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Ash cloud moves towards UK airspace

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/23/ash-cloud-moves-towards-uk-airspace

Ash from Iceland’s Grimsvötn volcano could affect Heathrow by the end of the weekThis article titled “Ash cloud moves towards UK airspace” was written by Dan Milmo and Adam Gabbatt, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 23rd May 2011 10.04 UTCAirlines and airports have been warned to expect ash from an erupting Icelandic volcano to arrive in UK airspace by Tuesday, with the possibility that it could affect Heathrow airport by the end of the week.The safety watchdog for British airlines and airports, the Civil Aviation Authority, said today that particles from the Grimsvötn volcano could reach Scotland by midnight tonight and western England by Thursday or Friday, depending on wind direction.If airspace in western England, Ireland and the Atlantic is affected by the smoke plume transatlantic flights in and out of Heathrow could suffer delays later this week as planes are diverted around the most dense parts of the cloud.However, the Civil Aviation Authority said it was confident that a new Europe-wide safety regime introduced after the Eyjafjallajökull eruption last year would reduce disruption significantly and avoid the continental shutdown that stranded millions. Under the new operating procedures, it is understood that the effect of last year’s plume on commercial routes would have been 75% smaller.Nonetheless, some disruption is expected as airplanes divert around the heaviest parts of the cloud. According to the latest forecasts, Inverness and Aberdeen are the most likely airports to suffer disruption tomorrow, although the most accurate estimates can only predict six hours ahead.“Our number one priority is to ensure the safety of people both on board aircraft and on the ground. We can’t rule out disruption, but the new arrangements that have been put in place since last year’s ash cloud mean the aviation sector is better prepared and will help to reduce any disruption in the event that volcanic ash affects UK airspace,” said Andrew Haines, CAA chief executive.Under previous guidelines, aircraft were summarily grounded if there was any volcanic ash in the air. Now, airlines can fly through ash plumes if they can demonstrate that their fleets can handle medium or high-level densities of ash.The Met Office’s volcanic ash advisory centre will identify the density and location of the cloud, aided by satellite images, weather balloons and a radar specially installed for monitoring purposes in Iceland last year. Once those zones are relayed to airlines, they will need to prove that they can fly through them by producing “safety cases” that will include information from aircraft and engine manufacturers on the airline’s tolerance to volcanic ash.A CAA spokesman said all major UK airlines already had safety preparations for medium-density ash clouds.“We are in a much better position than last time,” he said. “Safety will still be paramount but we will be able to drastically reduce disruption compared to last time, provided there is not a huge amount of high-density ash.” The spokesman said a similar level of ash to the Eyjafjallajökull incident would not result in a mass-grounding. “It will be a different picture.” However, jets will have to divert around high-density clouds, causing delays on some routes, because no UK airline has submitted a safety case for flying through heavy ash plumes.BAA, the owner of Heathrow, Stansted, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen airports, has convened a crisis support team to prepare for a reduction in flights, as airlines and airports await a further briefing from Eurocontrol and the UK air traffic controller, Nats. “We are working closely with the CAA and Nats in preparing contingency plans if ash enters UK airspace,” it said.Under the new ash guidelines, cloud densities are split into three levels: low, medium and high. Once the Met Office assigns a particular density of ash to a section of airspace, airlines must prove they have the safety case to fly through it. A low density cloud is 2g of ash per 10 cubic metres of air, with medium being 2g to 4g of ash per 10 cubic metres. Anything above 4g is deemed high density.The Grimsvötn volcano began erupting on Sunday, causing flights to be cancelled at Iceland’s main Keflavik airport after it sent a plume of ash, smoke and steam 12 miles into the air. Experts have said the eruption was unlikely to have the dramatic impact that the Eyjafjallajökull volcano had in April 2010.“At the moment if the volcano continues to erupt to the same level it has been, and is now, the UK could be at risk of seeing volcanic ash later this week,” said Helen Chivers, a Met Office spokeswoman. “Quite when and how much we can’t really define at the moment.”She said the weather situation was likely to be different from last year, with the wind direction set to change continuously. She added: “If it moves in the way that we’re currently looking, with the eruption continuing the way it is, then if the UK is at risk later this week, then France and Spain could be as well.”While the ash has grounded aircraft in Iceland, it is not anticipated that it will have a similar impact in the rest of Europe.Dr Dave McGarvie, volcanologist at the Open University, said the amount of ash reaching the UK was “likely to be less than in the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption”, and the last two times Grimsvötn erupted it had not affected UK air travel.“In addition, the experience gained from the 2010 eruption, especially by the Met Office, the airline industry, and the engine manufacturers, should mean less disruption to travellers,” he said.The eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in south-east Iceland in April 2010 caused the worst disruption to international air travel since 9/11. Flights across Europe were cancelled for six days, stranding tens of thousands of people, and the eruption was estimated to have cost airlines £130m a day.Eurocontrol said in a statement: “There is currently no impact on European or transatlantic flights and the situation is expected to remain so for the next 24 hours. Aircraft operators are constantly being kept informed of the evolving situation.” guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogAsh cloud moves towards UK airspaceRelated posts:How to pronounce EyjafjallajoekullAsh Grounds Planes, Rest Of World Cut OffTag Cloud
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May 23 2011, 4:09pm | Comments »
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Japan hit by earthquake and tsunami warning

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/07/japan-hit-by-earthquake-and-tsunami-warning

In Japan, an alert for tsunami wave of up to two metres has been issued for the area affected by last month’s big earthquake.

