Officials are struggling with the latest set back at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant; flooded turbine rooms.

The turbine rooms are where the coolant is cooled, basically giant heat exchangers, or radiators. The problem is that the rooms have flooded with water that has mixed with fuel rods in the reactor cores, making the water highly contaminated.  Before they can do anymore work they have to get the water out.

Tokyo Electric Officials were thinking of pumping the contaminated water into the turbine condenser (it’s like a radiator on a car), but, oh yeah, the condensers already have water in them.  The contaminated water is so bad that it’s basically nuclear waste. You can’t just let it drain out into the ground water , or ocean.

So they are trying to drain the condensers, and then pump the contaminated water into the condensers. They’ve already begun on reactor 1 turbine room. Reactor 2 turbine room has radiation levels of 1,000 millisieverts per hour. TEPCo officials don’t know when they can attempt to drain reactor 2 turbine room because of the radiation levels.

They’re also dealing with a tunnel/trench found under the reactors, and found filled with contaminated water.

A U.S. nuclear expert, in Japan, stated that no one should get to worried about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster, until cesium starts showing up.

Cesium (aka Caesium) is the main reason people can not live near Chernobyl, even 25 years after that disaster. The expert said cesium was spread all over, and in huge amounts, by the Chernobyl reactor melt down. Cesium-137 has a half life of 30 years.

Cesium-137, and many other cesium isotopes, are used in nuclear power plants (as well as other applications, like dirty bombs).

Has cesium been detected following the Fukushima Daichi disaster? Yes. The University of Nevada has detected cesium-137 between 17-21 March.  The levels were small, but they represent the early days of the nuclear disaster in Japan, things have gotten worse since.  On 29 March, South Korea reported that they have detected cesium-134 & 137.

Cesium builds up in soil and plants. Cesium ingested by people can kill. Tests were done on dogs, and it killed them within three weeks.

Besides Chernobyl, there was another nuclear disaster involving cesium.  It did not involve a nuclear power plant. It was outdated radioactive medical cesium chloride, in Brazil in 1987.  Four people were killed, 245 were contaminated, by a thimble sized amount.

Cabinet Secretary Edano Yukio said they are putting together a task force, to focus on the LONG TERM care of workers fighting the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi.

They will also provide rest shelters, basically mobile homes, so the workers will have a place to live.

Edano also said they will have to begin replacing the workers currently struggling to contain the nuclear disaster.

Despite nuclear experts downplaying the detection of plutonium around Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Japanese Cabinet Secretary, Edano Yukio, says the situation is extremely serious.

Edano said that two of the samples showed a type of plutonium that could have only come from nuclear fuel rods. The Japanese government believes this is more proof that fuel rods are, or have, partially melted.

The economy of agriculture, in the areas affected directly by the radioactive food ban (Fukushima & Ibaraki Prefectures), is being hit hard.

One dairy farmer has dumped at least  3.5 tons of milk.

Spinach and Parsley farmers, who’ve spent 25 years or more growing their crops, have to let this year’s crops die, and maybe bury them.  No one has told them what to do with the contaminated crops, and, no one told them if they will be financially compensated for their loss.  One farmers says 30,000 of his Spinach plants will be lost because of the nuclear disaster.