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Nuclear Phase-Out Related articles, background features and opinions about this topic. Print E-Mail Feedback 07/13/2011   Phase-Out Hurdle Germany Could Restart Nuclear Plant to Plug Energy Gap dapd Germany might need to switch a nuclear power plant back on. Germany's energy agency is warning that one of the German reactors mothballed in the wake of Fukushima may have to be restarted to make up for possible power shortages this winter and next. Berlin is also   using money earmarked for energy efficiency to subsidize coal-fired power plants. For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol. Nuclear energy, as has become abundantly clear this year, has no future in Germany. For once the government, the parliament and the public all agree: Atomic reactors in the country will be history a decade from now. Before that can happen, however, the country has to find alternate power sources. In fact, amid concerns that supply shortages this winter could result in temporary blackouts, Germany's Federal Network Agency on Tuesday indicated that one of the seven reactors shut down in the immediate wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan could be restarted this winter to fill the gap . "The numbers that we currently have indicate that one of these nuclear energy plants will be needed," said agency head Matthias Kurth on Tuesday in Berlin. He said that ongoing analysis has indicated that fossil fuel-powered plants would not prove to be adequate as a backup.

Nuclear Phase-Out Related articles, background features and opinions about this topic. Print E-Mail Feedback 07/13/2011   Phase-Out Hurdle Germany Could Restart Nuclear Plant to Plug Energy Gap dapd Germany might need to switch a nuclear power plant back on. Germany's energy agency is warning that one of the German reactors mothballed in the wake of Fukushima may have to be restarted to make up for possible power shortages this winter and next. Berlin is also   using money earmarked for energy efficiency to subsidize coal-fired power plants. For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol. Nuclear energy, as has become abundantly clear this year, has no future in Germany. For once the government, the parliament and the public all agree: Atomic reactors in the country will be history a decade from now. Before that can happen, however, the country has to find alternate power sources. In fact, amid concerns that supply shortages this winter could result in temporary blackouts, Germany's Federal Network Agency on Tuesday indicated that one of the seven reactors shut down in the immediate wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan could be restarted this winter to fill the gap

Nuclear Phase-Out Related articles, background features and opinions about this topic. Print E-Mail Feedback 07/13/2011  Phase-Out Hurdle Germany Could Restart Nuclear Plant to Plug Energy Gap dapd Germany might need to switch a nuclear power plant back on. Germany's energy agency is warning that one of the German reactors mothballed in the wake of Fukushima may have to be restarted to make up for possible power shortages this winter and next. Berlin is also using money earmarked for energy efficiency to subsidize coal-fired power plants.

Economies around the world continue to grow, and the need for electricity, near-carbon-free, reliable, and low-cost energy is growing tremendously. In order to reap the benefits of nuclear energy, to effectively bridge the demand supply gap for India and to also necessitate the need to bring the industry at one platform, UBM India is pleased to bring the 3rd edition of ‘India Nuclear Energy 2011’ – International Exhibition and Conference. India Nuclear Energy 2011 will be held from 29th September – 1st October, 2011 at the Bombay Exhibition Centre, Goregaon (East), Mu

India Nuclear Energy 2011 is co-partnered by Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), the nodal Government body in the Indian Nuclear Energy sector and Supported by Indian Nuclear Society (INS). The topic of discussion at the press conference revolved around India’s use of nuclear energy to meet growing electricity demand and to endorse programs to expand the peaceful use of nuclear energy while minimizing the risks of proliferation. The Conference provides a platform for luminaries from the power sector and the government to share their views on India’s Nuclear Power future. Mr. S.K. Malhotra, Department of Atomic Energy (Government of India), Mr. M.V. Kotwal, Senior Executive Vice-President and Director, L&T, Mr. Eric P. Loewen, President, American Nuclear Society, and Mr. Sanjeev Khaira, MD, UBM India, addressed the media.

Mr. Sanjeev Khaira, MD–UBM India said: “India’s effort has been to achieve continuous improvement and innovation in nuclear safety.  The basic principle being, for all projects the Government gives priority to people’s safety as generation of power. This is important at a time when we are in the process of expanding nuclear capacity at an incredible pace.” In tandem with the Asian peers India is recording a high growth rate and the demand for energy is always on the upper curve. India is facing an acute shortage of fuel, like the coal and gas. Primarily, India has coal-fired (thermal) stations; however the shortage is forcing the power producers to resort to importing coal, which is more expensive. This in turn has caused prices of power to increase and the shortage has also resulted in certain regions facing power failures.

