"Fukushima tank springs major leak: 120 tons of radioactive water escape from underground facility"

As reported by Kyodo in the Japan Times, a water storage tank holding more than 13,000 tons of highly radioactively contaminated water was leaked 120 tons into the ground, and may leak another 47 tons before the remainder can be transferred to other tanks nearby. The amount of radioactivity already leaked is estimated to contain 710 billion becquerels of radioactivity.

The article reports: '“It is the largest amount of radioactive substances that has been leaked” since the crippled facility’s cold shutdown was declared in December 2011, Tepco official Masayuki Ono said.'

Blackout at Fukushima - continued peril at stricken nuclear plant

The Associated Press reports: "The operator of Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear plant says a power failure has left three fuel storage pools without fresh cooling water for hours. Tokyo Electric Power Co. says the blackout Monday night at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant was brief at its command centre but continued for hours at three of the seven fuel storage pools and a few other facilities. TEPCO says the reactors were unaffected, and it plans to restore power to the pool cooling systems as soon as it determines the cause. It says the nuclear fuel stored in the pools will remain safe for at least four days without fresh cooling water. The March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant's power and cooling systems, causing three reactor cores to melt and fuel storage pools to overheat. The plant is now using makeshift systems."

Japan's "long war" to deal with the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe could cost more than $500 billion

As reported by Reuters:

"...The reactors were declared to be in a stable state called cold-shut down in December 2011. But now Japan faces an unprecedented clean-up that experts say could cost at least $100 billion for decommissioning the reactors and another $400 billion for compensating victims and decontaminating areas outside the plant.

Tepco said in November the costs of compensation to residents and decontamination of their neighborhoods might double to 10 trillion yen ($107 billion) from a previous estimate. That did not include a forecast for decommissioning...

The Japan Center for Economic Research, a Tokyo-based think tank, has estimated that decontamination costs alone in the Fukushima residential area could balloon to as much as $600 billion...

Estimates for total costs are mostly guesswork. "Only God knows," said Chuo University's Annen [Junji Annen, a professor at Chuo University who last year chaired a panel on Tepco's finances].

Whatever the final bill, Japanese consumers are likely to end up paying much of it, either through taxes, higher electricity rates or both, even as Japan's government struggles with massive public debt and the costs of an ageing population.

That may be unpopular but also inevitable.

"This kind of job has never been done," said Keiro Kitagami, a former lawmaker who headed a government task force overseeing R&D for the project. "The technology, the wherewithal, has never been developed. Basically, we are groping in the dark."

Weekly protest rallies continue despite new pro-nuclear government

The weekly antinuclear power rallies are still being staged outside the Japanese prime minister’s office in Tokyo, as evidenced by a gathering of some 3,000 people one recent cold February evening, but the crowds are getting smaller.

Part of this decline may be because two years have passed since the Fukushima nuclear disaster started. Another factor may be that the Liberal Democratic Party — the very promoter of nuclear energy over the past half-century — returned to power at the end of last year.

The demonstrations, organized by the Metropolitan Coalition Against Nukes, a body made up of 13 groups as well as individual members, have been held every Friday in Nagata-cho since late last March, when the Democratic Party of Japan was in power and seemed receptive to calls to end nuclear power.

The movement that originally attracted 300 people grew drastically to draw some 200,000 participants of all ages within three months as the DPJ-led government moved toward restarting two reactors at the Oi nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture, coalition members said. A tent city, a makeshift gathering place set up by activists just outside the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, was set up on Sept. 11, 2011.

When the tent city was launched, about 1,000 people, many in their 20s and 30s, gathered daily from around the country to express their objections to METI’s efforts to restart nuclear plants without thorough investigations into why Fukushima No. 1 occurred. Some waged 10-day hunger strikes.

“The movement served as a catalyst for young people to take action back home,” said Takehiko Yagi, a spokesman for Tent Square.

Some of the original participants staged sit-ins at the Oi plant last July to try to prevent the reactor restarts. Others continue to confront other issues, including the disposal of radiation-contaminated debris that is being carried out in various parts of Japan.

New Greenpeace report shows Fukushima suffering continuing

The fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster continues for hundreds of thousands of victims in Japan still denied fair compensation from a regulatory system that allows the nuclear industry to evade its responsibilities and forces the public to pay for its disasters. A new Greenpeace International report, Fukushima Fallout: Nuclear business makes people pay and suffer, details how the serious flaws in nuclear regulations worldwide leave the public, not nuclear plant operators or suppliers of key equipment, to pay for the vast majority of the costs in the event of a nuclear accident.