This article titled “Japan hit by earthquake and tsunami warning” was written by James Meikle, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 7th April 2011 15.59 UTC A 7.4 magnitude earthquake has stuck off the north-eastern coast of Japan, triggering a tsunami alert. The warning has been issued in the same area where thousands of lives were lost last month after a magnitude 9 quake and tsunami which damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The Japan meteorological agency issued a warning for a wave of up to two metres in a coastal area devastated by last month’s tsunami. Officials say Thursday’s quake, which happened late at night local time, hit 25 miles under water off the coast of Miyagi prefecture. People in the area were told to “evacuate immediately” to a safe place away from the shore. Announcers on Japan’s public broadcaster NHK told coastal residents to go to higher ground away from the shore. A wave of up to half a metre was expected in neighbouring provinces. Buildings in Tokyo, more than 200 miles away, shook for about a minute. The US Geological Survey gave the preliminary magnitude as 7.4 and said the quake was off the eastern coast 60 miles from Sendai and 90 miles from Fukushima. Hundred of aftershocks have followed the 11 March quake but few have been stronger than magnitude 7. Officials at the Fukushima plant said there was no immediate sign of new problems.

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April 7 2011, 11:06am | Comments »
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Radioactive water from Japan’s Fukushima plant is leaking into sea

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/02/radioactive-water-from-japans-fukushima-plant-is-leaking-into-sea

Tepco officials say that a 20cm crack found in a containment pit under reactor two may be source of radioactive water from Japan‘s Fukushima plant leaking into the sea.

This article titled “Radioactive water from Japan’s Fukushima plant is leaking into sea” was written by David Batty and agencies, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 2nd April 2011 12.14 UTC Radioactive water from Japan’s quake-striken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is leaking into the sea, its operator said. The 20cm (8in) crack in a containment pit under reactor two may be the source of recent radiation in coastal waters, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) officials said. Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said Tepco was planning to pour concrete into the pit to seal the crack, which may have been leaking since the magnitude 9.0 earthquake three weeks ago. “This could be one of the sources of seawater contamination,” Nishiyama said. “There could be other similar cracks in the area, and we must find them as quickly as possible.” Readings released on Saturday showed radiation in seawater had spread to 25 miles (40km) south of the plant. The concentration of iodine there was twice the legal limit, but officials stressed it was still well below levels that are dangerous to human health. The announcement of the radioactive leak came as Japan’s prime minister Naoto Kan surveyed the damage in the town of Rikuzentakata, which was gutted by the devastating tsunami that hit the country following the quake. The prime minister bowed his head for a minute of silence in front of the town hall, one of the few buildings still standing, which has all its windows blown out and debris piled up in front of it. “The government fully supports you until the end,” Kan later told 250 people at an elementary school that is serving as an evacuation centre. He met with the town’s mayor, Megumi Shimanuki, whose 38-year-old wife was swept away in the wave and is still missing. Shimanuki, whose family is living in a similar shelter 100 miles (160km) away in Natori, said Kan did not spend enough time with people on the ground. “The government has been too focused on the Fukushima power plant rather than the tsunami victims,” said Shimanuki, 35. “Both deserve attention.” One member of the power plant crew described difficult conditions inside the complex in an interview in the Mainichi newspaper. He said the plant has run out of the nylon protective booties that workers put over their shoes. “We only put something like plastic garbage bags you can buy at a convenience store and sealed them with masking tape,” said the anonymous worker. He added that the grounds of the power plant were littered with dead fish churned up by the tsunami. Japanese media reported that nuclear workers had been offered up to 400,000 yen (£3,000) a day to work inside the crippled reactors. Before the crisis some contract workers were reportedly being paid as little as 10,000 to 20,000 yen (£75 to £150) a day. Three weeks after the tsunami more than 165,000 people are living in shelters, while 260,000 households still do not have running water and 170,000 do not have electricity.

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April 2 2011, 2:40pm | Comments »
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Japanese nuclear firm admits error on radiation reading

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/28/japanese-nuclear-firm-admits-error-on-radiation-reading

Tokyo Electric Power who run the ill fated Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant says initial reports of radiation levels 10m times higher than normal in parts of No 2 reactor were inaccurate.

This article titled “Japanese nuclear firm admits error on radiation reading” was written by Justin McCurry in Tokyo, for The Guardian on Monday 28th March 2011 00.10 UTC Fresh doubt has been cast on the handling of the Fukushima nuclear crisis after officials admitted wildly overstating levels of radiation, prompting an evacuation of the nuclear site damaged by the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said initial reports of a level 10m times higher than normal in parts of the No 2 reactor were inaccurate, although it could not say by how much. Tepco said at first that the worker who took the measurement, of a pool of water in the reactor’s basement turbine building, had fled before taking a second reading. The discovery prompted another evacuation at the site, halting work to pump and store radioactive water that has built up in the turbine buildings of three of the six reactors. Tepco later said the pool of water had been contaminated but the extremely high reading was a mistake. “The number is not credible,” spokesman Takashi Kurita said. “We are very sorry.” However, later reports on Sunday showed contamination 100,000 times normal in water at reactor No 2, and 1,850 times normal in the nearby sea, the most alarming levels since the crisis began. Evidence of dangerous contamination in reactor No 2 emerged days after three workers were exposed to high levels while repairing the cooling system at the No 3 reactor. Two of the men received suspected beta ray burns after stepping into water. Reports said the workers were due to be discharged from hospital on Monday. One pump is being used to extract radioactive water, and two more will be taken to the site. The US military is sending barges loaded with 500,000 gallons of fresh water to nearby Onahama Bay. Early this morning a magnitude 6.5 earthquake rocked north Japan, the latest aftershock, and officials warned it would trigger a 50 cm (two ft) tsunami. Two of Fukushima’s six reactors are safe, having achieved “cool shutdown”, but the other four have yet to be brought under control. Japan’s nuclear safety agency, Nisa, said the temperature and pressure inside all six reactors had stabilised. Yukio Edano, the chief government spokesman, said the myriad problems at the plant were no closer to being resolved. “We have restored power and pumped in fresh water, and we are making basic steps towards improvement. But there is still no room for complacency.” Modest progress was made on removing contaminated water and stepping up work to cool the reactors with fresh water, rather than corrosive sea water, over the weekend. But Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the emergency could continue for weeks, or possibly months. Concern over food safety spread to fishing over the weekend when officials said seawater samples taken 20 miles off the coast of Fukushima contained 1,850 times the normal level of radioactivity. Nisa said the tainted seawater posed no risk: “Ocean currents will disperse radiation particles and so it will be very diluted by the time it is consumed by fish and seaweed, and even more by the time they are consumed by humans. There is no need to worry about health risks.” US authorities said on Sunday night that low concentrations of radiation in samples of Massachusetts rainwater were probably caused by Fukushima. Nevada, California, Hawaii, Colorado and Washington state have also reported tiny amounts of radiation from the accident but officials said they presented no health risks.

