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Japan’s Tepco to restart nuclear reactors?

The Japanese government has approved a business turnaround plan submitted by Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant, which includes restarting idled reactors at the utility’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant. The business plan approval is required under the terms of a $10 billion state bailout of Tepco, received after the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster that was triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami. The approval would allow the utility to receive an additional $38 billion in state funding, the Wall Street Journal reports. Tepco is facing massive costs of cleaning up the Fukushima plant and huge compensation payments to those affected by the disaster. The overall decommissioning of the facility is expected to take around 40 years. Japanese Industry Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, when handing over the approval document Wednesday, told Tepco President Naomi Hirose: “This new plan is […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Japan's Tepco to restart nuclear reactors?

The Japanese government has approved a business turnaround plan submitted by Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant, which includes restarting idled reactors at the utility’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant. The business plan approval is required under the terms of a $10 billion state bailout of Tepco, received after the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster that was triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami. The approval would allow the utility to receive an additional $38 billion in state funding, the Wall Street Journal reports. Tepco is facing massive costs of cleaning up the Fukushima plant and huge compensation payments to those affected by the disaster. The overall decommissioning of the facility is expected to take around 40 years. Japanese Industry Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, when handing over the approval document Wednesday, told Tepco President Naomi Hirose: “This new plan is […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Japan power utilities’ Dec LNG use hits monthly record high 5.27 mil mt

Japan’s 10 major power utilities consumed 5.27 million mt of LNG in December, a record high for monthly imports and up 4.2% year on year, data released Friday by the Federation of Electric Power Companies showed. The major power utilities’ previous monthly record high LNG consumption was in January 2012 at 5.21 million mt, while the previous high for the month of December was in 2012 at 5.05 million mt, an FEPC official said. The power utilities also used a total 466,078 b/d of crude and fuel oil for power generation in December, down 25.9% from a year earlier, according to Platts calculations based on FEPC data. Of the total oil consumption, the utilities used 993,123 kiloliters (201,501 b/d) of crude and 1.3 million kl (264,577 b/d) of fuel oil in December, down 30.7% and 21.8%, respectively, from a year earlier, according to FEPC […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Japan power utilities' Dec LNG use hits monthly record high 5.27 mil mt

Japan’s 10 major power utilities consumed 5.27 million mt of LNG in December, a record high for monthly imports and up 4.2% year on year, data released Friday by the Federation of Electric Power Companies showed. The major power utilities’ previous monthly record high LNG consumption was in January 2012 at 5.21 million mt, while the previous high for the month of December was in 2012 at 5.05 million mt, an FEPC official said. The power utilities also used a total 466,078 b/d of crude and fuel oil for power generation in December, down 25.9% from a year earlier, according to Platts calculations based on FEPC data. Of the total oil consumption, the utilities used 993,123 kiloliters (201,501 b/d) of crude and 1.3 million kl (264,577 b/d) of fuel oil in December, down 30.7% and 21.8%, respectively, from a year earlier, according to FEPC […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Japan Approves Tepco Turnaround Plan

T, the utility at the center of Japan’s worst nuclear accident, won government approval Wednesday for a restructuring that will allow it to receive an additional ¥4 trillion ($38 billion) in state funding. But the new plan doesn’t offer a clear road map to return the company to financial health as it struggles with the high costs of cleaning up the devastated Fukushima Daiichi plant and paying compensation to those in the area affected by the high level of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Gangsters and ‘slaves’: The people cleaning up Fukushima

In the depths of Japan’s nuclear crisis in March 2011, a small band of workers at the Fukushima power plant stayed behind, stomaching daily doses of deadly radiation to bring the plant under control after a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered multiple meltdowns. They became known as the Fukushima 50. “We felt we had a responsibility to put things right,” nuclear engineer Atsufumi Yoshizawa told America Tonight. “And we felt that we were probably the only ones that could deal with the situation.” The courage of employees like Yoshizawa made them heroes in Japan, and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the operator of the stricken power plant, showcases them as symbols for what the company represents. But there is another group of workers that TEPCO rarely mentions, workers who […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Study: Dead sea creatures cover 98 percent of ocean floor off California coast; up from 1 percent before Fukushima

The Pacific Ocean appears to be dying, according to a new study recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California recently discovered that the number of dead sea creatures blanketing the floor of the Pacific is higher than it has ever been in the 24 years that monitoring has taken place, a phenomenon that the data suggests is a direct consequence of nuclear fallout from Fukushima. Though the researchers involved with the work have been reluctant to pin Fukushima as a potential cause — National Geographic , which covered the study recently, did not even mention Fukushima — the timing of the discovery suggests that Fukushima is, perhaps, the cause. According to the data, this sudden explosion in so-called "sea snot," which is the name given to the masses […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Japan’s November LNG imports rise 8.3% on year to 7.22 million mt

Japan’s November LNG imports rose 8.3% year on year to 7.22 million mt, according to data released recently by the Ministry of Finance. The imports slipped 4.3% from October. Malaysia was Japan’s top LNG supplier in November, sending 1.36 million mt, up 25.9% year on year and up 14.9% from October. Australia came in second, delivering 1.32 million mt of LNG to Japan, down 8% year on year and down 16% from October. Angola delivered its second cargo to Japan at an average price of $905.40/mt ($17.578/MMBtu). Article continues below… Request a free trial of: LNG Daily LNG Daily LNG Daily is essential reading as LNG supply dynamics continue to change in big markets like Japan, China, India and the U.S. This premier independent news publication for the global LNG industry gives readers information on every aspect of the global market from new LNG […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Japan's November LNG imports rise 8.3% on year to 7.22 million mt

Japan’s November LNG imports rose 8.3% year on year to 7.22 million mt, according to data released recently by the Ministry of Finance. The imports slipped 4.3% from October. Malaysia was Japan’s top LNG supplier in November, sending 1.36 million mt, up 25.9% year on year and up 14.9% from October. Australia came in second, delivering 1.32 million mt of LNG to Japan, down 8% year on year and down 16% from October. Angola delivered its second cargo to Japan at an average price of $905.40/mt ($17.578/MMBtu). Article continues below… Request a free trial of: LNG Daily LNG Daily LNG Daily is essential reading as LNG supply dynamics continue to change in big markets like Japan, China, India and the U.S. This premier independent news publication for the global LNG industry gives readers information on every aspect of the global market from new LNG […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Special Report: Japan’s homeless recruited for murky Fukushima clean-up

Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men. He isn’t a social worker. He’s a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan’s nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a head. "This is how labor recruiters like me come in every day," Sasa says, as he strides past men sleeping on cardboard and clutching at their coats against the early winter cold. It’s also how Japan finds people willing to accept minimum wage for one of the most undesirable jobs in the industrialized world: working on the $35 billion, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong. Almost three years ago, a massive earthquake and tsunami leveled villages across Japan’s northeast coast and […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple