Whats new with Japan?

Question:

It seems (at least for me) that the News has stopped broadcasting Japan's progress of recovering from the tsunami. Yeah, it did happen two months ago, but still, I'm curious. What has been going on? Did they ever fix the radiation leakage? And how are the houses/buildings doing? I know the tower of Tokyo was bent from the tsunami/earthquake. Have they caught back up with the **** load of donations they received? I know some things were contaminated there as well, I think milk, right? My prayers go out to Japan and hope they are doing good.

Answer:

People are still in shelters and there's a long way to go. The government is working on building temporary houses for those in shelters. As far as the Nuclear Plants go, they are trying to make progress, but as they keep going, they find some new problem somewhere. TEPCO is trying to follow its 6-9 month plan with the Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 1 as strictly as possible. Although, there are a lot of obstacles in their way. They are trying to reach a "cold shutdown." They should be able to achieve this by the end of this year or maybe the beginning of next year. Also, "International experts have said that a workforce in the hundreds or even thousands would take years or decades to clean up the area. John Price, a former member of the Safety Policy Unit at the UK's National Nuclear Corporation, has said that it 'might be 100 years before melting fuel rods can be safely removed from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant.'" This is most likely the case, because the isotopes in the rods have very long half lives so, they stay active for a long period of time. The country has been taking serious precautions to prevent situations like this occurring again. Recently, on May 6, Naoto Kan apparently ordered a shut down of the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant because, they have predicted that within the next 30 years there will be an earthquake there 8.0 or maybe even higher. I think the country will be able to get out of this situation as soon as possible. Japan owns 75% of the Westinghouse Nuclear division, about 37% of General Electric, and they own Hitachi and Toshiba. I know that we have more nuclear power plants in the U.S. compared to France and Japan but, Japan has more expertise when it comes to Nuclear Power. The most recent issue in our country is that about 70 new built nuclear plants in the U.S. were designed by Westinghouse, the same structure was used in the Fukushima Daiichi Plant 1 so, they might endure similar damage if we ever got hit by a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami. However the chances for that are slim. France has a higher chance of facing this issue because, France uses 86% of Nuclear Power for electricity and they have reactors by the sea like Japan, and they are all structured by Westinghouse.