6/12/2011 JST | 90,000 in shelters; most debris still uncleared 3 months on

Source: Daily Yomiuri Online
Date: June 12, 2011 JST

More than 90,000 people are still living in shelters three months after the Great East Japan Earthquake, and only a fraction of the debris dumped by the ensuing tsunami has been removed, according to official figures.
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6/11/2011 | Burglars hit evacuees' homes in Fukushima Pref.

Source: Daily Yomiuri Online
Date: Jun. 11, 2011
by: The Yomiuri Shimbun

Burglars are apparently targeting houses left vacant because they are within 30 kilometers of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
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6/7/2011 | Fire at Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant in Nebraska Temporarily Disables Spent Fuel Pool Cooling

Date: Published 6/11/2011
by: Jason Chan


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The Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant, which is near the Missouri river has been shut down since April 9th, for refueling and due to Missouri river flooding concerns.  There has been flooding reported at the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant parking lots but not within the facility itself.  Quoting the Omaha World Herald:

...
Nuke plant: No floodwater has breached the nuclear power plant at Fort Calhoun, say officials from both the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Omaha Public Power District. NRC spokeswoman Lara Uselding and OPPD spokesman Mike Jones said Thursday that some floodwater is pooling in some of the plant's parking lots, but there had been no confirmed reports of floodwater entering the currently idle plant, they said.
... [1]

At nuclear power plants, spent fuel is often stored on site in large pools of water which have pumps which circulate the water in order to keep the temperature down so that the spent fuel rods do not heat up and catch on fire or melt down. The spent fuel rod pool cooling was temporarily lost resulting from a fire affecting some of the safety systems. On June 7, 2011 9:30 AM a fire alarm sounded and non-essential workers were evacuated. At 9:40 AM an alert was raised with the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) regarding a fire starting in a room containing electrical equipment. Per the NRC's own Preliminary Notification of Event or Unusual Occurence report PNO-IV-004:

...
DESCRIPTION: At approximately 9:40 a.m., Tuesday, June 7, 2011, the Fort Calhoun Station
(FCS) declared an ALERT due to a fire in an electrical switchgear room. Automatic fire
suppression systems operated as expected. Licensee fire brigade personnel, the Blair Fire
Department, and the Fort Calhoun Fire Department responded to the fire. The fire was
confirmed extinguished at 10:20 a.m. The plant was already in a cold shutdown condition following completion of a planned refueling outage and was maintained safely in cold shutdown. [2]
...

At 1:15 PM the alert was terminated and the evacuated workers returned. [3]  No alerts of this seriousness have been issued by the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant since 1992 when electrical problems and a faulty valve resulted in 20,000 gallons of reactor coolant being dumped in to the basement of the containment building. [3]

According to Pro Publica the nuclear power plant did have a backup spent fuel pool pump which was not needed in this case:

...
Mike Jones, a spokesman for the plant's owner, the Omaha Public Power District, said Fort Calhoun has a backup pump to provide water to the spent fuel in case the main system is lost. That pump, which runs on a separate power supply from the rest of the plant, was inspected and standing by on Tuesday, but plant operators restored main power to the pool before the emergency pump was needed, he said. [4]
...

Although the fire was quickly extinguished within an hour of the initial fire alarm, two fire departments were called in which indicates external help was needed to get the fire under control.  Nuclear engineer and industry expert Arnie Gundersen in a recent interview with Robert Knight of the a-Infos Radio Project said that he felt it was fortunate that a full scale disaster was averted, but that this was mostly due to luck rather than good planning.  The situation could have gotten much worse according to Mr. Gundersen, who stated that had all cooling systems failed it would have taken about 80 hours for the water to evaporate and put the spent fuel rods in jeopardy. [5]

Sources:
[1] Omaha World Herald: The latest on flooding
[2] NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) PN (Preliminary Notification)  Report:

PNO-IV-11-004

06/07/2011

Fort Calhoun Station: Fort Calhoun Station Declaration of an ALERT Due to Fire Affecting Plant Safety Systems

[3] Omaha World Herald: Rare alert triggered at nuclear plant
[4] Pro Publica: Electrical Fire Knocks Out Spent Fuel Cooling at Nebraska Nuke Plant
[5] Radio4all.net: NEBRASKA NUKE DISASTER - Flood, Fire and Heat

Note: I am including a link to the NRC Preliminary Notification Reports in the left sidebar which should ideally be scanned on a daily basis considering the flooding going on does place many nuclear power plants in harm's way.

6/10/2011 | Nuclear Ash Cloud Of Radiation Raining On Tokyo From Burning Of Radioactive Fukushima Sewage Sludge

Source: Alexander Higgins Blog
Date: June 10, 2011 at 5:46 pm
by: Alexander Higgins

Independent scientists and local Japanese Government officials reveal that the burning of radioactive sewage sludge is contaminating the city of Tokyo with an ash cloud of nuclear radiation.
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6/9/2011 | Tokyo Riot Squad to Safeguard Tepco Meeting

Source: Bloomberg
Date: Jun 9, 2011 9:47 PM CT
by: Takahiko Hyuga and Tsuyoshi Inajima

Japan’s National Police Agency will send 150 officers and riot squads to Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s annual general meeting this month to quell possible protests by shareholders and terror attacks, a police official said.
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6/10/2011 | Japan adds four new areas to radiation threats

Source: CNN (International)
Date: June 10, 2011 -- Updated 0718 GMT (1518 HKT)

Katsunobu Sakurai, Minamisoma city mayor of Fukushima prefecture, speaks before the press in Tokyo on Thursday.

