March 14, Monday - 4

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quote
March 13, evening
While images of brutal destruction wreaked by a devastating earthquake and tsunami have stunned the nation and the world, Japanese are finding both inspiration and reasons to vent in the aftermath of the disaster.

One sentiment that is emerging is that such a calamitous event could occur again at any time, in any place.

"We don't know when it will happen to us," said Masatoshi Masuda, 52, a seal carver in the southwest city of Kagoshima, far from the deadly, three-meter-high waves that surged across farmland, villages and cities in Japan's northeast Friday.

Masuda noted that an active volcano, Mount Sakurajima, spews ash onto Kagoshima almost daily. And not far away is Shinmoedake, another volcano that began erupting in late January in its most significant activity in some 300 years.

A clearer picture of the deaths from the massive quake was emerging with estimates reaching at least 10,000, and damage at least in the tens of billions of dollars.
source : news.yahoo.com

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During an evening news report on TV, prime minister Kan talked about the dangers, but not full meltdowt of the reactors, it still seemed under some sort of control, although radioactivity was leaking.
He also warned of cuts in electricity, since the the reactors were gone, probably not to be repaired. Northern Japan uses a different kind of electricty voltage than we in the West, so they cannot simply sap it from here.

Food, gasoline and other stuff were slowly coming to an end in many stores, since the supply via the sea was cut off completely, no airport open and the highways mostly closed.

People were making emergency buys of cup ramen soup and stuff, while gasolin stands put up the sing "No more".

And another cold night was ahead for all.

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Monday, March 14


no words
no words today
no words



Earthquake M 6.2, 2011年3月14日　10:14


quote
Japan fights to avert nuclear meltdown after quake
A grim-faced Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the world's third biggest economy faced rolling blackouts as it reopens for business Monday, while officials confirmed three nuclear reactors were at risk of overheating, raising fears of an uncontrolled radiation leak.

"The earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear incident have been the biggest crisis Japan has encountered in the 65 years since the end of World War Two," Kan told a news conference.

"We're under scrutiny on whether we, the Japanese people, can overcome this crisis."

Broadcaster NHK, quoting a police official, said more than 10,000 people may have been killed as the wall of water triggered by Friday's 8.9-magnitude quake surged across the coastline, reducing whole towns to rubble.

Kyodo news agency said 80,000 people had been evacuated from a 20-km (12-mile) radius around a stricken nuclear plant, joining more than 450,000 other evacuees from quake and tsunami-hit areas in the northeast of the main island Honshu.

Almost 2 million households were without power in the freezing north, the government said. There were about 1.4 million without running water.

The most urgent crisis centers on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex , where all three reactors were threatening to overheat, and where authorities said they had been forced to vent radioactive steam into the air to relieve reactor pressure.

The complex, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, was rocked by an explosion Saturday, which blew the roof off a reactor building. The government did not rule out further blasts there but said this would not necessarily damage the reactor vessels.

"Radiation has been released in the air, but there are no reports that a large amount was released," Jiji news agency quoted him as saying. "This is fundamentally different from the Chernobyl accident."

ECONOMIC IMPACT
When we talk about natural disasters, we tend to see an initial sharp drop in production... then you tend to have a V-shaped rebound.

The earthquake was the fifth most powerful to hit the world in the past century. It surpassed the Great Kanto quake of September 1, 1923, which had a magnitude of 7.9 and killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo area.

The 1995 Kobe quake killed 6,000 and caused $100 billion in damage, the most expensive natural disaster in history. Economic damage from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was estimated at about $10 billion.
source : news.yahoo.com

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Tokyo and Kanto without electricity

Imagine sitting in a highrise building in greater Tokyo area

now switch off all electricity ... no running tab water, no toilet flushing, no aircon for heating or cooling, no TV, no icebox or refrigerator working, no elevater down, no telephone working (mostly not even the handies), no automatic doors moving

if you make it down, chaos on the streets (unless folks stay home) with no traffic lights working ... no vending maschines working

This will happen soon ...

TV is running timetables for the blackout ...


This should provide some info in English about the balckouts in most prefectures around Tokyo, in the greater Kanto regon
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html


and in Japanese
http://www.tepco.co.jp/index-j.html


Here in Western Japan, we should be all right, I keep my fingers crossed, but my heart is with all the people up there.

