Barack Obama’s rejection of the massive Keystone oil pipeline connecting the US and Canada proves once and for all that he’s a radical left-wing ideologue. He had the opportunity to create 20,000+ new jobs with the stroke of his pen in an election season and chose not to. It’s amazing. Now China will get all that energy. Unlike Obama, Canada’s Prime Minister, Steven Harper, is determined to turn his country into an energy powerhouse by developing Canada’s rich natural resources. He had hoped to partner with America and generate jobs and wealth in both our countries. Sadly, that isn’t going to happen.

Obama hates the US energy industry and he’s furious that his foolish green energy programs have been a complete dud. I just pray we can defeat this son of a bitch in 2012 before he can wreck anything else.

The State Department will announce the decision on Keystone XL pipeline is “no,” as early as Wednesday, an industry source told Fox News, suggesting that the department will say 60 days is inadequate time to do the required environmental impact assessment on the path of the coveted pipeline.

While the State Department for three years has been reviewing the initial proposal to run a pipeline from Canada down to Texas through a sensitive Nebraska aquifer, it retreated early from indications it would approve the plan after environmentalists complained.

Industry workers and Republicans contend the project would create thousands of jobs, and Canada’s prime minister has warned if the U.S. can’t get on board, the North American nation will look to team with China.

(H/T Fox Nation)

This article titled “Iran faces new wave of sanctions over nuclear programme” was written by Chris McGreal in Washington and Julian Borger, for The Guardian on Monday 21st November 2011 19.44 UTC

The US and Britain are leading a new wave of international sanctions targeting Iran’s banks and oil industry following the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report earlier this month that said Tehran worked for many years to develop nuclear weapons and may still be doing so.

Britain has used counter-terrorism powers to order its financial sector to cut all ties with Iranian banks in an attempt to undermine funding of the nuclear programme. The US announced measures intended to limit Tehran’s ability to refine its own fuel as well as targeting Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ financial interests.

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, wrote to European leaders as well as the US and Japan calling for “unprecedented” sanctions against Iran, including a halt to buying its oil.

But the measures are expected to have a limited impact in the face of resistance from China and Russia to strengthening global sanctions against Iran through the United Nations security council.

Britain went the furthest by, for the first time, cutting an entire country’s banking system off from London’s financial sector. It said that Iranian banks “play a crucial role in providing financial services to individuals and entities within Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes”.

The foreign secretary, William Hague, said the measures are part of increasing pressure on Iran to engage with the IAEA and foreign governments about its nuclear programme.

“The IAEA’s report last week provided further credible and detailed evidence about the possible military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear programme,” he said. “Today we have responded resolutely by introducing a set of new sanctions that prohibit all business with Iranian banks.

“We have consistently made clear that until Iran engages meaningfully, it will find itself under increasing pressure from the international community. The swift and decisive action today co-ordinated with key international partners is a strong signal of determination to intensify this pressure.”

British diplomats said the Iranian central bank plays a direct role in procuring equipment for its nuclear programme and added that the sanctions were also intended to punish Tehran for its refusal to compromise over its enrichment of uranium, which can produce reactor fuel or fissile material for a bomb, despite a series of UN security council sanctions calling on it to do so. They said that denying Iran access to the international financial hub in London would raise the cost and hassle for the Iranians of doing business with the rest of the world.

Canada took a similar step against Iran’s central bank.

In Washington, President Obama said additional US sanctions are intended to discourage business with Iran’s petrochemical industry, which traditionally has produced plastics and similar products but has increasingly been used to refine petrol because international sanctions have hit Tehran’s refineries.

“New sanctions target for the first time Iran’s petrochemical sector, prohibiting the provision of goods, services and technology to this sector and authorising penalties against any person or entity that engages in such activity,” Obama said. “They expand energy sanctions, making it more difficult for Iran to operate, maintain, and modernise its oil and gas sector.

“As long as Iran continues down this dangerous path, the United States will continue to find ways, both in concert with our partners and through our own actions, to isolate and increase the pressure upon the Iranian regime.”

Washington designated Iran a territory of “primary money-laundering concern” in the expectation that it will discourage foreign banks from doing business with Iranian financial institutions.

However, Washington continues to avoid directly targeting Iran’s central bank because if Tehran is unable to carry through financial transactions necessary to sell its oil, that could force the cost of petroleum up and hit the US economy.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, called the measures a “significant ratcheting-up of pressure” on Iran and said other countries will follow in the days ahead.

