‘Everyone at the power plant is battling on, without running away’



Glenda Kwek

March 18, 2011 – 3:54PM

“Please dad come back alive,” the tweet read.

As foreigners boarded charter flights to leave Tokyo amid radiation fears from a troubled nuclear power plant in Japan’s north, 180 workers toiled tirelessly at the facility in a race to stop a full meltdown.

Messages from the Fukushima Fifty – named because they work in shifts of 50 people – are emerging a week after the massive earthquake and tsunami damaged cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The workers have been battling to keep fuel rods in the plant’s reactors from overheating and melting down by pumping seawater manually into the cores.

US charters planes to help its citizens leave Japan

State Department authorizes voluntary evacuations; meanwhile, Japanese official says ‘there is absolutely no reason to leave Tokyo’

NBC, msnbc.com and news services

Airlines scrambled to fly thousands of passengers out of Tokyo on Thursday as fears about Japan’s nuclear crisis mounted and the United States joined other nations urging their citizens to consider leaving.

The U.S. authorized the first evacuations of Americans out of Japan and warned U.S. citizens to defer all non-essential travel to any part of the country as unpredictable weather and wind conditions risked spreading radioactive contamination.

The State Department said the government had chartered aircraft to help Americans leave Japan and had authorized the voluntary departure of family members of diplomatic staff in Tokyo, Nagoya and Yokohama – about 600 people.

Japan radiation leaks force 140,000 indoors

‘These are figures that potentially affect health. There is no mistake about that’

msnbc.com staff and news service reports

SOMA, Japan – Dangerous levels of radiation leaking from a crippled nuclear plant forced Japan to order 140,000 people to seal themselves indoors Tuesday after an explosion and a fire dramatically escalated the 4-day-old crisis spawned by a deadly tsunami.

Adding to the mounting crisis, the international nuclear agency said a fire in a storage pond for spent nuclear fuel at a tsunami-stricken Japanese power plant had released radioactivity directly into the atmosphere.

In a nationally televised statement, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said radiation has spread from four reactors of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Fukushima state, one of the hardest-hit in Friday’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the ensuing tsunami that has killed more than 10,000 people, plunged millions into misery and pummeled the world’s third-largest economy .

Death toll surges in Japan quake aftermath

Thousands of bodies found in Miyagi Prefecture on Monday

msnbc.com news services

TAKAJO, Japan – Rescue workers used chain saws and hand picks Monday to dig out bodies in Japan’s devastated coastal towns, as Asia’s richest nation faced a mounting humanitarian, nuclear and economic crisis in the aftermath of a massive earthquake and tsunami that likely killed thousands.

Millions of people spent a third night without water, food or heating in near-freezing temperatures along the devastated northeastern coast; the containment building of a second nuclear reactor exploded because of hydrogen buildup while the stock market plunged over the likelihood of huge losses by Japanese industries including big names such as Toyota and Honda.

Japanese nuclear plants’ operator scrambles to avert meltdowns



By Steven Mufson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, March 13, 2011; 12:29 AM

Japanese authorities said Sunday that efforts to restart the cooling system at one of the reactors damaged by Friday’s earthquake had failed, a major setback in the struggle to contain what has become the most serious nuclear power crisis in a quarter century.

Officials said utility workers released “air containing radioactive materials” in an effort to relieve pressure inside the reactor, even as they raced to bring several other imperiled reactors under control.

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.

Japan battles to stave off possible nuclear meltdown

Japanese media say officials have detected caesium, one of the elements released when overheating causes core damage, around reactor at Fukushima No 1 plant in Futuba

Tania Branigan in Beijing

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 12 March 2011 07.11 GMT

Workers are battling to stave off a possible nuclear meltdown at a plant in north-eastern Japan as the country struggles with the aftermath of Friday’s enormous earthquake and tsunami.

Japanese media said officials had detected caesium, one of the elements released when overheating causes core damage, around the reactor at Fukushima No 1 plant in Futuba, 150 miles (240km) north of Tokyo.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said it did not believe a meltdown was under way, but Ryohei Shiomi, an official with Japan’s nuclear safety commission, said that it was possible.

Magnitude 8.9 earthquake rocks Japan

The quake strikes off the northeast coast of Japan, and a tsunami follows, sweeping away cars, boats and even buildings. People in Tokyo tell of ‘shaking and rocking.’

By Barbara Demick, David Pierson and Kenji Hall, Los Angeles Times

March 11, 2011, 12:23 a.m.

Reporting from Beijing and Tokyo An 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck off the northeast coast of Japan on Friday, shaking office buildings in Tokyo and setting off a devastating tsunami that swept away cars and boats.

The quake – the world’s fifth largest since 1900, according to the U.S. Geological Survey – struck at 2.46 p.m. local time.

There were reports of injuries in Tokyo as officials tried to assess damage, injuries and deaths from the quake and tsunami, but there were no immediate details.

Libyan rebels: ‘Why won’t the world help us?’

Protest movement pleads for intervention as Gaddafi’s forces step up counter-attack

By Kim Sengupta in Ras Lanuf Thursday, 10 March 2011

As Colonel Gaddafi’s forces carried out bloody assaults on rebel-held towns yesterday, those on the receiving end of the wrath were increasingly asking a stark question: Why is the West failing to offer help in our desperate time of need?

Two frontline towns held by dissidents came under sustained attack and an oil facility was set ablaze yesterday during ferocious fighting that left dozens dead as Gaddafi forces rolled back military gains of the opposition.

The feeling was growing in opposition ranks that the disorganised and disunited political and military leadership of the protest movement would not withstand for much longer the sustained pressure being applied by Colonel Gaddafi’s forces.

Discord Fills Washington on Possible Libya Intervention



By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER Published: March 7, 2011

WASHINGTON – Nearly three weeks after Libya erupted in what may now turn into a protracted civil war, the politics of military intervention to speed the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi grow more complicated by the day – for both the White House and Republicans.

President Obama, appearing Monday morning with Australia’s prime minister, tried to raise the pressure on Colonel Qaddafi further by talking about “a range of potential options, including potential military options” against the embattled Libyan leader.

Despite Mr. Obama’s statement, interviews with military officials and other administration officials describe a number of risks, some tactical and others political, to American intervention in Libya.

America’s secret plan to arm Libya’s rebels

Obama asks Saudis to airlift weapons into Benghazi

By Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent  Monday, 7 March 2011

Desperate to avoid US military involvement in Libya in the event of a prolonged struggle between the Gaddafi regime and its opponents, the Americans have asked Saudi Arabia if it can supply weapons to the rebels in Benghazi. The Saudi Kingdom, already facing a “day of rage” from its 10 per cent Shia Muslim community on Friday, with a ban on all demonstrations, has so far failed to respond to Washington’s highly classified request, although King Abdullah personally loathes the Libyan leader, who tried to assassinate him just over a year ago.

Washington’s request is in line with other US military co-operation with the Saudis. The royal family in Jeddah, which was deeply involved in the Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, gave immediate support to American efforts to arm guerrillas fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan in 1980 and later – to America’s chagrin – also funded and armed the Taliban.