It took Japan’s Fukushima disaster to make nuclear energy interesting to students in Karl Craddock’s advanced placement chemistry class at William Fremd High School in Palatine, Ill. Too bad the buzz was about radiation plumes, iodine pills, and potential deadly threats at nuclear power plants that generate more than half the electricity in Illinois. It wasn’t the sort of talk to get kids excited about a career in nuclear energy. “It doesn’t have the cool factor right now, that’s for sure,” says Craddock, who has taught science at the suburban Chicago high school for seven years.

Nuclear utilities in the U.S. will need to hire nearly 25,000 people to replace the 39 percent of its workforce that will be eligible for retirement by 2016, says Carol L. Berrigan, senior director for industry infrastructure for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington-based trade group. Meanwhile, U.S. universities awarded a total of 715 graduate and undergraduate degrees in nuclear engineering in 2009, the most recent year for which data is available.

After nuclear plant disasters at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Chernobyl in Ukraine, nuclear power lost political support in the U.S. Hiring slowed through the 1990s and nuclear workers under the age of 40 became a rarity as talk turned from expansion to shutting down existing plants. “That’s not an exciting prospect for a young person thinking about their career,” says K.L. “Lee” Peddicord, a professor of nuclear engineering and director of the Nuclear Power Institute at Texas A&M University.

SciDev.Net reporters from around the world tell us which countries are set on developing nuclear energy despite the Fukushima accident. The quest for energy independence, rising power needs and a desire for political weight all mean that few developing countries with nuclear ambitions have abandoned them in the light of the Fukushima accident. Jordan's planned nuclear plant is part of a strategy to deal with acute water and energy shortages.

The Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) wants Jordan to get 60 per cent of its energy from nuclear by 2035. Currently, obtaining energy from neighbouring Arab countries costs Jordan about a fifth of its gross domestic product. The country is also one of the world's most water-poor nations. Jordan plans to desalinate sea water from the Gulf of Aqaba to the south, then pump it to population centres in Amman, Irbid, and Zarqa, using its nuclear-derived energy. After the Fukushima disaster, Jordan started re-evaluating safety procedures for its nuclear reactor, scheduled to begin construction in 2013. The country also considered more safety procedures for construction and in ongoing geological and environmental investigations.

The government would not reverse its decision to build nuclear reactors in Jordan because of the Fukushima disaster," says Abdel-Halim Wreikat, vice Chairman of the JAEC. "Our plant type is a third-generation pressurised water reactor, and it is safer than the Fukushima boiling water reactor." Wreikat argues that "the nuclear option for Jordan at the moment is better than renewable energy options such as solar and wind, as they are still of high cost." But some Jordanian researchers disagree. "The cost of electricity generated from solar plants comes down each year by about five per cent, while the cost of producing electricity from nuclear power is rising year after year," says Ahmed Al-Salaymeh, director of the Energy Centre at the University of Jordan. He called for more economic feasibility studies of the nuclear option.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. should cut costs by around twice as much as it is aiming for over the next 10 years if it expects to compensate victims of the nuclear crisis at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, a government panel said Monday.

In its report, the third-party panel also urged the utility to review its price-setting regime because its findings suggest that household power bills may be unnecessarily high due to cost overestimates on Tepco's side. One estimate in the report states that compensation payments could reach around ¥4.54 trillion by March 2013, including about ¥3.64 trillion for around a year starting from March 11, the day when the megaquake and tsunami crippled the plant.

The panel, tasked with scrutinizing Tepco's financial standing, submitted the report to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. It is part of the process the utility must take to get state aid for the compensation payments. Calling the report a "starting point," Noda said the government would "strictly" check Tepco's rationalization efforts and look into the country's electricity pricing system. The outcome of the study, which started in June, showed that Tepco could cut ¥2.55 trillion in costs by fiscal 2020 by reducing personnel and other expenses. But Tepco's plan shows costs would only be cut by ¥1.19 trillion. The panel, meanwhile, urged Tepco's managers to take responsibility by jettisoning executives and other means if it intends to win financial aid from the state-backed Nuclear Damage Compensation Facilitation Corp.

