"Japanese officials struggled through the day on Tuesday to explain why it had taken them a month to disclose large-scale releases of radioactive material in mid-March at a crippled nuclear power plant, as the government and an electric utility disagreed on the extent of continuing problems there."
"Japan has raised its assessment of the accident at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to the worst rating on an international scale, putting the disaster on par with the 1986 Chernobyl explosion, the Japanese nuclear regulatory agency said on Tuesday."
"Japan's unfolding reactor crisis is fueling a battle over nuclear power across the Pacific, in earthquake-prone California."
"Millions of gallons of radioactive water have leaked from nuclear power plants throughout the U.S. since the 1970s, threatening water supplies in New Jersey and other states, an Asbury Park Press investigation found."
Japan on Monday expanded the evacuation zone around its crippled nuclear plant because of high levels of accumulated radiation, as a strong aftershock rattled the area one month after a quake and tsunami sparked the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl."
"U.S. officials say the nation’s health system is ill-prepared to cope with a catastrophic release of radiation, despite years of focus on the possibility of a terrorist 'dirty bomb' or an improvised nuclear device attack."
The Japanese nuclear disaster is a reminder that the storage of spent fuel in temporary facilities across the United States may be a disaster waiting to happen.
"Japanese officials took some solace Wednesday in halting leaks of radioactive water from the nation's crippled nuclear plant. But in Washington, internal e-mails from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission revealed doubts within the organization about procedures for U.S. plants in a Fukushima-style event."
"United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."
"As the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station continued to dump radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, company officials said that seawater collected near the facility contained radiation several million times the legal limit."
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