Nuclear Power Plant, Japan Earthquake | featured news

Gregory Jaczko, head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, says the crisis is worse than Japanese officials appear to be letting on. 'This is a situation where people may be called in to sacrifice their lives,' he says of the crew working there.

A small band of experts is risking their lives to prevent a nuclear disaster at Japan's damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant.

It seems too impossible to believe, but according to reports from CNN, Reuters and the AP tonight, the last workers at the Fukashima-Daiichi reactors have been withdrawn from the scene, halting efforts to continue cooling partially melted fuel rods with ocean water. Just a day earlier 750 more workers had been removed. Exhaustion, radiation exposure, hopelessness–we don’t yet know the reason for this latest move. Earlier in the day new fires, explosions and clouds of smoke or steam were spotted. Maybe the evacuation means that the worst of the danger is over (how else could they leave?) — but that doesn’t seem likely.

What a bone-headed move. There’s nothing wrong with the 7 nuclear plants that German Chancellor Angela Merkel decreed would be shut down. Just last fall Germany decided to extend the lives of these plants, which provide roughly 10% of Germany’s electricity. With solar and wind entirely unscalable, how’s Germany going to make up the electric deficit? Either by ramping up the use of fossil-fuel burning plants (and importing more natural gas from Russia) or importing power from its neighbors–like nuke-friendly France.

Aviation authorities across the globe are closely monitoring the radiation levels at  a Japanese nuclear power plant damaged in last week's earthquake and tsunami.

Stocks plunged Tuesday, sending the Dow Jones industrial average down almost 300 points at the opening, as the nuclear crisis in Japan intensified following a deadly earthquake and tsunami....

The last thing Japan needed was more bad news on its threatened nuclear reactors. But Monday and early today, that's just what this nation got.

Austria on Monday called for European nuclear power plants to face stress tests to reassure people worried by the crisis in Japan while Britain and France urged calm.

Japan’s nuclear safety agency has confirmed that a hydrogen explosion has occurred at the No. 3 reactor of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Meanwhile, a 5 meter tidal wave is said to be on the way to northern Japan’s eastern coast.

Japan's chief cabinet secretary says a hydrogen explosion has occurred at Unit 3 of Japan's stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. The blast was similar to an earlier one at a different unit of the facility.