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TOKYO (Dow Jones)--Investors dumped Japanese shares Monday, sending the main index down 6.2% amid concerns about a nuclear emergency in the country after Friday's devastating earthquake and tsunami, with stocks of exporters and plant operators hardest hit. Analysts said the market may stabilize in coming weeks as local investors come in and buy at cheaper levels, but much depends on the situation at a troubled nuclear power plant in the country's northeast, and on when companies resume production at facilities in the automotive and technology sectors. Economists are also just starting to sift through the figures to make early estimates...

At the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi unit 1, where an explosion Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, the spent fuel pool, in accordance with General Electric’s design, is placed above the reactor. Tokyo Electric said it was trying to figure out how to maintain water levels in the pools, indicating that the normal safety systems there had failed, too. Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom think that unit 1’s pool may now be outside. Victor Gilinsky, a former commissioner at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said...

...Tokyo Electric Power Co. official Takako Kitajima said Monday that plant workers were preparing to inject seawater into the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant's Unit 2 to cool down its reactor following the loss of its cooling system. Kitajima said officials are also set to take other steps, including a release of pressure through ventilation if the reactor overheats.

The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and other US Navy ships in the waters off the quake zone in eastern Japan were repositioned after the detection of a low-level radiation plume from the troubled Fukushima nuclear plant located 100 miles away. According to 7th Fleet Commander and Spokesman Jeff Davis, the ships were moved away from the downwind direction of the plant as a precautionary measure on Sunday. The carrier is one of seven US Navy ships that were quickly moved to the eastern coast of Japan to assist with relief operations after Friday's earthquake and tsunami. The ship's crew...

Radiation and the Japanese Nuclear Reactors March 2011 Key Facts * An earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale struck off the northeastern coast of Japan on March 11, triggering a tsunami. Along with the loss of life and damage, Japan also faces the challenge of stabilizing nuclear power plants in the hardest-hit region. * After the earthquake, all the operating reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini nuclear plants shut down automatically, as they are designed to do. However, due to the loss of offsite power and failure of the backup diesel generators, there were difficulties powering the...

Concerns about Japan’s earthquake-induced nuclear-power shutdowns spread to another reactor at the Tokai No. 2 Power station, but authorities said a pump is keeping the reactor cool, according to reports early Monday. One of the two pumps used to cool the water of a suppression pool for the nuclear reactor at the Tokai plant stopped, but a second system is working, according to the English-language version of Kyodo News, which cited the nuclear safety section of the prefectural government. Japan Atomic Power said the reactor core at Tokai No. 2 Power station has been cooled, “without any problem,” Kyodo News...

Nuclear power is always unsafe, says Greenpeace * From: AAP * March 14, 2011 10:22AM ENVIRONMENTALISTS say the possibly catastrophic failure of a Japanese nuclear reactor shows that nuclear power can never be safe. Two reactors at the Fukushima plant in north-eastern Japan have been damaged by the devastating earthquake which struck nearby on Friday, and at least one is in danger of meltdown. Radiation has been released into the air after an explosion at one reactor, and although authorities have said it is not intense enough to affect human health, they have ordered evacuations of people living within 20km....

ADIATION from nuclear plants damaged in Japan's earthquake is unlikely to reach US territory in harmful amounts, US nuclear officials say. "Given the thousands of miles between the two countries, Hawaii, Alaska, the US Territories and the US west coast are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity," the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said in a statement. "All the available information indicates weather conditions have taken the small releases from the Fukushima reactors out to sea away from the population," the statement read. The office also said it sent two boiling-water reactor experts as part of a...

UPDATE AS OF 7:00 P.M. EDT, SUNDAY, MARCH 13: Fukushima Daiichi The hydrogen explosion on March 11 between the primary containment vessel and secondary containment building of the reactor did not damage the primary containment vessel or the reactor core. To control the pressure of the reactor core, TEPCO began to inject seawater and boric acid into the primary containment vessels of Unit 1 on March 12 and Unit 3 on March 13. There is likely some damage to the fuel rods contained in reactors 1 and 3. At both reactors 1 and 3, seawater and boric acid is being...

