More Japanese earthquake and nuclear misery

This video is called Fukushima, Japan – Nuclear Reactor Explosion – March 12, 2011.

By Peter Symonds:

Large aftershock hits northern Japan

9 April 2011

A major aftershock on Thursday night hit north-eastern Japan, the region already struck by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Three people died in the latest quake, which left more than four million households without power, and disrupted gas and water supplies in the city of Sendai and other urban areas.

The aftershock highlighted the vulnerability of Japan’s nuclear plants to further tremors. While Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) reported no change in the state of its crippled reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, other nuclear facilities in northern Japan suffered power losses and were compelled to rely on emergency diesel generators.

Japan quake causes fresh radioactive spill. Small amounts of radioactive water leaking at Onagawa nuclear plant, following an aftershock that left three dead: here.

A week before becoming ground zero for the world’s biggest nuclear crisis since 1986, the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant offered $11 an hour for full-time maintenance work in an area of Japan that was lagging even before last month’s earthquake and tsunami struck: here.

Japan’s foreign minister, Takeaki Matsumoto, will co-chair a special ASEAN-Japan Ministerial Meeting in Jakarta today. The summit has ostensibly been called to discuss Southeast Asian aid to Japan in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. There is, however, a hidden agenda to the meeting. Japanese Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto will be representing the interests of the International Nuclear Energy Development of Japan Company (JINED), reassuring potential Southeast Asian clients of the safety of the nuclear power plants which JINED is marketing throughout the region: here.

Sheri Fink, ProPublica: “U.S. officials say the nation’s health system is ill-prepared to cope with a catastrophic release of radiation, despite years of focus on the possibility of a terrorist ‘dirty bomb’ or an improvised nuclear device attack. A blunt assessment circulating among American officials says ‘Current capabilities can only handle a few radiation injuries at any one time.’ That assessment, prepared by the Department of Homeland Security in 2010 and stamped ‘for official use only,’ says ‘there is no strategy for notifying the public in real time of recommendations on shelter or evacuation priorities'”: here.