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"Tokyo Electric Power Co. did not fully disclose radiation monitoring data after its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the government revealed Friday. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, after being informed by Goshi Hosono, a special adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, told reporters that he instructed Tepco to sort out the data, make it public and make doubly sure no more information-withholding occurs. Coming a day after he blasted Tepco's flip-flop over the injection of seawater into the plant's reactor 1, Edano said the government "cannot respond to this matter on the premise" that no more undisclosed information will emerge."

"Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) has edged another step closer to its near-term goal of bringing the crippled reactors at its quake and tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi plant to a state of cold shutdown by January, as the temperature at the second of three damaged units fell below boiling point this week. The utility said it would be cautious on officially declaring cold shutdown had been achieved, however, even when the temperature at the third reactor has dropped significantly, saying the government and the nuclear watchdog would need to give their seal of approval to such a move. WHAT IS COLD SHUTDOWN AND HOW CLOSE IS IT? Cold shutdown is when water used to cool nuclear fuel rods remains below 100 degrees Celsius, preventing the fuel from reheating. But even when the temperature at the third reactor falls below 100 degrees, Tepco said it would not automatically declare that a cold shutdown has been reached."

"Tokyo Electric Power Co. aims to sell 280 real estate properties to raise 200 billion yen for use paying compensation payments for damage caused by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant crisis, sources close to the matter said Friday. The properties include its headquarters building in central Tokyo, company dormitories and recreation facilities, according to the sources. TEPCO intends to double its property sales target from 100 billion yen planned in May as it urgently needs to raise funds for full-fledged compensation payments from October, and for expanding fossil power generation to cover nuclear power generation capacity losses, they said."

Tokyo Electric Power Co. succeeded in stopping highly radioactive water from leaking into the Pacific Ocean from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant early Wednesday morning after injecting a chemical agent, it said. In a bid to stem the leak, Tepco injected about 6,000 liters of "water glass," or sodium silicate, and another agent around a seaside pit located near the plant's No. 2 reactor water intake, through which the highly radioactive water had been leaking heavily. The leak has apparently seriously contaminated the marine environment, as a seawater sample taken near the water intake Saturday showed a radioactive iodine-131 concentration of 7.5 million times the maximum level permitted under law.

70 percent of fuel rods in reactor core at Fukushima nuke plant damaged The pool for spent fuel at the No. 4 reactor of TEPCO's Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is pictured in this Feb. 1, 2005, file photo. (Mainichi ) About 70 percent of the 400 fuel rods in the No. 1 reactor at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant are damaged, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has revealed. In addition, some 30 percent of the 548 fuel rods in the No. 2 reactor core and 25 percent of those in the No. 3 reactor core are also thought to be damaged, the power company stated on April 6. The figures are based on analysis of radiation data collected from the side of the reactor pressure vessel between the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and March 15. Just after the earthquake hit, the No. 1-3 reactors were successfully shut down when control rods were inserted into the cores. However, the plant operators soon lost the ability to adequately cool the cores, and TEPCO believes it possible some of the nuclear fuel pellets inside the fuel rods may have melted and leaked from their metal sheathes. At the time of the quake the plant's No. 4 reactor was undergoing a routine inspection and had no fuel rods in its core, while reactors No. 5 and 6 were not operating.

"The accident at Fukushima -1 in March this year was caused by defects in construction, both the former and the current senior engineers of the Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) - the company operating the Japanese nuclear power plant - told "The Wall Street Journal". Specialists say that emergency diesel-generators and switchgears were wrongly placed at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant. Only 50 per cent of the devices transmitting electricity from the generators to the reactors' coolers were well fixed, the TEPCO experts say. All the rest were destroyed by the earthquake and by the tsunami that followed it, which finally led to the wide-scale radiation leak."

"Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) on June 17 announced an updated roadmap for bringing the troubled Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Plant under control and stressed that it is making progress, but many obstacles remain and some important problems still have no resolution in sight. New problems have emerged at the plant such as how to improve the working environment of workers and how to dispose of radioactive waste after removing it from contaminated water. Only one month remains until the final day of Step 1 of the roadmap: achievement of stable, maintained cooling of the reactors. "Regarding a cold shutdown, even if the reactor core temperature is cooled to below 100 degrees Celsius, we cannot say we have achieved our goal until we secure a state where the reactors are emitting only limited amounts of radiation," said Goshi Hosono, special advisor to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, at a news conference on June 17. He vowed to do his utmost to help bring the nuclear reactors to a state of cold shutdown in the period from mid-July to the beginning of next year, as envisioned in Step 2 of the roadmap."

"Japan's TEPCO said Wednesday it had booked an extra $1.1 billion loss to compensate victims of the Fukushima crisis, and would set aside another $473 million to bring the crippled plant under control. In May Tokyo Electric Power Co. reported a $15 billion annual net loss for the year ended March, the biggest ever for a non-financial Japanese firm, on costs related to the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986. But on Wednesday it said it would book an additional loss of 88 billion yen ($1.1 billion) to cover compensation related to "psychological distress" suffered by tens of thousands of evacuees from areas near the plant, following calculations by an official government commission."

" Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it expects to pay 88 billion yen in compensation to around 150,000 nuclear crisis evacuees for their mental distress. The compensation from the operator of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will cover the period between March 11, when the quake-tsunami disaster crippled the complex, and mid-January, the target date for TEPCO to achieve a cold shutdown of the damaged reactors. TEPCO's estimate was revealed after a government panel presented guidelines for compensation payments, under which evacuees in temporary housing or apartments will receive 100,000 yen per month for six months from March and those staying in shelters will receive 120,000 yen a month. The utility will include the 88 billion yen as an extraordinary loss in its April-June consolidated financial results."

