TOKYO (Reuters) – Over the past two weeks, Japanese government officials and Tokyo Electric Power executives have repeatedly described the deadly combination of the most powerful quake in Japan’s history and the massive tsunami that followed as “soteigai,” or beyond expectations.

When Tokyo Electric President Masataka Shimizu apologised to the people of Japan for the continuing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant he called the double disaster “marvels of nature . that we have never experienced before.”

TOKYO, March 29 (Reuters) – Over the past two weeks,
Japanese government officials and Tokyo Electric Power
executives have repeatedly described the deadly combination of
the most powerful quake in Japan’s history and the massive
tsunami that followed as “soteigai,” or beyond expectations.

When Tokyo Electric President Masataka Shimizu apologised to
the people of Japan for the continuing crisis at the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear plant he called the double disaster “marvels of
nature . that we have never experienced before”.

TOKYO (Reuters) – Over the past two weeks, Japanese government officials and Tokyo Electric Power executives have repeatedly described the deadly combination of the most powerful quake in Japan’s history and the massive tsunami that followed as “soteigai,” or beyond expectations.

When Tokyo Electric President Masataka Shimizu apologized to the people of Japan for the continuing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant he called the double disaster “marvels of nature that we have never experienced before”.

TOKYO (Reuters)- When the massive tsunami smacked into Fukushima Daiichi, the nuclear power plant was stacked high with more uranium than it was originally designed to hold and had repeatedly missed mandatory safety checks over the past decade.

The Fukushima plant that has spun into partial meltdown and spewed out plumes of radiation had become a growing depot for spent fuel in a way the American engineers who designed the reactors 50 years earlier had never envisioned, according to company documents and outside experts.

TOKYO, March 21 (Reuters)- When the massive tsunami smacked
into Fukushima Daiichi, the nuclear power plant was stacked high
with more uranium than it was originally designed to hold and
had repeatedly missed mandatory safety checks over the past
decade.

The Fukushima plant that has spun into partial meltdown and
spewed out plumes of radiation had become a growing depot for
spent fuel in a way the American engineers who designed the
reactors 50 years earlier had never envisioned, according to
company documents and outside experts.

TOKYO, March 21 (Reuters) – The operator of Japan’s
tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant told safety regulators less
than two weeks before disaster struck that it had failed to
carry out some scheduled inspections at the facility.

In a report submitted to Japan’s nuclear safety agency on
Feb. 28, Japan’s largest power utility, Tokyo Electric Power Co
, said it had failed to inspect 33 pieces of equipment
in the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi complex.

TOKYO (Reuters) – Exhausted engineers attached a power cable to the outside of Japan’s tsunami-crippled nuclear plant on Saturday in a desperate attempt to get water pumps going that would cool down overheated fuel rods and prevent the deadly spread of radiation.

Hopes were dashed of miracle survivors when it turned out that a story was wrong that a young man had being pulled alive from the rubble eight days after the quake and tsunami ripped through northeast Japan, triggering the nuclear crisis.

TOKYO, March 17 (Reuters) – By Thursday morning the last line
of defense came down to this: a police water cannon, a
helicopter maneuver designed for wildfires and a race against
time to get the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant rewired to
the grid.

As a crew of about 100 Japanese workers and soldiers battled
to keep a string of six nuclear reactors from meltdown just
short of a week into Japan’s nuclear crisis, the arsenal of
weapons at their disposal remained improvised, low-tech and
underpowered.

TOKYO (Reuters) – By Thursday morning the last line of defense came down to this: a police water cannon, a helicopter maneuver designed for wildfires and a race against time to get the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant rewired to the grid.

As a crew of about 100 Japanese workers and soldiers battled to keep a string of six nuclear reactors from meltdown just short of a week into Japan’s nuclear crisis, the arsenal of weapons at their disposal remained improvised, low-tech and underpowered.

TOKYO (Reuters) – By Thursday morning the last line of defense came down to this: a police water cannon, a helicopter maneuver designed for wildfires and a race against time to get the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant rewired to the grid.

As a crew of about 100 Japanese workers and soldiers battled to keep a string of six nuclear reactors from meltdown just short of a week into Japan’s nuclear crisis, the arsenal of weapons at their disposal remained improvised, low-tech and underpowered.