Thursday, March 17, 2011

15/03 Satellite Photos of Japan, Before and After the Quake and Tsunami

UPDATED March 15, 2011
Satellite Photos of Japan, Before and After the Quake and Tsunami
Move the slider to compare satellite images from before and after the disaster.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant
Japan's largest ongoing threat is at this nuclear power plant. There have been explosions at four of its six reactors and all four have released some radioactive material..

17/03 Một vài nét về tác phẩm mới xuất bản Thi Ca Lãng Mạn Pháp của Nhà Thơ Đông Yên



Thursday, March 17, 2011 4:26:45 PM 
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Lê Hoàng

Như một tình cờ, không bất ngờ nhưng khá thú vị bằng cuộc gặp gỡ giữa tôi và hai người bạn cũ – Có thể gọi là nối khố và cố tri dưới bầu trời mùa Xuân Cali khá thú vị, chẳng khác nào Đà Lạt năm nào!
Thế mà đã gần nửa thế kỷ trôi qua - Những năm đầu của thập niên 60, cũng không khí mát lạnh và êm đềm như hôm nay, nhưng không gian và thời gian thì khác hẳn. Thuở đó,cuộc sống và con người khác nhau, chúng tôi là những sinh viên thật trẻ đã tìm đến môi trường Thụ Nhân của cái xứ quanh năm lành lạnh để học làm người: Bạn tôi anh Lương Tấn Lực, bút hiệu Đông Yên – con người mà sau này vẫn cố gắng ôm chặt mảnh đất mát lạnh đó qua  sự cộng tác với ngôi trường nổi tiếng của miền Nam nước Việt, trường Võ Bị Đà Lạt, cho đến ngày cuối cùng, sau hết là chấp nhận rời xa quê hương ! Còn tôi thì đã thật sự mãi mãi nhận nơi đó làm nơi chôn nhau cắt rún thứ hai - Thứ nhất là của chính tôi và thứ hai là của người vợ thân yêu của tôi.Và bây giờ, Đông Yên vừa mới đưa cho tôi đứa con tinh thần đầu tay của anh, đó là tác phẩm Thi ca Lãng Mạn Pháp ( Le Romantisme Français ). Tôi sẽ giới thiệu tác phẩm này trong một ngày gần đây. Còn người bạn kia cũng lại là bạn đồng môn ngày xưa nhưng còn cộng thêm tình đồng nghiệp: đó là Phạm Quốc Bảo - Một người lúc nào cũng hiền hòa, dễ thương  và mến bạn. Một chút bất ngờ làm tôi thích thú khi biết được hai bạn tôi, mỗi người đều có hồn thơ trong lòng, nhưng mỗi người một hướng, một bên là  dịch giả của những dòng thơ Tây phương và một người Đông phương.

Riêng về tác phẩm Thi ca Lãng Mạn Pháptrước mắt, tôi muốn mượn lời của các anh Nguyễn Đình Cường, Nguyễn Mạnh Cường, Trần Huy Bích và Nguyễn Phan Anh để giúp độc giả  có một khái niệm tổng quát về công trình văn học nầy.

“…Nhà thơ Đông Yên đã tổng hợp tất cả những khả năng mang tính cách khoa bảng của ông với một kiến thức vững vàng và phong phú về văn chương Pháp cũng như triết học Tây Phương.Do đó ông đã chuyển dịch những kiệt tác của các đại thi hào trong trào lưu lãng man Pháp nói riêng và thi ca lãng mạn Pháp nói chung qua ngôn ngữ Việt Nam một cách nhuần nhuyển lưu loát tuyệt vời, mang phong thái rất hàn lâm và quí phái.Thực ra có rất nhiều dịch giả Việt Nam đã chuyển dịch thi ca Pháp,nhưng do những hạn chế về tư duy, cảm hứng, thời đại v.v., những dịch bản đó chỉ đạt được một mức độ nghệ thuật nào đó.Ở nhà thơ Đông Yên, tác giả đã thẩm thấu được tất cả những rung động, cũng như đã nhìn ra những tinh tế trong thi từ của các thi hào, và với một tâm hồn đầy mẫn cảm của một thi nhân ông đã thể hiện được trọn vẹn những tinh hoa của các tuyệt tác đó...” ( 
Nguyễn Đình Cường)

“Sống trong một thời đại Internet kỹ thuật số và nhiều biến động chính trị gần đây, thế kỷ chúng ta cần có những tác phẩm giá trị nghệ thuật cao về nhân bản. Chúng ta gần như mất đi dần  những cơ hội tiếp xúc với thiên nhiên, khả năng cảm nhận giữa con người với con người vì điều kiện sống ngày càng trở nên vội vã khắc nghiệt hơn.Do đó theo thiển nghĩ của tôi, những bài thơ đầy tính cách lãng mạn của các đại thi hào Pháp sẽ là một luồng gió mới thổi vào tâm hồn khô cằn của chúng ta và làm bừng dậy những nỗi niềm và nhiều vùng trời kỷ niệm.Ngạn ngữ Pháp có câu “Pháp Văn là ngôn ngữ của tình yêu”.Tuy nhiên không phải ai cũng có khả năng cảm nhận được sự phong phú và thi vị của những bài thơ nầy, vì nó đòi hỏi một sự hiểu biết về cấu trúc và ngôn ngữ của văn chương Pháp.  Học giả kiêm  nhà thơ Đông Yên Lương Tấn Lực đã chuyển dịch những bài thơ nầy từ ngôn ngữ Pháp sang ngôn ngữ Việt một cách rất tài tình.  Sự cảm nhận tuôn tràn của tác giả đã làm những bài thơ trở nên phong phú với tiết điệu và cấu trúc tuyệt vời của ngôn ngữ Việt
.”( Nguyễn Mạnh Cường) 

“…Thành thật chúc mừng anh đã hoàn tất một công việc rất quan trọng. Thơ Hán, thơ Đường, thơ Tống ... đã được rất nhiều người dịch sang tiếng Việt. Thơ Anh, thơ Mỹ ... cũng đã có nhiều bản dịch xuất hiện. Gần đây có người dịch cả thơ vùng Trung Đông. Nhưng thi ca lãng mạn Pháp, một thành phần phong phú và trọng yếu của văn học thế giới, thì chưa thấy ai dịch một cách nghiêm túc, thành hệ thống. Có lẽ các cụ xưa, kể cả thế hệ Thầy và chú bác chúng mình, đọc và hiểu thẳng từ tiếng Pháp, cho rằng việc dịch không quan trọng chăng? Nhưng từ thế hệ chúng mình về sau, số người Việt hiểu đúng và thấy được cái hay trong thơ Pháp có được bao nhiêu đâu. Việc anh làm là một việc rất đáng, rất nên, đồng thời cũng không dễ làm một chút nào. 

