Radiation

NAMIE, Japan -- Japan's system to forecast radiation threats was working from the moment its nuclear crisis began. As officials planned a venting operation certain to release radioactivity into the air, the system predicted Karino Elementary School would be directly in the path of the plume emerging from the tsunami-hit Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant.

But the prediction helped no one. Nobody acted on it.

TOKYO -- Small business owners and laborers forced to leave their homes and jobs because of radiation leaking from Japan's tsunami-flooded nuclear plant rode a bus all the way to Tokyo on Wednesday to demand compensation from the plant's operator.

People are increasingly growing frustrated with Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s handling of the nuclear crisis, which has progressed fitfully since the March 11 tsunami swamped the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, knocking out important cooling systems. Restoring them will take months.

WASHINGTON -- Most Americans doubt the U.S. government is prepared to respond to a nuclear emergency like the one in Japan, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows. But it also shows few Americans believe such an emergency would occur.

Nevertheless, the disaster has turned more Americans against new nuclear power plants. The poll found that 60 percent of Americans oppose building more nuclear power plants. That's up from 48 percent who opposed it in an AP-Stanford University Poll in November 2009.

The Associated Press-GfK poll comes as Japan continues to struggle with a nuclear crisis caused by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has leaked radiation into the environment and radioactive water gushed into the Pacific Ocean. Japan was rattled by a strong aftershock and tsunami warning Thursday, but officials reported no immediate sign of new problems.

TOKYO -- The operator of Japan's stricken nuclear plant reported Wednesday that it had apparently contained a leak that had been allowing radiation to seep into the sea.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. had said Tuesday that it had found iodine-131 at 7.5 million times the legal limit in a seawater sample taken earlier near the facility, and government officials instituted a health limit for radioactivity in fish. Other samples were found to contain radioactive cesium at 1.1 million times the legal limit.

The exact cause of the radiation was not immediately clear, though Tepco has said that highly contaminated water has been leaking from a pit near the No. 2 reactor. The utility had suspected the leak was coming from a crack, but several attempts to seal the crack failed to stop the flow.

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- The horrors of the world's worst nuclear accident greeted Natalia Manzurova when she arrived in the Ukraine after the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl.

Assigned by the Soviet government to study the accident's fallout, Manzurova visited an abandoned nursery school and found a bony dog sleeping on a child's cot. Its sagging, bleeding skin showed evidence of radiation burns. Through clouded eyes, the dog looked sadly at her.

"It loved children so much, that even when they had been evacuated, it stayed in a child's bed," Manzurova said during a visit to the University of South Carolina last week to remember the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident.

The sight of the sickened dog is one she can't forget, but one example of how a nuclear power accident can affect life, she said. And it's why the world should take care to avoid another Chernobyl, Manzurova said.

BOISE -- Trace amounts of radioactive gases from the nuclear reactor disaster in Japan began showing up in Idaho and other Western states this week.