The German government announced that they will end the use of nuclear power plants as soon as possible.
Germany is prepared to spend the money necessary to make renewable clean energy sources their main power supply by 2020. Germany will keep its coal and natural gas fire electrical plants in operation.
“Just pointing a measuring device at your food before dinner is pretty much meaningless.”-Katayama Atsushi, Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry.
The Japanese Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry says you should use scintillation counters to detect iodine-131 in milk and vegetables. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometers should be used to trace uranium. Nitric acid and dehydrated samples are turned to ash over a 24-hour period in temperatures exceeding 400 degrees Celsius, in order to detect strontium.
“Just to know what the radiation levels are in your home, it’s relatively straightforward, but when you get to measuring it in food, milk and soil it gets much more complicated.”-Joseph Rotunda, Thermo Fisher Scientific
You could spend $400.00 on a Geiger counter just to measure radiation in and around your home, but lots of things can affect the reading. Things like concrete walls and driveways, granite counter tops and even cell phones.
To save some money, if you don’t think it’s safe to eat, don’t eat it.
“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.
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.
