Iitate village in Fukushima Prefecture, announced they will start evacuating pregnant women, thanks to increasing radiation levels.

Iitate is 40km (24.8 miles) from the damaged nuclear power plant, and outside the official danger zone, but local officials say they’ve picked up high radiation readings in their area.

Radiation levels exceed standards set by the International Commission on Radiological Protection. So the town, on its own decision with no help from the central government, is going to evacuate pregnant women, children younger than 3 and their guardians. Pregnant women will leave first, by the end of the week. Town officials are still trying to make arraignments, regarding where they will evacuate the people to.

NHK interviewed a nuclear analyst who said a cold shut down of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi can’t be done.

He explained that the reactors are too unstable, and TEPCo is still having trouble getting electrical power to the control rooms. He also said the situation is so dangerous that officials must keep everyone constantly updated.

Tokyo Electric Power Company saying Reactor 1 showing signs of damaged reactor core. They believe hydrogen gas is building up inside. An explosion is immanent unless the hydrogen gas can be counteracted.

They plan on injecting nitrogen gas into the reactor core tomorrow morning.

So far TEPCo does not have a good track record with any of their attempts to control the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant.

NHK (Nippon Housou Kyoukai/Japan Broadcasting Corporation) has run several reports that show local prefectural governments, near the damaged nuclear pant, but outside the 20km (12.4 miles) evacuation zone, are encouraging their residents to evacuate.

Some residents are leaving.  Some local governments have even booked hotels for mass evacuations to begin next week.  One hotel said they were booked up for two months.

NHK reporting that one of their helicopter news crews took video of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, after Tokyo Electric Power Company announced that they stopped the contaminated water leak from Reactor 2 pit.

Not only does the video show water still pouring into the ocean, but it shows smoke coming from reactors 2, 3 & 4.

An analyst interviewed by NHK said the water still pouring out could be from other leaks not yet discovered.

TEPCo admitted that the smoke might be caused by continued build up of hydrogen gas inside the containment vessels. They are going to try to inject nitrogen into Reactor 1, to prevent an explosion by hydrogen gas.  If another explosion happens, this time it will rupture the reactor’s containment vessel.

In a joint report between The Washington Post and Foreign Policy, it’s been revealed that while Rome burned Tokyo Electric Power Company fiddled.

Apparently, instead of trying to figure out what to do after two of their reactors suffered hydrogen gas explosions, and continued to spew radiation, TEPCo officials were trying to figure out how to build two new reactors!

On March 26 they presented the Fukushima Prefectural government with their plan for new reactors. “It was just unbelievable.”-Nozaki Yoichi, Fukushima Prefectural Planning and Coordination Department

After getting the cold shoulder from local authorities, TEPCo submitted the plan to the Japanese central government on 31 March.  They got the same reaction.

TEPCo is so hated now, in Fukushima Prefecture they’ve covered up their signs for their offices, because they’ve been getting threatening phone calls, and employees are being harassed.

Fukushima Prefectural officials told TEPCo “…to sort out problems on the ground first and stop thinking about new reactors.”

TEPCo officials now say they made a mistake in asking for the new reactors now, and they claim the plan was made before the 11 March disasters. If that’s so, why did they wait until 26 March to present the plan?

What corporate arrogance, to ask for government backing for two new reactors while the ones you have are blowing up and spewing radiation. Baka! 

For several days the Japanese government, and Tokyo Electric Power Company officials, have been talking about using specially coated sheeting to wrap the Fukushima Daiichi nuke plant in.  Now they’ve announced when that will happen: September!

Hello, I think that’s too late guys!  How much radiation will have spewed in that amount of time? And it doesn’t even address water leakage.

The Japanese government has already commissioned a contractor to do the job. According to Kyodo News, that contractor says they hope to start work by June (June!). The reason, same as always, radiation levels are too high to do any truly productive work.

This is a vicious circle: They have to do work to get radiation levels down, but the radiation levels are so high that the amount of time a worker can be at the job is limited to less than 15 minutes, with full protective gear. This has been stated by many TEPCo employees interviewed by Japanese media. Even Japanese nuke analysts have said as much.  In other words this has become a “sit & spin” operation!

Let me ask again: Why don’t they dump concrete on it!?