A Japanese government report Monday heaped fresh criticism on the operator of the nuclear power plant where a disastrous accident was set off last year by the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit the country.
The measures taken by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the plant operator, and the Japanese nuclear regulator to prepare for disasters were "insufficient," the report by a government-formed panel of investigators said, and the response to the crisis was "inadequate."
The crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant spewed radiation and displaced tens of thousands of residents from the surrounding area in the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine.
Even now, more than one year after the disaster began, TEPCO doesn't seem to be making much effort to clearly investigate the causes of the accident at the plant, the 10-member panel, led by Tokyo University engineering professor Yotaro Hatamura, said in the report Monday.
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Japan was once again getting electricity from nuclear power on Thursday after two months as a nuclear-free nation.
Unit No. 3 at Kansai Electric Power Co. Ohi nuclear plant began generating power at 7 a.m., according to a report from broadcaster NHK.
The process of restarting the reactor had begun Sunday night.
The reactor will provide electricity to western Japan - which includes Osaka, Japan's second-biggest city.
Ohi's No. 4 reactor is scheduled to resume operations by July 24.
All 50 commercial nuclear reactors in Japan have been offline since May 5 for safety checks in the wake of the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant after last year's devastating earthquake and tsunami. The government has been conducting simulation tests for restarting its nuclear reactors in response to public concerns.
Before the March 2011 nuclear disaster, Japan had relied on nuclear energy for about 30% of its electricity needs, according to government figures.
The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant admitted Wednesday that it was not fully prepared for the nuclear accident spurred by last year's devastating earthquake and tsunami.
"All who were related to the nuclear plant could not predict an occurrence of the event which was far beyond our expectation," said Masao Yamazaki, executive vice president of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO). "We did not have enough measures to prevent the accident."
Yamazaki spoke at a press conference announcing a TEPCO report on the nuclear accident that spewed radiation and left tens of thousands of residents displaced.
He acknowledged criticism that his company took too long to disclose information and as well as accusations that TEPCO has been hiding information.
FULL STORYA 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the eastern coast of Japan early Wednesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage, and no tsunami alert was issued.
The moderate quake struck off the east coast of Honshu, the main island, about 4:30 a.m., the USGS said. Its center was 95 miles east-southeast of Tokyo.
FULL STORYA 62-year-old evacuee from Fukushima Prefecture made a brief visit to his radiation-contaminated home, walked to his shuttered shop, and then hanged himself in a storage space.
The death is yet another sad reminder how the March 11, 2011, disaster in Japan continues to claim victims.
On that day, a magnitude-9 earthquake triggered a tsunami which swamped the Fukushima Daiichi plant, knocking out power to cooling systems and leading to meltdowns in its three operating reactors.
The triple disaster left more than 150,000 dead.
The resulting release of radioactivity forced residents of several towns near the plant to flee their homes, and a 20-kilometer (12.5-mile) zone around the plant remains closed to the public.
The man, who was not named by police, was one of tens of thousands who were evacuated.
He and his wife were briefly granted entry into the exclusion zone around the plant on Sunday, to visit their home and their small store, police said.
After the wife reported him missing, officers and volunteer firefighters in the town of Namie organized a search, police said.
The following day, firefighters found the man's body in his store's storage shed.
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When a 1-year-old Humboldt penguin that escaped from a Tokyo aquarium three months ago dared to set foot on land in Ichikawa on Thursday night, it was captured by hand and finally collared, The Japan Times reported.
An aquarium employee was walking alongside the Edogawa River in Chiba Prefecture at 5:30 p.m. and spotted the fugitive penguin, which escaped in March.
The penguin was seen swimming in the river near the Kanamachi water purification plant in Katsushika Ward earlier in the week. Last week, people also saw it thriving and snacking on small fish in Tokyo Bay. It was assumed that the bird was finding some place to rest onshore at night.
The fugitive bird, known as Penguin 337, somehow scaled a 13-foot wall and got through a barbed-wire fence to get into the bay. Aquarium officials believe it escaped through small gaps that cats and frogs can pass through.
Officials from Tokyo Sea Life Park feared the penguin would not survive in the waters of the bay, busy with marine traffic headed for densely populated Tokyo.
