Another week of work over. It's good to be working. I love my students so much. I love all my classes this year. Some great students, some I have taught before and that's special. I am almost officially broke, my first pay check wont arrive till next month so we are really being careful here till then.
I suppose it's good news that I haven't updated here for a while. I usually write when things are bad not good. There have been some new developments, some not so welcome and some better and hopeful.
TEPCO now claims reactor 1, 3 and 2 in that order did in fact meltdown almost completely right after the tsunami. That means that radioactive levels of fall out nuclides and radiation were far higher and worse than suspected or claimed for the 3 days following the twin disaster. If I lived in Fukushima I would be wanting more than a bow and an apology about that. People hung around their homes, walking in streets right near the plant for days before any kind of information pertaining safety was made available and then, when it finally came it was grossly underplayed. National shame.
Here in Sendai, I remember we spent much of those first days inside because it was so cold...lucky we did..it's safer inside....but we did have to line up for hours for food in snow blizzards. Deadly snow blizzards. Possible radionuclide snow blizzards as it turns out..
Too late to do anything about that now. We did eat a lot of iodine saturated wakame..raw seaweed we happened to have lots of...it is supposed to protect the thyroid somewhat as it is a natural source of stabilized iodine which protects you from the radioactive kind that was in the air for 5 days. I almost feel to leave now is sort of ridiculous. Too late. Except for the food situation of course -ongoing- and which I suppose will also be revealed as worse than they say in months or more likely years to come.We are eating imported foods, dairy products from Hokkaido and Australian or Brazilian meat which is easy to come by. Nobody dares eat sea food, and fish generally is also probably risky for some time.
Waiting anxiously now for John Beddington's assessment on the 30th. A team of nuclear scientists from Europe, he included, arrived in Japan to report on the situation to date and uncover some truths. I 'll watch the conference live or record it at least. John Beddington was one of my brother's professors at Imperial College London. He has this ability to make really complex facts and stats very easy to understand and has a kind,calm manner.Looking forward to that.
One thing I have learned is not to fear the facts; armed with them you can make much better decisions.
