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He noted that while the North Anna nuclear facility, near the quake's epicenter in Mineral, Va., successfully shut down Tuesday, one of its backup generators failed to work. The plant declared an "alert" — the second lowest of NRC's four emergency classifications. It regained its electricity seven hours later but is not yet back in operation. Twelve other nuclear power plants along the East Coast and upper Midwest declared an "unusual event," the lowest classification. They resumed normal operations by the end of Tuesday. They are: Peach Bottom, Three Mile Island, Susquehanna and Limerick in Pennsylvania; Salem, Hope Creek and Oyster Creek in New Jersey; Calvert Cliffs in Maryland; Surry in Virginia; Shearon Harris in North Carolina and D.C. Cook and Palisades in Michigan.

"It's unclear how they (U.S. reactors) would stand up," says Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit group critical of nuclear energy. He says the lack of transparency about their preparedness "provides an additional smokescreen" that implies the public should just trust them. "It's not 'trust us.' It's a regulatory process," says Steve Kerekes, spokesman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group. He says each plant looks at historic seismic activity in its area, designs against that and upgrades systems as needed. Last year alone, he says, the industry spent about $7 billion on capital improvements.

Yet not all that money was spent on safety, and the regulatory process is "based on industry self-assessment," says Robert Alvarez, scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and former senior adviser at the Department of Energy. "You can imagine the conflicts of interest that arise." So how prepared each nuclear plant is for an earthquake, he says, is "pretty much what the operators say it is."

Jim Norvelle, spokesman of Dominion Virginia Power, which operates the North Anna plant, says its two reactors were built to withstand ground motion of 0.12g to 0.18g, depending on soil composition. He says that translates into magnitudes of 5.9 to 6.2. He says that although one backup diesel generator leaked when Tuesday's quake cut off power, the plant had a spare generator and redundant safety systems to keep the reactors' radioactive cores cool.

Any exposure to radioactivity, no matter how slight, boosts cancer risk, according to the National Academy of Sciences. Federal regulators set a limit for how much tritium is allowed in drinking water, where this contaminant poses its main health risk. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says tritium should measure no more than 20,000 picocuries per liter in drinking water. The agency estimates seven of 200,000 people who drink such water for decades would develop cancer.

The tritium leaks also have spurred doubts among independent engineers about the reliability of emergency safety systems at the 104 nuclear reactors situated on the 65 sites. That's partly because some of the leaky underground pipes carry water meant to cool a reactor in an emergency shutdown and to prevent a meltdown. Fast moving, tritium can indicate the presence of more powerful radioactive isotopes, like cesium-137 and strontium-90.

So far, federal and industry officials say, the tritium leaks pose no health or safety threat. Tony Pietrangelo, chief nuclear officer of the industry's Nuclear Energy Institute, said impacts are "next to zero." LEAKS ARE PROLIFIC

Like rust under a car, corrosion has propagated for decades along the hard-to-reach, wet underbellies of the reactors — generally built in a burst of construction during the 1960s and 1970s. There were 38 leaks from underground piping between 2000 and 2009, according to an industry document presented at a tritium conference. Nearly two-thirds of the leaks were reported over the latest five years

For example, at the three-unit Browns Ferry complex in Alabama, a valve was mistakenly left open in a storage tank during modifications over the years. When the tank was filled in April 2010, about 1,000 gallons (3,785 liters) of tritium-laden water poured onto the ground at a concentration of 2 million picocuries per liter. In drinking water, that would be 100 times higher than the EPA health standard. And in 2008, 7.5 million picocuries per liter leaked from underground piping at Quad Cities in western Illinois — 375 times the EPA limit.

Subsurface water not only rusts underground pipes, it attacks other buried components, including electrical cables that carry signals to control operations. A 2008 NRC staff memo reported industry data showing 83 failed cables between 21 and 30 years of service - but only 40 within their first 10 years of service. Underground cabling set in concrete can be extraordinarily difficult to replace.