"MITO (Kyodo) -- A federation of seafood processing firms in Ibaraki Prefecture on Tuesday demanded about 1.85 billion yen in damages from Tokyo Electric Power Co., claiming their businesses have been hurt in the wake of the nuclear emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. After receiving a written claim over sales losses amid fears of seafood contamination by radiation at the federation's office in Mito, Ibaraki, Kaoru Takagi, a senior TEPCO official, said the utility will decide how to deal with it based on the government guidelines for nuclear damages. The damages for three months from March include about 1.14 billion yen covering such losses as costs for disposal of processed seafood products rejected by markets and retailers. The remainder is for radiation measurement and leave compensation. Involved in the claim are 159 firms and two cooperatives. If more losses emerge, additional claims will be made, the federation said."

Tokyo Electric Power Co. will seek a ban on the operation of its quake-damaged nuclear plant lifted, paving the way for a test run when it completes repairs of one of the reactors next month. "We will ask the local fire department to check our facility," President Masataka Shimizu told reporters today. Tepco will fix a turbine in early February, the final repair on the No. 7 reactor at its Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant, he said. Six other reactors are still being worked on. The Kashiwazaki Fire Department imposed the ban after a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the plant on July 16, 2007, causing a fire and radiation leaks. Shimizu said he doesn't know when he can resume output at Kashiwazaki Kariwa, the world's biggest nuclear plant.

Japan's Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) (9501.T) inched closer to restarting part of the world's biggest nuclear plants after an operation-suspension order was lifted on Tuesday on one of seven generators. The decision by the city of Kashiwazaki in northwest Japan marked one of the last steps before restarting the No.7 unit at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, shut since a major earthquake in July 2007.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), Asia's biggest utility, said on Monday its earnings forecasts for the year to March 2009 were based on the premise that it would not be restarting its quake-hit Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., Japan's biggest electric utility company, said Monday it lost more than 700 million dollars in the three months to June due to soaring fuel costs at its power plants. The operator of the world's largest nuclear plant, which was shut down by an earthquake last year, warned it expects to end the year deep in the red. The company, known as TEPCO, reported a net loss of 76.24 billion yen (707 million dollars) for the fiscal first quarter, compared with a net profit of 31.07 billion yen in the same period of the previous year.

Japan's nuclear safety agency gave the green light to Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) (9501.T) to restart its No. 7 nuclear generator at the quake-hit Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, Kyodo news said on Friday, citing government officials. The officials said that after examining TEPCO's plan and inspection data, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has concluded the reactor is clear for a test run, Kyodo reported.

"Nuclear regulators trusted that the reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 complex were safe from the worst waves an earthquake could muster based on a single-page memo from Tokyo Electric Power Co. nearly a decade ago. In the Dec. 19, 2001, document - one double-sized page obtained by The Associated Press under the public records law - Tepco rules out the possibility of a tsunami large enough to knock the plant offline and gives scant details to justify this conclusion, which proved to be wildly optimistic. Regulators at the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency had asked plant operators for assessments of their earthquake and tsunami preparedness. They didn't mind the brevity of the utility's response, and apparently made no moves to verify its calculations or ask for supporting documents."

"Tokyo Electric Power Co. admitted Wednesday that one of the critical cooling pipes at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant's reactor unit 3 may have been damaged in the March 11 megaquake. Tepco suggested earlier that no major damage, including ruptures in the facility's main steam pipes, had occurred at the reactor until the massive tsunami hit after the magnitude 9.0 quake. But if the temblor had actually damaged the High-Pressure Core Flooder system - which is used to supply coolant water to a reactor core in emergencies to keep nuclear fuel from overheating - power suppliers across the country might be forced to reconsider the quake resistance designs for their reactors."

"Not only the pressure vessels, but the containment vessels of the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant were probably damaged within 24 hours of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s analysis of the nuclear crisis. In a report on the analysis, the utility said it carried out minute calculations on internal pressure and other measurements in the nuclear reactors after the earthquake. The report was submitted to the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency on Monday night. TEPCO said it found that an isolation condenser, a type of emergency cooling device, did not work properly at the No. 1 reactor. This caused the core meltdown to progress until it damaged the bottom of the pressure vessel about 15 hours after the earthquake. Along with the meltdown, the temperature inside the steel containment vessel, which contains the pressure vessel, rose until it reached 300 C in 18 hours after the quake, much higher than 138 C the vessel was designed for. It is believed the internal temperature continued to rise after that. Containment vessels are designed for a much lower temperature and pressure than pressure vessels, which can be exposed to temperatures close to 300 C and pressure reaching 70 bars when a reactor is in operation."

"Tokyo Electric Power Co. concealed data showing spikes in radiation levels at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March, one day before a hydrogen explosion injured seven workers. The Asahi Shimbun obtained a 100-page internal TEPCO report containing minute-to-minute data on radiation levels at the plant as well as pressure and water levels inside the No. 3 reactor from March 11 to April 30. "

"Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Monday started sending out some 60,000 application forms to people seeking damages due to the nuclear crisis at its Fukushima No. 1 power plant. The 60,000 forms are being sent to households that have already received provisional compensation. Those who are filing for the first time need to ask Tepco to send an application form. Applicants are required to attach necessary documents, such as receipts, to apply for compensation for transportation costs, lodging expenses, mental suffering and other problems. Under the full-scale compensation scheme, an evacuee who has been forced to flee in line with a government order will receive ¥5,000 for moving from one place to another inside Fukushima Prefecture. A person will also be given up to ¥8,000 per night for staying in a hotel."