ScribbleLive

Guides seek TEPCO compensation for fallen revenue

A group of Japanese tour guides is demanding compensation from the Tokyo Electric Power Company. They say the Fukushima nuclear accident caused a sharp drop in the number of foreign tourists.

The fifteen tour guides from Tokyo and elsewhere have taken their case to the state-run dispute settlement center to ask for arbitration with the TEPCO. All of guides have an official license to offer tours in foreign languages.

The power company says it will compensate for cancellation of tours made by the end of May. This is based on guidelines provided by the state supervisory panel.

The licensed guides on Monday demanded over 360 thousand dollars in damages.

They are claiming the number of their foreign clients has not returned to usual levels even after June.

One claimant offering guided tours in French says his income has shrunk to nearly zero and he has used up all his savings. He's asking the utility to understand the difficulties the guides are facing.

TEPCO says it will examine the demand and consider how to solve their predicament.

Monday, December 05, 2011 19:33 +0900 (JST)
www3.nhk.or.jp

Solar power fair begins near Tokyo

A trade show exhibiting cutting-edge solar cells and other eco-friendly technologies has begun at a major convention center in Chiba city, near Tokyo.

Some 250 companies and groups from 6 countries, including China and Germany, are taking part in the 3-day event starting Monday.

Interest in renewable energy has soared in Japan following the power shortages that hit much of the country after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in March.

A new law that comes into effect next July also obligates Japanese power utilities to purchase solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy, with prices set by the government.

Many exhibitors are showing solar panels for use in large-scale power plants and factories.

The panels come in various shapes to accommodate the different needs of users.

Varieties range from solar panels that generate power by amassing light inside tightly arranged lenses, to lightweight panels that can be bent to fit.

With production of solar batteries by Chinese and Taiwanese makers growing rapidly, international competition is on the rise.

Japanese makers are increasing their production and distribution systems, saying that they expect growth on a global scale.

Monday, December 05, 2011 18:38 +0900 (JST)
www3.nhk.or.jp

Lessons from Fukushima crisis should be applied in Turkey: Edano

TOKYO, Dec. 5, Kyodo

Japanese industry minister Yukio Edano expressed hope Monday for the deepening of bilateral cooperation with Turkey in the area of nuclear power generation, including exports of related Japanese technology, saying the lessons learned from the Fukushima nuclear crisis should be utilized in quake-prone Turkey.

Speaking at the Turkey-Japan Economic Forum in Tokyo attended by visiting Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Edano said that nuclear power generation is an ''important area of cooperation'' with Turkey.

''We intend to advance cooperation in a way that Turkey can apply the lessons of the accident (at the Fukushima Daiichi plant),'' Edano said.

''The nuclear accident is steadily moving toward a situation where it is brought under control,'' Edano said, adding that Japan intends to realize a cold shutdown of the plant reactors by the end of this year.

In October, Edano requested in a meeting with Turkish energy minister Taner Yildiz that Ankara continue talks with Tokyo over a nuclear power plant deal in Turkey.

==Kyodo english.kyodonews.jp

So if the radioactive water had the cesium removed, but not the stronium. So is the stronium removed in a later process?

is leaking strontium compatible with cold shutdown ?

@M.I.A. you mean like the EPA saying they were going to up acceptable levels?

I looks like Japan may have changed their food levels at least vs. what we found early on

Enviroment Pollution in Japan on Monday, 05 December, 2011 at 03:54 (03:54 AM) UTC.
Updated: Monday, 05 December, 2011 at 12:57 UTC
Description
More environmental damage has likely occurred at Japan’s stricken nuclear reactor after more than 45 tons of highly radioactive water leaked from the Fukushima Daiichi atomic power station this weekend, with some of the water possibly reaching the nearby Pacific Ocean, the utility that operates the plants says. The leak counteracts assurances that Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) has largely controlled damage at the coastal plant, located about 220 miles northeast of Tokyo, which it plans to bring to a total shutdown by year's end. On March 11, the 1970s-era plant was hit by a massive earthquake-triggered tsunami that knocked out its cooling system, eventually leading to several reactor core meltdowns. The catastrophe, which experts have called the largest single release of radioactivity into the ocean, has threatened fisheries in the region and caused the evacuation of 80,000 residents near the facility.

Since March, utility engineers have attempted to cool the ailing plant's reactors by flooding them with water, which becomes contaminated with radioactivity in the process. Tepco installed a new circulatory cooling system in September with filters that decontaminate and recycle the cooling water. But the company acknowledges that some water has already leaked into the ocean, and thousands of tons of water remain in the flooded basements of the plant's reactor buildings. According to a statement on the utility’s website, workers discovered Sunday morning that radioactive water was pooling in a runoff container near one of those purification devices. The system was shut down and the leak apparently ceased, but workers later found highly radioactive water leaking from cracks in the container’s concrete wall into a gutter that leads to the ocean.

Employees stemmed the leak with sandbags. The newspaper Asahi Shimbun quoted Tepco officials saying that as much as 220 tons of water may now have leaked from the damaged facility since the disaster struck nearly nine months ago. The water from Sunday’s leak was measured at 16,000 becquerels per liter of cesium-134, and 29,000 becquerels per liter of cesium-137, the utility acknowledged. Those numbers are 270 times and 322 times higher, respectively, than government safety limits, experts say. Both substances are readily absorbed by living tissue and can greatly increase the risk of developing cancer.

In another development, Japanese press quoted an interim report released by Tepco last week to capture the desperation workers faced when the Fukushima Daiichi plant was struck by the tsunami in March. "I felt I could do nothing. Other operators appeared anxious, and said, 'When we cannot control (the reactors) and are helpless, is there any point in us staying here?' " the chief of the reactors' central control room is quoted as saying in the utility’s internal investigation report released Friday. "So, I bowed my head and asked them to stay." Another worker interviewed by officials was part of an effort to vent the containment vessels around the nuclear cores to prevent explosion. "I heard some big weird popping sounds . . . and when I tried to start working . . . my black rubber boots melted (because of the heat)," he said. hisz.rsoe.hu

aaaaand the Greenpeace activists in France that invaded a nuke plant just got arrested. online.wsj.com

Yet they are spraying it on the trees etc?

A few years ago the power companies here were whining that they will have to build new plants and raise rates - rates are locked down by law. Need state approval to raise rates.

But they are who is blockading grid tied solar where they buy from consumers.

Does anyone remember what company bought up a huge stockpile of frozen fish right after the disaster? Was it Toshiba or Toyota? I can't find a news story

I think maybe it was Mitsubuishi but now can't find the news story on it.

but it seems mitsubishi stockpiled bluefin tuna long before fukushima, in speculation of its soon extinction. www.abovetopsecret.com

@lillymunster capitalism.

@lillymunster i asked that before when they installed their magic. they only spoke of cesium all the time.