UPDATE: Fire is has now reached the Los Alamos nuclear facility.

A wildfire crests over the hills above Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico overnight Sunday. The nuclear lab has been forced to close because of the fast-moving fire. (Luis Sa¡nchez Saturno/The New Mexican/Associated Press)

Japan moves “giant step” toward resolving nuclear crisis.

The operator of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant moved closer to ending its radiation crisis on Monday with the start of a system to cool damaged reactors that could also help avoid dumping highly contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean.

The move was hailed as “a giant step forward” by Goshi Hosono, an adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

“This is critical in two aspects,” Hosono told a news conference. “First, the system will solve the problem of contaminated water, which gave all sorts of worries to the world. Second, it will enable stable cooling of reactors.”

Reactors at the plant, on the Pacific coast 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, went into meltdown after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out their cooling systems.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co is running out of space to store a huge amount of radioactive water that has accumulated during efforts to cool the reactors. It hopes the new system, which decontaminates water and re-circulates it to reduce reactor temperatures, will help achieve its goal of bringing the plant to stability by next January.

None of this matters if your urine is radioactive.

Newsflash: The radioactive crisis near Fukushima isn’t getting any better.

This has been something we discussed in the last few weeks, but now there are some new disturbing details.

From Japan Times:

More than 3 millisieverts of radiation has been measured in the urine of 15 Fukushima residents of the village of Iitate and the town of Kawamata, confirming internal radiation exposure, it was learned Sunday.

Both are about 30 to 40 km from the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, which has been releasing radioactive material into the environment since the week of March 11, when the quake and tsunami caused core meltdowns.

Meanwhile our Nebraska plant is surrounded by water.

Then again, North Korea would prefer you just starve to death.  Our world is not what I wanted for the future of our children.