Land Of The Rising Core Temperature, Part 35

The Fukushima Daiichi disaster is still causing massive problems in Japan, despite our news being swamped by debt ceiling stupidity and summer record temps.  Turns out the warning signs about the plant being a potential catastrophe were there for years...and largely ignored by Japanese officials.

Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant ranked as one of the most dangerous in the world for radiation exposure years before it was destroyed by the meltdowns and explosions that followed the March 11 earthquake.

For five years to 2008, the Fukushima plant was rated the most hazardous nuclear facility in Japan for worker exposure to radiation and one of the five worst nuclear plants in the world on that basis. The next rankings, compiled as a three-year average, are due this year.

Reuters uncovered these rankings, privately tracked by Fukushima's operator Tokyo Electric Power, in a review of documents and presentations made at nuclear safety conferences over the past seven years.

In the United States -- Japan's early model in nuclear power -- Fukushima's lagging safety record would have prompted more intensive inspections by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It would have also invited scrutiny from the U.S. Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, an independent nuclear safety organization established by the U.S. power industry after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, experts say.

But that kind of stepped-up review never happened in Tokyo, where the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency remains an adjunct of the trade ministry charged with promoting nuclear power.

And yet Japan did nothing.  No wonder the government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan is on the verge of collapse.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who is facing strident calls for his resignation, has rejected reports that he may well dissolve the Lower House of the Parliament to pave the way for early general elections, reports said on Tuesday.

Addressing a parliamentary panel in Tokyo, Kan said he favored holding of simultaneous polls to both the Upper and Lower Houses of the 'Diet' (Parliament) in 2013. "To speak of a snap election is against public sentiment," he said.

Kan has had to put up with fierce opposition from his own party as well as political opponents who accuse him of ineffective leadership and failure on the part of his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government to provide timely help to victims of the March 11 earthquake-tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan.

Despite the Premier's claims, analysts believe that there is a political motive behind Kan's decision not to go in for snap polls. According to them, there might be further erosion of inner party support for Kan in the event of early elections owing to a possible consolidation of his rivals. Moreover, an exodus of DPJ supporters into the Opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) ranks is also feared.

Either way, Kan won't survive the year.  He may very well not survive the next six weeks, frankly.  Booting Kan won't fix the Fukushima Daiichi problem either.