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I remember watching the vid posted here showing a tyvek-clad monk's initiative to go around neighborhoods in Fukushima with his friends offering decontamination. The lady of the house next door ambivalently questioned the presence of the guys in her street because it looked bad for the neighborhood.

...in that vein, lilly asked the other day whether the public (military) efforts at decontamination make sense. I believe they do, because they will inevitably demonstrate the limitations of the effort.

Scouring radioactive waste usually means just that. Scrub with soap and water, pails and brushes. Repeat. If it sounds messy, it is—and dangerous too for those exposed to dust and contaminated wastewater.

Hawaii-based CBI Polymers says it's come up with a better way to clean up nuclear waste. The firm's blue goo may not look high-tech; all you do is pour it. But as the superabsorbent goo gels, its molecules act as a sponge, binding and encapsulating radioactive molecules. Peel the film off and you've got lightweight waste that can be rolled up and disposed of more cheaply and easily than vats of toxic water.

"It's the same concept as Silly Putty. It gets into every pore, nook, and cranny," says the Department of Energy's Hector Rodriguez, who used it to sop up beryllium, a hazardous metal, left over from weapons research at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Oregon. The yearlong project cut the labor used in such efforts by 70 percent.

This year CBI donated 500 gallons to the nuclear cleanup in Japan, where it decontaminated 25,000 square feet of walls, sidewalks, and playgrounds. It's also good on toxic PCBs, asbestos, and heavy metals like mercury—on everything from battleships to power plants—as well as nonindustrial messes. That's heavy-duty work for such humble-looking goo. —Gretchen Parker
ngm.nationalgeographic.com

CBI Polymers: decongel.com

and additionally, the tubes seen in the Unit-3 video are silver, seeming to rule them out as spent-fuel tubes.

Is anyone aware that the 20 mSv/y "safety limit" is also a compensation limit, such that only properties contaminated over 20 mSv/y will be compensated?

@Peter, when I reviewed the Chernobyl health-impact literature, I found that research on the effects of Chernobyl fallout was most dramatic wrt fetal-brain development in the gestational period of 8-16 weeks following the the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl. In this narrow range, the set of all available studies clearly weighed in favor of an effect. I've made some headway on a video about this.

@lillymunster, exactly! It follows logically that 20 mSv/y is a compensation limit too, as it's saying no harm was done to your property if the nuclear fallout dumped on it was below that level. And that's indicated in this statement: "National and prefectural governments have determined that until the 20 millisieverts level they are not obligated to offer financial support to residents, certain businesses or schools wanting to relocate outside the irradiated areas." globalspin.blogs.time.com

@lillymunster, and this compensation aspect puts a decidedly ugly spin on the 20 mSv/y limit, that it's probably more to do with money than any honest reading of health science.

At least 462 trillion becquerels of radioactive strontium have leaked to the Pacific Ocean since the March.

ajw.asahi.com

Japan refugees in New Zealand: Family’s health suffering — Diarrhea, chest problems, swollen glands — “Many of her friends and family back in Fukushima have similar symptoms”. www.odt.co.nz

SNL mocks Fukushima — Shows radioactive monkeys replacing Godzilla (VIDEO) enenews.com

@lillymunster, someone posted this page that says SFP3 had 52 Unirradiated Fuel Assemblies www.iaea.org This seems to support the possibility that the silver objects might be fuel tubes.