Krista Mahr posted a great item this morning on Japan’s decision to stop building new nuclear plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. Atomic power already supplies some 30% of Japan’s electricity—considerably larger than nuclear’s share in the U.S.—and the Japanese government had plans on table to add another 14 reactors …
nuclear power
With Nuclear Expansion Off the Table, What Do Japan’s Energy Options Look Like?
After two months of near silence, Japan’s government has seemingly awoken from its slumber and kicked into high damage-control gear. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Naoto Kan, whose administration has come under fire for its slow and opaque response to the ongoing nuclear crisis at Fukushima, made two surprise announcements. First, that he …
Report: No Increased Risk of Leukemia Near Nuke Plants
A major new report looking at over three decades of data in the UK has found no evidence that young children living near nuclear power plants face an increased risk of developing leukemia.
However, the report looked only at nuclear power plants during normal operation and so the findings cannot be used to predict the health …
Another Nuclear Plant to Shut Down in Japan on Safety Concerns
Chubu Electric Power Company agreed on Monday to suspend operations at the controversial Hamaoka nuclear power plant, three days after Prime Minister Naoto Kan made an unprecedented request for the company to shut down the plant, citing safety concerns. Like the beleaguered Daiichi Fukishima nuclear power plant further north, Hamaoka is …
Japan: Are Kids Being Exposed to Too Much Radiation?
A U.S. medical group has slammed the Japanese government and senior nuclear adviser Toshiso Kosako has tearfully resigned over the levels of radiation exposure Tokyo says are safe for students at elementary and junior high schools in Fukushima prefecture. In a statement quoted by Kyodo news agency, Physicians for Social Responsibility …
On the Road with a Geiger Counter in Japan
FUKUSHIMA — A Geiger counter isn’t something you ever want to know how to use. It’s definitely not something you want to need. Not that it’s an intimidating piece of equipment – the one I used last week in Japan was roughly the size of a mobile phone circa 1998. Our Terra MKS-05, made in the Ukraine, almost blended into the …
Fresh Concerns Emerge as Japan Unveils Timetable for Fukushima Shut Down
Assessing the full impact of Japan’s crisis has been a moving target since the first minutes after the 9.0 earthquake struck on March 11. So it’s with a cautious sense of optimism that Sunday’s news from Tokyo Electric and Power Company (TEPCO) – that the crippled power plant could be in cold shut down before the end of the year …
Sawdust and Radioactive Water Dumps: The Increasingly Desperate Options at Fukushima
Sawdust. It’s not the first thing most people would choose to put between themselves and highly contaminated radioactive water. But a mixture of sawdust — ogakuzu in Japanese — with chemicals and shredded newspaper is precisely what nuclear safety authorities and power plant officials turned to in trying to plug a 8-inch crack …
Butterfly Wings and Nuclear Disasters, Part 2: The Missed Warnings
On Monday, my colleague Jeffrey Kluger wrote an insightful post, “Butterfly Wings and Nuclear Disasters,” about how—with all respect to the Greek dramatists— there really is no such thing as a single “tragic flaw”; rather, tragedy results most often in the real world from the accumulation of small but significant mishaps. While that …
Japan’s Radiation Exposure: How Serious Is It?
There are few environmental dangers that spook people more than radioactivity. And there is surely no country in the world that comes by that fear more rightly than Japan — which, alone among nations, has felt the pain of a nuclear conflagration first hand. So it’s understandable that the Japanese public is terrified by the danger …