In his letter, Sarkozy said that Iran’s nuclear programme represents a “serious and urgent threat to peace”. He called for a halt to purchasing Iranian oil and for the assets of Iran’s central bank to be frozen. EU foreign ministers are also expected to consider further measures at a meeting on 1 December.

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This article titled “Los Alamos nuclear laboratory threatened by wildfire” was written by Ed Pilkington, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 29th June 2011 18.50 UTC

Teams of firefighters are battling to prevent a wildfire in New Mexico from reaching the Los Alamos National Laboratory, America’s largest and most important research and development site for nuclear weapons.

The fire that started on Sunday, probably as a result of a downed power line, has forced the entire 11,000 population of Los Alamos to be evacuated and has reached within a road of the outer perimeter of the lab on its south-western and western sides. An acre of vacant land on the south-western border of the lab experienced a spot fire, though that was quickly brought under control.

The wildfire has drawn attention to at least 10,000 drums of radioactive waste dating back to the Cold War era which are being stored in a part of the laboratory known as Area G. The 55-gallon drums are stored three deep on concrete under fire-protected tents.

The management of Los Alamos says that the waste is under little danger following the investment in recent years of m of firefighting measures including the thinning of trees and creation of fire breaks.

As a last resort, plastic foam could be used to seal off the drums from incoming flames.

But the prospect of a possible threat to such a sensitive nuclear site has raised alarm in the region, and specially converted planes known as “flying laboratories” are being flown over the area to monitor air quality to detect whether any nuclear particles are entering the atmosphere. No radioactive contaminants have been recorded so far.

“There are fire mitigations at all of our nuclear facilities, and I am confident in our ability to protect all of them. This is a strong team protecting a national treasure”, said the laboratory’s director, Charles McMillan.

The lab was created during the second world war as a secret location for the Manhattan Project, the mission to develop the first atomic bomb. It has since grown into a massive research institute with an annual budget of more than billion covering such diverse studies as nanotechnology, computing and space science.

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Big hat tip to Ace for pointing out this gem. A climate scientist now says he can’t go along with the scam any longer. He calls the global warming industry the “carbon gravy train.”

The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools out of our politicians.

Let’s set a few things straight.

The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now outrageously maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.

Like Ace, I highly recommend you click over and read the entire piece. We need more scientists to stop with the BS and come clean about this garbage. Al Gore is a fraud.

Environmental kook Diane MacEachern has an interesting insane piece up at The Huffington Post. She uses a lot of bland language and non-threatening terms but her message is clear. We must keep our population growth under control through vigorous “family planning” in order to stop “Climate Change.”

Accelerating the development of clean energy is critical, as is maximizing energy efficiency. But neither strategy will be enough if we don’t set our sights on a world where population actually decreases over time.

That may not be as difficult as it seems. Every country that offers easy access to contraceptive and safe abortion services also has a fertility rate of two children per woman or fewer, consistent with a declining population, notes Worldwatch’s Engelman. Further, he says, more than two out of five pregnancies worldwide are unintended, suggesting that a world in which women everywhere were fully in control of their childbearing would soon reverse population growth.

I’m not one of those people who’s against contraception by any means. If a woman wants birth control pills she should have access to them. What I’m against is Communist Chinese style population control to stop something that isn’t real. Global warming is a farce. CO2 emissions are not destroying the earth. Al Gore is a fraud.

The idea that America should fund abortions worldwide in order to combat “Climate Change” is insane.

This article titled “Australia leases out mineral-rich land as China’s hunger for resources grows” was written by Stephen Sackur in Cue, western Australia, for The Guardian on Tuesday 12th April 2011 06.00 UTC

China is leasing huge areas of land in Australia to secure a vital source of mineral resources, the latest sign of its acquisitive approach to the commodities trade.

No longer satisfied with buying iron ore and coal from Australian mining companies, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, China is developing its own mining operations, funding a port with a mile-long breakwater jutting into the Indian Ocean.

Citic Pacific’s Sino Iron project, in the Pilbara region in the north-west of Australia, illustrates the scale of Beijing’s ambitions. China expects to mine at least 2bn tonnes of ore from Sino Iron over the next 25 years. The open cast mine, which will become fully operational this year, promises to be the biggest magnetite iron ore mine in the world. The ore will be processed on site and brought to China on a fleet of purpose-built container ships.

