Radioactive milk and spinach...just a little.

Reports from the Japanese government show that milk from cows in the Fukushima area is slightly radioactive - no surprise - but also spinach down in Ibaraki Prefecture is also slightly radioactive.  Neither case is cause for concern, according to Japanese officials.  Ibaraki is 70mi / 110km south of Fukushima, which seems disconcerting, considering that the evacuation zone was only 12mi / 20km, and US and other nations have had an expanded evacuation zone of 50mi / 80km.

According to Bloomberg/Businessweek, officials have connected power to the #5 reactor.  It should be understood, that reactors 5 and 6 were being partially cooled by diesel generators, anyway.  The greatest difficulty will be if they can power up the cooling pumps in the other four reactors, as seen in the severity in IAEA's chart.  The IAEA notes that the fuel rods in reactors 1,2 and 3 are all damaged.

* - Chart directly from IAEA's updated status, as of Saturday, March 19, 4:30 UTC (GMT).

Just a thought: Do Japanese authorities believe 12mi / 20km is the actual edge of safety, or are they taking into account an extra safety factor multiplier, of say 2.0, and therefore they actually believe anyone outside of 6mi / 10km zone around the Fukushima plant is safe? Perhaps they should have considered expanding the evacuation zone at the time they raised the rating of the ongoing crisis from a 4 to a 5, to save face.