Beef contaminated by radiation from Fukushima prefecture has been eaten by consumers in Japan, intensifying food-safety concerns and stoking criticism against a government testing program that checks only selected products.

About 437 kilograms (963 pounds) of beef from a farm in Minami-Soma city, 30 kilometers from the stricken Fukushima Dai- Ichi nuclear station, was consumed in eight prefectures, according to the Tokyo metropolitan government, which detected the first case of tainted beef from the farm earlier this month.

Products including spinach, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, tea, milk, plums and fish have been found to be contaminated with cesium and iodine as far as 360 kilometers from Dai-Ichi. Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the stricken station, said June 14 it found cesium in milk tested near another nuclear reactor site about 210 kilometers from the damaged plant.

Germany will be redirecting its economy towards renewable energy, because of the political decision to decommission its nuclear plants, triggered by the Fukushima event in Japan and subsequent public opposition to nuclear energy. Germany's decision would make achieving its 2020 CO2 emission reduction targets more difficult.   To achieve the CO2 emissions reduction targets and replace nuclear energy, renewable energy would need to scale up from 17% in 2010 to 57% of total electricity generation of 603 TWh in 2020, according to a study by The Breakthrough Institute. As electricity generation was 603 TWh in 2010, increased energy efficiency measures will be required to flat-line electricity production during the next 9 years.   Germany has 23 nuclear reactors (21.4 GW), 8 are permanently shut down (8.2 GW) and 15 (13.2 GW) will be shut down by 2022. Germany will be adding a net of 5 GW of coal plants, 5 GW of new CCGT plants and 1.4 GW of new biomass plants in future years. The CCGT plants will reduce the shortage of quick-ramping generation capacity for accommodating variable wind and solar energy to the grid.

Germany is planning a $14 billion build-out of transmission systems for onshore and future offshore wind energy in northern Germany and for augmented transmission with France for CO2-free hydro and nuclear energy imports to avoid any shortages.    Germany had fallen behind on transmission system construction in the north because of public opposition and is using the nuclear plant shutdown as leverage to reduce public opposition. Not only do people have to look at a multitude of 450-ft tall wind turbines, but also at thousands of 80 to 135 ft high steel structures and wires of the transmission facilities.   The $14 billion is just a minor down payment on the major grid reorganization required due to the decommissioning of the nuclear plants and the widely-dispersed build-outs of renewables. The exisitng grid is mostly large-central-plant based. 

This article includes the estimated capital costs of shutting down Germany's nuclear plants, reorganizing the grids of Germany and its neighbors, and building out renewables to replace the nuclear energy.    Germany’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG) in 2000, guarantees investors above-market fees for solar power for 20 years from the point of installation. In 2010, German investments in  renewables was about $41.2 billion, of which about $36.1 billion in 7,400 MW of solar systems ($4,878/kW). In 2010, German incentives for all renewables was about $17.9 billion, of which about half was for solar systems.   The average subsidy in 2010 was about ($9 billion x 1 euro/1.4 $)/12 TWh = 53.6 eurocents/kWh; no wonder solar energy is so popular in Germany. These subsidies are rolled into electric rates as fees or taxes, and will ultimately make Germany less competitive in world markets.   http://thebreakthrough.org/blog//2011/06/analysis_germanys_plan_to_phas-print.html http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-31/merkel-faces-achilles-heel-in-grids-to-unplug-german-nuclear.html http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/829664/revealed_how_your_country_compares_on_renewable_investment.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany  

A significant shortfall in nuclear power engineers and administrators is nearing a critical stage in China, with 27 new reactors under construction. Under Beijing's long-term project to increase the number of China's nuclear power plants, 6,000 new hires are needed each year in the nuclear power sector, but only several hundred college students who meet the job requirements graduate in the entire nation every year. Given that the July 23 high-speed train accident in Wenzhou that killed 40 people underscored China's inefficient system to train railway workers, concerns have also arisen that accidents could occur in a nuclear power industry lacking properly trained engineers and administrators. The shortage of workers in the nuclear power sector was reported by Chen Shaomin, professor of the engineering physics department at Tsinghua University, at the 2nd China International Nuclear Symposium, held from Oct. 20-22 in Hong Kong. The event was organized by the Chinese Nuclear Energy Association, a leading nuclear power industry organization in China.