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March 28 2011, 11:32am | Comments »
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Fukushima crisis: radiation fears grow for low-paid heroes battling disaster

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/27/fukushima-crisis-radiation-fears-grow-for-low-paid-heroes-battling-disaster

Safeguards at the Fukushima nuclear power plant have failed emergency crews, and trust in the Japanese authorities is fading.)

This article titled “Fukushima crisis: radiation fears grow for low-paid heroes battling disaster” was written by Suzanne Goldenberg, for The Observer on Sunday 27th March 2011 00.06 UTC The last time Tomotake Watanabe turned up for his shift at the No 1 reactor of the Fukushima nuclear plant, he was thrown to the ground by Japan’s powerful earthquake and showered with broken glass and ceiling plaster. Now he awaits a call to join a mission to regain control of the plant whose danger is terrifyingly evident. “I feel under pressure that I might be called back,” he said. “I don’t feel I need to volunteer, but I worry about what I will do when I get called.” Seventeen workers have been exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation, including three last week who stood for 40 minutes in pools of water with radiation 10,000 times above safety limits. The accident raised fears of a leak in one of the six reactor cores and deepened criticism of the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s safeguards for workers. It also reinforced Watanabe’s conviction that he will not go back to work, if called. “I wouldn’t go back because I have a family and it is a very dangerous time. I would refuse,” he said. “At the moment there is a very high level of radiation, so even if they are calling people to return now, I don’t think that it is possible to go in safely.” The best Japan’s top government spokesman, Yukio Edano, could offer reporters was: “We are preventing it from worsening.” Sea water near the plant is now contaminated; Japan’s nuclear safety agency said that levels of radiation 1,250 times the legal limit were detected in sea water near drain outlets from the plant. High levels of radiation have already been detected in milk and leafy vegetables. The nerve centre of the operations to contain the crisis is a heavily shielded building on the reactor site, manned by about 50 top engineers. But the rest of the workforce, from firefighters to welders to electricians, are drawn from a pool of semi-skilled labour who work for low wages. Many work for associated companies such as Hitachi, Watanabe’s employer, Toshiba, and Toden Kogyo. Between shifts they are housed in a football stadium, J-Village, within the expanded 30km evacuation zone and brought in by bus. A number were seasonal workers, using a job at the plant to supplement livelihoods as small farmers. Some, like Watanabe, have been hopping between jobs at nuclear plants for years. Like much of Japan, Watanabe is in awe of their bravery. “Of course, someone has to go and do the job and maybe the people who went wanted to do the right thing,” he said. He does not want to be asked to make the same sacrifice. The 35-year-old had been working as a caretaker at an old people’s home when he got his first job at another nuclear plant three years ago. Since then, he has bounced from job to job in the industry, working for below the average monthly wage. At the outset he had few concerns about his safety at Fukushima – he says that he was never issued with protective gear. “They were always bragging about safety. They would say the plant was strong, that it could withstand an earthquake.” Watanabe started his current stint at Fukushima on 4 January, when he replaced worn and contaminated equipment on the spent atomic fuel pool at reactor No 4. But he was also called to service the other reactors and was in the turbine room next to reactor No 1 when the earthquake hit. “I couldn’t stand,” he said. “The window above my head shattered and parts of the ceiling fell in.” The three workers injured last week were trying to reconnect a pump in a turbine building next to reactor No 3 when they stepped into water 10,000 times more radioactive than normal.Press reports said that the three had ignored alarms from radiation dosimeters because they assumed there had been a malfunction. They were exposed to between two and six sieverts of radiation, or up to 24 times the annual exposure limit of 250 millisieverts set for workers at the plant in the wake of the disaster. “Now I have no trust in that place,” said Watanabe. The only way he thinks he will return to work at Fukushima is once the authorities declare radiation levels are low enough to demolish it. “They said they would close the plant. If that happens, there could be work again, tearing it down,” he said.

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March 27 2011, 1:19pm | Comments »
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Japan faces new setback in fight to avert disaster at Fukushima plant

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/25/japan-faces-new-setback-in-fight-to-avert-disaster-at-fukushima-plant

After the Earthquake and Tsunami, Fukushimam is a big man-made disaster now, and they know it. But when they say “We have been transparent right from the start” that means they are still involved in covering up the truth for some reason. ”it may be years before they return to their homes” is an understatement when the plutonium isotope that may well be involved has a half life of over 6,000 years!

