Multiple reports of "radioactive cars" from Japan include news of countries including Jamaica, the Netherlands, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia detecting them and returning them to Japan. Russia reports a sharp decline in radioactive objects seized by customs since 2011. In April 2011, the European Union established a "safe" level of radiation (above background radiation) for all ships coming from Japan. This level is slightly lower than the "safe" level of radiation exposure Japan has set for the Fukushima region. The European limit is non-binding and may or may not be implemented by individual countries at their ports.
South Korea continues to ban the import of fish from Fukushima prefecture and seven other prefectures around the site of the multi-meltdowns that have contaminated the Pacific Ocean continuously, at varying intensities, since March 2011.
The Unit 4 fuel pool, teetering about 100 feet above ground, has been about 77% emptied since the fall of 2013. Japan's NRA announced on August 6 "that 1,188 out of a total of 1,533 spent and unirradiated (sic) fuel assemblies in the Unit 4 Spent Fuel Pool at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station have been transferred to the Common Spent Fuel Pool on site," a safer location. Removal was suspended July 1 for legally required maintenance that is expected to last into early September.
Three former TEPCO executives should face criminal prosecution for their failure to take action to prepare the Fukushima plant to survive the likelihood of earthquake or tsunami, an 11-member independent judicial panel of Japanese citizens concluded August 5. In 2013 the Tokyo prosecutor decided not to prosecute any TEPCO officials, saying the disaster was unforeseeable. The panel decision requires the Tokyo prosecutor to re-open the investigation and its decision is expected in about three months, when it will be reviewed by the panel.
TEPCO did not respond to warnings in 1990 by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in a report first circulated in draft form in 1987. According to Bloomberg in March 2011, the NRC report reviewed reactors of the same design as those at Fukushima and "identified earthquake-induced diesel generator failure and power outage leading to failure of cooling systems as one of the 'most likely causes' of nuclear accidents from an external event" -- which is what happened at Fukushima 20 years later. Bloomberg added:
"The 40-year-old Fukushima plant was hit by Japan's strongest earthquake on record March 11 only to have its power and cooling systems knocked out by the 7-meter (23-foot) tsunami that followed. Lacking power to cool reactors, engineers vented radioactive steam to release pressure, leading to as many as four explosions that blew out containment walls at the plant 135 miles (220 kilometers) north of the capital.
While the appropriate measures that should have been implemented are still to be evaluated, more extensive waterproofing of the underground portion of the reactor could have helped prevent the cooling systems' failure, said [a nuclear researcher], who questions the use of nuclear power in Japan because of its seismic activity."
There were earlier warnings as well, as reported in March 2011 by BBC filmmaker Adam Curtis:
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