Somali pirates seize Indonesian chemical tanker

Somali pirates have hijacked a
chemical tanker in the Gulf of
Aden - the third vessel seized in
waters around Somalia this
week.
Maritime officials said the
Pramoni - a 20,000-tonne
Indonesian-owned vessel - was
seized en route to India and was
now heading towards Somalia.
The ship has a crew of 24, most of whom
are Indonesian.
Last Monday Somali pirates captured two
other ships with 45 crew off the East
African coast.
A UK-flagged chemical tanker, the St James
Park, was captured in the Gulf of Aden
while on its way to Thailand from Spain.
The Navios Apollon, a Panamanian-flagged
Greek cargo ship with 19 crew, was
hijacked north of the Seychelles.
In the latest incident, the captain of the
Singapore-flagged Pramoni reported by
radio that the ship had been hijacked but
all the crew were well, the EU counter-
piracy force Navfor said.
The ship's crew consists of 17 Indonesians,
five Chinese, one Nigerian and one
Vietnamese, it added.
Pirate attacks are common off the Somali
coast and international navies have been
deployed to counter them.

Japan eyes damage to spent nuclear fuel

Japanese authorities say high radiation
readings from one of the spent fuel pools at
the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant
may be caused by radioactive debris from
outside rather than from damage to the fuel
rods inside.
A water sample taken from the pool that
houses the No. 4 reactor's old fuel rods
showed a higher-than-normal amount of
radioactive iodine-131, said Hidehiko
Nishiyama, the chief spokesman for the
Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. That's
an indication that the fuel rods may have
sustained some damage since the disaster,
but the cause was still under investigation, he
said.
The elevated radiation levels first reported
Wednesday were "not that high," Nishiyama
said. That suggesting the source may have
been radioactive debris blowing into the
pools from outside the badly damaged
building.
"If the fuel rod had some problems, the value
would go much higher," Nishiyama said.
The safety commission reported radioactivity
from iodine-131, the most commonly
measured reactor byproduct, at 84
millisieverts per hour on Wednesday -- a level
that would give plant workers their
maximum annual dose in about three hours.
Engineers have been struggling to stabilize
the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant since
March 11, when the tsunami that followed
Japan's magnitude 9 earthquake knocked out
its cooling systems. The cores of of three of
the plant's six reactors were damaged by
overheating and resulting hydrogen
explosions in the early days of the disaster,
now classified as a top-scale nuclear accident.