This article titled “Japan faces new setback in fight to avert disaster at Fukushima plant” was written by Justin McCurry in Tokyo and Suzanne Goldenberg, for The Guardian on Friday 25th March 2011 18.30 UTC A suspected break in the core of a nuclear reactor could have been responsible for a leak of large amounts of radioactive contamination at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, Japanese nuclear safety officials said on Friday, in another setback to efforts to avert disaster at the stricken facility. The prime minister, Naoto Kan, described the situation at the plant as “very serious”, while media reports said that two men who were injured while working on the plant’s No.3 reactor on Thursday may have suffered internal exposure to radiation. “We must remain vigilant,” Kan told a televised news conference. “We are doing our best to prevent a deterioration in the situation, but we are not yet in a position that allows us to be optimistic. We must treat every development with the utmost care.” He praised the hundreds of Tokyo Electric Power employees, troops, firefighters and police officers who are struggling to avert disaster at the plant, and insisted any new information would be released quickly to the Japanese people and the international community. “We have been transparent right from the start and will continue to give accurate information about radiation levels and their possible impact on health,” he said. Growing uncertainty over radiation contamination led to an increased exodus from the area surrounding Japan’s stricken nuclear plant. Officials in towns across Fukushima prefecture said they had been instructed to prepare more shelters in anticipation of a new influx of evacuees. The Japanese government said it was considering extending its evacuation order to a 30km (19 mile) radius of the damaged Fukushima reactors. In Nihonmatsu, which is already housing 2,900 people who fled homes close to the reactor, officials said they were advised to prepare 10 new shelters for the next wave of nuclear evacuees. “We are preparing for more evacuations,” said Hatori Norio, who serves on the town’s disaster committee. The town is also preparing for the possibility that the evacuees will stay for the duration. He said the town had begun putting evacuees on the waiting list for public housing, recognizing that it may be years before they return to their homes. The government’s chief spokesman, Yukio Edano, said 130,000 residents in the area had been encouraged to leave to improve their quality of life, not because their health was at risk. The nuclear emergency, 150 miles north of Tokyo, has caused severe disruption to business, supply routes and other services in the area. On Thursday three workers were exposed to unusually high levels of radiation after stepping in contaminated water in the turbine building of the crippled No. 3 reactor, which they were trying to cool. Two received possible beta ray burns to their legs. All three have been transferred to a special radiation treatment facility. Kyodo news reported that the two more seriously injured workers could have suffered internal radiation exposure. “The contaminated water had 10,000 times the amount of radiation as would be found in water circulating from a normally operating reactor,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for Japan’s nuclear safety agency. Nishiyama said it was unlikely that the reactor had cracked, but conceded that the unusually high levels of radiation appeared to have originated from its core. “It is possible there may be damage somewhere in the reactor,” he said, adding that a leak in the plumbing or the vents could also be to blame. Hideo Morimoto, director of Japan’s agency for natural resources and energy, said the water leak did not mean the battle to prevent meltdown at the reactor was being lost. “I feel that if the pressure vessel has been seriously damaged, then far more radiation would have leaked,” he said. The temperature and pressure inside the core, which holds the fuel rods, remained stable and was far too low to be capable of further melting the core, officials said. Dr Ian Haslam, head of radiation protection at Leeds University, said there was a “real possibility” a hydrogen explosion at the reactor on 14 March had damaged the containment vessel and the fuel rods. But he added: “If there was significant damage to the rods and significant holes, the contamination would be a lot higher; we would be seeing a lot more steam coming out.” Edano said the source of the leak remained unknown. “We are exploring every possibility, but we don’t think this is a new situation, rather that a certain amount of radiation may have leaked from the reactor. This is a possibility that we have been mentioning for some time. “But at this point we don’t know if the radiation is coming from the reactor itself or from another source.” Nuclear officials say the leak may have come from pipes or the reactor’s pool for storing spent fuel rods, which workers have been struggling to cool since the plant was badly damaged in the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. The reactor contains 170 tons of radioactive fuel in its core, and is the only one of the facility’s six reactors that contains the potentially more dangerous plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel. Thursday’s accident forced a temporary halt to work on two reactors while technicians check radiation levels. “We should try to avoid delays if at all possible, but we also need to ensure that the people working there are safe,” Nishiyama said. The official death toll from the earthquake and tsunami has risen above 10,000, according to the national police agency. But with more than 17,400 listed as missing, the final number of dead is expected to rise significantly.

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March 25 2011, 2:14pm | Comments »
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Tsunami survivors in town that vanished search for hope and shelter

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/19/tsunami-survivors-in-town-that-vanished-search-for-hope-and-shelter

On one of the most badly hit parts of Japan‘s coast, roads have been cleared and a supply chain is being rebuilt after the deadly earthquake and tsunami

