undt is needed SEATTLE An empty Japanese fishing boat drifting off the coast of western Canada could be the first wave of 1.5 million tons of debris heading toward North America from Japan's tsunami last March.
The wreckage from flattened Japanese coastal towns - including refrigerators, washing machines, televisions, roofs and fishing nets - is heading inexorably east across the Pacific and could arrive sooner than expected, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"The early indication is that things sitting higher up on the water could potentially move across the Pacific Ocean quicker than we had originally thought," said Nancy Wallace, director of NOAA's Marine Debris Program, which had forecast the appearance of tsunami debris on North American shores only in 2013.
"Those higher-wind, quicker moving items may actually be onshore much sooner - pretty much now."
On March 20, Canada's transport department spotted what it said was an empty Japanese fishing vessel 150 nautical miles south of the Queen Charlotte Islands, adjacent to the main coast of British Columbia.
The ship has been declared a hazard to shipping, but Canada has not said what - if anything - it will do with it. The country's Coast Guard said it will take action only if fuel spills from the ship, which is not likely.
The so-called ghost ship is the first major piece of evidence that Japanese tsunami debris is heading to the United States.
"It does confirm that debris generated by the tsunami will make landfall on the west coast of North America," said Nicholas Mallos, a conservation biologist and marine debris specialist at the independent Ocean Conservancy, which monitors the problem of Ocean trash.
TOKYO One of Japan's crippled nuclear reactors still has fatally high radiation levels and hardly any water to cool it, according to an internal examination Tuesday that renews doubts about the plant's stability.
A tool equipped with a tiny video camera, a thermometer, a dosimeter and a water gauge was used to assess damage inside the No. 2 reactor's containment chamber for the second time since the tsunami swept into the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant a year ago. The probe done in January failed to find the water surface and provided only images showing steam, unidentified parts and rusty metal surfaces scarred by exposure to radiation, heat and humidity.
The data collected from the probes showed the damage from the disaster was so severe, the plant operator will have to develop special equipment and technology to tolerate the harsh environment and decommission the plant, a process expected to last decades.
Tuesday's examination with an industrial endoscope detected radiation levels up to 10 times the fatal dose inside the chamber. Plant officials previously said more than half of melted fuel has breached the core and dropped to the floor of the primary containment vessel, some of it splashing against the wall or the floor.
Particles from melted fuel have probably sent radiation levels up to dangerously high 70 sieverts per hour inside the container, said Junichi Matsumoto, spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co.
"It's extremely high," he said, adding that an endoscope would last only 14 hours in that condition. "We have to develop equipment that can tolerate high radiation" when locating and removing melted fuel during the decommissioning.
The probe also found the containment vessel a beaker-shaped container enclosing the core had cooling water up to only 60 centimeters 2 feet from the bottom, far below the 10 meters yards estimated when the government declared the plant stable in December.
Finding the water level was important to help locate damaged areas where radioactive water is escaping.
He said that the actual water level inside the chamber was way off the estimate, which had used data that turned out to be unreliable. But the results don't affect the plant's "cold shutdown status" because the water temperature was about 50 degrees Celsius 122 Fahrenheit, indicating the melted fuel is cooled.
Three Dai-ichi reactors had meltdowns, but the No. 2 reactor is the only one that has been examined because radiation levels inside the reactor building are relatively low and its container is designed with a convenient slot to send in the endoscope.
The exact conditions of the other two reactors, where hydrogen explosions damaged their buildings, are still unknown. Simulations have indicated that more fuel inside No. 1 has breached the core than the other two, but radiation at No. 3 remains the highest.
The high radiation levels inside the No. 2 reactor's chamber mean it's inaccessible to the workers, but parts of the reactor building are accessible for a few minutes at a time with the workers wearing full protection.
Last year's massive earthquake and a tsunami set off the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, sending three reactor cores to melt and causing massive radiation leaks. The government said in December that the reactors are safely cooled and the plant has stabilized, while experts have questioned its vulnerability.
During a recent visit by a group of journalists including The Associated Press, the head of the plant said it remains vulnerable to strong aftershocks and tsunami and containing contaminated water and radiation is a challenge. Radioactive water had leaked into the ocean several times already.
Workers found the fresh leak of 120 tons from a water treatment unit this week from one of its hoses, with estimated 80 liters 20 gallons escaping into the ocean, Matsumoto said. Officials are still investigating its impact.
Fukukushima's accident has instilled public distrust and concerns about nuclear safety, making it difficult for the government to start up reactors even after regular safety checks. All but one of Japan's 54 reactors are now offline, with the last one scheduled to stop in early May.