Thousands evacuate as Fukishima nuclear emergency is declared

[Peter Lemkin]

NRC approves first new reactors since 1978

The NRC, America's nuclear power regulatory board, has given the go ahead to two new reactors in Georgia. Industry advocates call the decision 'historic,' but it had a prominent critic.

By Mark Clayton, Staff writer / February 9, 2012

Southern Company Chairman, President, and CEO Thomas Fanning announces that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 4 to 1 to approve the Atlanta-based company's request to build two nuclear reactors at its Vogtle site south of Augusta, during a news conference in Atlanta Thursday.

John Bazemore/AP


The federal board that regulates nuclear power in the US on Thursday voted to allow construction to proceed on the first new commercial nuclear power reactors in more than three decades.
Related stories

The decision, which clears the way for two reactors at the Vogtle nuclear power site east of Atlanta, was immediately hailed as "historic" by business groups and nuclear-industry advocates. But it was condemned not only by nuclear-safety watchdog groups, but also by the chairman of the regulatory group itself.

"Ultimately, my responsibility is to make what I believe is the best decision for nuclear safety," said Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the sole dissenting vote on the five-member panel, in a statement. "I simply cannot authorize issuance of these licenses without any binding obligation that these plants will have implemented the lessons learned from the Fukushima accident before they operate."

RECOMMENDED: How safe is nuclear power? Three lessons from Japan.

Following the Fukushima accident in Japan last March, an NRC special task force identified numerous safety improvements for US nuclear plants, but the commission has not acted yet to approve any of them.

To ensure that the new plants carried forward the lessons learned from that accident, Mr. Jaczko had proposed that new licensees' plants meet all post-Fukushima standards the NRC approves. The four other commissioners disagreed and overruled him, arguing that the NRC has enough tools to change standards as needed without needing to write them into licenses.

"We find ourselves in disagreement with the specific approach he offers in his dissent namely, an across-the-board license condition requiring implementation of 'all' Fukushima-related requirements prior to operation of the Vogtle plant," the four commissioners wrote. "Such a license condition, in our view, cannot now be framed in meaningful terms."

Moreover, the license-condition approach is "unnecessary, given the myriad of regulatory tools available to the NRC to implement Fukushima-related requirements as they emerge," the commissioners added.

Nuclear-watchdog groups took issue with that line of thinking. They argue that by not requiring in the construction license that the new reactors meet post-Fukushima safety standards, the NRC made it far less likely that new standards would be incorporated at all.

It's not at all clear if post-Fukushima standards which could require costly retrofits meet an NRC rule that requires companies to implement safety conditions only if they meet a cost-benefit analysis standard.

"The commission should have said: 'We're not going to leave the door open for you to say 10 years later, 'It's not worth it,' " says Edwin Lyman, a nuclear physicist and reactor-safety expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington-based nuclear-safety advocacy group. "It's actually a wise strategy that no new reactors be allowed to operate unless they can show they are in full compliance with post-Fukushima safety measures."

[Magda Hassan]

Were these reactors approved as part of Dick Cheney's Energy Bill that he illegally wrote in a secret meeting with all the industry people? I think 70 new reactors are eventually planned. If any of them are part of the illegal energy leases that Bush Jr sold, then they will almost assuredly be built by foreign companies.

[Peter Lemkin]

February 11th, 2012 Arnold Gundersen with the first 2012 Fukushima update; more of Dr. Caldicott's 2011 speech in Berlin


Listen Now Download the show by right-clicking the link. [GREAT SPEECHES - BOTH!]

Arnie Gundersen

This week Dr Caldicott receives another update on Fukushima from nuclear engineer Arnold Gundersen. After this conversation, we hear another excerpt of Dr. Caldicott's lecture at a conference on Chernobyl in Berlin in 2011. Longer show description to follow. Read the February 12 news article: Fears Growing as Fukushima Reactor Temperature Rising. Also relevant are three 2012 articles: Temperature Soars Mysteriously Inside Fukushima Nuclear Reactor; Japan's Nuclear Exclusion Zone Shows Few Signs of Life, Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation and French Scientists: Childhood Leukemia Spikes Near Nuclear Reactors. Visit Dr. Caldicott's websites NuclearFreePlanet.org and HelenCaldicott.com, and read her book Nuclear Power is Not the Answer.

[Peter Lemkin]

AMY GOODMAN: We continue on the issue of nuclear power. On Sunday, tens of thousands of anti-nuclear protesters across the globe took their message to the streets to mark the first anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami at Japan's Fukushima power plant. Greenpeace Hong Kong campaigner Prentice Koo was among those voicing their concerns.

PRENTICE KOO: Although no one died right now, but everyone can forecast the impact of Fukushima will last for over a decade or even a century. So for Japan, this kind of well-developed country can't eveneven they can't handle a nuclear disaster, so it's really a strong lesson for everyone to know that when nuclear reactors go wrong, no one can control it.

AMY GOODMAN: We are going right now to Burlington, Vermont, to speak with Arnie Gundersen, former nuclear industry senior vice president who has coordinated projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the country. Arnie Gundersen provides independent testimony on nuclear and radiation issues to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and congressional and state legislatures, as well as government agencies and officials in the U.S. and abroad, now chief engineer at Fairewinds [Associates]. He co-wrote the new Greenpeace report, "Lessons from Fukushima."
What are these lessons, Arnie Gundersen?
ARNIE GUNDERSEN: Well, I think the firstthe first lesson is that this is a technology that can destroy a nation. I was reading Mikhail Gorbachev's memoirs, and he claims that it was Chernobyl, not perestroika, that destroyed the Soviet Union. And as you look at the transcripts coming out of Japan, we see that the Fukushima accident was on the verge of causing the evacuation of Tokyo. And had the wind been blowing the other way, across the island instead of out to sea, Japan would have been cut in half and destroyed as a functional country. So, this is a technology where perhaps accidents don't happen every day, but when they do, they can destroy a country.
The other things are the cost is astronomical. To fix this is going to be something on the order of half-a-trillion dollars. All of the money that Japan saved on oil over the 40 years that they've had nuclear plants just got thrown away in the half-a-trillion-dollar recovery effort.
And the other piece is the human issues. The health impacts to the Japanese will begin to be felt in several years and out to 30 or 40 years from cancers. And I believe we're going to see as many as a million cancers over the next 30 years because of the Fukushima incident in Japan.
AMY GOODMAN: Arnie Gundersen, Fox News host Neil Cavuto spoke with California Republican Congress Member Devin Nunes about what would happen if a tsunami hit a nuclear reactor here in the U.S. I want to go to that clip.

REP. DEVIN NUNES: I live close to Diablo nuclear power plant over on the central coast of California, and I've had a lot of questions recently about that. Well, first of all, those plants arethose reactors are about a hundred feet above the sea level. So you would need well over a hundred-foot tsunami to even hit those plants. They're actually prepared. They wouldn't have the problem that happened in Japan.

AMY GOODMAN: Arnie Gundersen, your response?
ARNIE GUNDERSEN: They're not prepared. The tsunamithe myth of the tsunami is that the tsunami destroyed the diesels, and had that not happened, everything would have been fine. What really happened is that the tsunami destroyed the pumps right along the ocean. It doesn't matter that Diablo Canyon's plant is up on a hill. The pumps have to be at the ocean, because that's where the water is. We call that the loss of the ultimate heat sink. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission hasn't addressed that in the short-term issues coming out of Fukushima. Without that water, the diesels will overheat, and without that water, it's impossible to cool a nuclear core. So, as a country, we haven't addressed this issue of the loss of the ultimate heat sink, and we're kicking that can way down the road, not addressing it for years to come.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk exactly about the nuclear plants in Japan, at Fukushima, and the nuclear plants now? Because two were just approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Georgia, despite the dissenting opinion of the chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who explicitly said we have not instituted the safeguards needed since the Fukushima disaster.
ARNIE GUNDERSEN: Well, the plants in Japan were built, actually, seismically much tougher than this plant in Georgia. If the plant in Georgia were at Fukushima, it would not have survived the earthquake, let alone the tsunami. The industry's line is that the plants in Georgia would withstand an off-site power loss, which may be true, but the bigger problem is theybecause they have an enormous amount of water on the roof, and then seismically that makes it tippy, the plants in Georgia could not have survived the incident that began the entirethe entire issue.
You know, it really boils down to money, though. These plants are something on the order of $20 billion. And it's taxpayer-funded, because we've got these loan guarantees in place. So, basically, us Vermonters are guaranteeing the loan guarantees to these plants in Georgia. If it weren't for those loan guarantees, these plants wouldn't be built. Nuclear has gotten to the point where it's so expensive that the new nukes are pricing themselves out of the market, if it weren't for loan guarantees.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet President Obama himself has pushed for these new nuclear power plants, the first two in decades. The issue of these loan guarantees pushed by Republicans and Democrats, both deeply concerned about the debt, yet private industry not being able to move forward alone with nuclear power?
ARNIE GUNDERSEN: You know, left to Wall Street drutherswe subsidize their insurance, and we subsidize them on the front end, as far as their ability to build these plants. If it were up to Wall Street and this was a real capitalistic country, we wouldn't be building nuclear. We've basically socialized the risks, but any profits flow to the corporations. It's a crazy analogy.
AMY GOODMAN: The Mark I containment design that's used in the United States and was used in Japan?
ARNIE GUNDERSEN: I'm on record as saying that we should close the 23 reactors with the Mark I design. Just three weeks before Fukushima, my wife and I were talking, and she said, "Where is the next accident going to occur?" I said, "I don't know where, but I know it's going to be in a Mark I design." These containment vents prove to fail three times out of three. And the NRC's response is, "Well, let's make those vents better." Well, if they just failed three times out of three, it's hard to imagine how to make something like that better.
In addition, the fuel is stored on the roof, essentially, in unshielded, unprotected areas. And there's more nuclear cesium-137 in the fuel pool at the plant in Pilgrim, Massachusetts, than was ever released by every nuclear bomb ever exploded in the atmosphere. So we have an enormous inventory of nuclear material way up on the roofs of these buildings, and I think it's time to close these Mark 1s down, because of those two design features.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Arnie Gundersen, in your home state of Vermont, the governor is trying to shut down the nuclear power plant there but has been stopped by the company that ran it, Entergy.
ARNIE GUNDERSEN: We have a federal judge's opinion that the state overstepped its bounds and looked at the safety of the nuclear power plant. It's pretty clear that states can't look at safety, and that's NRC jurisdiction. But the position of the state, and my position, isI was on the panel that evaluated itwe didn't look at safety; we looked at reliability. And we made our decisions based on, do we think a plant that's that old can be reliable in the future? The oldest nuclear plant in the world has only gotten to 47 years
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds. Arnie Gundersen, I want to thank you very much for being with us, former nuclear industry senior vice president, has coordinated projects at 70 nuclear power plants, speaking to us from Burlington, Vermont.

[Peter Lemkin]

AMY GOODMAN: We're broadcasting on over a thousand stations, and one of those stations is in Japan, where we go right now, which is marking the first anniversary of the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck the country's northeast coast. The twin disasters left approximately 20,000 dead or missing, as well as many more fearing the aftermath of radiation from the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex. The main memorial ceremony was held at Tokyo's National Theatre, where Japan's prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, and Emperor Akihito remembered the victims of the national tragedy.

PRIME MINISTER YOSHIHIKO NODA: [translated] Our forebearers who built this country's prosperity have emerged from each crisis even stronger. We will fulfill our historic mission of realizing the rebirth of this nation through reconstruction while holding hands with people in the disaster-affected regions and being close to them.

EMPEROR AKIHITO: [translated] I would like to take this opportunity to deeply thank the people who helped the victims and those in the disaster zones and those who helped deal with the nuclear crisis.

AMY GOODMAN: Across Japan and the world, there were hundreds of similar memorial services. The magnitude-9.0 offshore earthquake was the strongest recorded in Japan's history and set off a tsunami that towered more than 65 feet high in some spots along the northeastern coast, destroying thousands of homes, wreaking widespread destruction.
Over the last year, Japan has struggled to recover. Nearly all the tsunami zone's roads have been repaired, large swaths of land fully cleared of debris. However, some 325,000 people rendered homeless remain in temporary housing. While much of the debris has been gathered into massive piles, very little rebuilding has begun. For many residents, the traumatic events of last year remain fresh.

FUKUSHIMA RESIDENT: It's been a year, but Fukushima is still affected by the nuclear plant and still hasn't calmed down. So I can't really let my children go outside. In that sense, I strongly feel that the crisis is really just now beginning.

