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"The head of Japan's banking lobby said on Thursday that Tokyo Electric could become insolvent if parliament fails to pass a bailout bill by the end of September, when the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant closes books for the fiscal first half. Katsunori Nagayasu, chairman of the Japanese Bankers Association, told a regular news conference time is running out as the government panel on nuclear damages compensation is set to release guidelines around late July. "It will be known how much the compensation will be in rough figures, but if there is no (government) scheme for that then, Tokyo Electric could immediately become insolvent," he said. "And it will trigger a series of risks for the power industry and the markets and put a damper on Japan's reconstruction efforts," he said. "

It is one of the mysteries of Japan's ongoing nuclear crisis: How much damage did the March 11 earthquake do to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors before the tsunami hit? The stakes are high: If the quake structurally compromised the plant and the safety of its nuclear fuel, then every other similar reactor in Japan will have to be reviewed and possibly shut down. With virtually all of Japan's 54 reactors either offline (35) or scheduled for shutdown by next April, the issue of structural safety looms over the decision to restart every one in the months and years after.

* Compensation covers damages until Aug 31 * Subsequent claims to be taken quarterly * First round of compensation does not cover property damage By Taiga Uranaka TOKYO, Aug 30 (Reuters) - Tokyo Electric Power unveiled the first details on Tuesday of how it would compensate Fukushima residents for lodging and other costs stemming from their evacuation of areas close to its crippled nuclear plant. The payments, due to reach victims in October, nearly seven months after the start of the nuclear crisis, mark just the first round in a series of state-supported outlays that some analysts estimate could climb as high as $130 billion. About 80,000 people were evacuated from a 20 kilometre radius around Tokyo Electric's Fukushima Daiichi plant, which has been leaking radiation since a March 11 earthquake and tsunami triggered a meltdown of reactor cores.

"Breaking News: Melt OUT was predicted on 3/11 Posted by Mochizuki on September 5th, 2011 · No Comments http://nanohana.me/?p=4545 On March 11, at 22:35, the Cabinet received advice predicting that the fuel would be damaged and the pressure vessels would be breached Forecast: exposure of top of active fuel (TAF): 21:40 (approx.) Forecast: damage to the reactor core(s) begins: 22:20 (approx.) Forecast: breaching of the pressure vessel(s) begins: 23:50 (approx.) [excerpt from source document: Cabinet briefing paper: source link] Japanese Prime Minister and Cabinet knew of melt through in MARCH"

The first comprehensive survey of soil contamination from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant showed that 33 locations spread over a wide area have been contaminated with long-lasting radioactive cesium, complicating Japan's effort to clean up the disaster-hit region, the government said Tuesday. The survey of 2,200 locations within a 100-km radius of the crippled plant found that those 33 locations had cesium-137 in excess of 1.48 million becquerels per square meter, the level set by the Soviet Union for forced resettlement after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Another 132 locations had combined amount of cesium 137/134 over 555,000 becquerels per square meter, the level at which the Soviet authorities called for voluntary evacuation and imposed a ban on farming.

"An extensive area of more than 8,000 square kilometers has accumulated cesium 137 levels of 30,000 becquerels per square meter or more after the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, according to Asahi Shimbun estimates. The affected area is one-18th of about 145,000 square kilometers contaminated with cesium 137 levels of 37,000 becquerels per square meter or more following the 1986 Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union. The contaminated area includes about 6,000 square kilometers in Fukushima Prefecture, or nearly half of the prefecture. Fukushima Prefecture, the third largest in Japan, covers 13,782 square kilometers. The government has not disclosed the size of the area contaminated with cesium 137 released from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 plant. Cesium 137 has a long half-life of about 30 years. The Asahi Shimbun calculated the size of the contaminated area based on a distribution map of accumulated cesium 137 levels measured from aircraft, which was released by the science ministry on Sept. 8. "

"Nothing stirs in the empty heart of Tomioka, a community of 16,000 now reduced to the eerie status of a ghost town after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima. The shops of the main street are deserted, motorbikes and cars are abandoned, weeds push through gaps in the concrete. Vending machines selling drinks and snacks - always popular in Japan - stand unlit and silent. Tomioka lies just inside the 20km exclusion zone that was hurriedly enforced last March when a radioactive cloud escaped from the stricken power plant. In the rush to flee, doors were left wide open. Windows and roofs shattered by the earthquake and tsunami are still not repaired. A bicycle leans against a lamp-post."

"Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc. has embarked on full-fledged studies in preparation for extraction of spent fuel from the stricken reactors at Fukushima I nuclear power station (NPS). On September 1, it instituted an ad-hoc organization whose name translates "Fuel Extraction Preparations Group," and assigned ten employees to it. The Group is to examine methodology and technical issues in preparation for extraction of the approximately 2,700 spent fuel assemblies in the spent fuel pools in units 1 through 4. Its future schedule envisions the removal of rubble and performance of other work in parallel, and start of the fuel extraction job no later than three years after the achievement of cold shutdown of the reactors. The fuel pools in units 1-4 at Fukushima I are already undergoing cyclic cooling through heat exchange, and the temperature of their water is being maintained in the range of 30-40 deg C. In units 1, 3 and 4, however, the reactor building is damaged and the radioactive substances in them are not completely contained. The numbers of spent fuel assemblies in the pools are 292 in unit 1, 587 in unit 2, 514 in unit 3, and 1,331 in unit 4. In medium-term approaches following cold shutdown, a key question is how to go about extracting this large number of spent fuel assemblies."

