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"Absolutely no progress is being made" towards the final resolution of the crisis, Suzuki told reporters at a Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan news conference on Dec. 15. Suzuki, 55, worked for a Toshiba Corp. subsidiary as a general laborer there from July 13 to Aug. 22, documenting sloppy repair work, companies including plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) playing fast and loose with their workers' radiation doses, and a marked concern for appearances over the safety of employees or the public.

For example, the no-entry zones around the plant -- the 20-kilometer radius exclusion zone and the extension covering most of the village of Iitate and other municipalities -- have more to do with convenience that actual safety, Suzuki says. "(Nuclear) technology experts I've spoken to say that there are people living in areas where no one should be. It's almost as though they're living inside a nuclear plant," says Suzuki. Based on this and his own radiation readings, he believes the 80-kilometer-radius evacuation advisory issued by the United States government after the meltdowns was "about right," adding that the government probably decided on the current no-go zones to avoid the immense task of evacuating larger cities like Iwaki and Fukushima.

The situation at the plant itself is no better, where he says much of the work is simply "for show," fraught with corporate jealousies and secretiveness and "completely different" from the "all-Japan" cooperative effort being presented by the government.

Toshiba plans to sell some of its controlling stake in nuclear-power unit Westinghouse Electric as it looks to form an alliance to tap demand in emerging markets, reports said Tuesday. The Japanese engineering giant, which holds about 67 percent of Westinghouse, said it would sell as much as 16 percent of the US firm to buyers with a foothold in nations eager to build nuclear plants, after demand in post-Fukushima Japan fell away.

After 34 years, the United States is expected to resume construction of nuclear reactors by the end of the year, and Toshiba will export turbine equipment for the reactors to the U.S. early next month, it was learned Saturday. According to sources, construction will begin by year-end on the Nos. 3 and 4 reactors of the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia Georgia Country Georgia /ˈdʒɔrdʒə/ (Georgian: საქართველო, sak’art’velo IPA: [sɑkʰɑrtʰvɛlɔ] ( listen)) is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern E... View full Dossier Latest news and the Nos. 2 and 3 reactors of the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in South Carolina South Carolina U.S. state South Carolina /ˌsaʊθ kærəˈlaɪnə/ is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally pa... View full Dossier Latest news .

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Nuclear Regulatory Commission Government Agency (United States of America) The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency of the United States government that was established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 from the United States Atomic Energy C... View full Dossier Latest news is expected to shortly approve the construction and operation of the reactors, which have been designed by Westinghouse, a subsidiary of Toshiba. The decision to resume construction of reactors is expected to pave the way for Japan Japan Country Japan /dʒəˈpæn/ (Japanese: 日本 Nihon or Nippon; formally 日本国  Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, literally, the State of Japan) is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the... View full Dossier Latest news to export related equipment to the United States, observers said.

The reactors to be constructed are of the AP1000 type

In Japan's most aggressive move to promote exports of nuclear technology since the Fukushima Daiichi accident in March, a Tokyo-based utility consortium signed a deal with Vietnam on Wednesday to conduct a feasibility study for two new reactors. The agreement comes as a lifeline to Japan's nuclear industry, which harbors ambitions of expanding abroad, even as its future is in doubt at home. Amid a post-disaster reassessment of energy policy, the government has vowed to reduce dependence on nuclear power for domestic electricity generation. But it has continued to push nuclear technology in overseas markets.

For Vietnam, where rapid economic growth has increased demand for electricity, the contract with Japan Atomic Power Co. offers a way to diversify its energy mix beyond two Russian nuclear reactors currently under construction. The Vietnamese government said last year it plans 13 nuclear reactors at eight separate plants with a combined capacity of 15,000 megawatts by 2030. "This important milestone ... shows Vietnam's determination to develop nuclear power plants, especially in the face of global economic difficulties and after the incident at Japan's Fukushima plant," Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Hoang Quoc Vuong said at the signing ceremony in Hanoi. He said he expects nuclear power to account for 7% of Vietnam's installed generation capacity by 2030.

Lessons from the Fukushima disaster will be taken into account in the Vietnamese project, according to officials from Japan Atomic Power, a consortium of Japan's nine nuclear utilities, including Fukushima Daiichi plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501.TO). "We pledge to work hard to ensure the nuclear power development of Vietnam," said Japan Atomic Power President Yasuo Hamada. Vietnamese officials said Japan will build advanced boiling water reactors (ABWR), a type of technology used by Hitachi Ltd. (6501.TO) and Toshiba Corp. (6502.TO). But Japan Atomic Power officials in Tokyo said no decision had been made on the type or contractor for construction and operation.

