But increasingly they are fed up with the shroud of secrecy thrown over the Fukushima plant and the abandoned towns and villages where families had lived for centuries.

The explosion that occurred at Fukushima Daiichi Saturday was not a meltdown itself—it was in another part of the building, according to Japanese officials, anyway.

The mass beside the atom; the strip of ruined wall and the broken bowl,--threatening fraternization of every sort of rubbish. Sisyphus had thrown his rock there and Job his potsherd.