Japan's nuclear safety agency today rejected a claim in British newspaper The Independent that the earthquake itself, not the subsequent tsunami, destroyed cooling systems leading to meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

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An IAEA spokesman said that a report from the mission – led by Mike Weightman the UK's chief inspector of nuclear installations – contains detailed accounts of the failure of cooling systems in the early hours of the disaster which challenge the idea that the quake caused the damage, as claimed in The Independent.

Meanwhile, TEPCO said on Wednesday that overall radiation released from the three damaged Fukushima reactors is now a 10-millionth of peak levels recorded on 15 March, just after the accident.

What really happened at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant to cause a meltdown? TEPCO and the government of Japan have provided many explanations. They don't make sense. The one thing they haven't provided is the truth. It's time that they did.

ふくいちライブカメラ: A live webcam overlooking the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

So, let’s suppose the whole of Japan was covered in caesium-137 to give everybody a dose similar to the helicopter crews flying over the Chernobyl reactor core. Let’s further suppose that there was subsequently a tripling of leukemia rates throughout the whole of Japan.

What are we up to? I’ve postulated a ridiculous worst case scenario over a ridiculously large area causing a rate of leukemia way above anything actually measured. The result would be that leukemia would rise to about 13 cases per 100,000 people per year. This is about half the rate of bowel cancer increase that has afflicted the country as a result of shifting from their traditional diet to one with more red and processed meat. It’s about a third of the male rate of bowel cancer.

This article has an idiotic title and, like so many other reports on Fukushima lately, contains a hefty dose of alarmist bullshit, but it also brings up a very valid issue: that of Tepco trying to escape its responsibility and generally pinch pennies by using subcontractors instead of employees, both in its cleanup efforts and in its daily operations.

Job offers come not from TEPCO but from Mizukami Kogyo, a company whose business is construction and cleaning maintenance. The description indicates only that the work is at a nuclear plant in Fukushima prefecture. The job is specified as three hours per day at an hourly wage of 10,000 yen (about US$122). There is no information about danger, only the suggestion to ask the employer for further details on food, lodging, transportation and insurance.

Those who answer these offers may have little awareness of the dangers and they are likely to have few other job opportunities.

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).