Soon after Japan's triple disaster, I suggested that an official cover-up of a nuclear-weapons program hidden inside the Fukushima No.1 plant was delaying the effort to contain the reactor meltdowns. Soon after the tsunami struck, the Tokyo Electric Power Company reported that only three reactors had been generating electricity on the afternoon of March 11.. (According to the initial report, these were the older GE-built reactors 1,2 and 6.). Yet overheating at five of the plant's six reactors indicated that two additional reactors had also been operating (the newer and more advanced Nos. 3 and 4, built by Toshiba and Hitachi). The only plausible purpose of such unscheduled operation is uranium enrichment toward the production of nuclear warhead

On my subsequent sojourns in Japan, other suspicious activities also pointed to a high-level cover-up, including systematic undercounts of radiation levels, inexplicable damage to thousands of imported dosimeters, armed anti-terrorism police aboard trains and inside the dead zone, the jamming of international phone calls, homing devices installed in the GPS of rented cars, and warning visits to contacts by government agents discouraging cooperation with independent investigations. These aggressive infringements on civil liberties cannot be shrugged off as an overreaction to a civil disaster but must have been invoked on grounds of national security.

One telltale sign of high-level interference was the refusal by science equipment manufacturers to sell isotope chromatography devices to non-governmental customers, even to organizations ready to pay $170,000 in cash for a single unit. These sensitive instruments can detect the presence of specific isotopes, for example cesium-137 and strontium-90. Whether uranium was being enriched at Fukushima could be determined by the ratio of isotopes from enriched weapons-grade fissile material versus residues from less concentrated fuel rods.

South Africa’s Department of Energy said reports of a tender process being under way for six new nuclear power plants “are factually incorrect.” “At no point has the government committed to build six new nuclear reactors,” the department said in an e-mailed statement today. The government "hasn’t selected any design, vendor nor suppliers of the nuclear power plants. No decision has been made on the actual number.’’ South Africa plans to diversify energy sources away from coal, which makes up more than 90 percent of its generation capacity of about 40,000 megawatts. It also aims to prevent a repeat of power outages in 2008 that temporarily shut most of the nation’s mines and smelters, its biggest source of foreign exchange.

Energy Minister Dipuo Peters has proposed a strategy for the roll-out of new nuclear power plants to the Cabinet, the ministry said. The government approved plans to boost its nuclear energy capacity by 9.6 electrical gigawatt, it said. Safety concerns following the meltdown of nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan, prompted Peters to postpone the opening of the bids until next year, she said on Sept. 15.

‘Factually Incorrect’ The energy department’s statement said it “noted” an article published by the Mail & Guardian on Oct. 6. The newspaper listed potential bidders for a 1 trillion rand ($126 billion) tender to build six nuclear plants by 2030 as Areva SA, EDF SA (EDF), Toshiba Corp. (6502)’s Westinghouse Electric Corp. unit, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Corp., Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEP) and Rosatom Corp. The report, which cited unidentified people in government and industry, is “full of statements that are not true and factually incorrect,” the Department of Energy said in its statement.

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps toured Japan from August 2nd to 12th, visiting Tokyo, Fukushima, Fukui, Kansai and Kyushu. A highlight included meeting with officials from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and the Nippon Export and Investment Insurance agency, where a letter signed by 75 U.S. national and grassroots groups was delivered, urging no Japanese financing for risky new reactors in the U.S. A backgrounder spelled out these risks in detail. Most proposed new U.S. atomic reactors have designs owned by Japanese companies -- either Toshiba (Westinghouse), Hitachi (General Electric), or Mitsubishi. At South Texas Project, Toshiba and Tokyo Electric Power Company are even partners in the venture. In addition, Japan Steel Works would be the primary supplier of large nuclear components, such as reactor pressure vessels and steam generators. The Japanese news media were alerted to the letter and meeting, and the Japanese Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, and Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry received copies of the letter.

Information from Iwakami Yasumi's USTREAM channel netcasting the workshop of an Osaka citizens' group "Kansai network to stop the disaster-debris acceptance" with a panel of experts including European experts.One Japanese expert, Hiromitsu Ino, said a Containment Vessel at Fukushima II (Daini) is broken, and they are trying to repair it. It was probably caused by the earthquake, not tsunami.

The workshop is on-going at this link: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/iwj-osaka1#utm_campaign=t.co&utm_source=8481429&utm_medium=socialHiromitsu Ino is professor emeritus at Tokyo University. His area of specialty is metallic materials science. He is the head of the Group of Concerned Scientists and Engineers Calling for the Closure of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant.

I still remember a tweet last summer (I think) saying an acquaintance fleeing from the area near Fukushima II Nuke Plant right after the earthquake saw a smoke coming out of one of the reactor buildings (there are 4). Fukushima II, unlike Fukushima I, has 4 Mark-II type boiling water reactors built by Toshiba and Hitachi.

