QUAKE UPDATES Day 7 +++

Another heavy snow here, another earthquake up there, where "suicide squads" are frantically trying to stop several meltdowns as quakes keep happening and it's extra cold for March, but at least Kasumi and family are out of their shaky waterless danger-zone apartment and safe down here, at least till the next step, whatever that may be... no telling when or if they might return up north...

I haven't seen them yet, they arrived in Kyoto late afternoon yesterday, exhausted (they took 5am bus from their town), hungry and with basically only the clothes on their backs and a few things - and from there went to Tatsuya's parents' big house across the lake, ate, bathed (the luxury!) and went to sleep. Miasa was sick but seems better, but now Kasumi is sick. I'll talk to them tonight, find out when they'll be fit to visit over here where the kids can pick some spinach, plant some radishes, stack some firewood, go wild...

I see that the US govt is urging Americans to leave Japan or not travel to Japan, has planes at the ready to assist where necessary; press is interviewing Americans here, most aren't leaving, it seems, though some may, I don't know anyone who is... I've long opposed nuclear power for many reasons, and if this involved plutonium, the use of which is insane, I'd be out of here last week, but as of now I have no plans to leave despite some uranium byproducts in the air. I'm assuming that they'll see the dumbth of their ways, clean it all up eventually under the gaze of a stern public eye and never do it again, but I'm not holding my breath, though I might wear a mask while I withhold judgment pro tem. It's just too beautiful here to let it be destroyed for any reason, let alone greed, and though long-term foreign residents can't vote in Shiga, we can oppose. This site has good insights and rich links on local nuclear activism.

Always amazing, how low ad hoc lowlifes can go; in this case, a potassium iodide ripoff! List price $5.99!...

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"But what makes reactor 3 so special? In one acronymic word: MOX.

All of the fuel rods in all of the other reactors are made essentially of uranium with a zirconium cladding to seal in radioactive emissions. Reactor 4 uses something different. Its fuel rod are only 94% uranium, with 6% plutonium stirred in and then the same zirconium shell. This mixed oxide (hence the MOX moniker) formulation has one advantage [the public doesn't know what's actually in it]—and a number of disadvantages."

THOSE IDIOTS! 24,000 years!! Five times the length of our civilization!! Rethink.....

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"Denis Flory, a top safety official at the agency, pointed out that all used nuclear fuel contains plutonium." [Oh, that's OK then...] It forms naturally within conventional uranium fuel as the uranium is bombarded by neutrons. ["Naturally..." that's a nice 'official' touch...]
And although plutonium is a long-lived emitter of radiation, it is also quite heavy, so it is not likely to move very far downwind from its source. [Comforting, to be sure. And just how far IS "not very far downwind," in officialese? Just keep running, folks, and don't breathe too much... only 23,999.999 years to go...]