Japan Nuclear Crisis

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  Japan nuclear plant firm opens Twitter account

  Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), which operates the quake-hit Japanese nuclear reactors, opened an official Twitter account late Thursday, immediately drawing more than 117,000 followers.

• 5.5 magnitude quake hits Japan nuclear crisis zone, Fukushima plant stable

  A 5.5-magnitude earthquake hit Japan's Fukushima area on Monday, but a nuclear plant there that was crippled by a huge quake and tsunami in March remained stable, officials said.

• UN chief heads to Japan as nuclear crisis simmers

  UN chief Ban Ki-moon arrives in Japan on Sunday, where he plans to visit the Fukushima nuclear disaster zone, as the crippled atomic power plant simmers and a food safety scare deepens.

• 'Safety myth' left Japan ripe for nuclear crisis

  Near a nuclear power plant facing the Sea of Japan, a series of exhibitions in a large public relations building here extols the virtues of the energy source with some help from "Alice in Wonderland.""It's terrible, just terrible," the White Rabbit says in the first exhibit. "We're running out of energy, Alice." A Dodo robot figure, swiveling to ad...

• Hillary Clinton visits Japan in a show of support

  U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday that America would stand by Japan, saying she was confident the country will fully recover from its tsunami and nuclear disasters."We are very confident that Japan will recover and will be a very strong economic and global player for years and decades to come," Clinton told Prime Minister N...

• Nine-month plan is set for crippled Japan nuclear plant

  Tokyo Electric Power Company said Sunday that it hopes to bring the reactors at its hobbled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into a stable state known as cold shutdown within the next nine months, during which the three damaged reactor buildings at the facility will be covered.The goals are part of a two-part plan that represents Tokyo Electri...

• Japan raises nuclear crisis level to 7; worst on global scale, at par with Chernobyl

  Japan's nuclear regulators raised the severity level of the crisis at a stricken nuclear plant on Tuesday to rank it at par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, citing the amount of radiation released in the accident.The regulators said the rating was being raised from 5 to 7 -- the highest level on an international scale overseen by the International...

• Govt suspends food imports from Japan for three months

  The government today suspended import of food items from Japan, hit by a nuclear disaster, for three months or till such time as the radiation hazard in that country has subsided to acceptable limits.The decision to suspend the imports was taken at a meeting held under the chairmanship of P I Suvrathan, Chairperson, Food Safety and Standards Author...

• Radioactivity 10,000 times standard at Japan plant

  Officials with the company that operates Japan's tsunami-stricken nuclear plant say radioactive contamination in groundwater underneath a reactor has been measured at 10,000 times the government health standard.A spokesman for plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. says the company doesn't believe any drinking water supply is affected.Contaminated...

• Japan tries to stem leak of radioactive water

  Workers at Japan's crippled nuclear plant piled up sandbags and readied emergency storage tanks on Tuesday to stop a fresh leak of highly contaminated water from reaching the ocean, opening up another front in the battle to contain the world's worst nuclear accident in decades.As fears of further contamination grew, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said hi...

• In Deference to Crisis, a New Obsession Sweeps Japan: Self-Restraint

  Even in a country whose people are known for walking in lockstep, a national consensus on the proper code of behaviour has emerged with startling speed. Consider post-tsunami Japan as the age of voluntary self-restraint, or jishuku, the antipode of the Japan of the "bubble" era that celebrated excess.With hundreds of thousands of people displaced u...

• Germany: Merkel's party suffers loss in key polls first time in 60 years

  German chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives have suffered a historic defeat in a state ballot after almost six decades in power there; preliminary results have showed, in an election that amounted to a referendum on the party's stance on nuclear power.     The opposition anti-nuclear Greens doubled their voter share in Baden...

• More obstacles impede crews in Japan N-crisis

  Mounting problems, including incorrect radiation figures and a shortage of storage tanks, stymied emergency workers Sunday as they tried to nudge Japan's stricken nuclear complex back from the edge of disaster.Workers are struggling to remove radioactive water from the tsunami-ravaged nuclear compound and restart the regular cooling systems for the...

• Radiation inside Japan nuclear plant rises sharply

  Japanese officials continued to battle a spreading contamination problem at the Fukushima nuclear complex on Sunday, saying that water pooling inside one of its reactors and the seawater just outside the plant were showing sharply increased levels of radiation. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that water seeping out of the crippled No....

• US rushes freshwater to help Japan nuclear plant

  US naval barges loaded with freshwater sped toward Japan's overheated nuclear plant to help workers who scrambled Saturday to stem a worrying rise in radioactivity and remove dangerously contaminated water from the facility.Workers at the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi plant have been pumping seawater in a frantic bid to stabilize reactors overheating...