Công bình mà nói thì các cụ trước cũng đã dịch từ văn học Pháp khá nhiều. Nhưng cụ NV Vĩnh chỉ dịch thơ ngụ ngôn của La Fontaine, một số hài kịch của Molière, cùng một số truyện bằng văn xuôi. Và cụ chú trọng tới dịch ý, coi quá nhẹ việc dịch lời ("Nhưng mà cá đã cắn cu..."). Cụ Phạm  Quỳnh, vô cùng uyên bác, cũng chỉ dịch Corneille (
Le Cid, Horace), một số truyện ngắn và tiểu thuyết bằng văn xuôi, cùng viết bài biên khảo về Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu ... Các cụ chú trọng nhiều tới thế kỷ 17, 18 của văn học Pháp. Thế kỷ 19 chưa được đối xử đúng mức. Anh đã làm được, và làm đúng, điều các cụ chưa làm. 

Thành thật mừng anh, và cám ơn anh đã chia sẻ thành quả của việc làm này với anh em, trong đó có tôi. Với thời gian, tôi tin rằng công việc anh làm sẽ được ghi nhận đúng mức. Thiết nghĩ tập thơ anh dịch sẽ có một địa vị rất xứng đáng trong văn học.”( 
Trần Huy Bích)

“…Tôi vừa nhận được tập Thi Ca Lãng Mạn Pháp của anh qua Lê Hoàng.Đọc vội trong thời gian ở nhà Hoàng, tôi rất thích bản dịch “Dĩ Vãng” của anh. Lời thơ trau chuốt, tình tứ, tự nhiên và rất có hồn. Nếu không biết trước, không ai có thể ngờ được đó là bài thơ dịch.

Cám ơn anh đã cho tôi được sống với những giây phút thư thái lãng mạn tình tứ thuở đầu đời. Cám ơn và cám ơn anh, Nhà Thơ & Học Giả Đông Yên.”( 
Phan Anh)

Cuối cùng, tôi đồng ý rằng một người dịch thành công phải có "một kiến thức vững và phong phú về ngôn ngữ, văn chương Pháp cũng như triết học Tây Phươngvà "không phải ai cũng có khả năng cảm nhận được sự phong phú và thi vị của những bài thơ này, vì nó đòi hỏi một sự hiểu biết vững chắc về cấu trúc và ngôn ngữ của văn chương Pháp." 

Lê Hoàng
(1)

(1)Lê Hòang: là bút hiệu của Hoàng Quốc Trứ, cựu sinh viên viện đại học ĐàLạt & SàiGòn. Trước 1975, Lê Hòang đã là ký giả cho các nhật báo Thời Luận, Dân Chủ Mới, Chính Luận và các hãng Thông Tấn Tin Việt & Tin Điển, chủ bút nguyệt san Tuyên-Đà( Tuyên Đức-ĐàLạt). Sau 1975,Lê Hòang định cư ở Nam Cali, chủ nhiệm kiêm chủ bút nguyệt san Doanh Thương Thời Báo( Vietnamese Business Magazine), Saigon Nails( trích bản tóm tắt tiểu sử).

17/03 Arnold Schwarzenegger admits fathering employee's child


Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria ShriverMr Schwarzenegger and Ms Shriver jointly announced their separation last week

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Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has acknowledged he fathered a child with a member of his household staff more than 10 years ago.
"After leaving the governor's office I told my wife about this event, which occurred over a decade ago," Mr Schwarzenegger said in a statement.
Earlier this month the former actor and his wife Maria Shriver said they were separating after 25 years of marriage.
Ms Shriver moved out of their Los Angeles mansion earlier in the year.
In his statement, Mr Schwarzenegger said: "I understand and deserve the feelings of anger and disappointment among my friends and family."
He and Ms Shriver have four children together between the ages of 14 and 21.
Ms Shriver said in a statement: "This is a painful and heartbreaking time. As a mother, my concern is for the children. I ask for compassion, respect and privacy as my children and I try to rebuild our lives and heal."
The couple's children posted messages on Twitter expressing their love for their family and thanks to supporters for their sympathy.
The 63-year-old former governor has maintained a high public profile and worked to revive his movie career since finishing a seven-year run as California governor in January.
'Truly sorry'
The name of the former member of Mr Schwarzenegger's household staff with whom he fathered the child has not been made public. But reports said she worked for the family for 20 years and retired in January.

Analysis

Arnold Schwarzenegger fell out of favour with Californians long before he left office. But political failings aside, today's revelation came as a bolt out of the blue. It will certainly cement the so-called Governator's image as a disgraced public figure.
He had long had a reputation as a womaniser but this affair is tawdry - the fact that his mistress continued to work in the Schwarzenegger household up to January of this year - without his wife knowing what happened.
Mr Schwarzenegger's legacy was already in serious question, thanks to the fallout from his decision (in his final hours in office) to commute a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter to seven years for the son of a close friend. Last week the San Diego District Attorney filed papers to void the commutation. The scandals swirling around Mr Schwarzenegger must surely kill any chances of a future life in public service. But Hollywood may be more forgiving.
In an interview on Monday, before the former governor issued his statement, the woman told the Los Angeles Times that another man, her husband at the time, had fathered her child.
When the Times informed her of Mr Schwarzenegger's statement later on Monday, the woman declined to comment further.
"I have apologised to Maria, my children and my family. I am truly sorry," Mr Schwarzenegger said.
Ms Shriver supported her husband during his 2003 campaign, following accusations by more than a dozen women who said Mr Schwarzenegger had groped them in the past.
The former governor responded to the accusations by saying he "behaved badly sometimes".
The former first couple of California have been married for 25 years and did not mention a cause for the separation when it was announced last week.
Prior to taking office, Mr Schwarzenegger was best known for starring in the Terminator action films.
Ms Shriver, a member of the Kennedy dynasty, left her job as a TV reporter when her husband was elected as governor.

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16/03 In Europe and China, Japan’s Crisis Renews Fears About Nuclear Power

March 16, 2011
By JUDY DEMPSEYand SHARON LaFRANIERE

As Japan’s nuclear crisis intensified Wednesday, governments across Europe remained at odds over whether to scale back nuclear power programs or continue plans to expand, while China announced that it was suspending new plant approvals until it could strengthen safety standards.

