June 3, Friday

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charity sticker
We hope you put it on your car and support for the affected people by the earthquake.

source :　www.varis-officialblog.com


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Gabi reports:

A sunny morning.
I was out most of the day.


Hatoyama:
Kan to resign as early as by end of June
Pressure mounting on Kan to resign quickly
WELL
there has been no word yet as to who is going to replace KAN.

. The Political Situation .

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Bulletins from NHK Online
source : www3.nhk.or.jp

Friday, June 03, 2011 01:25
IAEA wants latest information on nuclear accident
The International Atomic Energy Agency has called on Japan to report the latest, most detailed information on the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The IAEA explained to its member nations the current status of the accident at a meeting at its headquarters in Vienna on Thursday. The agency plans to hold an international, ministerial-level meeting to discuss the accident later this month.
Deputy Director General Denis Flory told reporters after the meeting that the agency has so far received adequate information on the accident from Japan.
He added that Japan should report the latest information, including the status of the nuclear reactors and why highly contaminated water leaked into the sea, at the coming meeting.
Flory also said countries must follow common safety standards to rebuild confidence in nuclear energy and that the IAEA standards should be their basis.


Friday, June 03, 2011 05:11
TEPCO cools storage pool in No.2 reactor building
The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it has succeeded in lowering the temperature in a storage pool for used nuclear fuel at the No.2 reactor after it started operating a cooling system there.
Tokyo Electric Power Company says the temperature in the pool dropped to 38 degrees Celsius on Thursday from about 70 degrees previously.
TEPCO had anticipated that it would take about one month to lower the temperature to about 40 degrees.
The company installed a circulatory cooling system to lower the pool temperature in order to reduce humidity and began operating the system on Tuesday.
Since the temperature has sharply decreased TEPCO plans to inspect the interior of the building as it suspects humidity has also declined. If the situation has improved, it will install systems to remove radioactive substances.
The company plans to start operating similar cooling systems at the storage pools in the No.1 and 3 reactor buildings in June, and in the No.4 reactor building in July.


Friday, June 03, 2011 14:05
TEPCO needs to store 100,000 tons of tainted water
Tokyo Electric Power Company says more than 100,000 tons of highly radioactive water has been leaked from the damaged reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The operator warns that the water may overflow later this month during the rainy season and says it is struggling to find a place to store the water after filtering.
The basements of the first 4 reactor buildings are full of water that was injected to cool down the damaged reactors.
The situation is hampering efforts to achieve the ultimate goal of stabilizing the reactors.
TEPCO says 16,200 tons of water has been leaked outside Number One, 24,600 tons at Number 2, 28,100 tons at Number 3 and 22,900 tons at Number 4. It says another 13,300 tons of water has already been moved to a storage facility.
It says the 105,100 tons of water contains an estimated 720,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances. Tera stands for one trillion.
On June 15th, TEPCO plans to start using equipment that can filter 1,200 tons of toxic water a day. In mid-August, it will also install an underground storage tank that can hold 100,000 tons of highly radioactive water.
TEPCO fears that the toxic water could overflow if the filter fails to work. It plans to secure more storage facilities.


Friday, June 03, 2011 17:01
Tokyo stocks fall on Japan's political uncertainty
Tokyo stocks fell on Friday, due to the increased uncertainty of Japan's political situation over the timing of Prime Minister Naoto Kan's resignation.
On the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the Nikkei average of 225 selected issues finished the week at 9,492, down 62 points from Thursday.
The broader TOPIX index of all First Section issues ended at 816, down 9 points.
Market sources say conflicting views over when Prime Minister Kan should resign muddied the political situation and created sell orders on a broad range of issues. Many investors also stayed on the sidelines, awaiting the announcement of US employment data later on Friday.


Friday, June 03, 2011 19:14
LDP refuses to debate bills unrelated to disaster
A senior member of Japan's main opposition Liberal Democratic Party says his party will boycott Diet debates on bills unrelated to reconstruction efforts for areas hit by the March 11th disaster.
LDP's Diet affairs chief, Ichiro Aisawa 逢沢一郎 , told reporters on Friday that he cannot tolerate Prime Minister Naoto Kan's refusal to clarify when he will step down. Aisawa stressed that people's mistrust of politics is deepening.


Friday, June 03, 2011 20:15
TEPCO says contaminated water may overflow
Tokyo Electric Power Company says that, in a worst case scenario, highly radioactive water may overflow from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant as early as June 20th.
The company is set to start operating filters for highly radioactive water from June 15th. However, it warns that if the filtering does not go to plan, highly radioactive water may overflow from a tunnel at the Number 2 reactor.
TEPCO says that by May 31st, 105,100 tons of waste water had accumulated. It contains an estimated 720,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances. Tera stands for one trillion.
The utility plans to treat 1,200 tons of water per day at a storage facility and transfer the filtered water to temporary tanks. It says it has already set up tanks for 13,000 tons of filtered water and will increase storage capacity by 20,000 tons per month.
TEPCO officials say that in the event the filters don't work properly, the utility will complete an additional underground tank for highly contaminated water by mid-August.
The basements of the reactor buildings and turbine buildings are full of highly radioactive water. The amount is increasing by 500 tons a day due to ongoing injections of fresh water to cool the damaged reactors and fuel rods.

