Two recent disasters — the tsunami at Fukushima and Hurricane Sandy — show that shoreline infrastructure can easily result in extensive ocean pollution. With sea levels rising rapidly, this problem could quickly become significantly greater.
A cooling fuel pool was shut down Monday at the embattled power plant so workers could remove two dead rats. It was the third time in a little over a month that cooling equipment had to be shut down for rat related issues — and right now there are more radioactive rodent recurrences than answers.
On the same day that Japan's prime minister declared the country would re-start nuclear reactors shut down in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima power-plant disaster, the World Health Organization released a report of the meltdown's lingering health effects — and it may say more about cancer in general than cancer from a nuclear accident.
Discovered: Radiation worries are expanding Japanese children's waistlines; birds respond to music like humans; chemo changes the brain; asparagus each day keeps the hangovers away.
Discovered: Nuclear disaster lingers in Japanese waters; the hole in the Antarctic ozone hasn't been this small since the '90s; the problem with algae-derived biofuels; the amazing shrinking ancient hippo.
Japan's recent decision to phase out nuclear power had a lot of loopholes to let plants keep operating, but even so it was too harsh for the country's business lobby, which persuaded the government to drop it on Wednesday.
In the wake of last year's disastrous Fukushima meltdown, Japan announced Saturday a plan to eliminate their reliance on nuclear power over the next 30 years. But the plan has some loopholes that could see reactors live on past the current deadline.
The first creatures definitively shown to have mutated following the Fukushima meltdown are pale blue grass butterflies, but it's still a long way from proving human mutation, scientists said.
Japan’s prosecutors officially began investigating Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and its former top executives on criminal charges today in relation to the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima following last year's March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Discovered: Astronomers find the oldest known spiral galaxy; dolphins are good with numbers; Japan's nuclear disaster will probably result in 130 deaths; and laziness is on par with smoking.
An independent Japanese commission that investigated last year's nuclear disaster at Fukushima released its findings on Thursday, putting the blame for the disaster squarely on the shoulders of the Japanese government and the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
Yes, the nuclear disaster at Fukushima was sparked by the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 11, 2011, but a Japanese parliamentary report said Thursday the disaster that followed was man-made, and suggested more plants were susceptible.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
Japan's Prime Minister ordered two of the countries nuclear reactors to resume operations on Saturday, the first time the country's used any of its 50 working nuclear reactors since the meltdown in Fukushima.
Researchers say that giant bluefin tuna captured off the coast of the U.S. last fall contained trace amounts of cesium-134, a radioactive element released into the ocean by the quake-damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.
In the first arrest in relation to the yakuza's role in Japan's nuclear industry since last March's devastating earthquake and tsunami, police in Fukushima charged a senior yakuza leader for illegally dispatching workers to the reconstruction at the TEPCO-run Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant.
The New York Times on food deserts and global warming, Al Jazeera on the Gulf's mutated shrimp, The Washington Post on America's waning love of gas, and the Los Angeles Times on the future of nuclear in Japan
Discovered in green: Buying less stuff won't make everything all better, what Fukushima did to the ocean and its fish, fertilizers are doing nasty things to our air and sparrows have changed their tune for noisy cities.
The nuclear power plant at Fukushima was officially declared "stabilized" in December, but maybe the plant's operators should have done a better job at cleaning up for visiting journalists today to avoid reports of how shabby the repairs look, like this one from the AP.
In one of the more disturbing things you'll hear out of Japan, the manager of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant is blaming the plant's sharply rising temperatures (a possible sign of radiation leaks) on a faulty thermometer, telling journalists on Monday that they'll hopefully allow people back to their homes soon.
Discovered: Electric cars aren't so green after-all, another earthquake on the way for Fukushima?, hearing aids are not popular, everyone hates their bosses, babies understand language.
"TEPCO's involvement with anti-social forces and their inability to filter them out of the work-place is a national security issue," a Japanese Senator with the Liberal Democratic Party said on background.
Japan's prime minister today declared that the power plants at Fukushima, site of the worst nuclear distaster since Chernobyl, are finally 'stabilized' -- but that seems to be more of a technical designation than anything else.
Officials at Japan's earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant said on Sunday they'd discovered a leak in some new equipment that is supposed to keep radioactive water out of the ocean.
For the first month in the eight months since an earthquake and tsunami hit the Fukushima nuclear power station, the Japanese government has opened the area to media.
Japanese robotics wizard Yoshiyuki Sankai invented his science fiction-inspired robotic exoskeletons to help disabled people, but a new model aims to speed up the clean-up at Fukushima.
Reporters challenged Japanese official Yasuhiro Sonoda to drink water from the quake-leveled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and today he did.
A small earthquake hit the Fukushima prefecture of Japan early on Wednesday at about 2 a.m. local time, registering 5.2 on the richter scale.
Six months later, Fukushima has stabilized and Japan is cleaning up
IEEE Spectrum translates and publishes the blog of an anonymous bot operator
The New York Times details the nation's transition away from nuclear energy
The nation remembers Nagasaki and Hiroshima in light of Fukushima
A government system for predicting path of radioactive harm went unheeded
The high levels were found on a ventilation stack between reactors
But some meat contaminated with caesium has already been consumed, analysts said
Tens of thousands of migrant workers are cleaning the place up
Before the tsunami arrived, workers say the quake left its aging Unit 1 reactor crippled
TEPCO demands custody over two dogs the Hoshi family rescued from their plant
A commenter parses the difference between Tokyo Electric and U.S. utilities
Jake Adelstein and Stephanie Nakajima report on the Japanese utility after Fukushima
A Tokyo Electric shareholders meeting turns rowdy with anti-nuclear protests
The bill would be able to handle claims up to $125 billion
The revelation will increase the heat on the government
"Us older ones have less chance of getting cancer."
The AP uncovers more evidence of a lack of preparation for a disaster
Shimizu apologized from 'the bottom of my heart' for the Fukushima crisis
TEPCO has released the first photos of the beginning of the nuclear crisis
Tokyo Electric releases silent footage from inside and outside the crippled nuclear plant
The New York Times finds a 'culture of collusion' propping nuclear power in Japan
TEPCO officials confirmed today what had been suspected for months
They are installing a ventilation equipment to lower radiation levels
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