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.
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.
The U.S. based World Bank says international food prices have entered the “danger zone”, and are heading towards the “tipping point”.
World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, blames in on several things.
People in countries where the economies are good, are buying more meat. The problem is that increasing meat production means more grain crops going to ranchers, instead of food for people. Crops used for bio-fuels, instead of food, is also a problem.
Then there’s a supply system problem; it’s taking longer to rebuild stocks of basic food ingredients, once they are used up. This is made worse by the fact that many countries are facing lower crop production mainly because of climate change (cold wx, flooding and drought).
Add to that oil. Petroleum is used for fertilizers, pesticides, etc, and that is adding to the cost of food production.
One country, China, is so scared of lack of food that they’re buying up huge tracts of land in Africa for food production.
Zoellick says this is a long term problem, we’re only at the beginning of higher food prices. Also, while countries with more money to buy food are seeing higher prices, the poorer countries are paying far more for their food.
Zoellick says just since last year the higher prices have pushed 44 million people into poverty. He predicts another 10% increase in food prices will push another 10 million people into poverty.
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.