Tofino, BC | December 16

CBC - Bottles, cans and lumber from the tsunami that devastated Japan in March began washing up on British Columbia shores this week, more than a year earlier than oceanographers had initially predicted.

Winds and currents have carried the items -- emblazoned with Japanese characters -- nearly 21,000 kilometres across the Pacific Ocean. They began washing up in the Tofino area on Vancouver Island's west coast earlier this week.

Jean-Paul Froment, a longtime area resident, says he's used to seeing things wash up on the beach, but has never seen such a large quantity of debris at once.

Tofino mayor Perry Schmunk said municipal workers will take special care in cleaning up the retrieved items.

[...]

The flotsam now arriving in B.C. heralds a much larger cluster of debris on its way. Russian sailors have reported spotting a giant floating cluster of material, estimated to be twice the size of Texas, about 2,700 kilometres east of Hawaii. The items include a fishing boat marked "Fukushima."

SEOUL – Japan declared Friday that the tsunami-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has reached a condition that suggests a critical stable state known as a “cold shutdown” and has ceased to leak substantial amounts of radiation.

The development comes nine months after an earthquake-generated tsunami struck the coastal plant March 11, knocking out its cooling system and eventually causing a series of meltdowns.

The reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant have reached a state of cold shutdown, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda told Cabinet members in an announcement intended to reassure Japan and the rest of the world that the nation is moving beyond its nuclear nightmare.

But critics say that continuing harm is being caused by the plant, stricken by what many call the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, and that it will still take decades to fully decommission the facility.

[...]

[Updated at 6:36 a.m., Dec. 16: Environmentalists blasted the government's claims of progress at Fukushima.

“By triumphantly declaring a cold shutdown, the Japanese authorities are clearly anxious to give the impression that the crisis has come to an end, which is clearly not the case," said a statement by the group Greenpeace. "Instead of creating a PR smokescreen to deflect attention away from the ongoing failure to help people living with the consequences of the disaster, the government’s priority should be to ensure public safety and begin the shutdown of all nuclear reactors in Japan.”]

And there are continuing signs that the fallout is entering the food system. A Japanese baby food manufacturer this month announced the recall of 400,000 cans of infant formula that reportedly contained traces of radioactive cesium connected to the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown.

The Independent, By David McNeill, December 16

The operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant is expected to declare today that its crippled reactors have been stabilised, nine months after an earthquake and tsunami triggered the world's worst nuclear accident in 25 years.

But critics, including a journalist who worked undercover at the plant, have rubbished the claims by Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) that the crisis is over. And Japan's government admitted this week that dismantling the reactors and the 260-tonne lethal cargo of nuclear fuel will take up to 40 years.

Tepco plans to announce that radiation releases from the plant are under control and the temperature of its nuclear fuel is consistently below boiling point: the two conditions set by the beleaguered utility for what it calls "cold shutdown conditions". Masao Yamaguchi, a Tepco spokesman, called the achievement a "milestone".

Much of the fuel in three of Fukushima Daiichi plant's six reactors has melted through the base of the containment vessels. Engineers are still pumping 4,000 tonnes of water a week on to the fuel to keep it cool, leaving 200,000 tonnes of heavily contaminated water on site. Despite the efforts, the rush to bring the plant under control is storing up complex problems, according to Tomohiko Suzuki, who spent a month working at the plant during the summer and has released a book this week about his experiences. "The question is, can they maintain this temperature for years and years?" he told reporters in Tokyo yesterday. "I believe the problems there are just starting."