Top news: TEPCO has announced that fuel rods in Fukushima’s number 1 reactor suffered a near complete meltdown soon after the 11 March earthquake; 3,000 tons of contaminated water is set to be dumped into Fukushima soil; educational company Scholastic used to provide biased coal-friendly lesson plans to US teachers.

 

© Clement Tang / Greenpeace

 

#Nuclear: Fukushima nuclear plant operator TEPCO admitted on May 15 that nuclear fuel at reactor 1 started melting soon after the on March 11 earthquake. "Because there is similar damage to the fuel rods at the No. 2 and 3 reactors, the bottoms of their pressure vessels could also have been damaged," as the TEPCO senior official Junichiro Matsumoto said.

3,000 tons of radioactively contaminated water has been discovered at Fukushima nuclear power plant. The contaminated water could reach the sea through the holes that the melted rods burnt through the vessel. The engineers are now saying that they can no longer flood the reactors in order to cool them, so what will be the next plan to cool down the melting material within the reactors? As Greenpeace is strongly saying these days, "the fact that TEPCO has used more than two months to confirm the complete meltdown, shows the apparent inability of the nuclear industry to face such disasters."

#Coal: Scholastic, the main producer of teaching material for classrooms in the US, was discovered providing biased lesson plans such as “The United States of Energy” in 2010. According to Greenpeace and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the material published doesn’t mention disadvantages of coal mining, such as house gases and pollution it produces. "People have fond feelings about Scholastic and were shocked they were selling their services to the coal industry" said Josh Golin, associate director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. According to The Coalblog, Scholastic’s lesson plan was sponsored by the American Coal Foundation, as well as a 2010 series of environmental lessons on land, water, air, and climate tied to the Lexus Eco Challenge, supported by car maker Toyota.