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"Japan's nuclear safety agency has more than doubled its estimate of the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. And plutonium believed to have come from the plant has also been found in a town near the facility - the first time plutonium has been found in soil outside the facility. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says it believes the earthquake-stricken Fukushima plant emitted nearly 800,000 terabecquerels of radioactive material into the air in the days after it was hit by a massive tsunami."

"The U.S. nuclear power industry, when responding to concerns raised by the nuclear disaster in Japan, leaned on lessons learned from the oil industry's response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a top official with the Nuclear Energy Institute said Thursday. The institute, the main trade group for nuclear power companies, crafted emergency plans and developed a communication strategy after analyzing the events surrounding the April 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Tony Pietrangelo, NEI's chief nuclear officer said. "We were fortunate, I think, as an industry," Pietrangelo said before a panel of nuclear specialists that works with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Following the BP PLC Deepwater Horizon explosion last year, "we kind of did a lessons-learned on that-how we would apply that to our industry if we had an event like that." "

"A Japanese nuclear power plant has come under fire for trying to sway the outcome of a public forum on atomic safety, dealing a fresh blow to the industry's credibility four months after the world's biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. An employee with Kyushu Electric Power Co instructed workers at the utility and its affiliates to pose as ordinary citizens and send e-mails backing the restart of nuclear reactors in southern Japan to a televised public hearing. A massive earthquake and tsunami crippled the coastal Fukushima-Daiichi power plant in northeast Japan on March 11, sparking a fuel-rod meltdown and the biggest nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. The plant is still leaking radiation in a protracted disaster which prompted the government to go back to "scratch" on its nuclear energy policy. Only 19 of Japan's 54 reactors are still running. "

"The Japanese prime minister has predicted it will take well over ten years to decommission the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. Water crippled the cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi plant following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. In the first government announcement since the disaster, Prime Minister Naoto Kan told members of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan on Saturday that the entire clean-up would require a long time-frame. "

"Around 45 percent of children in Fukushima Prefecture checked by the prefectural and central governments in late March experienced thyroid exposure to radiation, although in all cases in trace amounts that didn't warrant further examination, officials of the Nuclear Safety Commission said Tuesday. The survey was conducted on 1,080 children from newborns to age 15 in Iwaki, Kawamata and Iitate from March 26 to 30 in light of radiation leaking from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. Among children who tested positive for thyroid exposure, the amounts measured 0.04 microsievert per hour or less in most cases. The largest exposure was 0.1 microsievert per hour, equivalent to a yearly dose of 50 millisieverts for a 1-year-old."

"As part of our efforts to get readings for all of Japan, including many areas that have never had published measurements, we've been driving across the country taking readings constantly as we go. This provides some exceptionally detailed mapping of radiation levels along the routes we have traveled, we call this Safecasting. Featured Maps:"

"ROCKVILLE, Md. - When commercial nuclear power was getting its start in the 1960s and 1970s, industry and regulators stated unequivocally that reactors were designed only to operate for 40 years. Now they tell another story - insisting that the units were built with no inherent life span, and can run for up to a century, an Associated Press investigation shows. By rewriting history, plant owners are making it easier to extend the lives of dozens of reactors in a relicensing process that resembles nothing more than an elaborate rubber stamp. As part of a yearlong investigation of aging issues at the nation's nuclear power plants, the AP found that the relicensing process often lacks fully independent safety reviews. Records show that paperwork of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission sometimes matches word-for-word the language used in a plant operator's application."

"BUCHANAN - As America's nuclear power plants have aged, the once-rural areas around them have become far more crowded and much more difficult to evacuate. Yet government and industry have paid little heed, even as plants are running at higher power and posing more danger in the event of an accident, an Associated Press investigation has found. Populations around the facilities have swelled as much as 41/2 times since 1980, a computer-assisted population analysis shows. But some estimates of evacuation times have not been updated in decades, even as the population has increased more than ever imagined. Emergency plans would direct residents to flee on antiquated, two-lane roads that clog hopelessly at rush hour."

"LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found. Time after time, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have decided that original regulations were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased without peril, according to records and interviews. The result? Rising fears that these accommodations by the NRC are significantly undermining safety - and inching the reactors closer to an accident that could harm the public and jeopardize the future of nuclear power in the United States."

"The number and severity of the leaks has been escalating, even as federal regulators extend the licenses of more and more reactors across the nation. Tritium, which is a radioactive form of hydrogen, has leaked from at least 48 of 65 sites, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission records reviewed as part of the AP's yearlong examination of safety issues at aging nuclear power plants. Leaks from at least 37 of those facilities contained concentrations exceeding the federal drinking water standard. While most leaks have been found within plant boundaries, some have migrated off-site. But none is known to have reached public water supplies."