The engineering physics department at the school has been designated by the government as a special division to train nuclear power personnel. Currently, 14 nuclear reactors are in operation in China, where about 14,000 engineers and administrators, as well as about 7,000 researchers, worked as of 2010. Twenty-seven new reactors are under construction--although approval of new construction projects has been suspended since the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant crisis--while 33 prospective sites are awaiting construction approval from the government. According to Chen, 700 to 1,000 workers are required for each reactor. If all new reactors are built by 2020 as planned by the project, about 60,000 new recruits--which means 6,000 new workers each year on average--will be needed to keep reactors operational.

(Reuters) - Japanese utilities will largely avoid power shortages this winter despite prolonged reactor shutdowns amid public concerns over nuclear safety, but hurdles remain for next summer, the government said on Tuesday.

It also unveiled ways to bridge the gap next summer, when peak-hour demand is expected to exceed supply by 16,560 megawatts, compared with the biggest gap this winter of 2,530 MW in one area, if no reactors restart by then.

Utilities plan to secure additional fossil-fuel capacity of 4,090 MW by next summer, but other plans depend on how far policy initiatives, such as fiscal spending, can encourage energy conservation and the use of solar and wind power, leaving the risk of rolling blackouts.

South Korea's oldest nuclear reactor -- shut down since March -- will resume operations, the government said. The announcement Monday coincides with a power shortage warning by the government amid a heat wave that has stretched for 10 days. Built in 1977, the Kori-1 reactor, in the southern port city of Busan, had been shut down since March after it briefly lost power in February during a safety check. That blackout was covered up by officials for more than a month.

The International Atomic Energy Agency gave the go-ahead for the 578-megawatt reactor to restart following a safety check in June. While Korea's Nuclear Safety and Security Commission approved the restart on July 4, it has faced strong opposition from activists and residents.

Nature magazine reports Hiromitsu Ino, an emeritus professor of materials science at the University of Tokyo, as saying that Kori-1 isn't safe to operate because the weld material in the pressure vessel has degraded. "Any 50 nuclear power plants in Japan are much better than Kori-1," he said.

TONY EASTLEY: Still in Japan and the ABC has obtained documents revealing the lengths being taken to keep work at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant secret and to stop workers there from actually talking to the media.One former worker at the plant has told the ABC how they were given sub-standard protective gear after the accidents.North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy reports from Iwaki City in Fukushima.MARK WILLACY: Inside the leeching and twisted remains of the Fukushima nuclear plant 3000 workers are labouring to stabilise the melted reactor cores.It's dirty and dangerous work, and some workers claim they're being exposed and exploited.

: "I was not told how much radiation I would be exposed to or how high the radiation would be," says this man who worked at the Fukushima plant during the meltdowns. "They just gave me an anorak to wear and sent me to work. I worked at installing vents inside the reactor buildings to get rid of the steam so we could avert another explosion," he tells me.There's a good reason why this Fukushima worker doesn't want his identity revealed and that's because like others, he's been gagged.The ABC has obtained a document drawn up by one of the Fukushima subcontractors. It demands that its employees at the plant keep all of their work secret and under no circumstances are they permitted to talk to the media.

But that hasn't stopped Hiroyuki Watanabe from snooping about

Japanese government lifted evacuating area from Minami soma shi on 9/30/2011. However,about 30,000 of 71500 people have not come back yet. Medical staff escaped too. Hospitals are suffering from shortage of man power though they should evacuate actually. Minamisoma city hospital is one of the major hospitals ,where is only 23 km from the Fukushima plants.

In this hospital ,doctors and nurse evacuated too. Full time doctor ; 14 → 8 Nurse ; 136 → 100 Beds ; 230 → 100 Apart from Minami soma city hospital , 2 of 8 hospitals were closed , 13 of 39 clinics were closed too.

There were about 900 medical staff but now it’s only 300 in total. Remaining medical staff are thinking that’s because the national support is not enough. Fukushima local government therefore has decided to spend 2 billion of 12 billion yen of tax allocation grant for medical care on these areas. It will be spent to re-employ evacuated doctors or hire new doctors.