Friday, June 03, 2011 20:16
2 TEPCO workers exposed to radiation above limit
Experts say 2 workers at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been exposed to high levels of radiation exceeding the safety limit set by the government.
This is the first confirmed case in which radiation levels in humans have exceeded the limit since the accident at the plant.
The test by the National Institute of Radiology Sciences shows the estimated internal radiation absorbed by one man in his 30s is between 210 and 580 millisieverts, while another man in his 40s received between 200 and 570 millisieverts.
An earlier test showed the younger man had received about 74 millisieverts of external radiation and the other about 89 millisieverts.
The latest test results indicate that the amounts of radiation for the both workers exceeded the limit of 250 millisieverts set for emergency situations. The limit was raised by the government from 100 millisieverts soon after the accident.
The Institute says most of the radiation is in the men's thyroid glands, but that the possibility of their developing a thyroid disorder is lower than it would be in children.
TEPCO says safety measures, such as wearing protective clothing and masks, may have been inadequate just after the accident. It says it wants to conduct detailed tests on about 150 workers who were involved in similar operations.


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Voices from around


. Daily Radiation Levels . 　

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Japan Times :

Kan offers exit, beats no-confidence vote
Prime Minister Naoto Kan survives a no-confidence motion after suddenly announcing his intention to resign once disaster-hit Tohoku is back on its feet and the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant is safely under control.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110603a1.html

Kan buys time but cedes advantage to opposition
Prime Minister Naoto Kan handily prevails over an opposition-backed no-confidence motion, in part because he compromised with foes within his Democratic Party of Japan to step down in the near future after he feels he has accomplished his disaster-response duties.


Life insurers to hasten payments to families of missing
It usually takes at least a year for insurers to pay benefits to the families of policyholders who go missing in a natural disaster, but the insurers may move forward the start of payments as an exceptional measure as many disaster survivors are suffering financial difficulties, the sources said.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110603a4.html


30 blankets made by Israeli kids sent to orphanage
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20110603a7.html

Tohoku, Tokyo residents lash out at Diet backbiting
Opposition, DPJ turncoats hit by backlash for no-confidence vote
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110603a6.html


March 9 foreshock should've led to Big One alert: expert
Authorities could have issued a warning over the March 11 earthquake had they treated an earlier quake as a foreshock and closely analyzed the aftershocks that followed, according to a Tohoku University associate professor.

The foreshock, which occurred at 11:45 a.m. on March 9 near the focus of the March 11 quake, some 50 hours before it struck, registered a magnitude of 7.3, rocking Miyagi Prefecture and sending a tsunami of up to 60 cm to Iwate Prefecture.

Tomoki Hayashino 林野友紀 at the university's Research Center for Neutrino Science analyzed 43 earthquakes with a magnitude of 7.0 or above that occurred around Japan over the past 80 years and checked the number of aftershocks occurring within 20 hours of each.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20110603a5.html


School radiation cleanup slammed
Despite the education ministry's recent move to set a new nonbinding target to reduce the radiation children in Fukushima Prefecture are exposed to at schools, experts, local educators and parents don't feel reassured.
"The way the ministry is handling the school radiation issue makes me feel like it's someone else's problem," said Junko Matsubara, a former member of the Nuclear Safety Commission. "Just setting the 1 millisievert target doesn't get anywhere."
...
So far, the ministry has provided no specific guidance or instructions to help local governments reduce radiation levels at schools. It took until Tuesday simply to organize a hearing in Tokyo attended by radiology and education experts.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20110603f2.html


Companies' capital spending grows at slower pace since quake
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nb20110603n5.html


State, not internal veteran exec, should run Tepco: critics
Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s choice of a 36-year company veteran to resolve the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl and avert bankruptcy prompted calls for the government to take a more direct role in managing the utility.
Tepco on May 20 picked Toshio Nishizawa 西澤俊夫 , 60, to replace Masataka Shimizu, who resigned following a $15 billion loss, the biggest on record for a nonfinancial Japanese company. Nishizawa spent most of his career in corporate planning, a period that saw a series of scandals causing the departure of three previous presidents.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20110603n1.html


The Fukushima disaster and Japan Disincorporated
GREGORY CLARK
The Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant disaster is being used to convince the world that nuclear energy generation is inherently dangerous, especially in earthquake-prone Japan.

But the two other nuclear plants facing the Japan quake area — Fukushima No. 2 and Onagawa — came though fairly unscathed even though the force of the quake well exceeded the level they had been built to withstand.

The disaster at Fukushima No. 1 was due almost entirely to an act of unbelievable stupidity — placing a nuclear plant with its emergency power and pumping equipment on a coastline protected by a mere 5.7-meter sea wall in an area with a far-from-distant history of double-digit-size tsunamis.

Admittedly the plant had been designed mainly by the U.S. General Electric Co., which, one assumes, would not have been quite as tsunami-conscious as its Japanese partners.
...
Instead of looking at the mysterious dangers of nuclear power, we should be looking at the mysterious, and now it seems dangerous, workings of the Japanese mentality and bureaucracy.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/eo20110603gc.html

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From Germany and Europa

WHO: E. coli in Europe rare strain
The World Health Organization says the E. coli bacteria spreading in Europe is a rare strain that has never been seen in an outbreak of illness.
More than 1,000 people have fallen ill from E. coli in Europe, mainly in northern Germany. 18 of them have died due to kidney failure and other problems.
The WHO said in a statement on Thursday that the strain is a rare one, seen in humans before, but never in an outbreak.
The WHO said it is trying to identify the infection route, in order to stop the spread of the bacteria.
WHO officials and other researchers say the bacteria is highly toxic and infectious. Some experts say it could be an entirely new strain.
The WHO says people who have developed bloody diarrhea and abdominal pain after travelling to northern Germany should promptly seek medical advice.
source :　NHK world news

Mysteriöse Seuche:
EHEC-Erkrankungen in Deutschland
tödliche EHEC-Infektionen in Deutschland

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