At the moment the conditions at Unit 1 of Fukushima nuclear power plant continues to be chaos, so Tadaharu Murakami (pseudonym), 30 years, an employee of a company that works as a subcontractor for Tokyo Electric Power. “The workers are not enough, TEPCO has recently committed even many people without experience who have never worked in a nuclear plant. As for the places of work, everything is really chaotic. It educates the people by giving them the ABCs teaches fundamental things such as wearing protective clothing like you.”

On The Pointy Guy) As a symbol of the discontent that elicits such a situation, there was an “incident” on 28 August has a live camera from TEPCO, which is mounted inside the block 1, sent pictures of a “mysterious” staff, who has placed himself in front of the lens and has said anything, while he pointed his finger at the camera. Murakami explains that after the conference on 30th August, during which expressed Yasuhiro Sonoda, responsible parliamentarians of the Cabinet, the wish that he would like to share the thoughts of “this person”, what he thinks, the guy who pretends to be that person and the real conditions on the website the bulletin board system of “2channel” has been disclosed. He has hit the nail on the head when he said that “for the people who work there, the working conditions are unfair and illegal. We have no insurance, we are poorly paid and we even have a contract. ”

Murakami confirmed, “that what he wrote on the Internet, the truth. Even when I worked before the accident in March as a temporary worker in Fukushima Daiichi have, you have promised me 15,000 yen a day and I’ve got nothing. “He continues,” when I asked at the sitting of the subcontractor, why do not they pay me what they owe me, they said, ‘You work for a subcontractor? So they have no right to make such a request.” I turned also to workers of TEPCO, which have responded harshly to me, I consider myself strictly to the rules of the line and that’s all. “I wait one more month and if they do not pay me, I’ll sue the subcontractor. “Murakami is confirmed by the descriptions, which are made on the internet about the poor accommodation,” even when it has cooled a bit in early September, break every day at least 10 workers due to fatigue together. I want them to rapidly improve the living conditions.”

Nuclear regulators already have “sufficient information and knowledge” to deal with earthquake risks at existing U.S. reactors and don’t need to wait for a broader review, a safety advocate said. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission developed seismic rules for new plants in 1996 and has since approved preliminary construction for proposed nuclear units at a Southern Co. plant in Georgia and certified an early reactor design by Toshiba Corp.’s Westinghouse Electric unit, according to comments filed with the agency today by David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Union of Concerned Scientists.

“If the NRC truly lacks sufficient information about seismic hazards and how safety at nuclear power reactors is affected, then the agency cannot responsibly have issued early site permits and certified new reactor designs,” he said. The NRC is in the process of evaluating seismic hazards in the central and eastern U.S. in response to updated geologic information. By the end of this year, the agency plans to develop an earthquake probability model for reactor owners to use and may require all U.S. plants to review their seismic risks within the next two years.

The NRC has said “repeatedly” the broad seismic review “deals with an issue that fails to present an immediate safety concern,” Scott Burnell, an agency spokesman, said in an e- mail. Existing plants are built to “safely withstand the earthquakes at their sites,” he said. Earthquake Protections The NRC is weighing requirements to bolster plant protections against earthquakes and floods in the wake of the nuclear disaster in Japan caused by a March temblor and tsunami that led to radiation leaks and meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant.

Three months after the start of full-scale water circulation system operations at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, high-level radioactive waste has kept piling up amid no clear indications of its final disposal destination. As of Sept. 27, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) had accumulated about 4,700 drums of radioactive waste after three months of cesium decontamination operations initially using U.S. and French equipment which was later joined by Toshiba Corp.’s “Sally” system in August. Since the start of October, TEPCO has conducted the plant’s water circulation operations using the Sally system alone while relegating its U.S. and French counterparts built by Kurion Inc. and Areva SA, respectively, to backups. The Kurion and Sally systems are designed to purify decontaminated water through an absorption unit called a “vessel” that contains zeolites. The vessel is changed every few days and the used vessels become radioactive waste. End Extract

DUKOVANY NUCLEAR PLANT, Czech Republic — Surrounded by corn fields, bicycle routes and a nature reserve, the eight huge cooling towers of the Dukovany nuclear power plant have dominated the Czech countryside near the Austrian border for almost three decades.

Against the odds, the government has worked to keep it that way for many years to come.

Defying growing global skepticism over the use of atomic energy, it is planning to dramatically increase the country’s nuclear power production — a move that would give the country a place among Europe’s most nuclear-dependent nations.The Czech plan reflects a sharp division over nuclear use among European nations, and relations with neighboring countries that have decided to go nuclear free could be seriously harmed.

