# 5421
A mixed bag of news this morning, with a few hopeful signs amid more troubling reports on the situation at the Fukushima nuclear facility.
First the good news.
NHK World News now reports that engineers have managed to get two diesel generators that supply power to reactor # 6 operational, and that they are supplying power to the cooling pumps at both reactor #5 & #6.
Cooling function operable at 2 reactors
Saturday, March 19, 2011 14:07 +0900 (JST)
The government says parts of the cooling systems at 2 of the 6 reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been confirmed to be operable.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told a news conference on Saturday that an emergency diesel generator at the No. 6 reactor has resumed operation.
The agency also said that a cooling pump, at the No. 5 reactor, has been confirmed to be usable, and that workers started cooling the spent fuel storage pool there at 5 AM on Saturday.
Efforts are still underway to connect external power to the stricken nuclear power plants, and the cable is reportedly laid and connected to reactor # 2, but the power has not been turned on.
NHK News reports on what the engineers are waiting on:
Efforts under way to reconnect outside power
(EXCERPT)
The company says it will check the status of the motors and pumps that supply cooling water to the reactor, and will start running the equipment, once it has confirmed that there are no abnormalities.
And lastly, Japan’s Defense Minister – speaking at a press conference – revealed that heat measurements taken by a military helicopter flying over the reactors suggest that some of the water spraying attempts have been at least partially successful.
Kitazawa: Reactors surface temperatures below 100C
Japan's Defense Minister says the surface temperatures of the 4 damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are lower than 100 degrees Celsius.
Toshimi Kitazawa told a news conference in Tokyo on Saturday that water-spraying proved to be effective.
Admittedly, not a terribly precise report, since actual readings were not revealed. While not exactly `good news’, this could be filed under `it could be worse’.
Less comforting reports include the discovery of radioactive contamination in the local food supply, although not at levels considered to pose an immediate health hazard.
Again from NHK News:
Radiation detected in milk and spinach
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano says the government was informed around 5:30 PM on Friday that higher levels of radiation than the legal standard were detected in fresh milk from cows at a dairy farm in Fukushima Prefecture.
He also said that at 11:00 AM on Saturday, the government received information that six samples of spinach tested at a research institute in Ibaraki Prefecture contained higher levels of radiation than the official standard.
Early on Saturday morning, the health ministry asked Ibaraki Prefecture to determine where the spinach samples came from and their distribution route.
In a similar vein, Kyodo news has recently posted the following flash regarding the detection of radioactive iodine in Tokyo tap water on their website.
No details were available at the time of this posting, and I’m always a bit leery of flash reports, so a strong Caveat Lector warning applies.
`Traces’ is about as inexact a measurement as you can come up with, and given the sensitivity of modern testing methods, may be so low as to have absolutely no public health impact.
We’ll have to wait for better data before we can evaluate the significance of this report.
And lastly, the strongest aftershock of the past 48 hours, registering a 6.1, struck at 09:56 UTC near the east coast of Honshu.
There were no immediate reports of damage.
Given dearth of good news coming out of Japan over the past 8 days, anything even remotely positive is gratefully received.
And quite obviously, given the levels of despair and deprivation in the worst hit regions of northern Japan, government officials are anxious to emphasize whatever progress is being made.
But regardless of short term victories or defeats, the recovery in Japan is going to be a very long, difficult, and painful process.
One that will likely take years to accomplish, and that has only just barely begun.
