April 14, 2015
A Japanese court (click here) has blocked the restarting of two nuclear reactors in the western city of Takahama, after local people raised safety concerns.
The plant had already obtained approval from the country's nuclear watchdog.A Japanese court (click here) has blocked the restarting of two nuclear reactors in the western city of Takahama, after local people raised safety concerns.
But locals had petitioned the court in Fukui prefecture, where Takahama is located, to intervene, saying it would not withstand a strong earthquake.
All 48 commercial reactors in Japan remain offline following 2011's Fukushima disaster.
The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Tokyo says the ruling is a serious blow for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's push to have the reactors restarted.
Mr Abe has said the shutdown is damaging the struggling economy, forcing Japan to import expensive fossil fuels to make up the power shortfall....
The robot to provide a method to understand what is occurring in the reactor no longer works. It is believed it was fried by the radiation.
The reacotr is out of control and it sits at the rim of a quake zone near the Pacific Ocean. This is not a good thing. It is a very bad situation.
April 13, 2015
Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) (click here) has had to give up trying to recover a shape-shifting snake robot that was sent into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on 10 April to access damage from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami disaster.
The Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami hit the Pacific coast of Japan in March 2011 and caused a major nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Three of the six nuclear reactors suffered meltdowns, releasing almost 30% more radiation than the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
The 60cm-long robot, developed by Hitachi and its affiliate, Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy, was sent into one of the nuclear containment vessels at the No. 1 reactor at 9.25am on 10 April. It is the first robot to have ventured into the containment vessel since 2011....