In return, Australia, already China’s biggest overseas supplier of iron ore, is guaranteed a steady stream of royalties and taxes. The project will also generate thousands of Australian jobs – China will provide finance and management, but not labour.

The deal’s biggest winner will be Clive Palmer, the larger-than-life Australian entrepreneur who holds the lease on the mine. His partnership with Citic Pacific is one big reason why he is close to the top of Australia’s rich list.

According to Palmer, his mining alliance with the Chinese has barely begun. He claims to control the mining rights to land which contains 160bn tonnes of iron ore – 100 times greater than the entire global output of iron ore last year.

If China’s steel mills maintain current level of demand, Palmer is set to become an “Aussie oligarch” to rival Russia’s richest resource billionaires, a suggestion to which he responds with a smile. “I hope I’m nicer,” he says.

Palmer commutes between Australia and his other home in Beijing by private jet, and boasts of friends at top levels in the Chinese government. Chinese banks seem to trust him. Last year, the Import-Export Bank of China made a bn loan to a Palmer-backed Queensland coal project which is supposed to deliver China’s power industry 1bn tonnes of coal in the next 30 years.

But China’s arrival has raised hackles. After Rio Tinto came close to accepting a major large investment from a the Chinese metals giantcompany Chinalco, Barnaby Joyce, senate leader of the opposition National party, has railed against “Australia’s prime sources of wealth being hijacked by a foreign government”. Palmer, himself one of the biggest financial supporters of the conservative opposition, dismisses such criticism. He said: “China is the only country willing and able to invest the billions needed to develop these projects. Three hundred million people are moving from the countryside to the cities. The demand is in the People’s Republic of China.”

But there are good economic reasons for Australians to worry. The windfall from the country’s mineral exports has strengthened the Australian dollar to a point where manufacturing bosses say their exports are becoming uncompetitive.

In Perth, Australia’s mining capital, there are signs of a bubble economy. Restaurants and farms are struggling to find labour as unskilled workers flock to the mines, where the average annual wage is A8,000 (£69,000). A truck driver in the mines can earn more than a surgeon.

Meanwhile, Australia’s prime minister, Julia Gillard, is committed to imposing a carbon tax and cutting greenhouse gases, goals that sit uneasily with the boom in the energy-intensive mining sector.

Beijing seems to be treading carefully. Sinosteel, another Chinese-owned metals conglomerate, has plans to develop a massive opencast iron ore mine in the Weld range, a ridge of hills 400 miles north-east of Perth. Geologists believe it will yield up to 300m tons of high-grade iron ore over 20 years. But it is a sensitive project. The red-tinged rock is not just rich in iron oxide, it contains archaeological evidence from thousands of years of Aboriginal life.

Colin Hamlett, an elder of the Wajarri people, is leading a campaign to prevent Sinosteel digging up his ancestors’ sacred places. His great-grandmother was buried at a site designated as dump for mine tailings. The plan has since been changed. “This land tells the story of my people,” Hamlett said. “Our songlines, our camps, our relics, they’re all here.”

Sinosteel’s top executive has assured Hamlett that sites sacred to the Wajarri will remain untouched. Top of his list is an unremarkable-looking hill known as Wilgie Mia. “This is where we get our ochre,” Hamlett said. “You see it in paintings hundreds of miles away.”

According to archaeologists, Wilgie Mia could be the oldest continuously worked mine in the world, proof that for 10,000 years, indigenous Australians have been digging holes in search of mineral riches. Now the Chinese are on a similar quest.

• An episode of Stephen Sackur’s Hardtalk, examining the Australian mining industry, is on the BBC News channel today.

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This article titled “Japanese nuclear engineers plug Fukushima leak” was written by Ben Quinn, for The Guardian on Wednesday 6th April 2011 00.46 UTC

Engineers battling to contain the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant appeared to have turned an important corner last night after they stopped highly radioactive water from leaking into the ocean from one of the facility’s crippled reactors.

Workers struggling to halt the leaks successfully used a mixture of sawdust, newspaper, concrete and a type of liquid glass to stem the flow of contaminated water near a seaside pit, said the plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco).