"The scars of Japan's March 11 disaster are both glaringly evident and deceptively hidden. Six months after a tsunami turned Japan's northeast into a tangled mess of metal, concrete, wood and dirt, legions of workers have made steady progress hauling away a good portion of the more than 20 million tonnes of debris covering ravaged coastal areas. The Environment Ministry says it expects to have it all removed by next March, and completely disposed of by 2014."

"This article from back in March describes some of the past safety problems at Japan's nuclear facilities. It briefly mentions issues the IAEA had as far back as the 1990′s with Japan's failing nuclear safety. The arrangements for accidents, emergency planning and safety training by Japanese power companies were condemned as inadequate by IAEA inspectors after they visited four reactors in the 1990s. Altogether they found 90 deficiencies in safety procedures. The IAEA's findings should have been a wake up call, the more concerning part is that they were completely unable to do anything about it. It did cause a major scandal in Japan as cover ups by the power companies hit the media. A considerable portion of the IAEA findings involved cracks in equipment, a serious danger. As of 2002 the IAEA did not know if anything had been done to solve the problems. They had not been invited back by Japan to visit the reactors for new inspections. This problem with the IAEA and their lack of ability to enforce anything has been criticized by many since the Fukushima disasters."

"The nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima earlier this year shocked the world, but they shocked the Japanese people even more. For years they've been earnestly reassured by their governments and the energy companies that atomic power was safe, clean and cheap. Industry drove a well-oiled marketing machine, backed by buckets of government cash. A largely compliant, unquestioning media toed the line. For heavily industrialised, gadget and appliance obsessed, energy-hungry Japan, nuclear was the future. "

The operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant said Tuesday that it is concerned that radiation leakage at the plant could eventually exceed that of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe. ''The radiation leak has not stopped completely and our concern is that the amount of leakage could eventually reach that of Chernobyl or exceed it,'' an official from the Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. Meanwhile, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that most of the radioactive material released in the air from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant came from the No. 2 reactor damaged by an explosion on March 15. At 6:10 a.m. on March 15, part of the reactor's containment vessel was damaged following an apparent hydrogen explosion. Massive amounts of radioactive substances are believed to have been released from the suppression pool of the reactor, the agency said.

"A decade and a half before it blew apart in a hydrogen blast that punctuated the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, the No. 3 reactor at the Fukushima nuclear power plant was the scene of an earlier safety crisis. Then, as now, a small army of transient workers was put to work to try to stem the damage at the oldest nuclear reactor run by Japan's largest utility. At the time, workers were racing to finish an unprecedented repair to address a dangerous defect: cracks in the drum-like steel assembly known as the "shroud" surrounding the radioactive core of the reactor. But in 1997, the effort to save the 21-year-old reactor from being scrapped at a large loss to its operator, Tokyo Electric, also included a quiet effort to skirt Japan's safety rules: foreign workers were brought in for the most dangerous jobs, a manager of the project said. "

"Major Japanese commercial banks are in final talks to set a 400 billion yen syndicated credit line possibly in August for Tohoku Electric Power Co., which has had difficulties raising funds through debt issues amid the Fukushima nuclear crisis, sources close to the matter said Friday. The government-controlled Development Bank of Japan is also considering a low-interest crisis response loan worth some 150 billion yen to the utility serving northeastern Japan, which was devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, they said. The major commercial banks and the DBJ will thus provide a total of 550 billion yen to Tohoku Electric, following some 2 trillion yen in loans they extended by April to Tokyo Electric Power Co. plagued with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant crisis set off by the quake-tsunami disaster."

" Cumulative radiation outside the 20-kilometer radius of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the past three months has reached as high as 82 millisieverts, more than four times the yardstick of 20 millisieverts a year, a science ministry estimate showed Tuesday. The highest level was detected in a part of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, around 22 kilometers northwest of the nuclear plant crippled since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, according to the data compiled by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Namie is among the designated evacuation areas lying outside of the no-entry zone where radiation levels are feared to exceed the annual limit of 20 millisieverts. Of 160 monitoring sites in the designated areas outside the no-entry zone, 23 registered radiation levels exceeding 20 millisieverts over the three-month period, the ministry said. A man is scanned for levels of radiation in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, Sunday, March 13, 2011. (AP Photo/Mark Baker) A man is scanned for levels of radiation in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, Sunday, March 13, 2011. (AP Photo/Mark Baker) Outside the areas subject to evacuation, an area in the city of Minamisoma had an estimated cumulative radiation level of 20.4 millisieverts a year since the start of the crisis. (Mainichi Japan) June 22, 2011"