Fukushima, Japan nuclear disaster update

This video says about itself:

Inside Fukushima’s Radioactive Ghost Towns

12 July 2016

A DAREDEVIL urban explorer has shared haunting images of the abandoned Fukushima earthquake ‘exclusion zone’ after sneaking in to the highly irradiated region. Wearing a gas mask but no other protective clothing, explorer and photographer Keow Wee Loong, 27, visited four of the evacuated towns in Fukushima – Tomioka, Okuma, Namie and Futaba – in June this year with friends Sherena Ng and Koji Hori.

Lying completely untouched since March 2011, the city of Fukushima was evacuated suddenly after the east coast of Japan was devastated by a massive earthquake followed by a huge tsunami. Keow’s images give an eerie insight into the panic that followed the disaster and show a city stuck in time as calendars remain on the same date, families’ clean washing is half-removed from driers and newspapers forever remain unsold.

Videographer / director: Keow Wee Loong
Producer: Crystal Chung, Ellie Winstanley
Editor: Jack Stevens

TOKYO — The combined costs of paying compensation for the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the decommissioning of the plant’s reactors may be double the initial estimate, rising to more than 20 trillion yen ($176 billion), according to estimates by the country’s industry ministry: here.

Why the water cooling system at Fukushima nuclear plant stopped — Business Insider Australia: here.

Japan tsunami highlights Fukushima nuclear plant vulnerability — Voice of America: here.

From the Asahi Shimbun daily in Japan:

Fukushima ‘ghost town’ uses dummies to fill sad post-3/11 void

By TAKUYA ISAYAMA/ Staff Writer

November 17, 2016 at 17:50 JST

NARAHA, Fukushima Prefecture–Ghosts of the past are all around in this Fukushima town whose communities were decimated in the aftermath of the 2011 nuclear disaster.

Less than one-tenth of Naraha’s residents have come home since its evacuation order was lifted, but some who did return have devised a creative solution to the population problem.

Locals have formed a group to make dummies to place them around the town in lieu of the many human inhabitants who have been absent since the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant disaster of March 2011.

The results are poignant.

KYOTO – The magnitude-7.4 aftershock that rocked Fukushima Prefecture and its vicinity last week, more than five years after the mega-quake and tsunami of March 2011, triggered fresh nuclear concerns in the Kansai region, which hosts Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Mihama plant in Fukui Prefecture: here.

Japan’s nuclear export ambitions hit wall as Vietnam set to rip up reactor order — Japan Today: here.