Japanese reaction to Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

The release of wastewater from Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant was temporarily suspended on Friday following an earthquake, its operator said.

A 5.8-magnitude jolt struck off the coast of the northeastern Fukushima region, home to the plant wrecked by a tsunami in 2011, at 00:14 am Friday (1514 GMT Thursday), the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

Around 100 fishermen and locals living near Fukushima will file a lawsuit this week seeking to stop the release of wastewater from the stricken Japanese nuclear plant, they said yesterday.

Twelve years after one of the world's worst nuclear accidents, on Aug. 24 Japan began releasing treated cooling water from the facility into the Pacific Ocean.

A Japanese court on Feb. 20 awarded nearly $4 million in fresh damages to scores of residents forced to flee their homes after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown.

According to the founder of Nuclear Crimes, Andrew Kishner, the continual leaking of nuclear waste into the ocean is being covered-up by officials and is getting worse each day.

Kishner claims that TEPCO, the company in charge of monitoring the plant, has data that shows radiation pouring into the Pacific Ocean non-stop for the past six years.

Japan's chief atomic energy regulator has acknowledged it was inappropriate to say it would be "much better" if North Korea dropped a missile on Tokyo rather than on a nuclear plant.

Shunichi Tanaka, head of the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), found himself in hot water on July 6 after he spoke to people living near a recently restarted reactor.

TOKYO, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Japan's trade ministry has almost doubled the estimated cost of compensation for the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and decommissioning of the damaged Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant to more than 20 trillion yen ($177.51 billion), the Nikkei business daily reported on Nov. 27. 

A former Fukushima nuclear plant worker has been diagnosed with radiation-linked cancer, Japanese officials said on Oct. 20, and an expert said the first confirmed case since the 2011 accident could be just the "tip of the iceberg".
 

The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant faced a fresh lawsuit July 29 from the family of a 102-year-old man who killed himself because he was depressed at having to leave his home.

Japan on July 28 approved an increase in compensation payments for the Fukushima crisis to 7.07 trillion yen ($57.18 billion), as tens of thousands of evacuees remain in temporary housing more than four years after the disaster. 

Traces of radioactivity originating from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011 have been detected in a seawater sample collected near Canada's west coast, according to a radiation monitoring group.