April 3rd Notes in Aftermath of Disaster "Japan says it may take months to end radiation leaks | Reuters"

Japanese Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster of March 11th
Retrieved by Pat Darnell
EXCERPT | March 11 :: "Lots of villages there washed away and about 215,000 people lost there shelters. State of emergency also declared by the government because in five nuclear reactors, cooling systems failed. The 8.9-magnitude tremor quake came on Friday [March 11, 2011] off the coast of Honshu island and in the north-east of Tokyo."

WRAPUP 1-Japan says it may take months to end radiation leaks | Reuters: "Germany and Switzerland have said they will shut older reactors or suspend approvals, China has suspended approvals for new plants, and Taiwan is studying cutting nuclear output."

• The 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami on March 11 has left nearly 28,000 people dead or missing and Japan's northeast coast a splintered wreck. The disaster has hit economic production and left a damages bill which may top $300 billion.
• The U.S.G.S. calculated Friday's [March 11, 2011] magnitude 8.9 earthquake in Japan to be 700 times stronger than Haiti's recent magnitude 7.0 earthquake, which devastated Port-au-Prince and killed more than 300,000 people.
  
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• [In Japan today] More than 163,710 people are living in shelters, with more than 70,000 people evacuated from a 20 km (12 mile) no-go zone area the nuclear plant, and another 136,000 people living a further 10 km out have been told to leave or stay indoors.
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• The government has said it estimated damage from the earthquake and tsunami at 16 trillion to 25 trillion yen ($190 billion-$298 billion). The top estimate would make it the world's costliest natural disaster. (Perry, Wm, Cawthorne, A. Reuters. April 3, 2011. LINK)
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• "Grown in Fukushima" has become a warning label for those nervous of radiation which has already been found in some vegetables close to the nuclear plant. "There is no way we will be able to sell anything," said 73-year-old farmer Akio Abiko. "People in Tokyo are just too sensitive about this kind of thing."
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• Milk and other staples like mushrooms and berries are still contaminated in parts of Ukraine by radioactive fallout from Chernobyl, 25 years after the world's worst nuclear disaster, Greenpeace said on Sunday. (Additional reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro, Kiyoshi Takenaka and Yoko Kubota in in Tokyo, David Dolan in Fukushima and Damir Sagolj in Rikuzentakata, David Fogarty in Bangkok, Richard Balmforth in Kiev.; Writing by Michael Perry and Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Daniel Magnowski. LINK)

PHOTO: TIME. LINK

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