"Tokyo, June 19 (ANI): Four out of five Japanese want the nation's 54 nuclear reactors to be decommissioned either immediately or gradually following the crisis that evolved after the earth-quake-cum-tsunami hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on March 11, a poll has revealed. The Kyodo news agency quoted the Tokyo Shimbun daily poll as saying that only 14 percent respondents said that the reactors should continue operations, while 82 percent said that they should be decommissioned. A total of 54 percent of respondents said that the reactors should be decommissioned "while taking into account the power supply-and-demand situation," followed by 19 percent who want decommissioning to "start with ones undergoing periodic checks". Besides, nine percent demanded immediate scrapping of the nuclear plants, showing an absolute lack of confidence in the nation's atomic energy policy. (ANI)"

"A government official who released a book on May 20 criticizing the government's response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster has been asked to leave his post. Sources say that Shigeaki Koga, 55, attached to the secretariat of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), was asked by Kazuo Matsunaga, a high-ranking METI official, whether he could resign on July 15. Koga is said to have held off on responding, saying the request was "too sudden." Koga has also pushed for changes to the country's energy policy, such as a separation of electric power generation and transmission fiercely opposed by power companies, and criticized the Democratic Party of Japan's (DPJ) reforms to the civil service."

" 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"

"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."

"In order to address public concerns over post 3/11 food safety, the government should be more forthcoming in the monitoring and disclosure of data regarding radiation contamination of soil, Akira Sugenoya, mayor of Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, told this reporter recently. Sugenoya, a medical doctor, speaks from experience, having spent 5½ years from 1996 in the Republic of Belarus treating children with thyroid cancer. He was there because the incidence of that disease in children surged after the Chernobyl disaster in neighboring Ukraine in 1986. In that April 26 event, which involved an explosion and a fire at the nuclear power plant there, large amounts of radioactive substances were released into the atmosphere. Consequently, due to his unique experience, Sugenoya - who has held his position as mayor since 2004 - was asked by Japan's Food Safety Commission to share his opinion as an expert at a series of meetings convened in late March to set emergency radiation limits for domestic food."

"The whereabouts of about 30 subcontractors who helped deal with the crisis at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant is unknown, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said on June 20. The workers are among some 3,700 who worked to control the disaster in March, the month the plant was struck by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. The workers' names were listed in records showing that they had been loaned dosimeters, but when the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), contacted the companies they were associated with, the companies replied that there was no record of those workers. The ministry has branded TEPCO's administration of workers "sloppy" and ordered the company to conduct an investigation to identify the workers. "We don't know why there is no record of the workers. The records and dosimeters were managed by TEPCO and its administration can only be described as sloppy," a representative of the ministry's Labor Standards Bureau said. Ministry officials said that 3,639 emergency workers were enlisted to handle the nuclear crisis in March. As of June 20, TEPCO had reported provisional radiation exposure figures for 3,514 workers to the ministry. "

"Campaigners in Japan are asking people to grow sunflowers, said to help decontaminate radioactive soil, in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster that followed March's massive quake and tsunami. Volunteers are being asked to grow sunflowers this year, then send the seeds to the stricken area where they will be planted next year to help get rid of radioactive contaminants in the plant's fallout zone. The campaign, launched by young entrepreneurs and civil servants in Fukushima prefecture last month, aims to cover large areas in yellow blossoms as a symbol of hope and reconstruction and to lure back tourists. "We will give the seeds sent back by people for free to farmers, the public sector and other groups next year," said project leader Shinji Handa. The goal is a landscape so yellow that "it will surprise NASA", he said. The massive earthquake and tsunami left more than 23,000 people dead or missing on Japan's northeast coast and crippled the Fukushima nuclear power plant that has leaked radiation into the environment since. Almost 10,000 packets of sunflower seeds at 500 yen ($6) each have so far been sold to some 30,000 people, including to the city of Yokohama near Tokyo, which is growing sunflowers in 200 parks, Handa said."

"You won't hear this a lot, but several reactors at the Fukushima I nuclear power plant have been in full meltdown for a while now. The authorities don't know how to cool the reactors or remove the massively radioactive fuel cores. This is very likely now the world's worst ever nuclear disaster. By SIPHO HLONGWANE. The Tokyo Electrical Power Company (Tepco), the owners and operators of the Fukushima nuclear plant recently admitted the accident had released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl in 1986, which would make it the worst nuclear accident ever recorded. The crisis at the plant followed a 9.0 magnitude earthquake that hit off the coast of Japan on 11 March 2011, followed by a tsunami and series of aftershocks. The natural disaster left 23,000 people dead or missing, but also severely crippled the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The plant was hit by a barrage of tsunamis immediately after the earthquake, one measuring 14m, which caused a power loss in the plant and massive damage to low-lying generators and pumps. The plant's cooling facilities were crippled, leading to the overheating of the reactors."

"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. "

" 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."