"It didn't look like it has gotten thinner over the past two months, or been without food. It doesn't seem to be any weaker. So it looks as if it's been living quite happily in the middle of Tokyo Bay," Kazuhiro Sakamoto, deputy director of the park, told Reuters.
The penguin was filmed by a Japanese coast guard patrol craft on May 7, but the crew was unable to catch it then.
Penguin 337 is one of 135 penguins at Tokyo Sea Life Park.
Tens of thousands of visitors flocked to the Tokyo Skytree on Tuesday, trying to be among the first people to get a view of the Japanese capital from the world's tallest tower.
The Skytree rises 634 meters (2,080 feet) above Tokyo. It was certified as the world's tallest tower by Guinness World Records on November 17, according to the Skytree's website.
Guinness lists the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, at 828 meters (2,716 feet 6 inches), as the world's tallest building.
The distinction is that Burj Khalifa is an occupied building. The Skytree is a broadcast structure, with digital transmissions for Tokyo media beamed from it. Its towering height doubles the coverage that was previously available, as it enables signals to get past the countless other skyscrapers in the Japanese capital, according to the Skytree website.
People showing up for trips up the Skytree were beaming with pride and excitement Tuesday, according to local news reports.
A penguin that escaped from a Japanese aquarium in March is apparently thriving in Tokyo Bay, according to news reports from Japan.
The fugitive bird, known as Penguin 337, somehow scaled a 13-foot-high wall and then got through a barbed-wire fence to get into the bay.
Officials from Tokyo Sea Life Park feared the 1-year-old Humbolt penguin would not survive in the waters of the bay, busy with marine traffic headed for densely populated Tokyo.
But apparently 337 is making meals of small fish in the bay and finding some place to rest onshore at night, park officials said, according to a Reuters.
"It didn't look like it has gotten thinner over the past two months, or been without food. It doesn't seem to be any weaker. So it looks as if it's been living quite happily in the middle of Tokyo Bay," Kazuhiro Sakamoto, deputy director of the park, told Reuters.
The penguin was filmed by a Japanese coast guard patrol craft on May 7, but the crew was unable to catch it.
A Harley-Davidson motorcycle believed to have traversed the Pacific Ocean to western Canada after being swept from coastal Japan during a March 2011 tsunami has been claimed by a Japanese man.
Ikuo Yokoyama, 29, of Yamamoto, Japan, says a Harley-Davidson representative tracked him down after the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. ran a story about the bike, which was found in a storage container on British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii islands, the CBC reported.
Harley-Davidson now intends to restore the bike, which had rusted but still had its Miyagi Prefecture license plate, and send it back to Yokoyama, Japanese broadcaster NHK reported Wednesday.
Yokoyama, who NHK reported lost three family members and his home in the disaster, said he was "so glad that (the motorcycle) will be returned to me.”
“I would like to thank the man who found my bike in person,” Yokoyama said in an NHK interview aired on the CBC.
Peter Mark, a Haida Gwaii resident, told the CBC that he found the container – and the motorcycle, golf clubs, camping equipment and tools inside – on a beach on April 18.
Some 9,000 U.S. Marines will be transferred off the Japanese island of Okinawa under an agreement reached by U.S. and Japanese officials, a U.S. Defense Department official said.
A soccer ball recently found washed up on a remote Alaskan beach apparently belongs to a teenager from a city devastated by the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan more than a year ago.
And it may soon be returned to its owner more than three thousand miles away on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
David Baxter, a technician at the radar station on Middleton Island in the Gulf of Alaska, came across the ball as he was beach combing.
The ball had Japanese characters written on it, from which Baxter's wife was able to translate the name of a school that was in the area hit by the tsunami, according to a blog post by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
An enormous amount of debris was swept into the Pacific by the tsunami that hit northeast Japan on March 11, 2011, killing thousands of people.
A number of objects, both large and small, have so far made their way as far as the coast of North America, including a rusty fishing trawler that the U.S. Coast Guard sank earlier this month. But the ball "may be the first identifiable item that could be returned," according to the NOAA.