This article titled “Tsunami survivors in town that vanished search for hope and shelter” was written by Jonathan Watts in Minami Sanriku, for The Observer on Saturday 19th March 2011 19.43 UTC Yasuo Kono is digging. So are his daughter and two grandchildren. They scrape deep into the gravel beside a block of concrete that is all that remains of their former home. It is tough and, so far, unrewarding work. But just over a week after their world was turned upside down by the tsunami, Kono is pinning his hopes for the family’s recovery on what they might find in the rubble. “We’re looking for our safe. It’s got everything in it that we need to start again – a million yen, our seal, our family registration documents and our bank books,” he says. “It was very heavy, so I don’t think the tsunami can have taken it very far.” This is optimistic, given the elemental force that tossed cars and trucks around like children’s toys and ripped up the massive concrete sea wall that was supposed to protect Minami Sanriku. But Kono – a widower for two years – half-jokingly believes the spirits in the family shrine will aid his mission: “I think my old wife’s ashes are down there too. She was very careful about money and would never have let it get away from her.” It may seem premature to consider money. But for survivors of Japan’s deadliest postwar disaster, as much as for the government, there is a growing need to calculate the scale of their losses and how to fund a path to recovery. Kono and his family want to get out of the disaster zone of Minami Sanriku, which was pulverised by the tsunami. The roads are open and fuel supplies are starting to return to the area, but unless they can find money, they will be stuck at the shelters that have become home to almost half a million people. In this fishing community, the biggest shelter is the Ocean Plaza gymnasium, where more than 700 people are crammed into corridors, stairwells and offices. Some have made walls from cardboard boxes. Most mark out territory with layers of blankets and futons. It is an impressively functional instant community that appears well organised and polite. Dinner queues are scrupulously observed and people are as careful about taking their shoes off before stepping on cardboard as they are before entering a home. Doctors and nurses provide basic medical care at a makeshift clinic in the former training room. Weightlifting equipment and exercise bikes have been pushed into one corner to make space for the patients, pharmacy and office. Most of the sick are elderly patients with high blood pressure, at least one of whom has died from a combination of cold, poor nutrition and inadequate drug supplies. “We need more medicine, especially drugs to lower blood pressure and laxatives,” said Masafumi Nishizawa, a local doctor who has been running the clinic since his former hospital was destroyed. He was confident that the acute problems were over, but said the chronic problems were likely to get worse in the weeks ahead. “People here have no baths, no beds and no toilets. They will get tired and vulnerable to contagious diseases… It’s a real concern.” But, after days of survivors having to cope on just one piece of bread or ball of rice, the food situation is improving. Saturday’s dinner in the Ocean Plaza disaster shelter is a boiled egg, a helping of rice and a scoop of seaweed and vegetables. It is the third meal of the day. Minami Sanriku’s mayor, Jin Sato, says he can see hope that the worst might be over. Two roads into the town have been cleared. More supplies are flowing in. The gymnasium is now stacked with hundreds of 50kg bags of rice, piles of donated clothes, giant bundles of blankets, countless boxes of toiletries, instant noodles and nappies. Sato has started to turn his mind from short-term survival to the construction of longer-term housing. “We have food now, but I cannot say it is enough. We have to provide so many meals. We really need more petrol. Without that, we cannot transport supplies and people.” Uncertainty plagues the communities almost as much as the instability of the ground beneath their feet. As in other evacuation centres, there is a noticeboard here, where people post requests for information about loved ones and scan through registers of survivors at other evacuation centres. NTT, Japan’s giant telecoms company, has restored mobile phone signals and organised a charging point outside the shelter. Other help appears to be on its way. Petrol tankers have become far more visible on the local roads and drivers are filling up again at the pumps – albeit often after waiting for several hours. On the road into Minami Sanriku, several shops outside the disaster zone have re-opened and are offering fresh stocks on the shelves for the first time in a week. The 24-hour convenience stores – one of the symbols of modern Japan – expect to follow suit soon. “In the five years I have worked here, we have never closed for even a second. But I had to shut up shop two days ago because we ran out of things to sell,” says Toshiro Abe, manager of a local FamilyMart. “My boss is coming over today to work out how we can start business again.” The economic impact of the earthquake and tsunami has been conservatively estimated at £120bn, but in a country that now faces rolling blackouts, dozens of wrecked ports along a large stretch of coastline and a nuclear industry in crisis mode, this looks like an underestimate. Japan is unsure how many of its people were taken by the sea. The confirmed fatalities are 7,348 – easily outstripping the 1995 Kobe earthquake as the deadliest disaster in the nation’s post-war history. But the number of missing is far from clear. It could be nearly 11,000 – which is the number of reports filed to Japan’s National Police Agency – or even double or triple that figure because many people have been without communications since the earthquake so have no way of reporting a person missing. Minami Sanriku highlights the difficulties of making this grim calculation. In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, it was feared that the death toll might be higher here than anywhere else because the destruction was so widespread. Initial accounts suggested 10,000 of the 17,000 population were missing, presumed dead. Yet the official casualty count is just 214 bodies. When the Observer asked mayor Sato to account for the discrepancy, he said the problem lay in the manner of counting. “At first we assumed only the 7,000 at the public shelters had survived, but we realise now that many others sought refuge with friends or left the town. That was our mistake. I still can’t tell you how many are dead. We still don’t know how to make an accurate estimate.” Yoko Saito has come to her own conclusion. Crying in front of the debris that was once her childhood home, she believes her mother is dead, though her body has never been found and she is not included on any casualty list. “She was here when it hit. We have been to all the shelters and cannot find her. I came here to look for something to remember her by. But there is nothing. Nothing at all.” When Saito was a small child, her mother carried her to safety from a tsunami. Since then, the town has built a huge sea defence, run simulations on where the next wave might hit and drilled its citizens on where to evacuate. “I think my mother would have remembered what happened last time and assumed she was safe,” sobbed Saito. The same story can be heard at several points along the coastline. This part of Japan is prone to tsunamis and has some of the world’s best precautions against them. Concrete sea defences have been erected across the mouths of harbours. Residents are instructed each year about warnings and the evacuation plans for their area. But these preparations were based on the last tsunami, 1.5 metres high, which struck 50 years ago. The one that struck last Friday was 10 times higher. The sea walls did not stand a chance. Nor did many of the people who thought they were on safe ground. Takuma Abe, a 36-year-old chiropractor, had rushed his pregnant wife and mother into the hills. They were halfway up the slope when the first surge arrived. “I didn’t think the tsunami could ever get that high, but it caught us,” he says. “We got out and tried to climb on to a rail track, but my arm got trapped and I couldn’t help them up. They were washed away.” His wife’s body was found nearby. His mother, remarkably, survived and is now in hospital. Abe has volunteered to help in the shelter’s clinic. “I have to do something to stop myself going crazy. I still don’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it. I can’t think of the future. My wife is gone. My home is gone. All I have in the world is my driver’s licence and 2,000 yen. But that’s normal here. Everyone has lost so much.” Yet there is hope too in the refugee centre. Takako Abe is nine months pregnant, but was able to move rapidly to safety just before the tsunami struck. “I didn’t pay much attention to the warnings until people screamed at me to evacuate. I couldn’t run very fast, but luckily my home is close to a slope. I was too scared to look back, but I could hear the tsunami behind me. It destroyed my home,” she says. She is now safely ensconced in the Ocean Plaza evacuation centre, where she is close to doctors, medicine and ambulances. The noise and germs, and the lack of sanitation and nutrition, are far from ideal for a pregnant woman. Sometimes there are just two small meals a day. But Abe is just glad that she, her baby, her husband and her parents are still alive. “We’ve lost our home, but so has everyone here. We are luckier than most,” she says. “It’s no good dwelling on things that can’t be changed. We have to look forward and think positively. Things will work out.”

