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By Risa Maeda and Kazunori Takada TOKYO, March 22 (Reuters) - Rising temperatures around the core of one of the reactors at Japan's quake-crippled nuclear plant sparked new concern on Tuesday and more water was needed to cool it down, the plant's operator said. Despite hopes of progress in the world's worst nuclear crisis in a quarter of a century, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that left at least 21,000 people dead or missing, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said it needed more time before it could say the reactors were stabilised. Technicians working inside an evacuation zone around the stricken plant on Japan's northeast Pacific coast, 250 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, have attached power cables to all six reactors and started a pump at one to cool overheating nuclear fuel rods.

On Friday, March 11, Japan was rocked by an earthquake. People were displaced, a nuclear reactor was in trouble, and the world watched as a tsunami flooded Japan, threatened the islands of the Pacific, and ultimately hit the western coasts of North and South America.

A Black Swan event is a metaphor used to explain a disproportionate, hard to predict event that is beyond the realm of normal expectation in history, science, finance and technology.

By Ichiko Fuyuno The magnitude-9.0 earthquake that struck northeastern Japan on 11 March trashed Koji Tamura's laboratory and office, flinging books, microscopes, sequencers and samples to the floor. [More]

More than a week after a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck Japan's northern coast, Princess Cruises has decided to scrap port calls to the island nation through May.

The radiation crisis in Japan worsens, for two reasons, one that we’ve heard about, one that we haven’t but which may in the end do far more harm. The Japanese government, and the company in charge of the crippled nuclear complex, are struggling with their risk and crisis communications, and their missteps are fueling mistrust and anger, which magnifies fear and stress, which may do more health damage than the radiation itself

In the past 15 months several devastating earthquakes have rumbled beneath the Pacific.

As night fell on Friday in Japan, workers and soldiers continued heroic efforts to douse the potential meltdown underway at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The covering darkness is not the only reason for confusion: vital systems monitors have lost power, making the status of critical elements--such as the integrity of the nuclear fuel rods in reactor No.

In the days following Japan's March 11 earthquake, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant there suffered increasing damage as its cooling systems failed, probably causing a build-up of hydrogen gas that led to explosions at three of its reactor units. [More]

There are reports that the U.S.

President Obama responded to Japan's nuclear reactor crisis yesterday by asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to make a comprehensive safety review of U.S.

As Japanese military struggles to cool overheating fuel rods at the country’s damaged nuclear plant, some suggest a full meltdown might actually be happening somewhere else--in the corporate suites of Tokyo Electric Power Co. Tepco, as it’s known, is a for-profit utility that owns the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and other plants and provides almost 35% of Japan’s electricity ( pdf ). And in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami that brought the country to nuclear crisis, the organization is turning into a lighting rod of political criticism.

By Fredrik Dahl VIENNA (Reuters) - Minuscule amounts of radioactive particles believed to have come from Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant have been detected on the U.S. west coast, two diplomatic sources said Friday. [More]

As nuclear crises worsens in Japan, U.S.

By Declan Butler Nature revealed earlier this week than an international agency set up to detect nuclear tests, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), is transmitting detailed data on the spectrum of radionuclides and their levels in the air in and around Japan and the Asia-Pacific region to its member states each day, but that the CTBTO could not release these data to the public because it lacked a mandate to do so. Now, at least one CTBTO member state, Austria, intends to make some of the data public in the form of summary reports and forecasts of global radiation spread.