Google Street View captures Fukushima ghost town
Google Street View has captured images of a Japanese ghost town, created when the Fukushima nuclear disaster left the area uninhabitable.
Google Street View has captured images of a Japanese ghost town, created when the Fukushima nuclear disaster left the area uninhabitable.
A year after the biggest earthquake to hit Japan the country remembers the events of that terrible day.
Experts disagree about how long it will take to clean up after Fukushima - it could easily be decades. But why did it happen at all?
Google Street View has captured images of a Japanese ghost town, created when the Fukushima nuclear disaster left the area uninhabitable.
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Tepco, the company behind the Fukushima nuclear power plant, suspects a rat might have caused Monday's outage.
The Japanese firm released a picture of a rodent carcass which it says probably triggered a short-circuit in a switchboard.
In March 2011 a massive tsunami caused a meltdown at the plant on the country's north east coast.
A power outage has left four fuel storage pools at Japan's tsunami-damaged Fukushima nuclear plant without fresh cooling water for more than 15 hours. The plant's operator it was trying to repair a broken switchboard that might have caused the problem.
Tokyo Electric Power Company said that pool temperatures were well within safe levels at the plant, and that pools would remain safe for at least four days without fresh cooling water.
People living in the areas contaminated by radioactive material released by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident two years ago have a higher risk of developing certain cancers over their lifetime, the World Health Organisation said.
The United Nations agency said: "This health risk assessment concludes that no discernible increase in health risks from the Fukushima event is expected outside Japan.
"With respect to Japan, this assessment estimates that the lifetime risk for some cancers may be somewhat elevated above base-line rates in certain age and sex groups that were in the areas most affected."
The UN health organisation is due to publish its findings on the health impact of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan today.
The in-depth report will give the World Health Organisation's assessment of risks from radiation exposure to people all over the world, as well as in the immediate vicinity.
Three reactors at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant experienced meltdowns after a 15-metre tsunami cause by a major earthquake disabled the plant's power supply.
No-one has died as a result of the accident, but more than 100,000 people were evacuated to avoid exposure to radiation.
Reuters reports that Tokyo Electric says there is no problem with the cooling system at the Fukushima nuclear plant after an earthquake in Japan and that there has been no irregularities in radiation levels.
Japan has approved the restarting of two nuclear reactors reactors despite mass public opposition. They will be the first to come back on line after they were all shut down following the Fukushima crisis.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has backed the restarts for some time, despite public concerns over safety after the big earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima plant.
Anti-nuclear campaigners fear it could open the door to more restarts among Japan's 50 nuclear power reactors, which formerly provided around a third of Japan's electricity demand.
A Japanese mobile phone operator has cashed in on residual fears from the Fukushima nuclear accident by designing a smartphone with a built-in radiation detector.
Softbank Corp claims the phones are more compact and user-friendly than conventional geiger counters, which have become a familiar sight in some parts of the country.
The company announced today that it would begin selling the phones this summer at an "affordable price".
Although there is an exclusion zone around the nuclear plant and all residents have been evacuated, there are still concerns about nuclear hotspots along Japan's eastern coast. Anti-nuclear activists have campaigned for radiation monitoring in schools.
Softbank president Masayoshi Son said: "The threat from the nuclear accident cannot be seen by the human eye and continues to be a concern for many people, especially for mothers with small children."
Tokyo Electric Power Co, the operator of the Fukushima plant, will shut down its last running reactor at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant, leaving online just one of Japan's 54 reactors.
Safety worries have kept those reactors taken off-line after the Fukushima disaster from being restarted.
Anti-nuclear activists may welcome the prospect that the reactors that supplied nearly 30 percent of Japan's electricity before the March 2011 disaster will be shut down.
But experts say firms will have to bear a costly burden and that mandatory limits on power use may be necessary to avoid blackouts.
One year after north-east Japan was devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami, Japanese citizens have held ceremonies to remember the dead. NBC's Ian Williams travelled to one of the worst-hit towns to see how life is gradually returning to normal.