Google adds street views inside Japan nuclear zone

TOKYO (AP) — Concrete rubble litters streets lined with shuttered shops and dark windows. A collapsed roof juts from the ground. A ship sits stranded on a stretch of dirt flattened when the tsunami roared across the coastline. There isn't a person in sight.

Google Street View is giving the world a rare glimpse into one of Japan's eerie ghost towns, created when the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami sparked a nuclear disaster that has left the area uninhabitable.

The technology pieces together digital images captured by Google's fleet of camera-equipped vehicles and allows viewers to take virtual tours of locations around the world, including faraway spots like the South Pole and fantastic landscapes like the Grand Canyon.

Now it is taking people inside Japan's nuclear no-go zone, to the city of Namie, whose 21,000 residents have been unable to return to live since they fled the radiation spewing from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant two years ago.

Koto Naganuma, 32, who lost her home in the tsunami, said some people find it too painful to see the places that were so familiar yet are now so out of reach.

She has only gone back once, a year ago, and for a few minutes.

"I'm looking forward to it. I'm excited I can take a look at those places that are so dear to me," said Naganuma. "It would be hard, too. No one is going to be there."

Namie Mayor Tamotsu Baba said memories came flooding back as he looked at the images shot by Google earlier this month.

He spotted an area where an autumn festival used to be held and another of an elementary school that was once packed with schoolchildren.

"Those of us in the older generation feel that we received this town from our forbearers, and we feel great pain that we cannot pass it down to our children," he said in a post on his blog.

"We want this Street View imagery to become a permanent record of what happened to Namie-machi in the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster."

Street View was started in 2007, and now provides images from more than 3,000 cities across 48 countries, as well as parts of the Arctic and Antarctica.

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Online: Namie Street View link: http://goo.gl/maps/iFIWD

Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at www.twitter.com/yurikageyama

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Power, cooling restored at Japanese nuclear plant

TOKYO (AP) — Cooling systems have been restored for four fuel storage pools at Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear plant, more than a day after a power outage halted the supply of fresh cooling water and raised concerns about the facility, which still relies on makeshift equipment.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. says the cooling system at the last pool at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant was repaired early Wednesday. It says pool temperatures were well within safe levels and the reactors were unaffected.

The utility says workers are still trying to determine the cause of the outage, which began when a brief power failure hit the plant Tuesday evening.

A massive earthquake and tsunami two years ago caused extensive damage to the plant.

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Power partially restored at nuclear plant in Japan

TOKYO (AP) — Power has been restored to two fuel storage pools at Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear plant, but two others are still without fresh cooling water after nearly 20 hours, raising concerns about the fragility of a facility that still runs on makeshift equipment.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said that pool temperatures at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant were well within safe levels, and that pools would remain safe for at least four days without fresh cooling water. The utility said the reactors were unaffected and no other abnormalities were found.

The cooling system was restored at two of the four pools by Tuesday evening, and the systems for the two other pools were to resume by Wednesday morning as workers complete repairs and try to determine the cause of the problem, TEPCO spokesman Masayuki Ono told reporters.

"We now have better prospects for cooling to resume," he said.

About 50 workers in hazmat suits and full-face masks were mobilized to fix cabling that involved the last of the three switchboards that they suspect as a possible cause of the problem. The utility was also preparing a backup system in case the repairs didn't fix the issue and "the worse comes to worst," Ono said.

Japan's March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant's power and cooling systems, causing three reactor cores to melt and fuel storage pools to overheat.

The current power outage is a test for TEPCO to show if it has learned anything from the disaster. TEPCO, which has repeatedly faced cover-up scandals, was slammed by local media Tuesday for waiting hours to disclose the blackout.

Ono acknowledged the plant was vulnerable.

"Fukushima Dai-ichi still runs on makeshift equipment, and we are trying to switch to something more permanent and dependable, which is more desirable," he said. "Considering the equipment situation, we may be pushing a little too hard."

Ono said the utility did not immediately try to switch to a backup cooling system because doing so without finding and fixing the cause could lead to a repeat of the problem but prioritized power restoration after all.

There is a backup cooling system but no backup outside power. TEPCO has backup cooling systems with separate power sources for reactor cooling, but fuel storage pools only have emergency diesel generators as a backup. TEPCO said it will consider installing backup outside power for the pools.

Units 3 and 4 reactors shared a makeshift switchboard that sits on the back of a truck but an upgrade for permanent, safer location was being planned later this month. Reactor cooling water pumps also sit on the back of a truck, with hoses traveling several kilometers (miles) to reach the reactors.

"We have a ton of problems that still needs to be taken care of to overcome the challenges that we have never experienced," Ono said. But he denied the power outage would affect the plant's long-term cleanup plans.

Regulators have raised concerns about the makeshift equipment and urged the plant to switch them to a more permanent arrangement. The operator still has to remove melted, fatally radioactive fuel from the reactors before fully decommissioning the plant, which officials say could take 40 years.

Yoshihide Suga, the chief government spokesman, sought to allay concerns.

"In a sense, we have put in place measures that leave no room for worry," Suga told reporters in a regular briefing.

The command center at the plant suffered a brief power outage before 7 p.m. Monday. Electricity was quickly restored to the command center but not to equipment pumping water into the fuel pools.

The temperature in the four pools had risen slightly, but was well below the utility's target control temperature of 65 degrees Celsius, TEPCO said.

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Associated Press writer Malcolm Foster contributed to this report.

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Power still out at damaged nuclear plant in Japan

TOKYO (AP) — Four fuel storage pools at Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear plant have been without fresh cooling water for more than 15 hours due to a power outage, but the plant's operator said Tuesday morning it was trying to repair a broken switchboard that might have caused the problem.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said that pool temperatures were well within safe levels at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, and that pools would remain safe for at least four days without fresh cooling water.

The utility was preparing a backup system in case the repairs didn't fix the problem, Masayuki Ono, an official at operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., told reporters.

"If worse comes to worst, we have a backup water injection system," said Ono.

The command center at the plant suffered a brief power outage before 7 p.m. Monday. Electricity was quickly restored to the command center but not to equipment pumping water into the fuel pools.

The utility was investigating the cause of the power outage and believes it might be due to problems with a switchboard, which it is trying to repair. At the same time, the company is preparing to connect another switchboard if repairs cannot fix the problem.

The temperature in the four pools had risen slightly, but was well below the utility's target control temperature of 65 degrees Celsius, TEPCO said.

The fuel pool for Unit 4, which contains spent and new fuel rods, had risen to 30.5 degrees as of 10 a.m. Tuesday from 25 degrees before the power outage. A common pool storing spent fuel for all reactors was at 28.6 degrees, while the Unit 1 pool was at 17.1 degrees and Unit 3 was at 15.9 degrees.

TEPCO said the reactors were unaffected and no other abnormalities were found.

The March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant's power and cooling systems, causing three reactor cores to melt and fuel storage pools to overheat. The plant is now using makeshift systems.

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Associated Press writer Malcolm Foster contributed to this report.

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