Power Company Predicts 9 More Months of Fukushima Drama
After five weeks of struggling to avoid a total meltdown at the quake- and tsunami-battered Fukushima nuclear plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. has announced that it could be nine months before it is able to cool damaged reactors completely.
After five weeks of struggling to avoid a total meltdown at the quake- and tsunami-battered Fukushima nuclear plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. has announced that it could be nine months before it is able to cool damaged reactors completely.
Meantime, it remains unclear when local evacuees will be able to return home, and concerns over new and accelerating leaks are escalating as radiation levels in the nearby sea rose last Friday to 6,500 times the legal limit—nearly six times the amount measured just a day before. — ARK
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Radiation levels in the sea near reactor 2 rose to 6,500 times the legal limit on Friday, up from 1,100 times a day earlier, Tepco has said, raising fears of fresh radiation leaks.
Tsunehisa Katsumata, the chairman of Tepco, Asia’s largest utility, told a news conference in Tokyo on Sunday they would need up to nine months to bring the power plant to ”cold shutdown”.
He said the plan would allow the tens of thousands of families evacuated from the area around the facility to return home as soon as possible.
“We sincerely apologise for causing troubles,” Mr Katsumata said. “We are doing our utmost to prevent the crisis from further worsening.”
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Environment
Demonstrators are also highlighting the complicity of Australian companies.
The new book "No Immediate Danger" tussles with the comprehension-defying nature of climate change.
It's not humanity alone that threatens life on earth. The bigger culprit is an economic and political system that relies on endless global appropriation of cheap food, energy, raw materials and labor.
On a global scale, in many important ways, this marks the highest-profile step yet toward the death of U.S. nuclear power and a national transition to a "solartopian," green-powered planet.
April 26 marks the 30th anniversary of the catastrophic explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
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