Japan's Nuclear Volcano Erupts (Mike Whitney)

Apr. 12, 2011 (Information Clearing House) -- Shares plunged across Europe and Asia Tuesday as the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant deepened and Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency raised the atomic alert level to its highest rating. Conditions at the stricken facility have steadily deteriorated and now the station is intermittently spewing lethal amounts of radiation into the a ...

Radiation Detected In Drinking Water In 13 More US Cities, Cesium-137 In Vermont Milk (Jeff McMahon)

Apr. 11, 2011 (Forbes) -- Radiation from Japan has been detected in drinking water in 13 more American cities, and cesium-137 has been found in American milk --in Montpelier, Vermont -- for the first time since the Japan nuclear disaster began, according to data released by the Environmental Protection Agency late Friday. Milk samples from Phoenix and Los Angeles contained iodine-131 at levels ro ...

Japan nuclear operator aims for cold shutdown in 6-9 months (Taiga Uranaka)

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese nuclear power plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) hopes it will be able to achieve cold shutdown of its crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant within six to nine months, the company said on Sunday. The firm said the first step would be cooling the reactors and spent fuel to a stable level within three months, then bringing the reactors to cold shutdown in ...

Japan says it may take months to end radiation leaks (Chizu Nomiyama and Yoko Nishikawa)

4:02 p.m. EDT, Apr. 3, 2011 -- TOKYO (Reuters) -- Japan warned Sunday it could take months to stop radiation leaking from a nuclear plant crippled by a huge earthquake and tsunami three weeks ago, while voters said a coalition would better handle the crisis and post-quake recovery effort. An aide to embattled Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the government's priority was to stop radiation leaks whic ...

Soaring radioactivity deals blow to Japan's plant (Shinichi Saoshiro)

Mar. 27, 2011 -- 11:21 p.m. JST (10:21 EST) -- TOKYO (Reuters) -- Workers were withdrawn from a reactor building at Japan's earthquake-wrecked nuclear plant Sunday after potentially lethal levels of radiation were detected in water there, a major setback for the effort to avert a catastrophic meltdown. The operator of the facility said radiation in the water of the No. 2 reactor was measured at m ...

Japan Nuclear situation 'grave and serious' (Irish Times)

Japanese prime minister Naota Kan at a news conference Friday. Photo: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg Mar 25, 2011 (Irish Times) -- The situation at Japan's crippled nuclear complex in Fukushima 240km north of Tokyo remains “grave and serious,” prime minister Naoto Kan said Friday. In a televised address Mr Kan warned that “we are not in a position where we can be optimistic. We must treat every develo ...

Fukushima Radiation: Some Difficult Truths (Ritt Goldstein)

Mar. 24, 2011 (CommonDreams.org) -- As radiation counts elevate in Japan, news of nuclear contamination spreading across a widening spectrum of life and its necessities, official pronouncements continue to play down events’ gravity. While some have questioned whether this is being pursued to promote calm, or perhaps the nuclear industry, the result has left many either skeptical of official claim ...

Plastic Particles Circulating Endlessly in World's Oceans (Stephen Leahy)

Marine debris on a Hawaiian beach. Credit:NOAA Mar. 24, 2011 -- HONOLULU, Hawaii (IPS) -- That plastic bottle or plastic take-away coffee lid that has 20 minutes of use can spend decades killing countless seabirds, marine animals and fish, experts reported here this week. On remote Pacific island atolls, diligent albatross parents unknowingly fill their chicks' bellies with bits of plastic that r ...

Radiation spikes in seawater by stricken Japan plant (Chizu Nomiyama and Shinichi Saoshiro)

Leslie's CHP Atomic Fish (Tablecloth) 8:00 p.m. JST (7 a.m. EDT) -- TOKYO (Reuters) - Radioactivity levels are soaring in seawater near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant, Japan's nuclear safety agency said on Saturday, two weeks after the nuclear power plant was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami. Even as engineers tried to pump puddles of radioactive water from the power plant 240 km (15 ...

Japan’s ‘BP Moment’ Troubles Global Economy (William Pesek)

Mar. 20, 2011 (Bloomberg) -- You never want to kick a nation when it’s down. It’s time, though, to consider the depth of Japan’s coming recession. A week ago, before radiation fears prompted a mass exodus from Tokyo, a downturn was of the “if” variety. Japan’s prospects then dimmed with each passing day of blackouts and panicked news reports. The questions now are when the recession will official ...

Get ready for the meltdown of the US Treasury Bond market | LEAP/E2020

Mar. 17, 2011 -- Public announcement GEAB N°53 (LEAP/E2020) -- Beyond its tragic human consequences (1), the terrible disaster that has just hit Japan weakens the shaky U.S. Treasury Bond market a little more. In the GEAB No. 52, our team had already explained how the sequence of Arab revolutions and the fall of the “petro-dollar” wall (2) would translate during 2011 into the cessation of the mas ...