Earlier efforts involving cement, an absorbent polymer and rags were unsuccessful in plugging the leak, which was discovered on Saturday, while radiation of more than 7.5 million times the legal limit for seawater was found just off the earthquake-hit plant.

In a sign of Tepco’s desperation, it breached its own regulations on Monday by beginning an intentional discharge of 11,500 tonnes of less contaminated water into the Pacific to make space for the highly radioactive liquid that was seeping out in an uncontrolled manner.

The company still needs to pump contaminated water into the sea because of a lack of storage space at the plant and will continue to release the 11,500 tonnes of low-level radioactive water until Friday. “The leaks were slowed yesterday after we injected a mixture of liquid glass and a hardening agent and it has now stopped,” a Tepco spokesman told Reuters.

A 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami hit Japan’s northeast coast on 11 March, leaving 28,000 people dead or missing and thousands homeless. It is the country’s worst catastrophe since the second world war.

Samples of the water used to cool the plant’s reactor No 2 were emitting 5 million times the legal limit of radioactivity, officials said on Tuesday, adding to fears that contaminants had spread far beyond the disaster zone. Workers are still struggling to restart cooling pumps – which recycle the water – in four reactors damaged by the earthquake and tsunami.

Until those are fixed, they must pump in water from outside to prevent overheating, and meltdowns. In the process, that creates more contaminated water that has to be pumped out and stored somewhere else or released into the sea.

The government is considering restrictions on seafood for the first time after contaminated fish were found. India is the first country to ban food imports from all areas of Japan over radiation fears.

Tepco has offered “condolence money” to those affected in the Fukushima region, but one city rejected the compensation and local mayors who came to Tokyo to meet the prime minister, Naoto Kan, demanded greater assistance.

“We have borne the risks, co-existed and flourished with Tepco for more than 40 years, and all these years, we have fully trusted the myth that nuclear plants are absolutely safe,” said Katsuya Endo, the mayor of Tomioka.

He was one of eight Fukushima prefecture mayors seeking compensation and support for employment, housing and education for the tens of thousands of evacuees.

A total of 60,000 tonnes of highly contaminated water remains in the plant after workers poured in seawater when fuel rods experienced partial meltdown after the earthquake and tsunami hit on March 11.

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This article titled “Fukushima soil contains plutonium traces, according to Japanese officials” was written by Justin McCurry in Tokyo and Suzanne Goldenberg in Nihonmatsu, for The Guardian on Tuesday 29th March 2011 00.55 UTC

Traces of plutonium have been found in the soil at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japanese officials said on Monday, but not at levels considered harmful to human health.

The discovery of plutonium – a byproduct of nuclear reactions – added to anxiety over the stricken plant, 150 miles north of Tokyo.

Earlier, the government confirmed that levels of radioactivity in water leaking from a reactor at the facility resulted from a partial meltdown of fuel rods, amid growing fears that radiation may also have seeped into seawater and soil.

The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco], said readings of plutoinium-238, 239 and 240 were similar to those recorded in other parts of Japan after nuclear tests conducted overseas.

“I apologise for making people worried,” Tepco’s vice president, Sakae Muto, told reporters. “It’s not at a level that’s harmful to human health.”

But an official from Japan’s nuclear safety agency was more cautious. “While it’s not at a level harmful to human health, I am not optimistic,” Hidehiko Nishiyama said. “This means the containment mechanism is being breached, so I think the situation is worrisome.”

Tepco has yet to determine the source of the plutonium, although it appeared that in two places, the radioactive element had come from reactors rather than from the atmosphere. One of the plant’s three reactors contains plutonium in its fuel mix.

Meanwhile, contamination in a pool of water in the turbine building of the No 2 reactor was found to be 100,000 times normal levels, Tepco said.

On Sunday the firm said the figure was 10m times higher, a mistake the government’s chief spokesman, Yukio Edano, said was “absolutely unforgivable”.

Tepco was forced into another embarrassing apology after it admitted it had twice named the wrong isotope in its corrections about the levels of radiation.

“On one hand, I do think the workers at the site are getting quite tired,” Edano told reporters. “But these radiation tests are being used for making various decisions on safety … they are absolutely unforgivable.”

In addition, radiation above 1,000 millisieverts per hour was found in surface water in concrete tunnels outside the No 2 reactor, Tepco said. It added that the tunnels did not lead to the sea, but conceded it could not rule out that radioactive water had seeped into the ground.

