TEPCO may run out of space for radioactive water

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said on Monday it does not have enough tank space should it need to move contaminated water from storage pits that started leaking over the weekend at its wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Two years after the worst nuclear disaster in a quarter of a century, TEPCO is struggling with breakdowns and glitches in its jerry-rigged cooling system to keep reactors and spent fuel pools in a safe state known as cold shutdown.

About 120,000 liters of water contaminated with radiation leaked from two giant pits over the weekend. The cooling system has broken down twice over the past three weeks.

The utility does not have enough sturdy, above-ground tanks it is building to take the water from the pits, a TEPCO general manager, Masayuki Ono, said at a news conference at the company’s headquarters.

TEPCO engineers have not decided whether to transfer the water to above-ground tanks, Ono said. The plant’s seven storage pits are lined with water-proof sheets meant to keep the contaminated water from leaking into the soil.

An earthquake triggered tsunami waves that crashed into the power plant, setting off a chain of events that caused three reactors to melt down and forcing 160,000 people to flee from their homes.

In the immediate aftermath of explosions at the plant, TEPCO released some radioactive water into the sea nearby, prompting protests from neighboring countries. Many nations put restrictions on imports of Japanese food after the disaster.

“It is extremely regrettable that incidents keep occurring at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters. “The government has instructed TEPCO to carry out a fundamental review of how it’s dealing with the problems.”

TEPCO President Naomi Hirose was summoned to the Industry Ministry to explain the leaks in the temporary storage pits and got a public dressing down from the minister, Toshimitsu Motegi.

TEPCO said on Friday it lost the ability to cool radioactive fuel rods in one of the plant’s reactors for about three hours, the second cooling system failure at the plant in three weeks.

Last month, a senior TEPCO executive told Reuters in an interview that the company was struggling to stop groundwater flooding into the damaged reactor buildings and may take as long as four years to fix the problem.

Source: Japan Today

World’s First Perpetual Motion Machine?

Facebook now charges you for messages sent to celebrities and people you aren't friends with

Facebook has started charging UK users up to £10 to send messages to celebrities and people they aren't friends with.

The social networking giant says the moves are to stop users being bombarded with messages from strangers.

Facebookers can still communicate with friends and people with whom they share mutual friends for free.

Those who want to contact non-friends can now either pay a fee of around 71p to send the message directly to a person’s inbox along with an automatic alert, or send the message for free to a less visible folder. Many Facebook users do not even know this other folder exists.

Users can pay the fee online instantly with a credit or debit card, but under-18s are barred from doing so. They are also blocked from receiving unsolicited messages.

According to The Sunday Times, the company is testing a sliding scale of fees for celebrities based on how popular it perceives an individual to be.

A message to Olympic diver Tom Daley will cost £10.68, while US rapper Snoop Dogg commands a message fee of £10.08.

The price structure uses an algorithm that often takes into account the number of followers a user has on Facebook. Facebook keeps all the money raised by the fees.

The company insists that paid “priority messages” are aimed at preventing users from being bombarded with unwanted communications from strangers. There is also a cap on the number of paid messages any user can receive.

A roll-out of the premium service to British users began at the end of last month after a successful trial in America.

Facebook said in a statement: “The system of paying to message non-friends in their inbox is designed to prevent spam while acknowledging that sometimes you might want to hear from people outside your immediate social circle. We are testing a number of price points in the UK and other countries to establish the optimal fee that signals importance.”

Source: The Independent

Bemused Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel confronted by topless Femen protester in Hanover

Vladimir Putin appears to have at last found a form of anti-government protest that he can support.

The Russian president was confronted by a topless protester with an obscene slogan insulting Mr Putin painted on her back - and, he admitted, he “liked” it.

Mr Putin was with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at at a trade fair in Hanover when the woman tried to push her way through to an amused-looking Mr Putin, but was blocked by aides. Her back was painted with an obscene slogan in Cyrillic script directed against the Russian president.

The activist was with two other women who also stripped to the waist and shouted slogans calling the Russian leader a “dictator”.

The women appeared to be members of the feminist group Femen, which has staged topless protests against the sex industry and religious institutions.

Speaking at a press conference afterwards, Mr Putin said: “As for the protest, I liked it. In principle, we knew that such a protest was being prepared.”

He said the organisers of the Hanover event should “say thank you to the Ukrainian girls, they helped you promote the trade fair.”

He added: “To be honest, I didn’t really hear what they were shouting because the security [guards] were very tough. These huge guys fell on the lasses. That seemed not right to me, they could have been handled more gently.”

Mr Putin appeared to show a flash of his well-known salty humour, adding: “I didn’t make out whether they were blondes, chestnut-haired or brunettes.”

The Russian president said protests by Femen activists were nothing new. “We’ve all got used to these demonstrations and I don’t see anything terrible here,” he said.

However, he added: “If someone wants to debate political questions, then it’s better to do it clothed rather than getting undressed. You should undress in other places, such as on nudist beaches.”

On their Facebook page, Femen said the protest was an “anti-dictatorial attack on Putin”. The group criticised the Kremlin, Russia’s Federal Security Service and the Russian Orthodox Church, saying that Femen was against “dictatorship, homophobia and theocracy”.

Femen protests have included burning a Salafist flag in front of the Grand Mosque in Paris, and chopping down an Orthodox cross with a chainsaw.

The group has criticized Mr Putin over the arrest and conviction of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot, for performing an anti-Putin song in a Moscow cathedral last year.

Russia has urged German authorities to punish the protesters. “This is ordinary hooliganism and unfortunately it happens all over the world, in any city. One needs to punish (them),” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The trade fair in Hanover, which opened on Sunday, features exhibitors from more than 60 countries. Relations between Russia and Germany have come under strain recently over the Kremlin’s harsh line on opposition groups and non-governmental organisations, including raids on the offices of two German NGOs in Moscow and St Petersburg.

At the opening of the fair on Sunday, Mrs Merkel that Moscow should give “non-governmental organizations - the many groups that we in Germany know as motors of innovation - a good chance in Russia.”

Mr Putin was in Hanover to open the fair, where Russia has a pavilion, and hold talks with Mrs Merkel.

Later on Monday he will travel to Holland. He is expected to be met by gay rights activists protesting over recently introduced Russian legislation which bans “homosexual propaganda” among minors. The law, in effect in several regions, has been widely criticised as homophobic.

Source: The Telegraph