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March 19 2011, 3:43pm | Comments »
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Japan’s horror reveals how thin is the edge we live on

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/18/japans-horror-reveals-how-thin-is-the-edge-we-live-on

Climate change may not be responsible for the tsunami, but it is shrinking our margin of safety. It is time to shrink back ourselves

This article titled “Japan’s horror reveals how thin is the edge we live on” was written by Bill McKibben, for The Guardian on Friday 18th March 2011 21.00 UTC It’s scary to watch the video from Japan, and not just because of the frightening explosions at the Fukushima plant or the unstoppable surge of tsunami-wash through the streets. It’s almost as unnerving to see the aftermath – the square miles of rubble, with boats piled on cars; the completely bare supermarket shelves. Because the one thing we’ve never really imagined is going to the supermarket and finding it empty. What the events reveal is the thinness of the margin on which modernity lives. There’s not a country in the world more modern and civilised than Japan; its building codes and engineering prowess kept its great buildings from collapsing when the much milder quake in Haiti last year flattened everything. But clearly it’s not enough. That thin edge on which we live, and which at most moments we barely notice, provided nowhere near enough buffer against the power of the natural world. We’re steadily narrowing the margin. Global warming didn’t cause the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Miyagi coast, but global warming daily is shrinking the leeway on which civilisation everywhere depends. Consider: sea levels have begun to rise. We’re seeing record temperatures that depress harvests – the amount of grain per capita on the planet has been falling for years. Because warm air holds more water vapour than cold, the chance of severe flooding keeps going up and in the last year countries from Pakistan to Australia have recently ended up on the wrong side of those odds. Those changes steadily eat away at that safety margin. With less food stored in our warehouses, each harvest becomes critical. With each massive flood, we have to spend more money rebuilding what was there before: there are still as many as 4 million homeless from Pakistan’s floods, which means “development” has given way to “getting a tarp over your head”. Even rich countries face this trouble: Australia cut much of its budget for renewable energy to help pay the recovery bill for soggy Queensland. Warmer temperatures are helping dengue fever spread; treating one case can use up the annual health budget for a dozen people in some Asian nation, meaning that much less for immunisations or nutrition. Just the increasing cost of insurance can be a big drag on economies: a study by Harvard and Swiss Re found that even in rich nations such as the US, larger and more frequent storms could “overwhelm adaptive capacities”, rendering “large areas and sectors uninsurable”. The bottom line was that, “in effect, parts of developed countries would experience developing nation conditions for prolonged periods”. There have always been natural disasters, and there always will be. For 10,000 years the planet has been by and large benign; you could tell where the safe margin for civilisation was because that’s, by definition, where civilisation was built. But if the sea level rises a metre, that margin shrinks considerably: on a beach that slopes in at 1 degree, the sea is now nearly 90 metres nearer. And it’s not just a literal shrinkage – the insecurity that comes with smaller food stocks or more frequent floods also takes a psychological toll: the world seems more cramped because it is more cramped. We can try to deal with this in two ways. One is to attempt to widen it with more technology. If the Earth’s temperature is rising, maybe we could “geoengineer” the planet, tossing sulphur into the atmosphere in an effort to block incoming sunlight. It’s theoretically possible. But researchers warn it could do more harm than good, and maybe this isn’t the week to trust the grandest promises of engineers, not when they’ve all but lost control of the highest technology we’ve ever built, there on the bluff at Fukushima. The other possibility is to try to build down a little: to focus on resilience, on safety. And to do that – here’s the controversial part – instead of focusing on growth. We might decide that the human enterprise (at least in the west) has got big enough, that our appetites need not to grow, but to shrink a little, in order to provide us more margin. What would that mean? Buses and bikes and trains, not SUVs. Local food, with more people on the farm so that muscles replace some of the oil. Having learned that banks are “too big to fail”, we might guess that our food and energy systems fall into that same category. Imagine, for instance, a nation that got most of its power from rooftop solar panels knitted together in a vast distributed grid. It would take investment to get there – we’d have to divert money from other tasks, slowing some kinds of growth, because solar power is currently more expensive than coal power. We might not have constant access to unlimited power at every second of every day. In the end, though, you’d have not only less carbon in the atmosphere, but also a country far less failure-prone. The solar panels on my roof could break tonight – and I’d have a problem if they did – but it wouldn’t ramify into rolling blackouts across the continent (and no one would need to stand in my driveway with a Geiger counter). Such changes wouldn’t make the world safe: climatologists promise us we’ve already put enough carbon out there to raise our planet’s temperature two degrees in the decades to come, which will make for a miserably difficult century. But they also promise that if we don’t stop burning coal and oil, that number will double, and miserable will become impossible. With Japan’s horror still unfolding, there’s nothing to do for the moment except watch, pray, and try to find some small ways to help people caught up in forces beyond their control. But the lesson we should learn, perhaps, is that it’s time to back off a little. Suddenly squat and plain words – “durable”, “stable”, “robust” – sound sweeter to the ear.

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March 18 2011, 5:29pm | Comments »
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Nuclear power stations and reactors operational around the world: listed and mapped

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/18/nuclear-power-stations-and-reactors-operational-around-the-world-listed-and-mapped

The degenerating situation at Fukishima is causing questions to be asked about nuclear safety around the world. How many nuclear reactors are operational around the world today – and where are they?