While the German public has been the most vocal against nuclear power — pushing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government this week to close temporarily seven of the country’s 17 plants — it is a different story in other parts of Europe.

France, the second-largest producer of nuclear power in the world behind the United States, said it would continue to rely on nuclear energy.

President Nicolas Sarkozy said Wednesday that the accident in Japan had “provoked across the world a number of questions about the safety of nuclear power stations and the energy mix.”

But he added: “France has chosen nuclear energy, which is an essential element of its energy independence and the struggle against greenhouse gases.”

He added: “I remain convinced of the relevance today of those choices.”

Nonetheless, critics voiced their opposition to the government’s stance.

François Mativet, a spokesman for Sortir du Nucléaire, a network of 875 antinuclear groups, described Mr. Sarkozy’s comments as “scandalous” and called for the immediate closing of 16 reactors in France that have been in service for more than 30 years, as well as a longer-term plan to abandon nuclear power.

Elsewhere on the Continent, Russia and several Eastern European countries were playing down the risk of nuclear power.

So confident was Russia that it signed an agreement with Belarus this week to finance and build Belarus’s first nuclear power plant, a 4.3 billion euro, or $6 billion, project near the Lithuanian border.

As if to make a point that Russia had no intention of backing away from its own ambitious nuclear energy policy, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin flew to Minsk for the signing ceremony on Tuesday.

“We now have a whole arsenal of progressive technological means to ensure the stable accident-free work of nuclear power stations,” Mr. Putin said.

The Belarusian plant will have two reactors. They are expected to begin operating by 2016 and 2018, Prime Minister Mikhail Myasnikovich of Belarus said at the ceremony.

Belarus’s neighbors in the European Union — Lithuania, Latvia and Poland — expressed concern about the accord, not only because it would increase Belarus’s dependence on Russia for its energy but also because of safety concerns. The 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl, in Ukraine, contaminated parts of these countries, as well as Belarus.

Despite such fears, Lithuania and Poland seem determined to go ahead with their own nuclear programs, if they can afford it.

The Lithuanian government has said it wants to replace the Ignalina nuclear power plant, which was partly closed in 2004 for safety reasons at the insistence of the European Union, which required it as a condition for joining.

Still, Dalia Grybauskaite, Lithuania’s president, said this week that the government might have to rethink its nuclear energy plans, not because of Japan’s disasters but because of costs.

“Lithuania should have no illusions that it may be able to build something in the near future; we have no investor,” Mrs. Grybauskaite told The Associated Press. “We have no technologies. It would be very naïve nurturing expectations, especially given the current situation and the economic crisis, which isn’t over yet.”

In Poland, which is considering building its own nuclear power plants, Prime Minister Donald Tusk also played down the crisis in Japan. “Plants will be built to provide maximum security,” he told reporters last weekend.

A similar attitude can be seen in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania, where public opinion, with few exceptions, has not questioned such a strategy.

All those countries intend to build more nuclear plants, despite the costs — and despite the increased dependence on Russia for the construction of these plants or for uranium.

In China, the government announced stepped-up inspections at its existing plants in addition to the suspension of new approvals.

China, the world’s leader in construction of nuclear plants, plans to add more than 25 reactors, but most are already under construction, and it was unclear how many would be affected by the new order.

The announcement came after Premier Wen Jiabao discussed Japan’s nuclear crisis with the State Council, a body roughly equivalent to the White House cabinet.

“We must fully grasp the importance and urgency of nuclear safety, and development of nuclear power must make safety the top priority,” the government said on its Web site. “Any hazards must be thoroughly dealt with, and those that do not conform to safety standards must immediately cease construction.”

Although the statement said "all new power plants" should be suspended until safety standards are revised, an industry expert said Thursday morning that the government intends to continue work on those plants already under construction and halt construction only if it identifies safety problems. In that case, China’s expansion of nuclear power might not slow significantly, he said.

Officials have portrayed nuclear energy as a way for China to reduce its reliance on coal and cut its carbon dioxide emissions while at the same time meeting surging demand for electricity. The country has never had a serious nuclear accident, though the speed of its construction program has raised safety concerns.

Some specialists also worried that China was building plants too close to urban areas or earthquake fault lines. In late February, just a few weeks before the crisis at Japan’s Daiichi nuclear complex began to unfold, China’s ministry of environmental protection announced regulations prohibiting nuclear construction near earthquake zones or major cities.

As recently as Saturday, before the gravity of the nuclear disaster in Japan was clear, a top Chinese official restated China’s commitment to nuclear power.

“Some lessons we learn from Japan will be considered in the making of China’s nuclear power plans,” Zhang Lijun, vice minister for environmental protection, said then. “But China will not change its determination and plan for developing nuclear power.”

He also said that China used a more modern design than those of Japan’s stricken reactors.


Matthew Saltmarsh contributed reporting.




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16/03 Scientists Project Path of Radiation Plume

March 16, 2011
By WILLIAM J. BROAD

A United Nations forecast of the possible movement of the radioactive plume coming from crippled Japanese reactors shows it churning across the Pacific, and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late Friday.

Health and nuclear experts emphasize that radiation in the plume will be diluted as it travels and, at worst, would have extremely minor health consequences in the United States, even if hints of it are ultimately detectable. In a similar way, radiation from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 spread around the globe and reached the West Coast of the United States in 10 days, its levels measurable but minuscule.

The projection, by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, an arm of the United Nations in Vienna, gives no information about actual radiation levels but only shows how a radioactive plume would probably move and disperse.

The forecast, calculated Tuesday, is based on patterns of Pacific winds at that time and the predicted path is likely to change as weather patterns shift.

On Sunday, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it expected that no “harmful levels of radioactivity” would travel from Japan to the United States “given the thousands of miles between the two countries.”

The test ban treaty group routinely does radiation projections in an effort to understand which of its global stations to activate for monitoring the worldwide ban on nuclear arms testing. It has more than 60 stations that sniff the air for radiation spikes and uses weather forecasts and powerful computers to model the transport of radiation on the winds.

On Wednesday, the agency declined to release its Japanese forecast, which The New York Times obtained from other sources. The forecast was distributed widely to the agency’s member states.

But in interviews, the technical specialists of the agency did address how and why the forecast had been drawn up.

“It’s simply an indication,” said Lassina Zerbo, head of the agency’s International Data Center. “We have global coverage. So when something happens, it’s important for us to know which station can pick up the event.”