AMY GOODMAN: Beyond the massive cleanup, many towns are still finalizing reconstruction plans, some of which involve moving residential areas to higher ground. Residents evacuated from the zone set up in a 12-mile radius around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are especially struggling to rebuild their lives. The government says the plant is stable and that radiation coming from the plant has subsided significantly. But the plant's chief acknowledged to journalists visiting the complex recently it remains in a vulnerable state. In all, more than 1,600 people have been confirmed dead in Fukushima, 214 remain missing and are presumed dead. The government has acknowledged that some areas near the plant may be uninhabitable for decades.
For more, we're joined by several guests. From Japan, we go to Aileen Mioko Smith, executive director of the Kyoto-based group Green Action. And here in the U.S., we're joined in New York by Saburo Kitajima. He's a contract laborer and union organizer from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, accompanied by his English-Japanese translator, Gen Chijiiwa.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Aileen Mioko Smith, talk about what is happening now in Japan, what people are calling for, the memorial services today.
AILEEN MIOKO SMITH: Well, we had the memorial services, and, of course, everybody is in mourning, because one year ago we lost so many loved ones. And as you mentioned, the recovery is still ongoing, and many areas have not recovered at all. I just spoke with somebody who has evacuated from that area to our region, which is the Osaka-Kyoto area. And he went back home, and he overlookedhe went up on the high hills and looked down, and he said it's still the same as it was a year ago. So there are various areas, but lots of rubble has still yet to be cleared.
In the Fukushima areain Fukushima, there are two million people living in the prefecture, the state, and about three-quarters of those people are living under levels of very serious radioactive contamination. There are prefectures inhot spots in surrounding areas that also have high levels. About 350,000 children are living under these conditions. And recently, the Japanese government said that it will go have an all-out effort to decontaminate Fukushima, the radiation, but that's a long ways away. The decontamination has started, but how effective it can besome areas have been decontaminated only levelsthe radiation went down 10 percent, 20 percent. And some areas actually were measured higher afterwards. That's because the hillsides bring down the radiation again.
But people are trapped there because of this alibi, this word "decontamination," because people living 40, 50 miles outside, out from the reactorsthis is in, for example, Fukushima City, which is the capital of the state, the prefecture, and another city, Datethese areas are 40, 50 miles away, and they are fighting to be evacuated. They call it "the right to evacuate," and that's because they want a compensation from the government if they elect to evacuate, and the government has refused. There hasn't been a cent paid to people who want to self-evacuate, except a one-time payment of $1,043, and that's it. And even the people who have officially evacuated have only received a first-time one-off payment of $13,043. This isyou know, you've had to leave your home. You've lost your home, as far as you know, forever maybe, and you're living in limbo in evacuation, and you only receive that amount of money.
The other thing that's been happening is that the prefecture, the state, of Fukushima initiated a health survey of the residents. This is a health survey about radiation. And only one out of five people have responded. I think there's notthere's not trust of government authorities. I mean, six months after the accident, you're told, "Tell us what you ate the morning of the 12th. What size was your plate? Where were you that morning? And then at noon, where did you go?" Et cetera. And people are, I guess, fed up, and there's been a really low response rate.
The other thing that we're concerned is thatthe Fukushima citizens' organizations, there are lots of them. One is an organization to protect radiationchildren from radiation. And they and us, Green Action, and several other groups, we asked the U.N. Office of the High Commission for Human Rights to investigate the violation of human rights of Fukushima children. This was back in the summer last year. And we know that the U.N., this office, asked the Japanese governmentthey wanted to come and investigate, they said, in November and December. But the government refused, or they said they were too busy, and then, later on, pretended that they were still waiting for the U.N. to contact them again, whereas in reality it wasthe ball was in Japan's government's court, and the U.N. was waiting for them to respond. Anyway, the long and the short of it is Japan, unfortunately, successfully delayed the commission from coming in and investigating human rights violations in Japan until this November. So we're very concerned. This is the year where Japan's human rights record will be investigated, and we really want to address the violation of the children's rights.
AMY GOODMAN: Aileen Mioko Smith, I want to thank you for being with us, joining us from Japan. Saburo Kitajima is with us here in New York, though usually in Japan. He worked at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and he was a union organizer. Talk about the workers at the nuclear plant, where the meltdowns took place.
SABURO KITAJIMA: [translated] The workers at the Fukushima plant are currently working under extreme circumstances. To be more specific, the wages are extremely low, and there are no rights being observed at the moment. In spite of being exposed to radiation, the levels of wages run to about maybe $100 a day, more or less.
AMY GOODMAN: And exactly what were they exposed to, and what continues to happen at these plants? I mean, in the United States, we know very little about what's happening in Japan.
SABURO KITAJIMA: [translated] In the course of our work, the type of work where people are exposed to the highest levels of radiation would be maintaining the water pipes that are being put in place to cool the reactor. And, of course, the entire site is extremely contaminated, and there is radiation that is coming from the ground.
AMY GOODMAN: What workers decided to go intoback into the plant afterwards, knowing how great the exposure would be?
SABURO KITAJIMA: [translated] We're talking about workers who have always worked at perhaps the most marginalized jobs and who oftentimes are not aware of the risks and had no other choice but to go back.
AMY GOODMAN: You have been speaking at anti-nuclear protests in the United States. What is your message?
SABURO KITAJIMA: [translated] There's two sides to it. And, of course, I would like the people who I met in New York to understand the situation in New York, to communicate what is exactly happening. At the same time, I would like that the people here support and stand with us in our struggles in Fukushima.
AMY GOODMAN: And what is your struggle in Fukushima? What are you calling for there?
SABURO KITAJIMA: [translated] For the moment, the workers at the Fukushima plant are demanding that they be compensated for exposure to radiation, which is not happening at the moment, and also kind of a compensation and being looked after, after working in these plants, since they must leave in a very short period of time.
AMY GOODMAN: And that short period of time iswhat is the kind of levels of exposure they have right now?
SABURO KITAJIMA: [translated] Those exposed to the highest levels of radiation must leave the plant in a period of under two months.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you for being with us. And Saburo Kitajima is in the United States now but lives in Japan, has worked at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and is a union organizer there.