This article titled “Nuclear power stations and reactors operational around the world: listed and mapped” was written by Simon Rogers, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 18th March 2011 13.30 UTC The crisis at in reactors Japan’s Fukishima nuclear power station has focused attention on the world’s nuclear power industry. But how big is it exactly? This database, from the World Nuclear Association gives us some idea. We’ve scraped a list of every operational nuclear reactor around the world – and its location, power rating and operating company. The list gives a unique picture of the state of the world in nuclear power. Monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the industry in Japan has been criticised for being less than forthcoming over what’s happening inside Fukushima. And Japan is certainly a major nuclear power – with a high proportion of boiling water reactors, such as the kind that are overheating at Fukushima today. Here’s how the data looks on a map:

But how old are they? Over 60 of the world’s operating reactors were opened before 1975, the vast majority in the US.

The full data is below. What can you do with it? Data summary

Download the data • DATA: download the full spreadsheet More data Data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian World government data • Search the world’s government data with our gateway Development and aid data • Search the world’s global development data with our gateway Can you do something with this data? • Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group • Contact us at data@guardian.co.uk • Get the A-Z of data • More at the Datastore directory • Follow us on Twitter • Like us on Facebook

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March 18 2011, 8:41am | Comments »
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Japan nuclear reactor water-bombing has little effect

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/17/japan-nuclear-reactor-water-bombing-has-little-effect

Radiation levels are rising rather than falling after the Fukushima No 3 reactor has been doused with hoses and water cannon, while helicopters appear to miss their target with huge bags of seawater. How much water remains in the pool containing the spent rods from reactor number 3, the one that runs on a mixture of the much more highly radioactive plutonium? There are some reports that the pool at number 3 may be leaking.

This article titled “Japan nuclear reactor water-bombing has little effect” was written by Justin McCurry in Osaka, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 17th March 2011 14.04 UTC Attempts to cool down a stricken reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan have suffered a further setback with radiation levels rising rather than falling after attempts to douse it with high-pressure hoses. Six fire engines and a police water cannon were sent in on Thursday evening to spray the plant’s No 3 reactor. But afterwards radiation emissions rose from 3,700 microsieverts per hour to 4,000 per hour, the Kyodo news agency quoted Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) as saying. An earlier attempt in which military helicopters dropped thousands of litres of water on the plant also appeared to have failed. As part of the desperate new tactics to avert nuclear meltdown, Chinook helicopters targeted the No 3 reactor’s spent fuel rod pool, which is overheating and at risk of releasing dangerous radioactive steam. Two helicopters flying at less than 300 feet dumped four loads of water. Footage suggested much of it missed the target. Emergency crews and the military are trying to cool the reactor and replenish a pool containing spent fuel rods. Tepco has been unable to take precise measurements but the pool at No 3 is feared to be almost empty, raising the risk that the rods will overheat and melt, releasing dangerous levels of radiation. Steam believed to have been caused by water boiling in the pool has been seen rising from it since Wednesday. Officials are also worried that the No 4 reactor’s spent fuel pool might be running low. ‘”The highest priority now is to pour adequate water onto the No 3 and No 4 reactors, especially in their spent fuel pools,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman of the government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency who was quoted by the Kyodo agency. Gregory Jackzo, the chairman of the US nuclear regulatory commission, has told a congressional hearing in Washington that the storage pool at No 4 was in danger of giving off more radioactive material. Hikaru Kuroda, a Tepco official, said: “We are afraid that the water level at [the No 4 reactor] is the lowest. Because we cannot get near it, the only way to monitor the situation is visually from far away.” Tepco said a military helicopter crew had seen some water in the No 4 pool but this could not be confirmed. Hydrogen explosions on Monday and Tuesday blew the roofs off the No 3 and No 4 reactors, removing the last line of defence against radiation leaks. Tepco has said it is attempting to open a temporary power line to the plant so it can pump water directly into the storage pools and reactor cores. Japan’s nuclear safety agency has said it hopes the power supply will be partially operational within hours. “Once we establish the temporary power supply we will be able to pump seawater into the reactors,” a Tepco spokesman said. “We believe the operation will help cool down the fuel pools,” the defence minister, Toshimi Kitazawa, told reporters. Each helicopter can carry 7.5 tonnes of water per load but the pools each hold 2,000 tonnes, an expert has told public broadcaster NHK. “It will be possible as long as the rods are fully submerged. That means the storage pool would need to be about a third full. But the dousing has to be done repeatedly.” About 70,000 people have been evacuated from a 12-mile (20km) radius around Fukushima Daiichi. Another 140,000 living outside 12 miles but within 18 miles (30km) have been told to stay indoors. Japan’s cabinet spokesman, Yukio Edano, said there was no need to widen the exclusion zone but signs were emerging that other countries were taking a more cautious approach. The worsening situation prompted the US to ask citizens living within 80km to evacuate. ”We are recommending, as a precaution, that American citizens who live within 50 miles of the Fukushima nuclear power plant evacuate the area or to take shelter indoors if safe evacuation is not practical,” the US embassy said in a statement. The British embassy has since issued similar advice and asked citizens living in Tokyo and northern Japan to consider leaving. Elevated but not hazardous levels of radiation have been detected well outside the Fukushima evacuation zone. In Ibaraki prefecture to the south, officials said radiation levels were about 300 times normal levels by late Wednesday morning. It would take three years of constant exposure to these higher levels to raise a person’s risk of cancer.