FULL STORYThe first opportunity for North Korea to launch its controversial rocket passed uneventfully Thursday, keeping the region on tenterhooks for at least another day.
As the launch window opened Thursday morning, the reclusive, nuclear-armed regime's neighbors were nervously watching for developments from the launch site, which is in a remote area in the northwest of the country.
Japanese missile defense systems scanned the skies above Tokyo and Okinawa. Japan has threatened to shoot down the North Korean rocket if it is seen threatening its territory.
International journalists in Pyongyang were taken on an official visit to a conference that had no connection to the launch. North Korean state television made no mention of the rocket, which the country says is necessary to put a weather satellite in orbit.
North Korea has said that it plans to carry out the launch sometime between Thursday and Monday, between the hours of 7 a.m. and noon (6 p.m.-11 p.m. ET Wednesday-Sunday).
FULL STORYThe U.S. Coast Guard has deployed a ship to sink a fishing trawler that was swept away more than a year ago by the tsunami off the coast of Japan and is now adrift near Alaska.
The crew of the coast guard's 110-foot CG Cutter Anacapa plans to assess the deserted trawler's condition Thursday morning, said Chief Petty Officer Kip Wadlow.
If its assessments are satisfactory, the crew will attempt to sink the vessel, named the Ryou-Un Maru, with the 25-millimeter cannon on board the cutter, Wadlow said.
The rust-stained trawler is part of a giant debris field in the Pacific Ocean that was generated by the devastating wall of water that struck northeastern Japan following a magnitude 9 earthquake on March 11, 2011.
FULL STORYA spring storm packing typhoon-strength winds caused two deaths and paralyzed traffic in Japan on Tuesday.
In Toyama, strong winds pulled down a barn, killing a man, police there said. In Ishikawa prefecture, an 82-year-old woman died after hitting her head when she fell in strong wind.
Japan's meteorological agency predicted a developing low pressure system and front in the Sea of Japan will create strong winds and heavy rain in Japan from Tuesday morning through Wednesday. The agency asked people to avoid potential weather hazards by remaining indoors.
Strong gusts and rain hit western Japan in the morning and widened northward throughout the day.
A record-breaking wind was recorded in the western city of Tomogashima, at 150 kilometers per hour (94 miles per hour).
FULL STORYapan gathered Sunday amid tears, prayers and a moment of silence to mark one year since a massive earthquake and tsunami killed thousands and triggered a nuclear crisis.
Throngs nationwide observed a moment of silence at 2:46 p.m. local time (12:46 a.m. ET), the exact time the earth shook on March 11, 2011.
The 9.0-magnitude quake literally shifted the earth's axis and unleashed a wall of water that swept away lives, homes and sent millions of people fleeing for higher ground.
Nearly 16,000 people died and 3,000 others remain missing.
Later Sunday, citizens will continue to mark the anniversary across the country, with a main ceremony at the New National Theatre in Tokyo. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is expected to attend and offer remarks.
He recently addressed rebuilding efforts, which represent Japan's greatest challenge since the end of World War II. Total damage is estimated at about 25 million yen, or roughly $300 billion so far.
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Japan's whaling fleet was headed home from the southern ocean after ending its annual Antarctic hunt with only a third of its expected catch, news reports from Japan said Friday.
The hunt ended three days ago with a catch of 266 minke whales and one fin whale, officials from Japan's Fisheries Agency said, according to one report from Australia's ABC news online.
The Sea Shephed Society, which sent a fleet of vessels to the southern ocean to block the hunt, proclaimed victory on its website.
"Operation Divine Wind is over! The Japanese whalers are going home!" the Sea Shepherd headline read.
"There are hundreds of whales swimming free in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary that would now be dead if we had not been down there for the last three months. That makes us very happy indeed," Sea Shepherd's Paul Watson is quoted as saying on the organization's website.
News of the Japanese whaling fleet's withdrawal comes four days after the Institute of Cetacean Research, which oversees the Japanese whaling program, reported a confrontation between the Japanese ships and Sea Shepherd's ship Bob Barker. The Bob Barker fired more than 40 flares and aimed a "high-powered" laser beam at the Japanese ships for more than 50 minutes, the institute said in a news release.
