Japanese nuclear power plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) hopes it will be able to achieve cold shutdown of its crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant within six to nine months, the company said on Sunday. The firm said the first step would be cooling the reactors and spent fuel to a stable level within three months, then bringing the reactors to cold shutdown in six to nine months. That would make the plant safe and stable and end the immediate crisis, now rated on a par with the world’s worst nuclear accident, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. TEPCO, founded 60 years ago, added it later plans to cover the reactor buildings, damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami that struck on March 11. The latest data shows much more radiation leaked from the Daiichi plant in the early days of the crisis than first thought, prompting officials to rate it on a par with Chernobyl, although experts were quick to point out Japan’s crisis was vastly different from Chernobyl in terms of radiation contamination.

Read more here:
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to be cooled down over the next 6 to 9 MONTHS!

More on SKCEA.org:

• Cloud Formation
  Clouds are amazing to watch and intricate in their formation and interactions with the atmosphere. Research from CERN involving University of Leeds scientists provides news insights into cloud formation in the atmosphere. In a paper published in the journal Nature today, the CLOU...
• Critical List: U.S. imported less than 50 percent of its oil in 2010
  by Sarah Laskow. We're off foreign oil! More or less . One price we'll pay for that: ads with blue skies and green fields and a man with a reassuring voice saying that natural gas is totally, totally safe . The price of renewable energy will go down . So naturally, you s...
• In the worst drought in Texas history, 13.5 billion gallons of water used for fracking
  by Jess Zimmerman. Texas is experiencing the driest eight-month period in its recorded history. But in 2010, natural gas companies used 13.5 billion gallons of fresh water for hydraulic fracturing, and that could more than double by 2020. Where's all this water coming from? ...
• Mercury Levels in Fish Higher Than Previously Estimated
  As a chef of over twenty years who has been dedicated to serving wholesome, transparently procured food, I was struck recently while reading an article about a 2010 study by www.GotMercury.org an off shoot of The Turtle Island Institute. The study assessed the levels of Methymerc...
• Irene Rainfall
  Hurricane Irene left a trail of devastation and heavy rainfall in its wake from the Caribbean to the U.S. east coast and is now a depression dumping heavy rains in eastern Canada before it heads into the Atlantic. Satellite imagery from NASA and NOAA continue to show the progress...