FAQ - Japanese Nuclear Energy Situation (Updated 3/13/11 @ 3:30 p.m. EDT) 1. What will be the impact of the Fukushima Daiichi accident on the U.S. nuclear program? It is premature to draw conclusions from the tragedy in Japan about the U.S. nuclear energy program. Japan is facing what literally can be considered a “worst case” disaster and, so far, even the most seriously damaged of its 54 reactors has not released radiation at levels that would harm the public. That is a testament to their rugged design and construction, and the effectiveness of their employees and the industry’s emergency...

WASHINGTON — As the scale of Japan’s nuclear crisis begins to come to light, experts in Japan and the United States say the country is now facing a cascade of accumulating problems that suggest that radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months. The emergency flooding of two stricken reactors with seawater and the resulting steam releases are a desperate step intended to avoid a much bigger problem: a full meltdown of the nuclear cores in two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. So far, Japanese officials have said the...

The containment structures appear to be working, and the latest reactor designs aren't vulnerable to the coolant problem at issue here. Even while thousands of people are reported dead or missing, whole neighborhoods lie in ruins, and gas and oil fires rage out of control, press coverage of the Japanese earthquake has quickly settled on the troubles at two nuclear reactors as the center of the catastrophe. Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), a longtime opponent of nuclear power, has warned of "another Chernobyl" and predicted "the same thing could happen here." In response, he has called for an immediate suspension...

Head line only so far.

I apologize for how long it has taken for me to get this blog post up, and I apologize in advance for answers that may prove to be inaccurate and overtaken by events. I am going to try to answer a number of questions I have received through email and Facebook and queries to this page since the Japanese earthquake struck. Q: What’s going on with the reactor in Japan?A: The Fukushima-Daiichi reactors were damaged by the quake and the tsunami that followed. There were six reactors operating at the site, all of them boiling-water reactors (BWRs) built by General...

In the aftermath of Japan's devastation, Conn. Sen. says it's time for temporary moratorium on building new nuclear plants (CBS News) Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman on Sunday called for a temporary moratorium on the construction of nuclear power plants in the U.S. in the aftermath of Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami, which damaged two reactors at a nuclear facility in the country's northeast. "The reality is that we're watching something unfold," he said in an interview for CBS' "Face the Nation." "We don't know where it's going with regard to the nuclear power plants in Japan right now. I think...

"TOKYO (Reuters) - The number of individuals exposed to radiation from the quake-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan could reach as high as 160, an official of Japan's nuclear safety agency said on Sunday.

There is a risk of an explosion at a building housing a nuclear reactor damaged by a massive earthquake in northeastern Japan after a buildup of hydrogen, although it is unlikely to affect the reactor's core container, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said on Sunday. An explosion on Saturday blew off the roof of another reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant....

(Reuters) - The United States should "put the brakes on" new nuclear power plants until fully understanding what happened to the earthquake-crippled nuclear reactors in Japan, the chairman of the U.S. Senate's homeland security panel said on Sunday.

Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said March 12 that the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 nuclear plant could only have been caused by a meltdown of the reactor core, Japanese daily Nikkei reported. This statement seemed somewhat at odds with Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano’s comments earlier March 12, in which he said “the walls of the building containing the reactor were destroyed, meaning that the metal container encasing the reactor did not explode.”

From the Washington Post: Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said officials were acting on the assumption that a meltdown could be underway at that reactor, Fukushima Daiichi’s unit 3, and that it was “highly possible” that a meltdown was underway at Fukushima Daiichi’s unit 1 reactor, where an explosion destroyed a building a day earlier. Hours before he spoke, authorities began evacuating more than 200,000 residents from a 12.5-mile radius around Fukushima Daiichi and another nuclear power complex, made preparations to distribute potassium iodide pills, and warned people in the vicinity to stay inside and cover their mouths if they...