[Magda Hassan]

It's emerged that at the height of Japan's nuclear crisis last March, the authorities in Fukushima concealed radiation data vital to safely evacuate people from that area. Japan has a computer system designed to predict the spread of radioactive releases. But local media reports say the prefecture's government deleted the e-mails detailing it. RT talks to Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar.

[Magda Hassan]

3 very important videos to watch! They kinda "sum up" the magnitude of the situation at Fukushima Link Here:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE...re=edit_ok

Please sign the petition to get congress to HELP Japan get Spent fuel pool HELP link here if you have not already done so - we are currently at 917 signatures!!! close to the 1000 signatures needed, so each one will help!

http://www.change.org/petitions/fukushima-spent-fuel-pool-4-risks-u-s-health-...

Latest Headlines:

http://enenews.com/

NHK: Expert urges caution against more tornadoes Fukushima borders both prefectures that had devastating twisters on Sunday Over 250 km/h, among most powerful ever in Japan Houses completely uprooted (VIDEO)

LOL! YouTube suggested tags include Compensation (chess) No Shit, thanks YouTube!

NISA: If we experience a quake, of course, uneven settlements of the ground could occur at Fukushima Daiichi This happened at another nuclear plant 200km away (VIDEO)

FBI Whistleblower Releases Unauthorized Memoir "They have individuals on their payroll on almost every nuclear facility in the United States" (VIDEO)

NHK: 17-year-old boy employed at Fukushima Daiichi Worked to repair Reactor No. 2 turbine building (VIDEO)

Columbia Medical Professor: Inhaling just one radioactive hot particle can cause cancer (VIDEO)

Gov't spokesman discusses 'heat' or 'lack of walls' decreasing strength of No. 4 reactor building "We've NOT included these points in our assessment even though that may exists" (VIDEO)

Nuclear Professor: 5,000 Hiroshima bombs worth of cesium-137 in spent fuel pool No. 4 "Low estimate" (VIDEO)

Koide: Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 "was caused to tilt" after the explosion, worried about great danger from pool falling down NISA: "We confirmed it was not leaning, we think there is no problem with the building" (VIDEOS)

M4.8, M4.5, M4.2, M4.7 hit Fukushima over last few hours

Source: Gov't docs suggests human experimentation related to Fukushima radiation City should establish Environmental Radioactivity Research Triangle Titled "In preparation for creating a program of economic reconstruction"

TV: "Could it really happen?" State of Washington testing CLAMS for Fukushima radiation Salmon and steelhead also Will continue "until public concern abates" (VIDEO)

NISA: "Earthquake may have caused ground subsidence in the area of Fukushima plants" Safety of Reactor No. 4 building 'visually' confirmed (VIDEO)

The Guardian asks: How likely is a catastrophe at Fukushima's No. 4 fuel pool? Plant near fault as large as one that caused M9.0 quake

Shallow M4.8 hits Fukushima 5km deep (MAPS)

Japan Physician: Radiation levels 40 times higher than reported by Japan gov't 12 Megabequerels per meter and NOT designated as evacuation zone (VIDEO)

Head of Medical Clinic: Radiation already causing health problems around Tokyo Highly contaminated areas have led to physiological damage (VIDEO)

Kyoto Professor: 20,000 square kilometers would be evacuated if Japan followed law on "illegal" radioactive waste 20 times larger than no-go zone (VIDEO)