Watson said that with the high-seas showdown, "the whaling season was effectively over for the season."
Japan hunts whales every year despite a worldwide moratorium on whaling, utilizing a loophole in the law that allows for killing the mammals for scientific research.
Sea Shepherd said it would be back to block the Japanese fleet if it returns this year.
“If the Japanese whalers return, Sea Shepherd will return. We are committed to the defense of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary,” Watson said on the website. “No matter how long it takes, no matter how risky or expensive. The word 'sanctuary' actually means something to us and that something is worth fighting for.”
Japan hands over whaling activists to Australia
Editor's Note: This post is a recap of the top five videos on CNN.com from the past week. So in case you didn't catch our best videos during the week, here is your chance to see what you missed.
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Fish and plankton collected from the Pacific Ocean near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant contain elevated levels of radioactive materials, but below levels that pose a threat to public health, researchers reported Tuesday.
Levels of the long-lived nuclear waste cesium-137 were 1,000 times higher in seawater samples taken three months after the accident than they were before the meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi, said Nicholas Fisher, a marine science professor at New York's Stony Brook University. Zooplankton, which get carried by currents, collected in those waters had levels of cesium-137 and the shorter-lived cesium-134 that were on average 40 times higher than the surrounding water, he said. They also had much higher levels of a radioactive form of silver produced by nuclear reactions.
But the readings amounted to a fraction of the amount of radioactivity sea life is exposed to from naturally occurring potassium in seawater, Fisher said.
"The total radiation in the marine organisms that we collected from Fukushima is still less than the natural radiation background that the animals already had, and quite a bit less," he said. "It's about 20%."
The findings were among several reports on the Fukushima Daiichi accident that were presented at an ocean science conference in Salt Lake City held this week.
FULL STORYEditor's note: This post is part of the Overheard on CNN.com series, a regular feature that examines interesting comments and thought-provoking conversations posted by the community.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved licenses to build two new nuclear reactors Thursday, the first authorized in over 30 years. CNN looked into safety at U.S. plants. There are 23 nuclear reactors in the United States that use the General Electric-designed Mark 1 containment housing, which is similar to the design at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant. Readers talked about the safety of U.S. plants.
U.S. nuclear plants similar to Fukushima spark concerns
Some readers thought the concerns were overblown. This was the most-liked comment:
Jack Baker: "We have been using nuclear power for over 50 years, and there have been very few serious incidents, and only a couple of incidents with injuries or radiation release. And considering that the quantity of waste by-product is significantly less than any other type of power generation, including natural gas, how can people be so adamant against nuclear power?"
There were many who responded in turn to Jack Baker's coment.
MK54: "I believe that rendering a portion of the Earth uninhabitable for centuries, maybe more is a tremendous and unacceptable disaster, because of the persistence, even if no person is directly killed. The scale of a disaster is not always just in people killed. Earth is a beautiful and hospitable place, but it is up to us to keep it that way."
pwrphoto: "Many people would say that it's because of ignorance but I think it is mostly due to the subjective nature of how we, humans, perceive risk. Risk has two components: likelihood and impact. Your comment focuses on both risk and likelihood but most people only look at the impact. That is, they don't care if having a nuclear accident is very unlikely. They just care that if there is an accident the consequences are extreme. It is for the same reason that airplane accidents attract more attention than each individual road accident."
PatriotEagle: "Also, unlike Japan we don't get tsunamis. And France is completely energy because they run the whole country on nuclear energy and there's not been one nuclear problem to my knowledge in France."
One reader replied to the "Why?" and wondered why other kinds of energy aren't being explored. FULL POST
Japan's population will shrink by a staggering 30% by 2060, according to a new estimate by the country's government.
The current population will shrink from the current level of 128 million to 86.74 million, as the graying nation's aging accelerates and the birthrate continues to stay low.
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare's research organization released the data on Monday. The group, called the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, provides a 50-year demographic forecast every five years.
The institute also projects that people age 65 and older will account for 39.9% of the total population in 2060. In 2010, the elderly accounted for 23% of the population.
The country's average life expectancy dipped in 2011 after the March earthquake and tsunami, which killed approximately 19,000 people.
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