Under NRC rules, tiny concentrations of tritium and other contaminants are routinely released in monitored increments from nuclear plants; leaks from corroded pipes are not permitted. The leaks sometimes go undiscovered for years, the AP found. Many of the pipes or tanks have been patched, and contaminated soil and water have been removed in some places. But leaks are often discovered later from other nearby piping, tanks or vaults. Mistakes and defective material have contributed to some leaks. However, corrosion - from decades of use and deterioration - is the main cause. And, safety engineers say, the rash of leaks suggest nuclear operators are hard put to maintain the decades-old systems.

Asahi, slightly better perspective but not much, but the article does quite the organizers' number, 60,000 people:

and the US paper Forbes, without photo, says "tens of thousands of people marched", but the article title declares "Thousands march against nuclear power in Tokyo". Thousands??Many participants in Japan are indignant that their demonstration was called a "parade", as if this was some festival attraction. Well, give the media time to learn. To me, it's amazing that the MSMs like Yomiuri and Asahi covered the event at all, and even had photographs. Asahi and Mainichi sent in their own photographers for the event. (Yomiuri's looks like Jiji Tsushin's photo.) I would take it as a sign that the anti-nuke movement may be crossing the threshold in Japan in terms of the number of people, and the MSMs cannot simply ignore anymore.

Calling it a "parade" and using the lowest official estimate by the police as the number of participants is a classic way to belittle a movement.

"It's the things inside the buildings that may have been shaken more than the design called for," Burnell said, adding that the buildings themselves appear to have been less affected. He said the analysis is based on a seismograph reading taken about 30 miles away by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Whatever the final numbers on shaking or ground motion, the plant withstood the jolts, Burnell said, indicating there's a "great deal" of safety margin."That margin was certainly enough for North Anna this time," he said.

"Maybe you shouldn't rely on the margin," said Edwin Lyman at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an organization critical of nuclear energy. "The jury is still out," he said, on whether the plant was adequately designed.The two reactors at the North Anna plant, which began operation in 1978 and 1980, have remained closed since the Aug. 23 quake. They automatically shut down after losing off-site power. Backup diesel generators kept their cores cool until electricity was restored several hours later.

Dan Stoddard, Dominion's senior vice president of operations, said Friday that initial readings from the facility's scratch plates and other monitors indicate its shaking during the quake exceeded its design, but he declined to give numbers. Dominion officials plan to brief the NRC today on those findings.

Not only you see children, but the parents are seen in shorts, T-shirts, no masks, no protective gear. They have rakes, shovels and brooms as tools. Tsukuba City's webpage shows houses right next to the school yard. (I bet they were not too happy to see the dust flying up from the operation.)The website of this particular school proudly announces the radiation level decreased by 0.002 to 0.01 microsievert/hour for the school yard. The radiation level dropped by two-third in ditches and under the rain gutters by removing the dirt.

Why did the school do this nearly useless "decontamination" which hardly reduced the radiation level except under the gutters and in the ditches? Probably to "alleviate fear and anxiety" among parents, as every single politician and bureaucrat in Japan spouts these days. Now the school is all set for its annual autumn school athletic meet.

It's all in your head, they say.I still occasionally see some tweets by people from high radiation areas saying "We'll adapt to high radiation quickly, won't we? After all, there are locations in the world with 10 millisieverts/year radiation!" Well, according to Dr. Alexey Yablokov (link is PDF file), it takes about 20 generations or 400 years for people to become less sensitive to radiation effect.

In a news release issued late Tuesday, the NRC said that the 12 steps recommended in the report would "increase safety and redefine what level of protection to public health is regarded as adequate." The full report will be released on Wednesday, the NRC said.

The panel will tell the commission that nuclear plant operators should be ordered to re-evaluate their earthquake and flood risk, add equipment to address simultaneous damage to multiple reactors and make sure electrical power and instruments are in place to monitor and cool spent fuel pools after a disaster.

members admit that the current patchwork of regulations is not given equal consideration or treatment by power plant operators or by the NRC, during its technical reviews and inspections

But Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, ranking member of the Senate environment committee, said such sweeping changes were premature. "Changes in our system may be necessary," Inhofe said, but "a nuclear accident in Japan should not automatically be viewed as an indictment of U.S. institutional structures and nuclear safety requirements."

"A 90-day review does not permit a complete picture of the still-emerging situation," said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute. "Therefore, we strongly recommend that the NRC seek additional information from Japan that would help establish the basis for actions."