Tokyo (CNN) -- Four new areas in northern Japan have been added to the list of places affected by radiation originating from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, authorities said Friday.
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6/10/2011 JST | TEPCO testing water treatment system

Source: NHK World
Date: Friday, June 10, 2011 12:09 +0900 (JST)

Tokyo Electric Power Company is conducting a test-run of a new system to treat the highly radioactive water that is flooding facilities at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
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6/10/2011 JST | Children in Fukushima to be given dosimeters

Source: NHK World
Date: Friday, June 10, 2011 09:07 +0900 (JST)

A city 60 kilometers away from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has decided to distribute dosimeters to all kindergarteners and school children to monitor their radiation exposure.

Voices of parents expressing concern about their children's health due to the radioactive contamination are growing louder.

Shoji Nishida, the mayor of Date City, Fukushima Prefecture, announced the plan on Thursday.

Date City is now outside the evacuation zone but earlier this month the estimated radiation levels at 3 locations topped the evacuation level of 20 millisieverts per year.

This level is 20 times higher than the long-term annual reference level for ordinary people recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection.

The city has allocated about 300,000 dollars to give dosimeters to about 8,000 children at local kindergartens, day-care centers, elementary and junior high schools.

Mayor Nishida said that the city decided to take the broad scale measurements as parents are deeply concerned about their children's radioactive exposure.

6/10/2011 JST | Widen evacuation zone for children, pregnant women: Greenpeace chief

Source: The Japan Times
Date: Friday, June 10, 2011 JST
by: JUN HONGO

The government should consider evacuating children and pregnant women from a wider area around the Fukushima No. 1 power plant because radiation levels remain high even outside the 20-km no-go zone, Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International, said Thursday in Tokyo.
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6/9/2011 | Japan Confirms Nuclear Fuel Has Melted Through The Base Of The Fukushima Plant

Source: Alexander Higgins Blog
Date: June 9, 2011 at 4:52 pm
by: Alexander Higgins

The nuclear fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has melted through the base of the pressure vessels and is pooling in the outer containment vessels, according to a report by the Japanese government.
...
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6/9/2011 | Japan's green tea contaminated with radiation

Source: NEWSCORE via New York Post
Date: 2:21 PM, June 9, 2011

TOKYO -- Japanese green tea, esteemed around the world for its purity and health-enhancing properties, has become contaminated with radiation, as fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant continues to blight Japan's agricultural heartlands, authorities revealed Thursday.

Authorities admitted for the first time that green tea from Japan's biggest tea-growing area, the Shizuoka prefecture, contains radiation higher than the officially-permitted level.

The contamination has opened a furious argument among local and national officials about how to measure the radiation, and what constitutes a safe level of contamination.

Dried leaves from the year's first harvest in the Honyama area of Shizuoka were found to contain radioactive cesium at a level of 679 becquerels per kilogram, above the permitted maximum of 500 becquerels. But the discovery was made by chance, and the authorities admit that earlier consignments, which were not examined and have gone to the market, may have also been contaminated.

Limits on the sale of tea from areas closer to Fukushima have been put in place, but Shizuoka is to green tea what the Champagne region of France is to sparkling wine, and the effect of the news will be devastating.

Japan produced 95,000 tons (86,000 tonnes) of dried tea in 2009, and 42 percent of that was from Shizuoka. The prefecture, supported by the ministry of agriculture, has insisted on carrying out radiation measurements in such a way as to minimize the suggestion that its precious product is dangerous.

The problem is that, unlike other vegetables, tea leaves are processed before going on sale and are not consumed directly. When fresh leaves are dried, the removal of water concentrates the radioactive elements to five times the former level.

But when they are infused in a tea pot the amount of radiation in the resulting brew is between 30 and 45 times less, according to the agriculture ministry.

The Shizuoka government wants the 500 becquerels limit to apply to the less intensely radioactive fresh leaves. But the health ministry argues that consumers might swallow dried leaves in a cup of tea, as well as in products derived from tea, such as green tea ice cream, and that the 500-becquerel limit for fresh vegetables must also apply to tea.

The high reading was discovered not by the tea grower or the local government, but by a mail order tea company in Tokyo that carried out its own measurements.

6/9/2011 | Swiss parliament cements decision to go non-nuclear in landslide vote, paving the way for renewables

Source: Bellona
Date: 6/9/2011
by: Charles Digges

Lawmakers in Switzerland’s lower house of parliament Wednesday cemented in a landslide vote plans by the government to phase out use of all five of the country’s nuclear reactors by 2034, making it Europe’s second country to abandon nuclear power in favor of renewable energy in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi crisis.
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