Seventy percent of the Japanese public supports centre-left Prime Minister Naoto Kan's policy to make the country nuclear free in future but most people still want him to quit, a poll said Sunday

Kan said earlier this month that the country must gradually reduce its reliance on atomic power with the eventual goal of becoming nuclear-free, despite fears that power shortages could slow an already limping economy.

Kan's scepticism about boosting nuclear power in the quake-prone island nation has also set him on a collision course with pro-nuclear lawmakers, both in the conservative opposition and within his own party.

A shortage of skilled engineers is threatening to hamper efforts by BP to boost production in the North Sea, a senior executive has said. The oil giant is expected to recruit between 150 and 300 jobs a year but admits that one of its biggest problems is finding the right people with the right skills. The comments, reported in the Sunday Telegraph, come a month after BP and its partners announced plans to invest £3 billion in redeveloping two oil fields off the Shetland Islands. The move should create hundreds of new jobs but Trevor Garlick, head of the company's North Sea operations, said BP would struggle to attract enough engineers for the available roles. He said

"Getting hold of the right people is a real issue for us. We are hiring a lot of people, but we are also an exporter of a couple of hundred people to other regions. We are a centre for recruiting elsewhere.

Part 2: Workers Pushed to Their Limits TEPCO is preparing to spend decades in J-Village. Workers have spread gravel around the large soccer stadium and in a number of adjacent areas. Here they have placed row after row of gray trailers. There are 40 per row and they sit two stories high, extending right up to the blue plastic seats in the stands. The stadium's large scoreboard still hangs behind this makeshift community. The stadium clock has stopped at 2:46 p.m., which was the moment when the earthquake cut off the electricity here and at the power plant 20 kilometers (12 miles) away. Now, the power is on again and white neon lights illuminate the rows of trailers. In one room the workers can pick up bento boxes. Next door TEPCO has built a laundromat with more than a hundred washing machines. Behind the main building in J-Village, buses are parked on the former soccer fields and debris is stored in large plastic bags on the tartan track.

Stacks of Contaminated Suits In the courtyard of the main building, TEPCO has had a small store built, where workers can purchase cigarettes and tea. Some of them, still wearing their work overalls, have gathered around a number of ashtrays and are smoking in silence. There is an Adidas advertisement glued to one of the doors and an obsolete warning sign: "No SPIKES!" An exhausted worker is asleep on the floor in the hallway.

In the window of the atrium hang huge banners for TEPCO Mareeze, the soccer team that belongs to the energy company. In the center of the building stands a panel with a large white and green map of J-Village. There was a time when this was there to help athletes find their way around. Now, a man in a TEPCO uniform stands here and uses a red felt pen to post the current radiation levels for over a dozen different places on the premises. Three TEPCO employees are sitting nearby with their laptops. The workers hand them their daily dosimeters. In return, they are given a receipt that resembles a cash register sales slip and shows the dose of radiation that they have received that day.

The Swiss parliament's upper house on Wednesday approved plans to phase out the country's nuclear plants over the next two decades in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan.It followed a June vote by the lower chamber to back an exit from nuclear energy recommended by the government, which had earlier frozen plans for a new construction programme after the Fukushima atomic plant explosion.

Bern said it would count on the development of its already considerable hydro-electric plants and other renewable energy to make up for the loss of nuclear power, while not ruling out importing electricity.If necessary the country could also fall back on electricity produced by fossil fuels, a statement added, while still respecting targets set under Switzerland's climate change policy.Under the government's recommendation, the first nuclear plant to be shut down would be Beznau I in 2019, followed by Beznau II and Muehleberg in 2022, Goegen in 2029 and Leibstadt in 2034.

The government predicted that such a programmed phasing out nuclear energy would favour businesses involved in green technology, boost employment and help Switzerland deal with expected rising electricity prices in Europe.Initial calculations estimate that the cost of reshaping the country's energy resources, offset by measures to cut consumption, would cost the country between 0.4 percent and 0.7 percent of gros s domestic product per year.Environment and Energy Minister Doris Leuthard also noted that nuclear energy was anyway becoming more expensive, due to the rising cost of making plants safer and more secure.However, the move to halt atomic energy was opposed by the federation of Swiss businesses EconomieSuisse, which had slammed it as an "irresponsible decision."The association of Swiss electricity companies applauded the decision for a progressive end to nuclear energy, rather than an immediate stop."The continuation of these plants gives us time to find solutions amid a shortage as well as implement more efficient measures," it said.

