A little while ago it was my birthday, and it's been a tradition that I throw a birthday party where I serve champagne cocktails, combined with large chunks of chocolat. This year I chose to serve champagne juleps. Brandy, muddled with mint sprigs, topped of with champagne. This will be what we'll be drinking in my room, after which we'll be heading to town to drink some more in a bar.
In Japan, the comunication about the nuclear crisis in Fukushima is so bad, that by now I (and I believe with me a lot of people) have less or more given up following it constantly. Nearly every "succes" later appears to have little or no effect, and every severe problem is later being downplayed or even labeled a mistake. The government is thinking about nationalising tepco 2.5 weeks into this disaster, which acording to me would be a good thing, but wouldn't it be a good idea, if it were standard operating procedure that during very severe crises government (in Japan, but in other countries as well) automatically takes over comunication and actively deals with the problem rather then believing that the company will solve it.
To me it still seems as if the situation is simply getting worse. plutonium being found outside the plant means that the fuel rods in there are very hot, radioactive particles are being found throughout Japan. Also I'm wondering how many of these fukushima 50 (allthough they are with many more by now) are already sick and what levels of radiation they are being subjected to by now. According to me, the level of radioactivity on this site could only havie been rising permanently throughout this crisis (temporary spikes are possible, due to release of new radioactive material which gets spread by the wind within minutes or hours of it exiting the plant) but the level htat would be measured when neglecting these effects can only have risen higher.
And to me, the worst problem is that they don't know what to do anymore. Spraying water on the reactors was a means of keeping them cool untill power was restored to the plant, after which this power could be used to cool the reactors in a more conventional way. Power has been restored, but the problem hasn't been solved. Thus restoring the power isn't helping enough to cool the reactors down to stabilise the situation, and safely put a concrete casing around the reactors. When spraying water wasn't doing enough, we knew that it was bad, but restoring power should make things better. Right now, it's bad, and they don't have a clue how to make things better anymore.
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