Tsunami, Japan Nuclear Crisis | featured news

Japan shuts down its last working nuclear power reactor this weekend just over a year after a tsunami scarred the nation and if it survives the summer without major electricity shortages, producers fear the plants will stay offline for good.

With a minute of silence, tolling bells and prayers, Japan will on Sunday mark the first anniversary of an earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands and set off a nuclear crisis that shattered public trust in atomic power and the nation's leaders.

Japanese officials unveiled a decades-long plan Wednesday to decommission the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, where reactor cooling systems failed after the country's devastating earthquake and tsunami in March.

Japan says the crippled reactors at its tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant have reached stability more than four months ago after the disaster.

Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced a full meltdown at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the country's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday.

U.N. inspectors faulted Japan on Wednesday for underestimating the threat of a devastating tsunami on its crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant but praised its overall response to the crisis as exemplary....

Ratings agency Fitch on Friday cut its outlook on Japan's sovereign debt, warning that the vast cost of a March earthquake and tsunami and the still-unknown bill for the clean-up after the nuclear disaster would further strain the country's already shaky public finances.

A worker at Japan's tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant died on Saturday, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said, bringing the death toll at the complex to three since a massive earthquake and tsunami in March.

Toyota Motor Co may slip to No. 3 in the automaker production rankings behind General Motors and Volkswagen due to Japan's earthquake and nuclear crisis, which slashed local output by almost two-thirds in March alone.

Japan's shelters are still packed, with no firm word on when evacuees may return home. Cleaning up the most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl is likely to take decades and cost Japan an untold fortune.