electricity and all shops were closed. The police took about 90 people had their blankets and rice balls, but there was no sign of aid trucks.

By Japanese seismologists in earthquake was upgraded to magnitude 9 - which is the largest in the area affected.

"Our country, 65 years ago at the end of the war's worst crisis," Prime Minister Naoto Kan, said yesterday. "I am convinced that we all Japanese cooperation can overcome."

Fears about US34.5 one billion deficit

US35 devastating earthquake one billion, nearly U.S. dollar insurance risk modeling firm AIR Worldwide can cause damage, said in a history making it one of the most costly disasters - More tsunami expected losses have not been counted without.

AIR said its damage estimates range between one billion US34.6 US14.5 billion. 1200000000000 yen, which is more than a 2800000000000 yen, 81.85 yen to the U.S. dollar is based on revenge.

The company had warned that the original estimate and model the impact of the tsunami earthquake or nuclear damage in the wake of the potential loss factor is not.


The official announcement that two reactors at an earthquake-damaged nuclear plant could be suffering meltdowns underscores the Japanese nuclear industry's troubled history, and years of grass-roots objections from a people uniquely sensitive to the ravages of nuclear destruction.

The unfolding crisis at the two reactors, both at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, feeds into a resurgence of doubts about nuclear energy's safety even as it has gained credence as a source of clean energy in a time of mounting concerns about the environmental and public health tolls of fossil fuels.

The crisis stems from failures of the cooling systems at the reactors at the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi plant. At a nearby nuclear plant, Daini, three more reactors lost their cooling systems, and Japanese officials were scrambling on Sunday to determine whether the systems could be revived or would also need injections of cooling seawater.

Critics of nuclear energy have long questioned the viability of nuclear power in earthquake-prone regions like Japan. Reactors have been designed with such concerns in mind, but preliminary assessments of the Fukushima Daiichi accidents suggested that too little attention was paid to the threat of tsunami. It appeared that the reactors withstood the powerful earthquake, but the ocean waves damaged generators and backup systems, harming the ability to cool the reactors.

It was not until Sunday that the increasingly dangerous nature of the problems at Daiichi became clear. But even on Saturday, with Reactor No. 1 there having suffered a radiation leak and an explosion, James M. Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said the nuclear industry would be shaken.

While Japan may try to point to the safety of its newer facilities, concerns may run too deep, he said. Decades ago, after the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents, Mr. Acton said, the nuclear industry tried to argue that newer reactors incorporated much better safety features. “That made very little difference to the public,” he said. Japan's status as the only target of nuclear attack, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, adds to the public's sensitivity.

Benjamin Leyre, a utilities industry analyst with Exane BNP Paribas in Paris, also speaking on Saturday, said politicians in Europe and elsewhere would almost certainly come under increased pressure to revisit safety measures.

“What is likely to come will depend a lot on how transparent the regulators in Japan are,” Mr. Leyre said. “There will be a lot of focus on whether people feel confident that they know everything and that the truth is being put in front of them.”

Over the years, Japanese plant operators, along with friendly government officials, have sometimes hidden episodes at plants from a public increasingly uneasy with nuclear power.

In 2007, an earthquake in northwestern Japan caused a fire and minor radiation leaks at the world's largest nuclear plant, in Kashiwazaki City. An ensuing investigation found that the operator, Tokyo Electric, had unknowingly built the facility directly on top of an active seismic fault. A series of fires inside the plant after the earthquake deepened the public's fear. But Tokyo Electric said it upgraded the facility to withstand stronger tremors and reopened it in 2009.

Tsunami alert
Last year, another reactor with a troubled history was allowed to reopen, 14 years after a fire shut it down. The operator of that plant, the Monju Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor, located along the coast about 220 miles west of Tokyo, tried to cover up the extent of the fire by releasing altered video after an accident in 1995.

In the hours after the blast at Reactor No. 1, nuclear advocates argued that Daiichi's problems were singular in many ways and stemmed from a natural disaster on a scale never before experienced in Japan. They pointed out that the excavation of fossil fuels has its own history of catastrophic accidents, including coal mine collapses and the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Some also said there might have been missteps in handling Reactor No. 1. A quick alternative source of water for cooling the destabilising core should have been immediately available, said Nils J. Diaz, a nuclear engineer who led the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2003 to 2006 and had visited the Daiichi plant.

Mr. Diaz suggested that the Japanese might have acted too slowly to prevent overheating, including procedures that might have required the venting of small amounts of steam and radiation, rather than risk a wholesale meltdown. Fear among Japanese regulators over public reaction to such small releases may have delayed plant operators from acting as quickly as they might have, he said.

“They would rather wait and do things in a perfect manner instead of doing it as good as it needs to be now,” Mr. Diaz said. “And this search for perfection has often led to people sometimes hiding things or waiting too long to do things.”

With virtually no natural resources, Japan has considered nuclear power as an alternative to oil and other fossil fuels since the 1960s. It has regarded its expertise in nuclear power as a way to cut down on its emission of greenhouse gases and to capture energy-hungry markets in Asia.

Japan is one of the world's top consumers of nuclear energy. The country's 17 nuclear plants boasting 55 reactors have provided about 30 per cent of its electricity needs.

To make plants resistant to earthquakes, operators are required to build them on bedrock to minimise shaking and to raise anti-tsunami seawalls for plants along the coast. But the government gives power companies wide discretion in deciding whether a site is safe.

In the case of Saturday's blast, experts said that problem was avoidable. Mr. Diaz said that a comprehensive nuclear power plant safety programme developed in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks would have prevented a similar accident at any of the nation's nuclear facilities. — New York Times

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