Highest Since 2008

The mainstream media may have long forgotten about the Fukushima tragedy (as it certainly goes against the far more popular and palatable meme of a Japan "recovery" courtesy of Abenomics) but that does not mean it is fixed or even contained. Quite the contrary. As a rare update from Japan's Jiji news agency reminds us, on Friday radiation at five monitoring points in waters adjacent to the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power station spiked to all-time highs according to the semi-nationalized TEPCO.

Days before Tokyo won its bid to host the 2020 Olympics last September, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe stated that Fukushima contaminated water was "under control." Now, as Reuters reports,  the nation's nuclear watchdog has uncovered that, following  "uncertainty about the reliability and accuracy of the September strontium reading," which prompted a re-examination of samples, levels of Strontium-90 were five times the levels previously recorded

In the past two weeks there was significant speculation that the Fukushima catastrophe was once again rapidly escalating after plumes of mysterious smoke were detected above the destroyed Reactor 3 - the one with a mixed MOX and uranium fuel core. RT described it as follows: Fresh plumes of most probably radioactive steam have been detected rising from the reactor 3 building at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, said the facility’s operator company.  

The dismal news keeps coming for the Fukushima nuclear power facility. According to NHK World, TEPCO is admitting to detecting radioactive cesium about one kilometer off shore. While the level is low, it is the secoond time radioactive substances have been found that far offshore and it is believed to be from wastewater leaking out with the groundwater. The company, reassuringly, says the leak poses no environmental risk...

Just when one though the bad news out of Fukushima would trickle down, no pun intended, if only because purely statistically it was improbable that any more bad news would leak out, here comes TEPCO which at a press conference this morning announced that "roughly 300 tonnes of radioactive water has seeped from a storage tank, marking the worst leak in more than 2½ years of efforts to contain the effects of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami

Tokyo on Tuesday unveiled a half-billion dollar plan to stem radioactive water leaks at Fukushima, creating a wall of ice underneath the stricken plant, as the government elbowed the operator aside. Acknowledging global concerns over the "haphazard" management of the crisis by Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his administration will step in with public money to get the job done.

Remember that recently announced leak at Fukushima (which we first noted nearly a month ago), which Tepco promised was nothing really, only to subsequently admit 300 tons of radioactive water was seeping out of the destroyed nuclear power plant daily into the ocean (and everywhere else), a leak which subsequently was raised from a st

Over the weekend we posted an in-depth narrative of what may happen in a theoretical worst case scenario in Fukushima, one in which the government continues to do nothing and pretends all is well, and where the end casualties are millions of innocent Japanese (and other) citizens, whose only crime is believing their government.