Greenpeace, meanwhile, said that it had recorded radiation levels of up to 10 microsieverts per hour in Iitate, a village 25 miles from the plant, and urged authorities to expand the evacuation zone from its current 12-mile radius.

“It is clearly not safe for people to remain in Iitate, especially children and pregnant women, when it could mean receiving the maximum-allowed dose of radiation in only a few days,” said Jan van de Putte, the group’s radiation safety expert. “When further contamination from possible ingestion or inhalation of radioactive particles is factored in, the risks are even higher.”

Tepco has reportedly asked the French nuclear sector for assistance, seeking help from Electricite de France, Areva and the Nuclear Energy Agency, a research body, according to Eric Besson, France’s industry and energy minister.

Japan’s nuclear and industrial safety agency (Nisa) said radioactive iodine-131 of 1,150 times the maximum allowable level had been detected in seawater near drainage outlets serving four of Fukushima’s reactors.

Nisa’s spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said he suspected radioactive water from the plant was leaking into the sea. On Sunday he had denied any connection.

Edano said partial meltdown had probably occurred when the plant was hit by the tsunami on 11 March, adding that there was no evidence of subsequent meltdown.

Four of the facility’s six reactors have yet to be made safe, while efforts are continuing to pump in fresh water to prevent a far more dangerous full meltdown.

“The radiation seems to have come from fuel rods that were partially melted down and came into contact with the water used to cool the reactor,” Edano said. “Steam may have condensed … carrying water from within the containment vessel.”

Airborne radiation has been confined to the reactor buildings, and work to remove contaminated water from the structures continued on Monday.

Setbacks to attempts to cool the reactors, and the realisation the crisis is far from over, have added to the plight of tens of thousands of people living nearby.

Sakae Muto, vice-president of Tepco, said: “Regrettably, we don’t have a concrete schedule at the moment to enable us to say how many months, or years it will take [to make the plant safe].”

About 70,000 people within a 12-mile radius of the Fukushima plant were evacuated soon after the disaster, while a further 130,000 people living in a 12-20-mile radius have been told to stay indoors. The government said that it had no plans to widen the evacuation zone.

It is not known exactly how many people remain in the outer zone. Many have left voluntarily after days without essential supplies and services.

Truck drivers are refusing to enter the zone, fearing radiation exposure.

The government created confusion last week when it advised people within a 20-mile radius to consider leaving. It insisted the advice was given due to concern for their quality of life, not exposure to harmful levels of radiation.

According to the public broadcaster NHK, self-defence force personnel in the evacuation zone said 30 people had yet to leave the 12-mile evacuation zone, and 10 had indicated they wanted to remain in their homes.

Evacuees have been urged not to return to the area to collect belongings while the Fukushima plant remains unstable. Residents who return, even temporarily, would expose themselves to “great risk of radiation contamination”, Edano said.

“It is very likely that the [12m] area is contaminated and there is a significant risk to health,” he added. Local authorities reported, however, that some people had already returned.

Others forced out of their homes are coming to terms with the possibility that they may never be able to return.

Even if they do, the many residents who depended on Tepco for employment accept that with the plant ruined, their chances of finding work in the area are close to nil.

A large number of evacuees have already moved twice since the nuclear crisis began, and could be forced to move again if the situation worsens and the evacuation zone is expanded.

“We’re assuming that in a worse-case scenario we might also be subject to evacuation,” Norio Hattori, a disaster official in Nihonmatsu, said, adding that he had sent his own daughter to Tokyo.

Some of the refugees are beginning to accept that a vast area surrounding the Fukushima plant could be condemned as a nuclear wasteland. “If it had been an earthquake or a tsunami, we could have gone home again, but because it’s radiation, we can’t,” said Tokuko Sujimoto.

Her home, in the village of Namie, was so close to the plant she heard the first reactor explosion on 12 March.

Her husband had watched from the roof of their house as a cloud of smoke rose from the reactor, before they fled.

Yoshimoto Nogi, who had a job at the Fukushima plant until he retired last summer, said he had no hopes of going home this year.

“It’s going to take a year or two. It is not a question of months,” said Nogi. “Even if the nuclear plant is stabilised tomorrow, I don’t think the government is going to tell us it is safe to go back any time soon.”

