Free Republic

Fukushima operator starts hazardous year-long fuel removal TOKYO Mon Nov 18, 2013 5:50am EST Nov 18 (Reuters) - The operator of Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant took the first step on Monday in the long and hazardous process of decommissioning the facility, extracting a fuel rod from its container for later removal. Tokyo Electric Power Co said it transferred the rod to a steel cask within the same cooling pool in a badly damaged reactor building, beginning the delicate and unprecedented task of removing 400 tonnes of highly irradiated spent fuel from that reactor.

Powerful Aftershock Complicates Japan’s Nuclear Efforts By HIROKO TABUCHIand ANDREW POLLACK Published: April 7, 2011 TOKYO — The strongest aftershock to hit since the day of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan rocked a wide section of the country’s northeast on Thursday night, prompting a tsunami alert, raising fears of new strains on the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and knocking out external power at three other nuclear facilities. The public broadcaster, NHK, said two people had died in Miyagi and Yamagata, including a 63-year-old woman whose ventilator stopped working in the blackout. Many more were injured. About...

APRIL 1, 2011, 2:35 P.M. ET. Energy Secretary Chu Says Reactor Core Is Damaged By STEPHEN POWER WASHINGTON—Japanese authorities are "making headway" in their effort to stabilize the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Friday. But radiation levels in at least one of the reactor buildings are "significant," and most of the core of one of the reactors has been damaged, he added. "There's still great concern" about the plant, Dr. Chu said to reporters at a breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor. "There's a lot of radioactivity in the reactor buildings, and that impedes...

Wednesday, March 16, 2011 Fuel Rods Damage At Fukushima's 2 Reactors Estimated At 70%, 33% TOKYO (Kyodo)--An estimated 70 percent of the nuclear fuel rods have been damaged at the troubled No. 1 reactor of the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant and 33 percent at the No. 2 reactor, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday. The reactors' cores are believed to have partially melted with their cooling functions lost after Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake rocked Fukushima Prefecture and other areas in northeastern and eastern Japan.

North Korea nuclear fuel rods tough to extract: envoy Fri Nov 30, 3:32 AM ET The removal of fuel rods from an ageing reactor at the heart of North Korea's nuclear arms program, an important step in a disarmament deal, will stretch into next year, South Korea's nuclear envoy said on Friday. North Korea agreed with regional powers to disable its Soviet-era reactor and other nuclear facilities by the end of this year in exchange for aid and an end to its international ostracism. "A lot of preparation is needed to get the fuel out of there," Chun Yung-woo told...

An Iraqi defector has given Pentagon officials a detailed inside look at Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein's biological and chemical weapons programs — and told of buying nuclear materials with a briefcase full of $100 bills. The defector, whose story is recounted in the new edition of Vanity Fair magazine, says he was involved in the most sensitive of Iraq's secret arms programs before fleeing a year and a half ago. Presented to U.S. officials by the Iraqi National Congress, a London-based exile group pushing for an American attack on Iraq, the defector says Saddam is close to finishing a...

/begin my translationIsrael To Bomb A Iran's Nuclear Power Plant Israel informed U.S. that, in order to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, she plans to bomb Busheher Nuclear Power Plant, under construction in Iran, if Russian-supplied fuel rods are put into its reactor(s.) The fuel rods are now at a Russian port, which are to be shipped in the first half of next year. 24 years ago, Israel's squadron of (F-15's and) F-16's bombed Iraq's Osirak Reactor which was being constructed using French technology, stopping Iraq's nuclear weapon's program on its track. /end my translation

Plan for N. Korea Will Mix Diplomacy and Pressure By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, May 7, 2003; Page A01 The Bush administration plans to adjust its policy toward North Korea by adopting a two-track approach that would combine new talks with pressure on the communist state by targeting its illegal drug and counterfeiting trade and possibly its missile sales, U.S. and Asian officials said yesterday. The emerging consensus, which will be refined today at a meeting of President Bush's top foreign policy advisers, would bridge a gap that has emerged within the administration since North Korea declared...

Another nuclear fuel rod is missing from the troubled research reactor in Democratic Republic of Congo and international authorities said they cannot exclude the possibility it is in the hands of terrorists. The Voice of America has learned a second fuel rod manufactured for the nuclear research reactor at the University of Kinshasa is unaccounted for. It was previously reported that one rod made for the controversial facility disappeared and was recovered from criminals in Italy by police in 1998, in an undercover operation. But nuclear industry sources have said at the time of that incident, inspectors for the International...