John Keats' Death Mask

Friday Morning EDT/
Friday Evening Japan Time
Calamity Update

With the words of the poet John Keats 
31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821

He died a poet's death,

In his quarters near the Spanish Steps,

Wracked with consumption, 

Coughing up his lungs,

Begging for withheld opium. 

Keats' epitaph:

"Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

TEPCO said it will build a 15 meter seawall around its Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant northeast of Tokyo. 

The idea is to protect the complex's seven nuclear plants from a future tsunami. Three of the seven reactors have been shut down since a 2007 earthquake caused damage which caused radiation leaks.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness.
-Endymion

Japan expanded the evacuation zone around Fukushima Daiichi beyond the original 20 kilometers to areas as  far as 50 kilometers today as former residents of previously evacuated areas demanded to return.

Masataka Shimizu, the president of the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), today apologized again to Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato for "causing great trouble". This was the first meeting between the two. Shimizu had twice before refused to see Sato. 

O magic sleep! 

O comfortable bird,

That broodest o’er the troubled sea of the mind

Till it is hush’d and smooth! 
- Endymion

Japan proposed spending $50 billion to start building 100,000 temporary homes to house persons displaced by nuclear radiation, the tsunami and the earthquake. 

The Lamia, 1909, Herbert James Draper
In her more comely form. 

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd;
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolv'd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries -
So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries,
She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.
 -Lamia

Japan Prime Minister Naoto Kan visited people in evacuation shelters today and found them reaching the limit of their patience. The Mainichi Daily News describes the scene:
"Kan first visited the Tamura city gymnasium where residents, mainly of Okuma, have been taking shelter. When he was about to leave the evacuation center after spending about 10 minutes there, some evacuees angrily shouted out, "Leaving already?" One evacuee told the prime minister, "You should try living here." "If you're going to visit evacuation centers, you should talk to everyone there," said another."

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
- Ode To A Grecian Urn


There seems to be a difference of opinion on how much radioactivity is reaching the United States. This angry commentary from The Alameda Sun is an example of what happens when scientists put their interests before facts. People cease to believe scientists for good reason.

I don't know about Alameda Sun readers, but I think it is criminally irresponsible for Vetter, a nuclear scientist, to lie to us about the safety and amount of radiation he is measuring, and that the public is being exposed to. Radiation is cumulative, is much more dangerous when it is ingested than when it is outside of you, and Vetter's own tests have shown the levels to be 181 times the MCLs on March 23.
And no, the levels will not be going down, as the Fukushima plant is now a permanent hot spot on this planet that will continue to spew every form of isotope imaginable, including the deadliest of all, plutonium.





Helen says Fukushima Daiichi is  worse than you think.