Nearly three months after the start of the Fukushima disaster, the stricken reactors have still not been brought under control, and activist demands are growing for the abolition of nuclear power in Japan.
Hundreds of Vietnamese turned out to protest against Chinese naval operations in disputed waters of the South China Sea. The tensions come as Vietnam is moving closer to the US, holding unprecedented joint naval exercises.
Deadly blasts that targeted government buildings in Fuzhou, Jiangxi province, are being blamed on a peasant farmer who waged a legal struggle for years after his home was destroyed to make way for a new expressway.
Engineers at Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear plant abandoned attempts to stabilize reactors by flooding them with water, finding that melting fuel rods have created holes in the chambers, allowing contaminated water to leak out.
Japan will abandon plans to expand its nuclear power industry and instead focus on renewable energy, Prime Minister, Naoto Kan announced—following weeks of the country’s biggest public protests in 40 years.
Tokyo Electric Power Company and its corporate partners like General Electric and Bechtel have drawn up a plan for decommissioning the disaster-stricken Fukushima reactors—which they say could take up to 20 years.
Tokyo Electric Power Company issued a plan for cooling down the reactors and reducing radiation leaks within six to nine months at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant on Japan’s Pacific coast.
Radioactivity levels skyrocketed in the sea surrounding the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan late last week, raising fears that a new leak in the facility needs to be sealed.
As experts now say the area around Fukushima will be uninhabitable for a generation, protests against nuclear development mobilized in Tokyo, Taiwan, India, California and the Northeast US.
Dissident artist Ai Weiwei is being held incommunicado by Chinese authorities after posting a coded protest image to his website. The website remains online, but practically devoid of content—suggesting it has been heavily censored.
Japan raised the severity level of its nuclear crisis to seven—putting it on par with the Chernobyl disaster—as stricken reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex continue to release large amounts of radioactive substances.
A magnitude 7.4 aftershock hit northeastern Japan—raising fears of a deepening of the crisis at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, which is now vulnerable to any further destabilization.