The TV coverage of more damage is still so shocking ... even some reporters shed tears as they walk through the debris in close-up ...

source : Gabi on facebook

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watching NHK NEWS

. . . . . At 11:00

The power is back in Kanto.
Many trains are cancelled, electricity has been saved enough for today.

also at 11:10
A tsunami has been seen from a helicopter near Fukushima ... should hit in about 10 minutes.

at 11:15
The third atomic reactor has exploded his hood, like the first one ...
They say it is only a "harmless" hydrogen explosion because of high pressure.
About 600 people within the 20 km zone around the plant should remain inside for now.

The news caster can not speak fast enough to bring all the warnings ...

at 11:25
The tsunami did not YET come and is called off.
There was also no earthquake.

12:15The leak at the reactor produced
20 micro Sievert シーベルト.
There have been 11 people injured by the explosion.


Kilometers of distance from the reactors


12:00 NEWS
quote 　　
Japan's chief cabinet secretary says a hydrogen explosion has occurred at Unit 3 of Japan's stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. The blast was similar to an earlier one at a different unit of the facility.

Yukio Edano says people within a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius were ordered inside following Monday's. AP journalists felt the explosion 30 miles (50 kilometers) away.

Edano says the reactor's inner containment vessel holding nuclear rods is intact, allaying some fears of the risk to the environment and public.

The No. 3 Unit reactor had been under emergency watch for a possible explosion as pressure built up there following a hydrogen blast Saturday in the facility's Unit 1.

More than 180,000 people have evacuated the area.
source : news.yahoo.com



. . . . . 12:40
More than 1000 dead bodies have been discovered.
Raising the number of dead and missing to 4700.


. . . . . 13:30

quote
A hydrogen explosion rocked the earthquake-stricken nuclear plant in Japan where authorities have been working desperately to avert a meltdown, compounding a nuclear catastrophe caused by Friday's massive quake and tsunami.

The core container was intact, Jiji news agency said, quoting the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), but the local government warned those still in the 20-km (13-mile) evacuation zone to stay indoors. Seven people, six of them soldiers, were missing in the blast.

Kyodo news agency said 2,000 bodies had been found on Monday on the shores of Miyagi prefecture, which took the brunt of the tsunami.
source : news.yahoo.com


. . . . . 14:30
According to NHK news, no high levels of radiation are measured, now four hours after the explosion.

1600 persons confirmed dead, 10000 are not accounted for.
43.0000 people are now living in shelters.


. . . . . 15:17　15時17分
Earthquake M 6.3 in Fukushima, Coast 福島県沖

BLACKOUT
Energy will be stopped in Group 5 in Kanto from 5 to 7 tonight.
They say in some parts, all is very unclear.
What do people do who care for an ill person at home and need electricity?


. . . . . 15:40
The atom reactor Number 2 is now also in danger, the cooling system does not work any more.
The Geiger Counter in Tokyo showed 12.33 cpm (normal).


. . . . . 15:55
Earthquake M 5.2 in Fukushima, Coast 福島県沖

Many people in Tokyo try to buy a bicycle to commute.

Stores all over Japan keep the lights down and try to save energy.



evening 21:00

quote
Japan scrambled to avert a meltdown at a stricken nuclear plant on Monday after a hydrogen explosion at one reactor and exposure of fuel rods at another, just days after a devastating earthquake and tsunami that killed at least 10,000 people.

Roads and rail, power and ports have been crippled across much of Japan's northeast and estimates of the cost of the multiple disasters have leapt to as much as $170 billion. Analysts said the economy could even tip back into recession.

Japanese stocks closed down more than 7.5 percent, wiping $287 billion off market capitalization in the biggest fall since the height of the global financial crisis in 2008.

Rescue workers combed the tsunami-battered region north of Tokyo for survivors and struggled to care for millions of people without power and water in what Prime Minister Naoto Kan has dubbed his country's worst crisis since World War Two.
"It's a scene from hell, absolutely nightmarish,"

Jiji news agency said fuel rods at the No. 2 reactor had been entirely exposed and a fuel rod meltdown could not be ruled out. The plant operator confirmed there was little water left in the reactor. The explosion happened at the No. 3 reactor, two days after a blast at the No. 1 reactor.
Crucially, officials said the thick walls around the radioactive cores of the damaged reactors appeared to be intact after the earlier hydrogen blast.

