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CIVIL NUCLEAR
Japan scientists to create controlled nuclear meltdown
by Staff Writers
Tokyo (AFP) Jan 09, 2014


A team of nuclear scientists in Japan said Thursday they plan to create a controlled reactor meltdown in a bid to learn how to deal with future disasters like that at Fukushima.

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency said it was working on a project using a scaled-down version of a reactor which they would deliberately cause to malfunction at a research facility in Ibaraki, north of Tokyo.

"We want to study exactly how meltdowns happen and apply what we will learn to help improve ways to deal with severe accidents in the future," said a spokesman for the government-backed engineering agency.

The meltdown project, which will begin some time in the fiscal year that starts in April, will use a small fuel rod that that will undergo a very rapid fission process, the spokesman said.

He said it will be the first such experiment to be carried out by the Japanese agency, although similar projects have been done in major nations with atomic power such as the United States and France.

The Japanese public has become keenly aware of nuclear safety since a 9.0-magnitude earthquake in 2011 triggered a killer tsunami that swamped the cooling system at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The plant went through meltdowns and explosions, spewing radioactive materials over a vast farming region and making parts of the area unfit for human habitation for many decades.

The planned experimental meltdown will not be designed to analyse how the Fukushima accident happened, the atomic energy agency's spokesman added.

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CIVIL NUCLEAR
Greenland and Denmark to agree on uranium in 2014: Danish PM
Copenhagen (AFP) Jan 08, 2014
An agreement between Greenland and Denmark governing uranium extraction in the Arctic territory will be in place by the end of the year, the Danish prime minister said on Wednesday. "I'm confident that we will get a cooperation agreement in place in the second half of 2014," Helle Thorning-Schmidt said at a press conference after meeting with her Greenlandic counterpart Aleqa Hammond. "W ... read more


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