For instance, the Japan forecast shows that the radioactive plume will probably miss the agency’s monitoring stations at Midway and in the Hawaiian Islands but is likely to be detected in the Aleutians and at a monitoring station in Sacramento.

The forecast assumes that radioactivity in Japan is released continuously and forms a rising plume. It ends with the plume heading into Southern California and the American Southwest, including Nevada, Utah and Arizona. The plume would have continued eastward if the United Nations scientists had run the projection forward.

Earlier this week, the leading edge of the tangible plume was detected by the Navy’s Seventh Fleet when it was operating about 100 miles northeast of the Japanese reactor complex. On Monday, the Navy said it had repositioned its ships and aircraft off Japan “as a precautionary measure.”

The United Nations agency has also detected radiation from the stricken reactor complex at its detector station in Gunma, Japan, which lies about 130 miles to the southwest.

The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory B. Jaczko, said Monday that the plume posed no danger to the United States. “You just aren’t going to have any radiological material that, by the time it traveled those large distances, could present any risk to the American public,” he said in a White House briefing.

Mr. Jaczko was asked if the meltdown of a core of one of the reactors would increase the chance of harmful radiation reaching Hawaii or the West Coast.

“I don’t want to speculate on various scenarios,” he replied. “But based on the design and the distances involved, it is very unlikely that there would be any harmful impacts.”

The likely path of the main Japanese plume across the Pacific has also caught the attention of Europeans, many of whom recall how the much closer Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine began spewing radiation.

In Germany on Wednesday, the Federal Office for Radiation Protection held a news conference that described the threat from the Japanese plume as trifling and said there was no need for people to take iodine tablets. The pills can prevent poisoning from the atmospheric release of iodine-131, a radioactive byproduct of nuclear plants. The United States is also carefully monitoring and forecasting the plume’s movements. The agencies include the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy.

On Wednesday, Steven Chu, the energy secretary, told Congress that the United States was planning to deploy equipment in Japan that could detect radiation exposure on the ground and in the air. In total, the department’s team includes 39 people and more than eight tons of equipment.

“We continue to offer assistance in any way we can,” Dr. Chu said at a hearing, “as well as informing ourselves of what the situation is.”



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16/03 U.S. Calls Radiation ‘Extremely High,’ Sees Japan Nuclear Crisis Worsening

March 16, 2011


By DAVID E. SANGER, MATTHEW L. WALD and HIROKO TABUCHI
This article is by David E. Sanger, Matthew L. Wald and Hiroko Tabuchi.

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave a far bleaker appraisal on Wednesday of the threat posed by Japan’s nuclear crisis than the Japanese government had offered. He said American officials believed that the damage to at least one crippled reactor was much more serious than Tokyo had acknowledged, and he advised Americans to stay much farther away from the plant than the perimeter established by Japanese authorities.

The announcement opened a new and ominous chapter in the five-day-long effort by Japanese engineers to bring the six side-by-side reactors under control after their cooling systems were knocked out by an earthquake and a tsunami last Friday. It also suggested a serious split between Washington and its closest Asian ally at an especially delicate moment.

The Congressional testimony by Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the commission, was the first time the Obama administration had given its own assessment of the condition of the plant, apparently mixing information it had received from Japan with data it had collected independently.

Mr. Jaczko’s most startling assertion was that there was now little or no water in the pool storing spent nuclear fuel at the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, leaving fuel rods stored there exposed and bleeding radiation into the atmosphere.

As a result, he said, “We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures.”

His statement was quickly but not definitively rebutted by officials of Tokyo Electric Power, the Daiichi’s plant’s operator.

“We can’t get inside to check, but we’ve been carefully watching the building’s environs, and there has not been any particular problem,” Hajime Motojuku, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric, said Thursday morning in Japan.

Later Thursday, a spokesman for Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Yoshitaka Nagayama, was more equivocal, saying, “Because we have been unable to go the scene, we cannot confirm whether there is water left or not in the spent fuel pool at Reactor No. 4.”

At the same time, officials did raise concern about two other reactors where spent fuel rods were stored, Nos. 5 and 6, saying they had experienced a slight rise in temperature.

On Wednesday night, Mr. Jaczko reiterated his earlier statement and added that commission representatives in Tokyo had confirmed that the pool at No. 4 was empty. He said Tokyo Electric and other officials in Japan had confirmed that, and also stressed that high radiation fields were going to make it very difficult to continue having people work at the plant.

If the American analysis is accurate and emergency crews at the plant have been unable to keep the spent fuel at that inoperative reactor properly cooled — it needs to remain covered with water at all times — radiation levels could make it difficult not only to fix the problem at reactor No. 4, but to keep servicing any of the other problem reactors at the plant. In the worst case, experts say, workers could be forced to vacate the plant altogether, and the fuel rods in reactors and spent fuel pools would be left to meltdown, leading to much larger releases of radioactive materials.

While radiation levels at the plant have varied tremendously, Mr. Jaczko said that the peak levels reported there “would be lethal within a fairly short period of time.” He added that another spent fuel pool, at Reactor No. 3, might also be losing water and could soon be in the same condition.

On Thursday morning, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces started dumping water from a helicopter on reactor No. 3, making several passes. They planned to do the same for No. 4 sometime Thursday. Tokyo Electric was also working busily to complete a high power line to the plant to restore the electricity needed to run the cooling systems, according to a senior nuclear industry executive.

On Wednesday, the American Embassy in Tokyo, on advice from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told Americans to evacuate a radius of “approximately 50 miles” from the Fukushima plant.

The advice to Americans in Japan represents a graver assessment of the risk in the immediate vicinity of Daiichi than the warnings made by the Japanese themselves, who have told everyone within 20 kilometers, about 12 miles, to evacuate, and those 20 to 30 kilometers to take shelter. While maps of the plume of radiation being given off by the plant show that an elongated cloud will stretch across the Pacific, American officials said it would be so dissipated by the time it reached the West Coast of the United States that it would not pose a health threat.

“We would recommend an evacuation to a much larger radius than has currently been provided by Japan,” Mr. Jaczko said. That assessment seems bound to embarrass, if not anger, Japanese officials, suggesting they have miscalculated the danger or deliberately played down the risks.

Late Wednesday night, after President Obama spoke with Prime Minister Naoto Kan, the State Department announced what it described as a “voluntary” evacuation of dependents of American government personnel in northeastern Japan, down to Tokyo and Yokohama. The undersecretary of state for administration, Patrick Kennedy, said that no one would be ordered to leave the country, and embassy staff and military officials would be expected to stay and perform their jobs. But the government is providing charter flights for dependents who want to leave.

