As the Japanese authorities struggle to contain the radiation that continues to leak from the stricken Fukushima nuclear reactors, the news remains bleak and not a little strange.

Back in March when the media was still interested in the disaster at Fukushima, it was reported that the Japanese government ordered helicopters to dump tonnes of seawater on the reactors in an attempt to cool them. It now emerges that this eye-catching act was utterly useless.

The water fell like mist on the reactor building, leading to steam rising from the structure […]Members of the Kan administration realized that dumping water from a helicopter would have almost no effect on cooling the reactor.

It was a PR stunt to try to impress US President Barack Obama who the Japanese government feared was about to order US citizens to evacuate Japan. ‘There was a need to demonstrate before the phone conversation with Obama that 'Japan was serious,' a source told Asahi news. The Kan government were desperate to be seen doing something even if that something was worthless.

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Some of you may remember, in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the nuclear industry in the shape of AREVA CEO Anne Lauvergeon telling us that the way to avoid future disasters was to build more complex nuclear reactors.

The trouble is these more complex, so-called Third Generation reactors are proving to be nothing more than a massive embarrassment for the nuclear industry. AREVA’s European Pressurised Reactors (EPR) being built in France and Finland are billions over budget and years behind schedule as well as being plagued by thousands of construction defects.

Now we hear in the US the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is questioning the safety of another Third Generation reactor and rival to the EPR, Westinghouse’s AP1000, two of which are already under construction in Augusta, Georgia.

The chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, said that computations submitted by Westinghouse, the manufacturer of the new AP1000 reactor, about the building’s design appeared to be wrong and “had led to more questions.” He said the company had not used a range of possible temperatures for calculating potential seismic stresses on the shield building in the event of an earthquake, for example.

A nuclear reactor vulnerable to earthquakes? Where have we heard that before?

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Fortunately, it’s not all bad news this morning. Over in Switzerland at the weekend, 20,000 people marched to the country’s Beznau nuclear power plant. It was the largest anti-nuclear protest the country has seen in 25 years. The movement against nuclear power continues to grow and, with the likes of Chancellor Angela Merkel calling for nuclear power to be phased out in Germany and the Swiss government suspending plans to build new nuclear reactors, it looks like our leaders are starting to finally listen.