01 October 2013 (12:31 UTC-07 Tango)/26 Dhu ‘l-Qa’da 1434/09 Mehr 1392/27 Ren-Xu (8th month) 4711

Government agencies have finally begun decontamination of areas around Fukushima Daiichi, more than two years after the melt downs began!

Japanese government officials said radiation levels were too high to begin decontamination efforts sooner!  Some areas of seven municipalities have been hit with so much radiation that nobody can live there.  Radiation levels are reported, by government agencies, to be at least 50 millisieverts per hour!

However, the decontamination efforts beginning now are considered a test, as officials don’t really know if decontamination of plants, soil and buildings will be successful.  A district leader in the city of Namie does not think decontamination will be successful.  He said radiation levels have remained unchanged in the no-go areas since April 2011.  He has been taking his own radiation readings every month since the melt downs began.

Tokyo Electric Power Company revealed that in September at least four metric tons of contaminated rainwater spilled into the ocean.  TEPCo says workers were pumping the contaminated rainwater into a storage tank when it overflowed.  It turns out the tank was already full.

The rainwater contained 160 becquerels per liter of radiation, which is five times the Japanese government safe limits for dumping contaminated water into the ocean!  Keep in mind there is no possible way for TEPCo to catch and store all the rain that hits the radioactive Fukushima Daiichi nuke facility, and it runs off into the Pacific Ocean.