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This article titled “The truth about the Fukushima ‘nuclear samurai’” was written by Suzanne Goldenberg in Yonezawa, for The Guardian on Monday 21st March 2011 18.23 UTC

To a world that doesn’t know him, Shingo Kanno is one of the “nuclear samurai” – a selfless hero trying to save his country from a holocaust; to his family, Kanno is a new father whose life is in peril just because he wanted to earn some money on the side doing menial labour at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

A tobacco farmer, Kanno had no business being anywhere near a nuclear reactor – let alone in a situation as serious as the one that has unfolded after the 11 March earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

His great-uncle, Masao Kanno, said: “People are calling them nuclear samurai because people are sacrificing their lives to try to fix a leak. But people like Shingo are amateurs: they can’t really help. It shouldn’t be people like Shingo.”

Masao Kanno is one of more than 500 people camped out on the hardwood floors of a sports centre in Yonezawa. The homes of most of them lie within 19 miles of the Fukushima plant. They worked at the plant, have family members who did, or passed it daily on the way to work or school.

Before, they rarely thought about the down side to that proximity; now it rules their lives. Many of their homes are inside the evacuation zone, with radiation 17 times higher than background levels and tap water too contaminated to drink.

Those with a close personal connection to the crisis, like Masao Kanno, are moved and grateful for the personal courage of the 500 or so workers still at the plant. But where Japan’s prime minister and others have conjured up cardboard heroes, he sees a flesh-and-blood relation.

Shingo Kanno, who had been hired to do construction work, was released from his duties at Fukushima soon after the declaration of a nuclear emergency. As the crisis at the plant worsened, and the Japanese government widened the evacuation zone, he moved his wife and his infant daughter to his in-laws, where they would be safer.

He also helped evacuate his extended family from their home town of Minamisoma, which is within the 30km exclusion zone, to the sports centre and other shelters. Then, his relatives say, Kanno got a call from the plant asking him to go back to work.

His whole family took turns getting on the phone to tell him not to go. They reminded him that he was a farmer, not a nuclear engineer, that he did not have the skills for such a sophisticated crisis. They said he should think of his responsibilities to his parents and his baby daughter.

“I told him: ‘You have a family now. You shouldn’t be thinking about the company – you should be thinking about your own family,’” said Masao Kanno.

But on Friday Shingo Kanno went back anyway. The family have not heard from him since.

In the meantime, the cult of the nuclear samurai has only grown. Japanese television aired an interview with a plant worker on Monday offering a harrowing insider’s account of the struggle for the reactors.

The worker, his face hidden from view, described sirens blaring, billowing smoke, explosions so powerful the earth rumbled, water sloshing in the pool of spent atomic fuel. Then he touched on his own complicated emotions before pulling out of the plant. “The people left behind – I feel really sorry for them,” the worker said. “It was a hard decision to make, but I had a strong feeling that I wanted to get out.”

Such scenes stir powerful emotions in this sports centre, where evacuees are re-examining their own relationship with the Fukushima plant.

“I think you could say those nuclear workers have been brainwashed,” said Keiichi Yamomoto, who used to visit the plant regularly for business. “Japanese people are used to focusing their whole lives on their company, and their company takes priority over their own lives.”

He said the power company had a policy of locating nuclear facilities in sparsely populated areas with little local industry. Local people got jobs; the power company was able to increase its supply of electricity for Tokyo.

The Japanese government assented to the Fukushima plant; the prefecture government assented to it; even local people assented to the plant, when they took jobs as inspectors there, Yamomoto said. “It was a trade-off.”

Now they are experiencing the consequences of that assent.

People who built their lives around the nuclear plant without ever fully acknowledging its presence are now signing up for text updates of radiation readings from their home town.

Some evacuees in the sports hall say they cannot rely on the power company to give them accurate information. They are going to wait for the Japanese government to issue an all-clear before they consider returning home.

Others are wondering whether they are also somehow culpable in the disaster. Yoshizo Endo moved to live near the plant in 1970, when he became one of the first workers at the then newly opened Fukushima.

He spent more than 20 years as an inspector, undergoing regular safety exercises: fire drills, earthquake evacuations. But, he said, they never contemplated the prospect of a nuclear disaster. “Looking back, it’s easy to say now that we should have thought of that,” he said.

His wife, Tori, said the crisis at the plant, and the struggle of the nuclear workers, had made her increasingly uncomfortable: her husband had made a good living for years at the plant, and they were living on his pension even now. “I feel guilty,” she said.