There are plans for eight more AP1000 reactors – four in Florida, two in North Carolina, and two in South Carolina. The next two AP1000s likely to be built are to be located near Miami at the Turkey Point power station operated by Florida Power & Light. The approval of the AP1000 design is turning into a high stakes outcome with much of the future of nuclear reactor construction in the U.S. over the next two decades riding on it. No other reactor vendor comes close.

UK continues on path to rebuilding a complete new sets of reactors. The Finnish government said that it has sent bid documents to Areva and Toshiba for responses to build a new nuclear power station. The new plant will need to generate up to 1,700 MW and be ready to produce power by 2020 at a cost of $6-9 billion

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted 20-year license renewals to the two reactors in Salem County, New Jersey. The two pressurized water reactors have been operating since 1977 and 1981 and generate just over 1,100 MW each.

...Nor would any new reactors be built in the U.S. today, according to a comprehensive new report written by Doug Koplow of Earth Track for the Union of Concerned Scientists: "Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable Without Subsidies." Ironically, the report's major public unveiling took place on Capitol Hill on March 11 -- the very day the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe began. Since then, one of the lead new reactor proposals in the U.S. -- two new reactors targeted at the South Texas Project, next in line for a multi-billion dollar nuclear loan guarantee and loan backed by U.S. federal taxpayers -- has largely gone belly up: its major partners included Tokyo Electric Power Company (owner and operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant) and Hitachi (merged with General Electric, designer of the catastrophically failed Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactor), as well as Toshiba (Japanese owner of Westinghouse) and the Japan federal government's Bank for International Cooperation. The U.S. partner, NRG Energy of Princeton, NJ, has announced it will put no more money into the project, given the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. Koplow's report is very likely the single most comprehensive accounting yet of more than half a century of lavish taxpayer and ratepayer subsidization of the nuclear power industry in the U.S. -- often without the public's knowledge, let alone consent. Koplow has concluded that “After 50 years, the nuclear industry needs to move away from government patronage to a model based on real economic viability. The considerable operational and construction risks of this power source need to be reflected in the delivered price of power rather than dumped onto taxpayers.”

Reuters cites a Mainichi Daily report that such U.S.-Japanese nuclear industry corporate players as General Electric-Hitachi and Toshiba-Westinghouse, in cahoots with Japanese federal ministries and the Mongolian government's uranium mining and nuclear development arm, were close to finalizing a deal on turning Mongolia into an international dumpsite for irradiated nuclear fuel, until the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe derailed the schedule. Undeterred by that, the partners in crime (or, at least it should be a crime) are still pursuing the plan.

Miami, Oct. 16 –Headline: ‘Fukushima disaster can happen here’ Today’s Miami Herald has an article warning South Florida residents they “should take little comfort in assurances that a Fukushima-type catastrophe could not happen here.” It notes that the Miami-area nuclear power plant, Turkey Point, “is just as reliant as Fukushima on offsite electricity, emergency electrical generators and batteries.” Yet, Florida Power & Light (FPL) is trying to build two new reactors at the site, making a total of four.

These two proposed reactors, the AP1000 design, are essentially “experimental” and “have never been tested or operated commercially at full scale”. The reactor design has “drawn substantial criticism on safety issues”. The article reviews three of these: 1) “One major issue is that the steel inner-containment structure is barely strong enough to keep radioactivity from escaping during a ‘design basis accident.’ This leaves little margin for error when the steel containment structure eventually corrodes and loses strength. Such corrosion is a common problem in older reactors.” 2) “The British Nuclear Installations Inspectorate has criticized Toshiba/Westinghouse for not sufficiently demonstrating that the outer concrete shield can withstand an external shock, such as an earthquake, hurricane, tornado or impact from a commercial aircraft crash.” 3) “Perhaps, the most damaging criticism comes from Dr. John Ma, the lead structural reviewer evaluating the outer concrete shield for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Dr. Ma submitted a ‘nonconcurrence statement of dissent’ stating that the outer shield could shatter like a ‘glass cup’ in an earthquake or commercial aircraft crash.”

Editor's Note: This is part of the IEEE Spectrum special report: Fukushima and the Future of Nuclear Power.

This past April, when the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) jointly unveiled their plan to bring the damaged reactors of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant to a cold shutdown and gain control of the release of radioactive materials, they set a tentative completion date for mid-January 2012. And "tentative" had to be the operative word, for the obstacles TEPCO faced—and to some extent still does face—are challenging in the extreme. They include:

Fuel rod meltdowns in reactors 1, 2, and 3 due to loss of cooling systems following the 11 March earthquake and tsunami; Severe damage to the upper levels of reactor buildings 1, 3, and 4 and slight damage to building 2, stemming from hydrogen explosions; High levels of radiation and contaminated rubble, making working conditions hazardous and difficult; Thousands of metric tons of contaminated water accumulating on the site and leaking out of the reactors.