In the same call with reporters, Daniel B. Poneman, the deputy secretary of energy, said the United States was also providing sophisticated nuclear detection devices. Some are flown aboard American aircraft. “We are dealing with this as a day to day, minute to minute situation,” he said.

It was not immediately clear how many people live within the zone around the plant that American officials believed should be evacuated. But the zone gets far closer to the city of Sendai, with its population of one million, which took the brunt of the earthquake last week.

At a hearing on Wednesday, Senator Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, pointed out that 50 miles could take in a huge number of people; San Onofre, in her home state, California, has seven million people living within that radius, she said.

American officials who have been dealing with their Japanese counterparts report that the country’s political and bureaucratic leadership has appeared frozen in place, unwilling to communicate clearly about the scope of the problem and, in some cases, unwilling to accept outside assistance. Two American officials said they believed that the Japanese government itself was not getting a clear picture from the Tokyo Electric Power Company.

“Everything in their system is built to build consensus slowly,” said one American official who would not be quoted by name because of the delicacy of discussions with Japan. “And everything in this crisis is about moving quickly. It’s not working.”

United States Air Force officials announced Wednesday that a Global Hawk remotely piloted surveillance plane would be sent on missions over Japan to help the government assess damage from the earthquake and the tsunami. A Pentagon official said the drone was expected to fly over the stricken nuclear plant.

American officials were careful to offer no public comparisons to past nuclear accidents when discussing the Fukushima disaster. But clearly the crisis in Japan already far outstrips what happened at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, where very little radiation escaped a crippled reactor. The effort now is to keep the Japanese crisis, involving at least three reactors that had been in active use before the quake, and three others that were inactive but had storage pools for spent fuel, from escalating to the levels of the worst nuclear disaster in history: Chernobyl.

Though the plant’s reactors shut down automatically when the quake struck on Friday, the subsequent tsunami wiped out the backup electronic pumping and cooling system necessary to keep the fuel rods in the reactors and the storage pools for spent nuclear fuel covered with cool water.

The spent fuel pools can be even more dangerous than the active fuel rods, as they are not contained in thick steel containers like the reactor core. As they are exposed to air, the zirconium metal cladding on the rods can catch fire, and a deadly mix of radioactive elements can spew into the atmosphere. The most concern surrounds Cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years and can get into food supplies or be inhaled.

Mr. Jaczko (pronounced YAZZ-koe) said radiation levels might make it impossible to continue what he called the “backup backup” cooling functions that have so far helped check the fuel melting inside the reactors. Those efforts consist of using fire hoses to dump water on overheated fuel and then letting the radioactive steam vent into the atmosphere.

Those emergency measures, carried out by a small squad of workers and firefighters, represent Japan’s central effort to forestall a full-blown fuel meltdown that would lead to much higher releases of radioactive material into the air.

Mr. Jaczko’s testimony, the most extended comments by a senior American official on Japan’s nuclear disaster, described what amounts to an agonizing choice for Japanese authorities: keep sending workers into an in


David E. Sanger and Matthew L. Wald reported from Washington, and Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo. Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong.




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16/03 Evacuation Zone around Nuclear Plant

March 16, 2011

The American Embassy in Tokyo, on advice from the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told Americans to evacuate a radius of “approximately 50 miles” from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The advice represents a graver assessment of the risk in the immediate vicinity than the warnings made by the Japanese, who have told everyone within 12 miles to evacuate and those between 12 and 19 miles to take shelter.

09/03 Kinh doanh tin nhắn từ clip sex nữ sinh

09/03/2011 08:00:27 AM



ICTnews - Giám đốc Trung tâm Ứng cứu khẩn cấp máy tính VNCERT (Bộ TT&TT) cho biết, việc phát tát văn hoá phẩm không đúng thuần phong mỹ tục đã là sai quy định, huống hồ trường hợp này còn nhằm mục đích kinh doanh.

Những ngày gần đây, cư dân mạng đang xôn xao về đoạn clip tự quay “cảnh phòng the” giữa 2 bạn sinh viên trẻ. Trong khi các cơ quan chức năng vẫn chưa tìm ra thủ phạm tung đoạn clip đó lên mạng thì trên một số trang web lại tranh thủ "kiếm tiền" bằng cách cho đường link tải về file nén rồi yêu cầu gửi tin nhắn theo cú pháp cho tổng đài 87xx để nhận password giải nén. Đến thời điểm ngày 7/3, đường link đã không còn tồn tại. Tuy nhiên, khi soạn tin theo cú pháp trên và gửi đến tổng đài 87xx, phóng viên Báo Bưu điện Việt Nam vẫn nhận được tin nhắn phản hồi với nội dung password giải nén cùng với đường link dẫn đến một trang web để xem online.

Qua tìm hiểu, đầu số trên thuộc quyền quản lý của một công ty ở quận Bình Thạnh (TP Hồ Chí Minh). Khi liên lạc theo số điện theo trên trang web, đại diện của công ty cho biết, không có cú pháp nhắn tin nào tương tự cú pháp mà chúng tôi sử dụng để nhắn tin tải clip. Mặc dù vậy, người đại diện này vẫn đề nghị cung cấp số điện thoại đã nhắn tin đến để kiểm tra và hẹn 15 phút sau gọi lại. Đúng 15 phút sau, chúng tôi tiếp tục gọi theo như yêu cầu để xác minh, dù cùng một giọng nói với người nghe cuộc điện thoại trước và đã nghe trình bày nhưng người đại diện này vẫn bắt chúng tôi đọc số điện thoại đã soạn tin nhắn và nói sẽ chủ động gọi sau 5 phút nữa. Đến tối ngày 7/3 vẫn chưa có bất kì cuộc gọi lại nào từ phía người đại diện công ty.

Ông Vũ Quốc Khánh, Giám đốc Trung tâm Ứng cứu khẩn cấp máy tính VNCERT (Bộ TT&TT) cho biết, việc phát tát văn hoá phẩm không đúng thuần phong mỹ tục đã là sai quy định, huống hồ trường hợp này còn nhằm mục đích kinh doanh. Hiện tại VNCERT đang thu thập thông tin liên quan tới sự việc này và tuỳ theo mức độ vi phạm của sự việc mà VNCERT sẽ chuyển cho Thanh tra Bộ TT&TT hoặc các cơ quan chức năng khác. Trước mắt, VNCERT sẽ cảnh báo cho các nhà mạng và làm việc với CP sử dụng đầu số 87xx để làm rõ hơn về sự việc này. Tối ngày 7/3, chúng tôi thử nhắn tin lại theo cú pháp trên thì nhận được dòng thông báo cú pháp trên chưa được phép sử dụng.