Had Endo been called, he would have gone too, albeit as part of a team, he said. But he added: “I can’t really do anything in this kind of situation. The only thing I know how to do is hold a thermometer.”

Did he think the nuclear samurai would succeed in taming the reactors? “What will be will be,” said Endo.

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This article titled “Radiation leak thwarts bid to regain control of reactors” was written by Tania Branigan in Beijing, for The Guardian on Wednesday 16th March 2011 21.23 UTC

Japan embarked on a desperate series of initiatives to regain control as conditions at its failing nuclear plant deteriorated further on Wednesday . It called in helicopters, water cannon and even, reportedly, a US spy plane.

But the work was hampered by radiation levels that forced technicians to briefly suspend operations. They took shelter as the radiation level spiked at the site in the morning and only returned when the government more than doubled the safety limit determining the maximum legal dose of radiation for workers.

In a rare television appearance to express his sympathy for the victims of the earthquake and tsunami, Emperor Akihito voiced deep concern about the “unpredictable” situation at Fukushima.

There was also concern that the nuclear crisis had hampered relief efforts aimed at residents of the area. The government’s chief spokesman, Yukio Edano, said he had heard food and supplies were not being delivered to areas outside the evacuation zones and urged people not to overreact so that relief would get to survivors.

Officials appear to have lost all faith in ability of the plant’s operators, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, to handle the crisis.

A Japanese government source told Kyodo news agency that a US spy plane would fly over the facility on Thursday, in the hope that its infrared cameras could provide clues as to what was happening inside the reactor buildings.

Earlier, Naoto Kan, the prime minister, ordered officials to measure radiation levels across Japan and supply information to the public, with details on safe and unsafe levels.

The broadcaster NHK aired what at first appeared to be a weather forecast – with a suited presenter gesturing at the map behind her – but was in fact a guide to radiation readings across northeast Japan and Tokyo.

But while radiation levels in the capital have been higher than usual, hitting 10 times the normal levels at one point, they remained low judged by safety standards, as of Wednesday evening.

Although the US and UK were urging their nationals to move further from the region – less than 24 hours after assuring them that the Japanese measures were appropriate – the real threat was that facing workers at the plant.

Tepco evacuated hundreds of workers on Tuesday following a surge in radiation, leaving only a core team of 50 to 70 people, although some reports suggested more staff may have returned to the facility on Wednesday.

The first problems with the plant became evident shortly after the quake and tsunami, when it emerged that the cooling systems were failing to work.

Workers continue to pump seawater into the first three reactors, the initial cause of concern, in an attempt to contain the situation. Unit 1 is known to have experienced partial melting of the core and it is feared the others have too. That is particularly worrying in unit 2, which suffered damage to its containment vessel. The outer buildings of all three have been damaged by hydrogen explosions.

Attention is increasingly focusing on the threat posed by spent fuel rods, with signs of problems in storage pools at four of the units.

Experts say if the rods are exposed to the air their zirconium alloy coating could react and release radiation. Unlike the reactors, the pools are not contained – meaning that if they release radioactive material there is only the building to prevent it leaking further into the environment. In at least two of the affected units, that outer casing has been damaged.

The new danger emerged on Tuesday in unit 4 – under maintenance at the time of the tsunami – with news of a blaze and reports that water levels in the storage pool might be dropping. On Wednesday it suffered a second fire and smoke or steam began to emerge.

With the mood becoming increasingly desperate, officials contemplated a range of measures. At first they said Japanese forces would spray water over unit 3′s spent fuel pool and helicopters were seen taking to the air with buckets of seawater. But they landed again without approaching the reactors when experts judged the radiation risk to the pilots unacceptably high.

The plan was fraught with difficulties in any case. “My estimates suggest they might need 50 tonnes an hour of water. You could do that easily with a large-bore hosepipe but if you are doing it with helicopters it is a lot more difficult,” said Professor David Hinde, head of nuclear physics at the Australian National University.

A water cannon was brought into use at unit 4. It was not clear how officials planned to deal with unit 3.

The battle to control the plant gets harder as it goes on, not only because of the multiplying problems but because workers are increasingly tired and will have to be pulled out as they hit exposure limits.

“The longer it goes on, the more people are going to be on the bench,” said Hinde.

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