Japan Nuclear Expert: There are known to be broken fuel rod assemblies in Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 Large amount of radioactive material has fallen to bottom "Many years" to get fuel out (VIDEO)

Bellona: Concerns loom ever larger at Fukushima as experts warn of No. 4 fuel pool's unstable condition with increasing worry

Kyodo: More than 25 Koriyama schools with high radiation areas At least 19 nursery and elementary schools affected 60km from Fukushima Daiichi

Official's Testimony: "Our town citizens reported they tried to have exposure tests at several hospitals but they are all stopped by Fukushima Medical University" (VIDEO)

[Magda Hassan]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3798[/ATTACH]
(7/13/2011) Harvested in June, Saitama.
http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/01/worst...-mutation/

[Peter Lemkin]

The Japanese Government has purchased Tepco...and now owns and runs it.....why do I think this is not an improvement?!...............:finger:By Yoko Kubota
TOKYO | Wed May 9, 2012 1:01pm EDT

(Reuters) - Tokyo Electric Power Co, Japan's biggest utility and owner of the devastated Fukushima nuclear plant, will be taken over by the government after the country's trade minister on Wednesday approved a $12.5 billion capital injection.

In what is effectively a nationalization, the government will help avert the collapse of once-powerful Tepco, the supplier of power to almost 45 million people in and around Tokyo.

The injection of 1 trillion yen ($12.5 billion) brings total government support for the company to at least 3.5 trillion yen since the meltdowns at Fukushima in March last year, triggered by an earthquake and a tsunami.

The eventual cost of the nuclear disaster, including compensation and clean-up costs, has been estimated at more than $100 billion.

"Without the state funds, (Tepco) cannot provide a stable supply of electricity and pay for compensation and decommissioning costs," Trade and Industry Minister Yukio Edano told a news conference after granting approval to the utility's 10-year turnaround plan, which paves the way for state control.

"Even though the firm will be under so-called state control, I want the company to do your best to step out of this situation soon," Edano told Tepco President Toshio Nishizawa, referring to the government's intention to own Tepco only until it recovers.

The government will get more than half of Tepco's voting rights, allowing it to choose board members, according to the plan.

It will also take convertible stock that, when converted, will increase its control to more than two-thirds, enabling it to make unilateral decisions on major management issues including mergers. The takeover must first be approved by a general shareholders' meeting in June.

The utility, saddled with trillions of yen in compensation and clean-up costs from the radiation crisis as well as surging fuel costs to cover for lost nuclear power capacity, has been facing insolvency risks since the disaster.

In addition to taxpayers' money, major creditors will provide the firm with an additional 1 trillion yen in credit, and a government-backed bailout body will aid Tepco with an additional 850 billion yen for compensation, the plan said.

RATE HIKES

Tepco also said it plans to hike electricity rates for three years for households by 10 percent and for corporate customers by about 17 percent.

The takeover allows the government to push through reforms at the utility, which downplayed the risks of earthquakes and tsunamis at its nuclear stations and covered up safety lapses.

Tepco will sell or lease some of its thermal power plants, a move Edano suggested could be an initial step towards loosening the grip of Japan's 10 regional monopoly utilities including Tepco by opening markets to some competition.

Tepco vowed to cut 3.3 trillion yen in costs over 10 years and said it aims to turn profitable in the 2013/14 business year, forecasting a net profit of 106.7 billion yen.

But this goal depends on some uncertain factors.

The household electricity rate hike, unpopular among the public, must first be approved by the government.

Tepco also aims to start bringing back on line seven reactors at its Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant from 2013/14.

But Japan has been unable to restart any of its 50 nuclear reactors after the Fukushima disaster due to mounting public worries, and the local authorities at Kashiwazaki Kariwa are not an exception.

Furthermore, the government has yet to decide what role nuclear power will play in Japan's future energy policy.

"The only thing we can do is to try to seek the public's understanding. If we can't realize this, then the impact would be big on our revenues and expenditures ... But we do not have a plan B or a C now," Tepco President Nishizawa said.

Tepco lodged a formal request for government support last month after months of dragging its feet as it sought to avoid losing control.

Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata will be replaced by a member of the bailout body, and a new president was chosen this week from within Tepco to replace Nishizawa in June. ($1 = 79.7750 Japanese yen)

[Magda Hassan]

So the shareholders got to keep all their dividends and bonuses and profits and the public gets to pay for cleaning up their mess. Privitisation of profits and socialisation of costs.