Năm 2007, 4 sinh viên ở Hà Nội đã bị Công an thành phố khởi tố tội danh truyền bá văn văn hoá phẩm đồi truỵ do tham gia vào việc phát tán video clip của Hoàng Thuỳ Linh.

Nguyễn Khiêm

Đọc toàn bộ bài viết trên báo Bưu điện Việt Nam số 29 ra ngày 9/3/2011.

16/03 Nuclear Agency Tells a Concerned Congress That U.S. Industry Remains Safe

March 16, 2011
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — Facing questions about the implications of Japan’s nuclear catastrophe for power plants in the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s top official said Wednesday at two Congressional hearings that his agency would take a methodical look at Japan and incorporate lessons from the disaster.

The pledge from the official, Gregory Jaczko, the commission’s chairman, drew praise and criticism that was often consonant with a lawmaker’s political position on nuclear power and other forms of energy.

“U.S. nuclear facilities remain safe,” Mr. Jaczko told two House Energy and Commerce subcommittees, which had originally planned to consider his agency’s budget for the coming fiscal year at the hearing. “We will continue to work to maintain that level of protection.”

Reactors are designed to meet the challenges of “the most severe natural phenomena historically reported,” he said. For earthquakes, that means any that occur within 200 miles of the reactor, and a margin of error, he said.

While it remains unclear if the crisis at Fukushima will be as serious as the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion in Ukraine in 1986, it will have much more direct implications for the American civilian power plant industry. At the time of the accident in Ukraine, then ruled by the Soviet Union, the United States had only one reactor that remotely resembled the Soviet one, and it was soon closed.

Yet a score of reactors in this country are very similar to the ones in Japan.

Some members of the committee seemed satisfied with Mr. Jaczko’s replies and turned to a variety of other energy questions. “I personally believe that nuclear energy must be part of any portfolio of renewable energy sources that will fuel this country moving forward,” said Representative Bobby L. Rush of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Energy and Power of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

On the Senate side, Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, told Mr. Jaczko that his agency should consider shutting down some older plants until more was known about the shortcomings of the reactors in Japan and the dimensions of the crisis. “I’m looking at you for more leadership than I’ve gotten,” she said.

The secretary of energy, Steven Chu, took a position similar to Mr. Jaczko’s in testimony at the House hearing. “We are going to be looking very, very closely at the events happening in Japan and take those lessons,” he said.

“You can be assured, with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission leading, but the Department of Energy providing any assistance, to look again at the current, existing nuclear power plants and any that are being considered.”

Representative Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas, badgered Dr. Chu on whether the administration still favored federal help for new reactors. Dr. Chu gave a professorial answer, but Mr. Barton cut him off and cornered him into whittling his response down to one word, “yes.”

“That’s what I wanted you to say,” Mr. Barton said.

Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, was not satisfied.

“We do have a problem that now, so much of our eggs are in the nuclear basket,” he said, referring to the nation’s reliance on nuclear power for roughly 20 percent of its electricity.

“After Chernobyl, many said such an event could not happen in the U.S., because the Soviet Union’s nuclear sector was not as advanced as our own,” Mr. Waxman said. “But Japan is a highly developed country. It is as technologically sophisticated as us, and there’s much concern in the U.S. that a similar accident could here.”

Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, renewed calls for delaying the licensing of a new reactor, the Westinghouse AP1000, until everyone was satisfied about its ability to perform in earthquakes.

Last month the Nuclear Regulatory Commission signaled that it was moving toward approving the reactor design, which would be deployed for projects like an expansion of Plant Vogtle in Georgia, where holes have been dug for two AP1000 reactors.

Mr. Jaczko tried to explain to the House committee that his agency did not require reactors to be designed to meet an earthquake of a certain magnitude, but rather the likely ground-shaking motion at their locations. He demonstrated by filling a glass half full of water and thumping his hand on the table to make the water move.

Representative Lois Capps, a California Democrat, complained that the commission had stopped short of considering the possibility of near-simultaneous catastrophes, like an earthquake and a tsunami. “We have just witnessed an earthquake, a tsunami and a meltdown,” she said.



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16/03 Flaws in Japan’s Leadership Deepen Sense of Crisis

March 16, 2011
By HIROKO TABUCHI, KEN BELSON and NORIMITSU ONISHI
This article is by Hiroko Tabuchi, Ken Belson and Norimitsu Onishi.

TOKYO — With all the euphemistic language on display from officials handling Japan’s nuclear crisis, one commodity has been in short supply: information.

When an explosion shook one of many stricken reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Saturday, power company officials initially offered a typically opaque, and understated, explanation.

“A big sound and white smoke” were recorded near Reactor No. 1, the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power, announced in a curt memo. The matter “was under investigation,” it added.

Foreign nuclear experts, the Japanese press and an increasingly angry and rattled Japanese public are frustrated by government and power company officials’ failure to communicate clearly and promptly about the nuclear crisis. Pointing to conflicting reports, ambiguous language and a constant refusal to confirm the most basic facts, they suspect officials of withholding or fudging crucial information about the risks posed by the ravaged Daiichi plant.

The sound and white smoke on Saturday turned out to be the first in a series of explosions that set off a desperate struggle to bring four reactors under control after their cooling systems were knocked out by the earthquake and tsunami.

Evasive news conferences followed uninformative briefings as the crisis intensified over the past five days. Never has postwar Japan needed strong, assertive leadership more — and never has its weak, rudderless system of governing been so clearly exposed. With earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis striking in rapid, bewildering succession, Japan’s leaders need skills they are not trained to have: rallying the public, improvising solutions and cooperating with powerful bureaucracies.

“Japan has never experienced such a serious test,” said Takeshi Sasaki, a political scientist at Gakushuin University. “At the same time, there is a leadership vacuum.”

Politicians are almost completely reliant on Tokyo Electric Power, which is known as Tepco, for information, and have been left to report what they are told, often in unconvincing fashion.

In a telling outburst, the prime minister, Naoto Kan, berated power company officials for not informing the government of two explosions at the plant early Tuesday morning.

“What in the world is going on?” Mr. Kan said in front of journalists, complaining that he saw television reports of the explosions before he had heard about them from the power company. He was speaking at the inauguration of a central response center of government ministers and Tepco executives that he set up and pointedly said he would command.

