The cap has been one of the most contentious issues in the talks. Tepco and its creditor banks have argued for a limit on compensation, warning that without one Tepco's credit ratings could be cut to junk, making it impossible for the utility to raise funds, sources say.

The decision on who bears compensation costs will hinge in part on the interpretation of Japanese law, which states that a nuclear plant operator can be granted an exemption from paying damages if an accident was caused by "a grave natural disaster of an exceptional character".

Edano has repeatedly said he does not believe the accident at Tepco's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant should qualify for that exemption. On Monday he reiterated that stance and said Tepco should not be offered the relief of a payment ceiling.

I don't think Tepco has done much to deserve anyone's sympathy, so I say, bleed her dry!

Tetsunari Iida, a former nuclear engineer who currently heads the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, says that the industry is dominated by a closely-knit nuclear establishment. Those who graduate from universities and graduate from schools with degrees in nuclear power engineering go on to work at power companies, energy-related manufacturers, or municipalities that host nuclear power stations. Everything comes down to personal networks, and who the graduating students go on to work for is largely influenced by the connections and interests of the students' professors. Regardless of whether the employers are public or private organizations, the newly inducted engineers are raised to become full-fledged members of the nuclear establishment.

Tepco's photos and video clips from inside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Taking Randall Munroe’s excellent Radiation Dose Chart and a Japanese-language version of the same as our data sources, we have visualised radiation doses as spheres (the shaded orange disc above). Each sphere has a volume that is directly proportional to the radiation dose it depicts (1µSv ≈ 16.14cm3). The spheres are shown next to a human figure, adding a human dimension to the comparison while also establishing the scale of each view (we have assumed a height of the figure of 175cm, which is fairly average for an adult male).

The Japanese government has ordered the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to pay households evacuated from the area surrounding the complex one million yen each (about $12,000), a top official said Friday morning.

...

Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Banri Kaieda said Friday that evacuees from within a 30-kilometer radius around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will receive preliminary compensation soon. He said that Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, has so far prepared 50 billion yen ($600 million) in cash for preliminary compensation.

It was deserted. It was eerie. There was still food on tables; slippers in the doorways of people’s houses; packs of dogs running around on the streets. Maybe the eeriest thing is in the mud left from the receding tsunami water: footprints everywhere. You could literally see where people had left their homes and left abandoned cars and walked through the mud and left town.

Here are the graphs depicting the evolution of the main parameters of Fukushima NPP1 reactors (unit1 to unit3) since the accident. . Data is taken directly from NISA’s press releases, and can also be retrieved on the following online Excel workbook. The later will always have the latest data, but I’ll add periodic snapshots to this post for those that can’t view it.

But this does not mean Fukushima is now on a par with Chernobyl. Indeed, as Bloomberg notes, the data so far suggests that Fukushima has released only one-tenth as much radioactive material as Chernobyl did.

It's also important to note that the upgrading does not mean that the situation is getting worse. Rather, it is a reassessment of what has already happened. The largest releases of radioactive material occurred in the first days after the earthquake, and the amount released every day has generally been decreasing as various leaks have been plugged.

One way of looking at the drama that has unfolded around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors is as a narrative with one central plot, and a number of sub-plots distracting the attention.