Tokyo Electric Power

The operator of the stricken Japanese nuclear power plant said Sunday that it hoped to stabilize the facility's reactors by the beginning of next year in a state known as a cold shutdown. The plan for the Fukushima Daiichi power plant is Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s most concrete timetable yet for resolving Japan's worst nuclear crisis. Emergency crews have struggled to avert a disastrous meltdown at the plant since March 11, when the earthquake and tsunami that struck the nation's northeastern coast damaged the complex.

Japanese nuclear regulatory officials Tuesday raised the severity rating at the earthquake- and tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant to the highest level by international standards, equaling the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown in the former Soviet Union. The country's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency announced that because of the amount of radioactive material released from the plant after the magnitude 9 earthquake a month ago, the rating would be changed to level 7, a "major accident" on the International Atomic Energy Agency's scale, up from a level 5, an "accident with wider consequences.

What a strange turn of events. Instead of uniting the environmental movement in renewed opposition to nuclear power, the Fukushima disaster in Japan has divided it still further. An increasing number of green advocates, including some very prominent voices, have declared their support for nuclear power as a clean energy option, even as radioactive water accumulates and the timeline for cleaning up the contaminated areas extends by decades. Can they be serious? They can. The irony of Fukushima is that in forcing us all to confront our deepest fears about the dangers of nuclear power, we find many of them to be wildly irrational -- based on scare stories propagated through years of unchallenged mythology and the repeated exaggerations of self-proclaimed "experts" in the anti-nuclear movement.

For nearly four weeks, Japanese emergency crews have been spraying water on the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, a desperate attempt to avert the calamity of a full meltdown. Now, that improvised solution to one nuclear nightmare is spawning another: what to do with the millions of gallons of water that has become highly radioactive as it washes through the plant. The water being used to try to cool the reactors and the dangerous spent fuel rods is leaking through fissures inside the plant, seeping down through tunnels and passageways to the lowest levels, where it is accumulating into a sea of lethal waste.

Engineers began injecting nitrogen into one of the reactors at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant Wednesday evening as radiation levels in seawater near the plant dropped and a new report from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission suggested that the plant may face even more troubles in the future. Officials from the United Nations, meanwhile, said that even though the situation in Japan is more serious than the U.S. faced after the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979, the group does not expect severe health consequences.

The operator of Japan's stricken nuclear plant said Wednesday that it had apparently contained at least one leak that was allowing radiation to seep into the sea. Tokyo Electric Power Co. had said Tuesday that it had found iodine-131 at 7.5 million times the legal limit in a seawater sample taken near the facility, and government officials instituted a health limit for radioactivity in fish. Other samples were found to contain radioactive cesium at 1.1 million times the legal limit.

The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant began releasing thousands of tons of radioactive water into the sea Monday evening under an emergency measure approved by the government to make room in storage tanks for far more severely contaminated water. About 10,000 tons of the water to be released was being taken from a communal storage facility near the No. 4 reactor. Another 1,500 tons was being released from near the No. 5 and 6 reactors — which have faced fewer problems than the other reactors.

In the first confirmation of fatalities at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex, the plant's operator on Sunday announced the recovery of the bodies of two workers who had gone missing after the devastating earthquake and tsunami. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Yoshiki Terashima, 21, and Kazuhiko Kokubo, 24, had rushed to the turbine room of the No. 4 reactor to inspect the power switches and test the operation valves after the March 11 earthquake. An autopsy revealed that they likely died from the force of impact from the tsunami.

Radioactive water continued to seep into the sea Monday after a failed attempt to seal the leak at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant using an absorbent polymer, sawdust and shredded paper. Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials think the leak has been coming from an 8-inch crack in the concrete pit holding power cables near reactor No. 2. On Monday, Tepco said it would use a dye to try to trace the path of the leak, Kyodo News reported. Radiation levels in the pit water are an estimated 1,000 millisieverts per hour, a high but not immediately lethal dose.

Japan's Red Cross has collected more than $1 billion in the first three weeks after the massive earthquake and tsunami but has yet to distribute any funds directly to victims, prompting Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano to urge Sunday that the process be accelerated. Meanwhile, the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant reported no significant progress in stopping the leak of radioactive water into the sea. Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials think the leak has been coming from a concrete pit holding power cables near reactor No. 2, and attempted Sunday to seal a crack there with a special polymer.