The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency said late Tuesday in a press conference in Vienna that his agency was struggling to get timely information from Japan about its failing reactors, which has resulted in agency misstatements.

“I am asking the Japanese counterparts to further strengthen, to facilitate, communication,” said the agency’s chief, Yukiya Amano. A diplomat in Vienna familiar with the agency’s operations echoed those sentiments.

“It’s so frustrating to try to get good information” from the Japanese, the diplomat said, speaking on the condition of anonymity so as not to antagonize officials there.

The less-than-straight talk is rooted in a conflict-averse culture that avoids direct references to unpleasantness. Until recently, it was standard practice not to tell cancer patients about their diagnoses, ostensibly to protect them from distress. Even Emperor Hirohito, when he spoke to his subjects for the first time to mark Japan’s surrender in World War II, spoke circumspectly, asking Japanese to “endure the unendurable.”

There are also political considerations. In the only nation that has endured an atomic bomb attack, acute sensitivity about radiation sickness may be motivating public officials to try to contain panic — and to perform political damage control. Left-leaning news outlets have long been skeptical of nuclear power and of its backers, and the mutual mistrust led power companies and their regulators to tightly control the flow of information about nuclear operations so as not to inflame a spectrum of opponents that includes pacifists and environmentalists.

“It’s a Catch-22,” said Kuni Yogo, a former nuclear power planner at Japan’s Science and Technology Agency. He said that the government and Tepco “try to disclose only what they think is necessary, while the media, which has an antinuclear tendency, acts hysterically, which leads the government and Tepco to not offer more information.”

The Japanese government has also decided to limit the flow of information to the public about the reactors, having concluded that too many briefings will distract Tepco from its task of bringing the reactors under control, said a senior nuclear industry executive.

At a Tepco briefing on Wednesday, tempers ran high among reporters. Their questions focused on the plumes of steam seen rising from Daiichi’s Reactor No. 3, but there were few answers.

“We cannot confirm,” an official insisted. “It is impossible for me to say anything at this point,” another said. And as always, there was an effusive apology: “We are so sorry for causing you bother.”

“There are too many things you cannot confirm!” one frustrated reporter replied in an unusually strong tone that perhaps signaled that ritual apologies had no place in a nuclear crisis.

Yukio Edano, the outspoken chief cabinet secretary, has been one voice of relative clarity. But at times, he has seemed unable to make sense of the fast-evolving crisis. And even he has spoken too ambiguously for foreign news media.

On Wednesday, Mr. Edano told a press conference that radiation levels had spiked due to smoke billowing from Reactor No. 3 at Fukushima Daiichi, and that all staff would be temporarily moved “to a safe place.” When he did not elaborate, some foreign reporters, perhaps further confused by the English translator from NHK, the national broadcaster, interpreted his remarks as meaning that Tepco staff members were leaving the plant.

From CNN to The Associated Press to Al Jazeera, panicky headlines shouted that the Fukushima Daiichi plant was being abandoned, in stark contrast to the calm maintained by Japanese media, perhaps better at navigating the nuances of the vague comments.

After checking with nuclear regulators and Tepco itself, it emerged that the plant’s staff members had briefly taken cover indoors within the plant, but had in no way abandoned it.

The close links between politicians and business executives have further complicated the management of the nuclear crisis.

Powerful bureaucrats retire to better-paid jobs in the very industries they once oversaw, in a practice known as “amakudari.” Perhaps no sector had closer relations with regulators than the country’s utilities; regulators and the regulated worked hand in hand to promote nuclear energy, since both were keen to reduce Japan’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels.

Postwar Japan flourished under a system in which political leaders left much of the nation’s foreign policy to the United States and domestic affairs to powerful bureaucrats. Prominent companies operated with an extensive reach into personal lives; their executives were admired for their roles as corporate citizens.

But over the past decade or so, the bureaucrats’ authority has been greatly reduced, and corporations have lost both power and swagger as the economy has floundered.

Yet no strong political class has emerged to take their place. Four prime ministers have come and gone in less than four years; most political analysts had already written off the fifth, Mr. Kan, even before the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.

Two years ago, Mr. Kan’s Japan Democratic Party swept out the virtual one-party rule of the Liberal Democratic Party, which had dominated Japanese political life for 50 years.

But the lack of continuity and inexperience in governing have hobbled Mr. Kan’s party. The only long-serving group within the government is the bureaucracy, which has been, at a minimum, mistrustful of the party.

“It’s not in their DNA to work with anybody other than the Liberal Democrats,” said Noriko Hama, an economist at Doshisha University.

Neither Mr. Kan nor the bureaucracy has had a hand in planning the rolling residential blackouts in the Tokyo region; the responsibility has been left to Tepco. Unlike the orderly blackouts in the 1970s, the current ones have been carried out with little warning, heightening the public anxiety and highlighting the lack of a trusted leader capable of sharing information about the scope of the disaster and the potential threats to people’s well-being.

“The mistrust of the government and Tepco was already there before the crisis, and people are even angrier now because of the inaccurate information they’re getting,” said Susumu Hirakawa, a professor of psychology at Taisho University.

But the absence of a galvanizing voice is also the result of the longstanding rivalries between bureaucrats and politicians, and between various ministries that tend to operate as fiefdoms.

“There’s a clear lack of command authority in the current government in Tokyo,” said Ronald Morse, who has worked in the Defense, Energy and State Departments in the United States and in two government ministries in Japan. “The magnitude of it becomes obvious at a time like this.”


Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong, William J. Broad from New York, and Mark McDonald from Tokyo.

16/03 U.S. Calls Radiation ‘Extremely High’ and Urges Deeper Caution in Japan

March 16, 2011
By DAVID E. SANGER, MATTHEW L. WALD and HIROKO TABUCHI

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave a far bleaker appraisal on Wednesday of the threat posed by Japan’s nuclear crisis than the Japanese government has offered, saying that American officials believe the damage to at least one crippled reactor was much more serious than Tokyo has acknowledged, and advising Americans to stay much farther away from the plant than the perimeter established by Japanese authorities.

The announcement marked a new and ominous chapter in the five-day long effort by Japanese engineers to bring the six side-by-side reactors under control after their cooling systems were knocked out by an earthquake and tsunami last Friday. It also suggested a serious split between Washington and its closest Asian ally at an especially delicate moment.