An experiment to test the power of sunflowers to absorb toxic radiation has failed to prove effective near the site of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan.  The Asahi Shimbun reports that the sunflowers removed only .05 percent of the radioactive cesium in the ground, while the  removal of just over an inch (3 centimeters) of topsoil along with grass removed up to 97 percent of the radioactive cesium. It was hoped that sunflowers would concentrate radioactive waste and could then be removed more easily than the wholesale “scraping” of soil and compost that it seems will  be required. In the meantime scientists are studying ways to decontaminate the forests near the nuclear accident site. According to the Japan Times, the prefecture (county) where the plant is located is 70% forested, and efforts to date have focused on decontaminating urban areas. Removing the contaminated soil and other material from the forest requires such extreme removal methods that the forest’s ecosystem will be seriously damaged.

Whether the radiation is removed by scraping soil or removing plant matter, the radioactive waste still needs to be safely stored. The government has not yet selected a permanent storage site for the tons of soil and debris that needs to be sequestered. Anti-Nuclear Protests Hit Tokyo

The Japanese public’s trust in nuclear power is clearly ebbing, as tens of thousands of citizens took to the streets of Tokyo today (Monday) to protest nuclear power. Police estimated the crowd at 20,000 (while organizers claimed more) as protesters carried signs saying “Sayonara Nuclear Power” to urge the government to eliminate nuclear power from the nation’s energy grid.  Nuclear accounted for 30 percent of Japan’s energy use prior to the Fukushima incident. There have been energy shortages as 30 of the country’s 54 reactors have been taken off line to enable inspections. Large businesses have been asked to take measures to conserve energy, such as adjusting thermostats, varying schedules around peak demand and cutting back on overtime. It has been six months since three of the Fukushima nuclear plant’s six reactors experienced meltdowns following a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami. Surrounding air, soil and water was contaminated and 100,000 residents were forced to evacuate.

Japan Failed to Hand Out Radiation Pills, Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2011:

[...] In interviews with The Wall Street Journal, several national and local government officials and advisers [...] cited an abrupt move by the government shortly after the accident, when local officials raised sharply the level of radiation exposure that would qualify an individual for iodine pills [...] According to official disaster manuals written before the accident, anyone who showed radiation readings of 13,000 counts per minute [...] was to be given KI pills [...] On March 14, Fukushima prefecture raised that cutoff to 100,000 cpm. [...] The World Health Organization advocates [1,300 cpm] for giving the medication to children. [...]

“When they told us they wanted to raise the screening level, we instantly knew we had a serious level of contamination [...] They were implicitly telling us they had more people than they could handle logistically, amid the shortage of water, clothing and manpower.” -Gen Suzuki, a physician specializing in radiation research and adviser to Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission Gauges on radiation monitors set for 13,000 cpm going off repeatedly: “It was very clear the previous level of 13,000 cpm wouldn’t work [...] We discussed how the staff should turn off alarm sounds and refrain from wearing protective suits and face masks in order not to fan worries among residents.” -Naoki Matsuda, a professor of radiation biology at Nagasaki University and an adviser to the Fukushima prefecture government

Beyond the police roadblocks that mark the no-go zone around the wrecked Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, 2-meter-tall weeds invade rice paddies and vines gone wild strangle road signs along empty streets. Takako Harada, 80, returned to an evacuated area of Iitate, a village in Fukushima Prefecture, to retrieve her car. Beside her house is an empty cattle pen, the 100 cows slaughtered on government orders after radiation from the March 11 atomic disaster saturated the area, forcing 160,000 people to move away and leaving some places uninhabitable for two decades or more. "Older folks want to return, but the young worry about radiation," said Harada, whose family ran the farm for 40 years. "I want to farm, but will we be able to sell anything?"

What is emerging six months since the nuclear meltdowns at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant is a radioactive zone bigger than that left by the 1945 atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

While nature reclaims the 20-km no-go zone, Fukushima's ¥240 billion a year farm industry is being devastated and tourists that hiked the prefecture's mountains and surfed off its beaches have all but vanished.