“As (Toyota) continues to address its production situation in Japan following the disaster, it has decided that vehicle production from May 10 to June 3 will proceed at approximately 50 percent of normal.”-company statement
Basically the situation for “key component suppliers” (parts makers) is still too unreliable to resume full production.
Toyota says it will continue to evaluate the situation, and make the necessary adjustments to production.
8 employees were fired, and 25 had their pay cut by 30%, for not paying for tickets on their own monorail service.
JR East Tokyo Monorail, says most of the employees were in management positions. They would board the train for work, swipe their pay cards, then once at work, would use the company computers to delete the charge.
One employee almost got away with 590,000 yen worth of fares. Unpaid fares have cost JR East over 1.2 million yen.
Tokyo Electric Power Company can not keep up with the amount of contaminated water coming from their Fukushima Daiichi reactors. So far they’ve removed 660 tons of water, but the reactors and fuel pools hold more than 80,000 tons combined, and the water continues to pour out.
Water levels in the tunnel connected to Reactor 2 has risen to a point higher than before they started removing the water. They still aren’t sure where the water is coming from, but suspect damaged reactor vessels.
On top of that they’re now saying the radiation levels in the contaminated water are maxed out (they used a term similar to that). As of 15 April, the radiation levels in the leaked water are now 38 times what they were last week. TEPCo also thinks the contamination is getting into the groundwater, not just the Pacific Ocean.
It turns out that TEPCo was testing radiation levels, in the leaked water, only once per week! They say they will now test three times per week.
The high radiation indicates that not only could reactor vessels be damaged, but fuel rods have melted.
TEPCo says they won’t be able to transfer recovered water, to a waste plant, until the end of next week.
The Geographical Survey Institute surveyed 28 benchmarks in three prefectures, hit by the 11 March earthquake.
They confirmed that the land has dropped as much as 84cm (33 inches, just under 3 feet).
The land sunk in Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures. They are now dealing with high tide flooding caused by the loss of their sea walls, and their sunken land.
Tokyo Electric Power Company will try a new weapon against radiation spreading in the Pacific Ocean; sandbags. They already tried steel and silt fencing, now they will use sandbags full of zeolite.
Zeolite is an aluminosilicate mineral, used in commercial absorbents. It’s hoped it will absorb some of the high levels of radiation in the water.
The difficulties never stop. Now analysis by the Atomic Energy Society says fuel rods have melted in reactors 1 and 3. The rods dropped small pellets into the cooling water as they melted. The pellets have built up at the bottom of the vessel. There is concern that a large buildup of melted fuel could become a molten mass and damage the vessel, leaking huge amounts of radioactive material.
One evidence of damaged vessels is plutonium. For the third time plutonium contamination has been found around Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The Fukushima University will conduct high altitude radiation checks, using high altitude weather balloons.
On Friday they will release the balloon, it will take readings as high up as 30km (18.6 miles). Readings will be taken at 10 meter (32.8 feet) intervals.
The jet stream blows from east to west (towards North America). The testing will be done over a 20 day period.
Finally, after weeks, local police and firefighters are searching for victims within 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuke plant.
300 personnel from Fukushima Prefecture have begun the operation. They are wearing protective gear. Some will dig through debris, while others monitor radiation levels. So far 10 bodies have been found.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan, apologized for a statement he never made. It concerned the possibility that people would not be able to return home in the radiation zones.
The statement was actually made by a special adviser to the Prime Minister, 
Kenichi Matsumoto, who had explained that the they were considering building what would be a refugee city, based on Germany’s eco-friendly models, just in case people could not go home.
Some people in Japan seemed to ignore the possibility of building new self sustaining committees, and were upset about not being able to go home. Even if they “went home” they still need to rebuild, and the suggestion to follow the German model is still good.
Tearing down, and cleaning up Fukushima Daiichi nuke plant will take ten years, according to the builder of the GE designed reactors, Toshiba, and that’s not until the current situation is brought under control.
Toshiba’s plan involves the help of four U.S. companies as well.
Phase one will likely to take several months to years. It involves cooling and stabilizing reactors and spent fuel pools, while preventing radioactive water from increasing.
Phase two could take five years: Safe removal, and storage, of nuclear fuel rods from the pools and pressure vessels.
Final phase another five years: Dismantling the reactors and clearing the land, will take another 5 years.
”As there is believed to be around 20,000 tons of water (in the No. 2 reactor turbine building and the trench connected to it), we’re feeling the difficulty of lowering the level of the water in a stable manner.”-Nishiyama Hidehiko, Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency
It’s not just 20,000 tons of contaminated water in Reactor 2, there is another 60,000 tons in reactors 1 and 3 to deal with, and no mention of how much water is leaking from Reactor 4. Now Tokyo Electric Power Company confirms the local ground water, not just the ocean, is contaminated.
TEPCo says radiation in ground water has risen several dozens of times in one week. It includes iodine-131 and cesium-137. On 06 April cesium levels were at 1.4 becquerels, on Wednesday it had risen to 53 becquerels. The readings for iodine-131 are much higher, on Wednesday it had hit 400 becquerels.
Just how much contaminated water has TEPCo been able to safely remove? 660 tons, that’s all. Thousands of tons has spilled out into the ocean, and into local ground water. One official thinks it will take three months to remove the tens of thousands of tons of contaminated water, and that needs to be done before they can deal with anything else.
The United States is sending several huge water storage tanks to help with the contaminated water removal. It must be put somewhere safe, because the water is nuclear waste.
The problem of the spilling waste water is being blamed on the dumping of sea water, as an emergency cooling operation.
Fukushima Daiichi is still showing temperature problems, but employees say they can not trust the instrumentation. One employee says one gauge will show overheating while another gauge shows normal!