"This is nothing like a Chernobyl ... At Chernobyl (in Ukraine in 1986) you had no containment structure -- when it blew, it blew everything straight out into the atmosphere."

Almost 2 million households were without power in the north, the government said. There were about 1.4 million without running water. Tens of thousands of people are missing.
source : news.yahoo.com


quote
The quake caused Japan's main island to shift 2.5 meters (8 feet) and moved the earth's axis 10 cm (2.5 inches), geologists say. The question now is whether the catastrophe will spur other seismic changes in Japan, which has yet to emerge from its "lost decades" of stagnant growth, aging population, and loss of international prestige following the collapse of the Japanese asset bubble in the early 1990s.

If any country is prepared to cope with an earthquake, it is Japan.
Earthquakes are a way of life in Japan, occurring on average every five minutes.

The tsunami, a Japanese word meaning "harbor wave," surged through towns and cities, bulldozing everything in its path. A large freight ship was sitting incongruously in the streets of Kesennuma in hard-hit Miyagi prefecture. A wrecked airplane lay nose-deep in the rubble of homes in the port of Sendai.

Many of the survivors appeared middle aged or elderly, reflecting Japan's aging demographic, particularly in rural areas where the average age of farmers is about 66.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
Any dividend from reconstruction and reform looked distant on Monday. Japanese stocks fell 7.6 percent, on track for the biggest daily loss since October 2008, and bond yields rose as investors expected the disaster to take a huge economic toll and require heavy government borrowing.

A hydrogen explosion on Monday at the number 3 reactor raised concern the crisis is escalating, but experts insist a Chernobyl-style nuclear disaster can be averted.
source : news.yahoo.com



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INFO

Sievert
The sievert (symbol: Sv) is the SI derived unit of dose equivalent.
It attempts to reflect the biological effects of radiation as opposed to the physical aspects, which are characterised by the absorbed dose, measured in gray. It is named after Rolf Sievert, a Swedish medical physicist famous for work on radiation dosage measurement and research into the biological effects of radiation.

The equivalent dose to a tissue is found by multiplying the absorbed dose, in gray, by a dimensionless "quality factor" Q, dependent upon radiation type, and by another dimensionless factor N, dependent on all other pertinent factors.
An older unit of the equivalent dose is the rem (Röntgen equivalent man).

1 Sv = 100 rem
1 mSv = 100 mrem = 0.1 rem
©　More in the WIKIPEDIA !


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Gabi, thank you for your concerns.
TEPCO said yesterday we are to have black outs, but they have changed their mind. We've been supplied with electricity. We feel sorry, for they have no electricity, no foods, no water in the Tohoku Region. The train services are in disorer; they announced they would not run trains except the Yamanote Line and some line. They announced no bullet trains would be running. They could, however, run them, since electricity is available.
It could be confusing!

source : Mariko from facebook


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A haiku friend from America wrote

Spring morning -
waking to discover
we're eight feet closer



. . . . . another friend wrote


holding hands
in the worst winter ...
first snowdrops

ps ... This poem is about the world holding hands ... as friends ...during this terrible crisis; and, it's about "new growth" and "new beginning" that always follows such rough times (such rough winters). It's a poem of hope. It's for you and yours, personally ... :) ... from me.


. . . . .


My Haiku in Russian

God of Earthquakes -
what does it take
to keep you quiet?

Бог землетрясений --
что ещё тебе нужно
чтоб ты успокоился?

source : Origa on Livejournal


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External LINKS

John wrote:
I want to show everyone the news media we are being presented with here in Japan. I think it's quite different from what you see on CNN and other Western news outlets. One thing about Japan--there are professional cameramen EVERYWHERE! It reminds me of the Vietnam war, and how it was the first time the US got real-time, color footage of a war zone. Since the quake, we've had lots of steady, HD video playing non-stop, showing you exactly what it would be like to witness the disaster first hand. Watch it in full-screen, and please share on your wall!!
Tsunami Footage from Japan . on facebook


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