The operator of Japan's crippled, radiation-spewing Fukushima nuclear plant is admitting another tank holding highly contaminated water has sprung a leak.  This comes as Japan’s most-popular Prime Minister of recent decades has changed his mind about nuclear power.

Junichiro Koizumi once pledged to create “a nation built on nuclear power”.  But in a speech in Nagoya on Tuesday, Koizumi shocked the pro-nuclear audience by saying that Japan should rid itself of its atomic plants and switch to renewable energy sources like solar power.  He says he changed his mind because of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.  Koizumi was prime minister from 2001-2006, a time when Japan was beginning to reverse the moribund economic crash of the 1990s.

On the other side of the coin, Japan’s number one fast food chain announced it will source ingredients just 80 kilometers from the scene of the triple meltdown.

Yoshinoya serves Gyudon, a beef-on-rice concoction that sated generations of hungry workers and students.  Now, the company says it will harvest rice and vegetable produce from local farmers in the prefecture, forming the “Yoshinoya Farm Fukushima”.

But every piece of news coming from the scene of the Fukushima disaster gets worse.  Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) admits another tank holding highly contaminated water is leaking; and that tank contains water 200,000 Becquerels per liter of beta-emitting radioactive isotopes including strontium 90, which causes bone cancer.  The legal limit for strontium 90 is 30 Becquerels per liter.  With a half-life of more than 28 years, it’s going to be there for quite a long time.