Meanwhile back in Japan:

From the Los Angeles Times (3/29/2011):

"Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan for the first time criticized the TEPCO, which owns the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, for inadequate preparations for a tsunami at the facility. The sea wall at the plant was designed to withstand an 18-foot wave, while the actual tsunami that struck after the magnitude 9 Tohoku earthquake was estimated to be more than 40 feet high.

"It's undeniable their assumptions about tsunamis were greatly mistaken," Kan said Tuesday of Tokyo Electric Power Co. in an address to the Japanese parliament. "The fact that their standards were too low invited the current situation."

Kan also criticized the company for placing the backup diesel generators, which were to provide power to the emergency cooling system, in the basements of reactor buildings, where they were swamped by seawater and disabled.

(SNIP!)

At the plant, meanwhile, workers were piling sandbags at the ends of tunnels near the coast as water levels inside the tunnels rose and threatened to spill out into the ocean. The water is highly radioactive and international law forbids its release into the sea, although the radiation would most likely be dispersed to the point where it was inconsequential.

Experts fear it could damage ocean life in the immediate vicinity of the plant, however.

Engineers are attempting to pump water out of the tunnels to restore access to the areas where workers have been attempting to restore power to the stricken facility, but are running out of places to store the radioactive water until its radiation levels can decay."

We used to propose (internal gossip) that Maine get rid of its nuclear waste by fusing it into ceramic seagulls and selling it to tourists who would take it with them when they left the State. But we all agreed that would be WRONG!

Charley Noble