The Congressional testimony by Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the commission, was the first time the Obama administration had given its own assessment of the condition of the plant, apparently mixing information it has received from Japan with data it has collected independently. Mr. Jaczko’s most startling assertion was that there was now little or no water in the pool storing spent nuclear fuel at the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, leaving fuel rods stored there exposed and bleeding radiation into the atmosphere.

As a result, he said, “We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures.”

His statement was quickly but not definitely rebutted by officials of Tokyo Electric Power, the Daiichi’s plant’s operator, and Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency.

“We can’t get inside to check, but we’ve been carefully watching the building’s environs, and there has not been any particular problem,” said Hajime Motojuku, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric. Takumi Koyamada, a spokesman for the regulatory agency, said that as of 12 hours ago water remained in the spent fuel pool at reactor No. 4.

“We cannot confirm that there has been a loss in water,” he said.

On Wednesday night, Mr. Jaczko reiterated his earlier statement and added that commission representatives in Tokyo have confirmed that the pool is empty. He said Tokyo Electric and other officials in Japan have confirmed that, and also stressed that high radiation fields are going to make it very difficult to continue having people work at the plant.

If the American analysis is accurate and emergency crews at the plant have been unable to keep the spent fuel at that inoperative reactor properly cooled — it needs to remain covered with water at all times — radiation levels could make it difficult not only to fix the problem at reactor No. 4, but to keep servicing any of the other problem reactors at the plant. In the worst case, experts say, workers could be forced to vacate the plant altogether and the fuel rods in reactors and spent fuel pools would be left to meltdown, leading to much larger releases of radioactive materials.

While radiation levels at the plant have varied tremendously, Mr. Jaczko said that the peak levels reported there “would be lethal within a fairly short period of time.” He added that another spent fuel pool, at Reactor No. 3, may also be losing water and could soon be in the same condition. Japanese efforts to pour in water by dumping it from helicopters were suspended, for fear that the helicopter crews would receive too large a dose of radiation.

Mr. Jaczko’s testimony came as the American Embassy in Tokyo, on advice from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told Americans to evacuate a radius of “approximately 50 miles” from the Fukushima plant.

The advice to Americans in Japan represents a graver assessment of the risk in the immediate vicinity of Daiichi than the warnings made by the Japanese themselves, who have told everyone within 20 kilometers, about 12 miles, to evacuate, and those between 20 and 30 kilometers to take shelter. While maps of the plume of radiation being given off by the plant show that an elongated cloud will stretch across the Pacific, American officials said it would be so dissipated by the time it reached the West Coast of the United States it would not pose a health threat.

“We would recommend an evacuation to a much larger radius than has currently been provided by Japan,” Mr. Jaczko said. That assessment seems bound to embarrass, if not anger, Japanese officials, suggesting they have miscalculated the danger or deliberately downplayed the risks.

It was not immediately clear how many people live within the zone around the plant that the United States believes should be evacuated. But the zone gets far closer to the city of Sendai, with its population of 1 million, which took the brunt of the earthquake last week.

At a hearing today, Senator Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, pointed out that 50 miles could take in a huge number of people; San Onofre, in her home state of California, has 7 million people living within that radius, she said.

American officials were careful to offer no public comparisons to past nuclear accidents when discussing the Fukushima disaster. But clearly the crisis in Japan already far outstrips what happened at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, a single reactor where very little radiation escaped a crippled reactor. The effort now is to keep the Japanese crisis, involving at least three reactors that had been in active use before the quake, and three others that were inactive but had storage pools for spent fuel, from escalating to the levels of the worst nuclear disaster in history: Cherynobyl.

Though the plant’s reactors shut down automatically when the quake struck on Friday, the subsequent tsunami wiped out the backup electronic pumping and cooling system necessary to keep the fuel rods in the reactors and the storage pools for spent nuclear fuel covered with cool water.

The spent fuel pools can be even more dangerous that the active fuel rods, as they are not contained in thick steel containers like the reactor core. As they are exposed to air, the zirconium metal cladding on the rods can catch fire, and a deadly mix of radioactive elements can spew into the atmosphere. The most concern surrounds Cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years and can get into food supplies or be inhaled.

Mr. Jaczko (the name is pronounced YAZZ-koe) said radiation levels may make it impossible to continue what he called the “backup backup” cooling functions that have so far helped check the fuel melting inside the reactors. Those efforts consist of using fire hoses to dump water on overheated fuel and then letting the radioactive steam vent into the atmosphere.

Those emergency measures, implemented by a small squad of workers and firemen, represent Japan’s central effort to forestall a full blown fuel meltdown that would lead to much higher releases of radioactive material into the air and the surrounding environment.

Mr. Jaczko’s testimony, the most extended comments by a senior American official on Japan’s nuclear disaster, described what amounts to an agonizing choice for Japanese authorities: Keeping sending workers into an increasingly contaminated area in a last-ditch effort to cover nuclear fuel with water, or do more to protect the workers but risk letting the pools of water boil away — and thus risk a broader meltdown.

The Japanese authorities have never been as specific as Mr. Jaczko was in his testimony about the situation at reactor No. 4, where they have been battling fires for more than 24 hours.

According to Tokyo Electric data, the spent fuel pool at the No. 4 reactor contains 548 fuel assemblies that were in use at the reactor until November, 2010, when they were move to the storage pool on the site. That means that the fuel rods were only recently taken out of active use and that their potential to burn and release radioactivity is higher than spent fuel in storage for a longer period.

Experts say workers at the plant probably could not approach a fuel pool that was dry, because radiation levels would be too high. In a normally operating pool, the water provides not only cooling but also shields workers from gamma radiation. A plan to dump water into the pool, and others like it, from helicopters was suspended because the crews would be flying right into a radioactive plume.

Earlier in the day, Japanese authorities announced a different escalation of the crisis at Daiichi when they said that a second reactor unit at the plant may have suffered damage to its primary containment structure and appeared to be releasing radioactive steam.

The break, at the No. 3 reactor unit, worsened the already perilous conditions at the plant, a day after officials said the containment vessel in the No. 2 reactor had also cracked.

But in one of a series of rapid and at times confusing pronouncements on the crisis, the authorities insisted that damage to the containment vessel at the No. 3 reactor — the main focus of concern earlier on Wednesday — was unlikely to be severe.

At a hearing in Washington on Wednesday held by two subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, “We think there is a partial meltdown” at the plant.

“We are trying to monitor it very closely,” he said. “We hear conflicting reports about exactly what is happening in the several reactors now at risk. I would not want to speculate about what is happening.”


Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong.