The temperature in the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent fuel pool never exceeded 90 degrees C and the level in the pool never fell below the top of the used fuel that was stored there. The Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the people who supported his testimony to Congress on the afternoon of March 16, 2011 were dead wrong.

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Those are the conclusions that should have been announced upon completion of a paper titled _Study of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit 4 Spent-Fuel Pool_.

Be that as it may. As a layperson, I might question the wisdom in storing tons and tons of radioactive and heat-generating spent fuel for extended periods of time in an on-premise pool. But what do I know?

Wearing white protective gear and wielding sickles, officials of the Okuma town government on Oct. 10 cut and bundled rice plants grown in the no-entry zone established after last year's nuclear disaster.

The plants were cultivated on an experimental basis to determine the radiation level of rice grown in radioactively contaminated soil.

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"We cannot imagine when people of this town can return to their homes. It may be several years from now or several decades from now. But we hope that the result of this experiment will help farmers who want to return to this town to resume their farming in the future," said Kiyoyuki Matsumoto, 35, a town government official who is managing the two plots of the rice field.

Once the nuke story got running, it was unstoppable. Instead of filming endless actual suffering, photographers in Japan staked out hospitals hoping to find radiation victims to fan their virtual fire of doom. After weeks of waiting they finally got a couple of burned feet and the vision flashed around the world at light speed. Amputation footage from the real disaster would have crawled.

Over the past year, about 600,000 Japanese will have had a new cancer diagnosis caused by the normal range of lifestyle choices, environmental hazards and genetic factors. Boring.

How many people have died from the radiation released by the failures of the Fukushima Daichi reactor? Zero. “It’s a disaster”, says ACF. No it isn’t.

Last year's accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant exposed local residents to whole-body radiation doses of up to 50 millisieverts, well below the safety threshold, the World Health Organization has estimated.

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Nowhere did the whole-body dose estimate exceed the 100-millisievert limit, which poses enhanced risks of dying from cancer.

The thyroid gland dose estimate was the largest, at 100-200 millisieverts, for infants in Namie, Fukushima Prefecture. That level was lower than the average of 490 millisieverts for evacuees from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident of 1986, which caused thyroid cancer in many evacuees.

A group of baby-boomer residents from a spa resort section of the city of Fukushima is aiming to restore the area's popularity — which is suffering amid the prefecture's nuclear crisis — by introducing a geothermal power-generation system that uses water from the hot springs.

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The new system, which can utilize excess spa water, is considered to be more environmentally friendly than existing geothermal power generation systems that require large-scale plants to generate electricity from high-temperature gases deep in the ground.

In what is effectively a nationalization, the government will help avert the collapse of once-powerful Tepco, the supplier of power to almost 45 million people in and around Tokyo.

The injection of 1 trillion yen ($12.5 billion) brings total government support for the company to at least 3.5 trillion yen since the meltdowns at Fukushima in March last year, triggered by an earthquake and a tsunami.

The eventual cost of the nuclear disaster, including compensation and clean-up costs, has been estimated at more than $100 billion.

I'm surprised this didn't happen much sooner.

The Japanese government says NOT carrying out decontamination work may be an option in areas near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant where radiation readings are likely to stay high for at least a decade.

A set of photos taken near Tomioka station in Fukushima, where Yoko and I would usually catch the train after visiting mamasan.

L'accident de la centrale japonaise a provoqué la plus grande marée radioactive de l'histoire. Mais les rejets ont été presque miraculeusement dilués grâce aux très puissants courants marins qui longent la côte.

Restrictions in sizeable parts of Fukushima's evacuation area have been relaxed, enabling some residents to visit at will and work towards a permanent return. Two towns have opened, and a third will follow in two weeks' time.

At midnight on 1 April the restrictions on several areas within 20 kilometres of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were revised. A significant part of these had shown dose rates caused by ambient radioactivity to be below 20 millisieverts per year - the government's benchmark for the return.

These towns are considerably farther from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant than Okuma, where our family used to live, though.