Once the nuke story got running, it was unstoppable. Instead of filming endless actual suffering, photographers in Japan staked out hospitals hoping to find radiation victims to fan their virtual fire of doom. After weeks of waiting they finally got a couple of burned feet and the vision flashed around the world at light speed. Amputation footage from the real disaster would have crawled.

Over the past year, about 600,000 Japanese will have had a new cancer diagnosis caused by the normal range of lifestyle choices, environmental hazards and genetic factors. Boring.

How many people have died from the radiation released by the failures of the Fukushima Daichi reactor? Zero. “It’s a disaster”, says ACF. No it isn’t.

A group of baby-boomer residents from a spa resort section of the city of Fukushima is aiming to restore the area's popularity — which is suffering amid the prefecture's nuclear crisis — by introducing a geothermal power-generation system that uses water from the hot springs.

...

The new system, which can utilize excess spa water, is considered to be more environmentally friendly than existing geothermal power generation systems that require large-scale plants to generate electricity from high-temperature gases deep in the ground.

A tool equipped with a tiny video camera, a thermometer, a dosimeter and a water gauge was used to assess damage inside the containment chamber of Fukushima Daiichi plant's number 2 reactor for the second time since the tsunami swept into the complex more than a year ago.

The data collected on Tuesday showed the damage from the disaster is so severe that the plant operator will have to develop special equipment and technology to tolerate the harsh environment and decommission the plant. The process is expected to last decades.

The other two reactors that had meltdowns could be in even worse shape. The number 2 reactor is the only one officials have been able to closely examine so far.

Japan insists its nuclear crisis was caused by an unforeseeable combination of tsunami and earthquake. But new evidence suggests its reactors were doomed to fail.

I don't know, I get a distinct whiff of sensationalism from both headline and lede, but I'm tagging this "toread" so I can check it out later.

The Tohoku 9.0 earthquake, fifth largest ever recorded, created a tsunami with large waves up to 40 meters, with walls of water swallowing coastal towns, has been one of the worst natural disasters in recent history with the death toll reaching just below 20,000 people, estimated damage $310 billion. The scale of the calamity is truly epic. Hence, the Fukushima nuclear accident should have been only a side show.

Not so, it immediately became the principal show. Coverage in the U.S. media replicated hysteria, sensationalism, scaremongering and disinformation that characterized coverage of the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident in 1979. It appears that coverage in Europe wasn’t much better. Initially the mainstream media paraded a stream of anti-nuclear activists who excelled in predicting an equivalent of Armageddon with cataclysmic consequences.

Last year, the Japanese government ordered the nuclear authorities to conduct tests on all Japan's reactors after the 11 March meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi raised questions about the safety of nuclear power, particularly in a country prone to earthquakes and tsunami.

Earlier this week, a team of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] began a review of the safety tests but said it was up to the Japanese government whether or not to approve the restart of idle reactors.

Currently only three of Japan's 54 reactors – just over 6% of its total nuclear capacity – are in operation after the Fukushima accident forced the closure of active reactors for safety checks.

Japan may announce on December 16 that tsunami-damaged nuclear reactors in Fukushima are in a cold shutdown, the Yomiuri newspaper reported on Friday, an important milestone in its plan to bring under control the worst nuclear accident in 25 years.

...

Declaring a cold shutdown will have repercussions well beyond the plant as it is one of the criteria the government has said must be met before it begins allowing 80,000 residents evacuated from within a 20 km (12 mile) radius of the plant to return home.

A considerable amount of the melted fuel is thought to have penetrated the reactor's pressure vessel and fallen to the bottom of the containment vessel, which includes the pressure vessel, TEPCO said.

If it is assumed that all of the fuel at the No. 1 reactor fell to the containment vessel, this could have eroded the vessel's 100-centimeter-thick concrete bottom by 65 centimeters, it said. But the fuel would not penetrate the containment vessel, it added.

At the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors where cooling continued for a certain period of time, about 60 pct of fuel is estimated to have melted. If all of the melted fuel is assumed to have fallen to the reactors' containment vessels, their bottoms could have been eroded by at the most 12 centimeters and 20 centimeters, respectively.

According to a report this week by the International Energy Agency, which isn't an especially alarmist body, the chances grow every day that the world will warm by more than 2C (4F), which scientists estimate is the limit beyond which change becomes chaotic and unknowable, and much more dangerous. To stay within that limit, the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere mustn't exceed 450ppm (parts per million). Its present level is 390ppm and last year, despite recession, more carbon dioxide from fossil fuels poured into the atmosphere than ever before. The world goes on gobbling up oil, coal and gas in increasing amounts and will continue to build power stations and steel mills that depend on their energy. "Fossil fuel lock-in" is the term, meaning an ongoing commitment to coal and oil that will be impossible to undo until long after 2020, which, according to climate science, is when carbon emissions need to start their decline.

Tepco said that the Daiichi reactors were emitting about 200 million becquerels of radiation per hour as of mid-September, about one four-millionths of the amount seen in the days after the March 11 disaster.

It said this translates to about 0.4 millisievert per year of radiation measured at the fringes of the plant, below the 1 millisievert legal limit.

...

Temperatures at all four of its spent fuel pools had fallen to levels considered stable by August. As of Tuesday temperatures at all the spent fuel pools were below 40 degrees.