Antinuclear

FUKUSHIMA — While contaminated water continues to accumulate at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, radioactive waste retrieved from that water during purification work is becoming a serious concern for the nuclear facility.

Since there is currently no way of dealing with the waste, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has stored it onsite as a temporary measure. But there are fears in Fukushima Prefecture that it may be left there for good.

Contaminated water builds up every day at the Fukushima No. 1 plant as groundwater flows into the reactor buildings where melted fuel from the Fukushima nuclear disaster lies. Since this contaminated water could flow into the sea, TEPCO processes it with several types of purification equipment, and reuses it to cool the No. 1 to 3 reactors.

Tainted water in the reactor buildings is pumped into the U.S. cesium absorption apparatus Kurion and Toshiba…

Over five-and-a-half years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011 and the subsequent nuclear accident at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Since then, big disasters have occurred in several other areas around the world, and in Japan the 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes also caused great damage. So, the term “disaster area” does not always evoke specific images of Tohoku or Fukushima for many of us in Japan today. However, a large number of disaster victims continues to suffer from the disaster in Tohoku, especially by the nuclear accident in Fukushima. The hard times for disaster victims haven’t ended yet. We report here on the latest situation in the Tohoku and Fukushima districts so as not to forget their ongoing suffering.

The losses from the Great East Japan Earthquake as of March 10, 2016, were officially reported as follows: 18,455 people dead or…

By Peter Hannam

As if humans weren’t making it hard enough for the world’s creatures great and small.
Evidence continues to mount that global warming is having an impact on ecosystems across the planet in a myriad of ways, altering both individual species and ecological communities.

There’s really nowhere on earth where the natural systems are not being affected by climate change,” Lesley Hughes, a professor of biology at Macquarie University, said.
“Climate change is simply an additional stress on already stressed ecosystems,”

Professor Hughes said, listing habitat loss, pollution and over-exploitation among the existing challenges.

A recent paper in Science said research on 94 core ecological processes and found 82 per cent were already revealing climate change impacts as temperatures warmed.
James Watson, a conservation biologist at the University of Queensland and one of the paper’s authors, said people often fixated on polar bears, penguins or another emblematic species.