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Crisis deepens for shaken Japan

20 Mar 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

“Our soul waits for the Lord, who is our help and our shield,” says the psalmist this Sunday. Millions of desperate Japanese still await assistance in the wake of a powerful earthquake and tsunami that rocked the island nation last Friday. Damaged nuclear reactors have complicated the already grave state of affairs. Much of the tsunami’s havoc was wrought in rural and even inaccessible areas, and much of that has barely been touched. “About 20 percent of the damaged area here has been searched,” Ken-Ichi Sato, who heads emergency operations in a hard-hit region, said Wednesday. “Parts we can’t reach because we can’t get into the area, and parts haven’t been searched because there’s so much debris to clear away.” Japan’s National Police Agency placed the disaster’s toll late Wednesday at more than 4,300 dead and more than 8,000 missing, figures that are likely to rise sharply as more complete reports are compiled. Meanwhile, the closure of highways and lack of goods have slowed government efforts to deliver supplies. Entire swaths of northern Japan remain without electricity, water, or cell phone service. Officials now worry that freezing weather could create a humanitarian crisis for survivors, many of whom have been left without homes. Even those whose homes were spared have found themselves living in a state of privation that this modern and wealthy nation has not known since World War II. At the same time, Japan’s nuclear crisis intensified on Wednesday after authorities announced that a second reactor unit at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan may have ruptured and appeared to be releasing radioactive steam. There are concerns about other reactor units at the site as well after a series of explosions and other problems in the earthquake’s wake that have resulted in the world’s worst nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl accident in 1986. International alarm about the nuclear crisis is growing, as several nations urged their citizens in Japan to head to safer areas in the south or leave the country. The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission Wednesday gave a bleak appraisal of the threat posed by the nuclear crisis, saying that the damage at one crippled reactor was much more serious than Japanese officials had acknowledged and advising Americans to evacuate a wider area around the plant than ordered by the Japanese government. Sources: Articles by Hiroko Tabuchi, Keith Bradsher, Michael Wines, David E. Sanger, Matthew L. Wald, and Martin Fackler for the New York Times and Mark Magnier, Barbara Demick, and Laura King for the Los Angeles Times

nuclear power earthquake tsunami japan radiation fukushima daiichi
Future of nuclear power clouded by Japanese crisis

27 Mar 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In this Sunday’s gospel Jesus tells the Samaritan woman he is the "gift of God” who shows God’s great care for God’s people. In the aftermath of the post-earthquake disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, a number of countries are questioning whether nuclear power is a gift and if human beings are really capable of caring for it. Several nations have begun to reexamine their nuclear policies, though no consensus exists on how to move forward. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing for the European Union to have common safety standards for nuclear power plants, but ahead of a meeting of European leaders in Brussels Thursday energy ministers could not even agree on how and when to conduct stress tests on European nuclear plants. For its part Germany plans to abandon nuclear energy for good. The transition was supposed to happen slowly over the next 25 years, but now it is being accelerated in the wake of the Japanese disaster. Germany’s phase-out may provide a road map that countries such as the United States, which uses a similar amount of nuclear power, could follow, but not countries like France, which relies on nuclear energy for more than 70 percent of its power and has no intention of shifting. In Italy the prospect of losing upcoming local elections has forced the conservative government to slow its push to reintroduce nuclear power. Rome is calling for a one-year moratorium on nuclear power, but antinuclear activists say it's a ploy to buy time. Switzerland said it was halting plans for new reactors, while other countries, including the U.S., announced reviews of plants. Still others, however, said they would forge ahead with nuclear energy plans. Jesus calls on his followers to “do the will of the one who sent me,” and the ongoing crisis in Japan raises ethical as well as environmental and health issues about energy use and the future of nuclear power, said Catholic ethicists. The accident could be a "huge wake-up call" that would "give impetus to jump starting massive research" in other energy technologies, such as solar and wind power, said William French, director of the Center for Ethics at Loyola University Chicago. Sources: Articles by Mario Trujillo for PRNewswire-USNewswire, Sylvia Poggioli for National Public Radio, the Associated Press, and Catholic News Service

angela merkel nuclear power plants fukushima daiichi switzerland european union japan germany energy italy nuclear power nuclear reactors
Japan’s nuclear nightmare continues

25 Aug 2013 - Preaching the News for Sunday

“Endure your trials as ‘discipline,’ ” encourages the second reading this Sunday. Japan has endured its share of trials since a massive earthquake and tsunami crippled a nuclear reactor two years ago, and the crisis appears to be escalating. The country’s nuclear watchdog now fears more storage tanks are leaking contaminated water.Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga called the situation "deplorable," and the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said it feared the disaster—the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier—was "in some respects" beyond the plant operator's ability to cope.Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, the plant's operator, has been criticized for its failure to prepare for the disaster and has since been accused of covering up the extent of the problems at the plant. After months of denial, Tepco recently admitted that the plant was leaking contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean from trenches between the reactor buildings and the shoreline.It said on Tuesday that water with dangerously high levels of radiation also was leaking from a storage tank—the most serious problem in a series of recent mishaps, including power outages, contaminated workers, and other leaks.Japan’s NRA Chairman Shunichi Tanaka likened the stricken nuclear plant to a house of horrors at an amusement park. "I don't know if describing it this way is appropriate, but it's like a haunted house and, as I've said, mishaps keep happening one after the other," he told reporters. "We have to look into how we can reduce the risks and how to prevent it from becoming a fatal or serious incident."South Korea's Asiana Airlines said it would cancel charter flights between Seoul and Fukushima city in October due to public concerns over the radioactive water leaks. The city, around 37 miles from the nuclear facility and with a population of some 284,000, is a popular destination for golfers and tourists visiting nearby local hot springs and lakes.Homily hint: The debates for and against nuclear energy often come down to how confident we can be that humanity can build structures that can withstand nature’s destructive capacity. Our faith calls for responsible stewardship of the earth and its resources. With safe, clean, renewable energy resources gaining momentum every year, may the day soon arrive when taking the high stakes gamble on nuclear energy is no longer necessary. Source: An article by Kiyoshi Takenaka and James Topham for Reuters

nuclear power nuclear reactors shunichi tanaka nuclear regulation authority tepco tokyo electric power co fukushima yoshihide suga