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March 17 2011, 9:23am | Comments »
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Fukushima fallout: the risks to health

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/15/fukushima-fallout-the-risks-to-health

The radioactive elements Caesium-137 and iodine-131, which increase the risk of cancer, are the main threats to those in the area around the Fukushima nuclear power station

This article titled “Fukushima fallout: the risks to health” was written by Ian Sample, for The Guardian on Tuesday 15th March 2011 20.30 UTC Radiation is being carried into the area around Fukushima by a mixture of radioactive products. The two main threats to human health come from caesium-137 and iodine-131. Caesium-137 can cause burns, acute radiation sickness and even death at high doses. It can contaminate food and water and, if ingested, gets distributed around the body, where it builds up in soft tissues, such as muscles. It has a half-life of about 30 years, meaning it takes that long for its radioactivity to fall by half. Over time, it is expelled from the body in urine. Iodine-131, if inhaled or swallowed, will concentrate in the thyroid gland where it can accumulate and cause cancer within a few years. Low doses can reduce the activity of the gland, and make it produce lower levels of hormones. The threat is more serious in children, who have more active thyroids. Officials have distributed potassium iodide pills to people in the exclusion zone around the plant as a prophylactic.; the pills saturate the thyroid with normal iodine, so it cannot absorb as much of the radioactive form. Iodine-131 has a half-life of only eight days, and so decays much more quickly than caesium-137.

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March 15 2011, 3:35pm | Comments »
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Fukushima factor adds pressure to economic fallout from Japan’s crisis

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/15/fukushima-factor-adds-pressure-to-economic-fallout-from-japans-crisis

Natural disasters are normally followed by v-shaped economic recessions, but the Japanese nuclear power plant explosions have complicated risk assessments.

This article titled “Fukushima factor adds pressure to economic fallout from Japan’s crisis” was written by Larry Elliott, for The Guardian on Tuesday 15th March 2011 20.16 UTC The three explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan have made the economic impact of last week’s natural disaster far more difficult to assess than the two templates used by analysts – the Kyoto earthquake in 1995 and Hurricane Katrina a decade later – would suggest. Normally, natural disasters are followed by v-shaped recessions. Output is badly affected in the short term, as infrastructure is knocked out and people can’t work or shop. Output falls sharply for three to six months, but then rebounds as the reconstruction starts. Government money is poured into the affected areas, leading to a mini-construction boom as homes, roads and power supplies are rebuilt. Pent-up spending from the period immediately after the crisis is unleashed. Despite Japan’s weak public finances, analysts would expect Tokyo to come up with the money to rebuild the north-eastern parts of the country affected by last week’s earthquake and tsunami. What makes this crisis different is the nuclear dimension. The three explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi plant puts this incident into a different category from either Kyoto or Katrina. There has been disruption to power supplies and people have been evacuated from a 12-mile exclusion zone around the plant, but it could potentially become far more widespread unless the Japanese can shut the plant down safely and quickly. Some analysts were last night starting to imagine what might happen in the event Tokyo, with 13 million people in its metropolitan district, had to be evacuated because of a radiation cloud heading its way. The economic costs of such an event would be astronomic. In Europe Japan’s crisis is already having an impact. Angela Merkel has ordered a temporary shutdown of Germany’s pre-1980s nuclear stations, which according to estimates account for 7% of the country’s power. That is a significant energy loss for a country that is growing robustly. The second factor is the impact the Sendai earthquake will have on consumer and business confidence. At present the global economy is characterised by a high degree of uncertainty, over the situation in north Africa and the Middle East and now over Japan. Economists think they have a way of quantifying this uncertainty, but they don’t. So while, in theory, it should be possible to do a full-scale risk assessment of the impact of Japan on, say, the UK, that is not really possible. In theory, the effects should be limited, because Japan is not a major trading partner for the UK and the days of intensive Japanese inward investment are over. The complexity of global supply chains for the goods in which Japan is world leader could mean delays and disruptions in some sectors, – such as consumer electronics and cars – depending on how badly the major Japanese multinationals are affected by shortages of power and materials. One big unknown for the UK is the oil price, which has been adding to inflationary pressure in recent months but has fallen since late last week because traders believe the paralysis in Japan will lead to a drop in global demand. That trend may not last. If it does have a v-shaped recovery Japan will quickly return to more normal levels of oil usage. Meanwhile, the unrest in Bahrain is evidence that the problems for governments in the Middle East are far from over. So estimates that Japan’s crisis will shave perhaps 0.1% or 0.2% off global growth this year, with a similar rebound in 2012, are little more than guesswork. It could be a lot worse than that.

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March 15 2011, 3:26pm | Comments »
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Radiation fears prompt Tokyo exodus

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/15/radiation-fears-prompt-tokyo-exodus

International companies are pulling staff out of Japan and airlines are cancelling flights after two more explosions at the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant

This article titled “Radiation fears prompt Tokyo exodus” was written by Justin McCurry in Osaka, for The Guardian on Tuesday 15th March 2011 19.39 UTC Airlines from Asia and Europe have halted flights into Tokyo, while multinational firms made plans to relocate employees as anxiety continued to grip Japan over the continuing nuclear crisis. Despite official reassurances that radiation levels in the capital posed no threat to health, a steady stream of tourists, residents and expatriates left the city by plane and bullet train. Austria said it was moving its embassy out of Tokyo to the western city of Osaka. Setbacks in the struggle to avert disaster at an atomic power plant in the north-east of the country also sparked a fresh round of panic buying in the Japanese capital, where tiny amounts of radioactivity registered for the first time since last Friday’s earthquake and subsequent tsunami. People in Tokyo endured another day of anxiety as they heard that the plant had been rocked by two more explosions and evidence emerged that water in a pool storing spent fuel rods may be boiling. Tokyo is already experiencing serious disruption to its transport network after the Tepco, the city’s electricity supplier, decided to implement rolling power cuts triggered by widespread disruption to power generation by the disaster. “I’m not that worried about another earthquake – it’s the radiation that scares me,” said Masashi Yoshida, who was waiting for a flight out of Haneda airport with his five-year-old daughter. Those among Tokyo’s 12 million people who decided to stay snapped up batteries, torches, candles and sleeping bags, and stripped shelves of bread, bottled water, instant noodles and canned food. The hoarding frenzy, partly prompted by the prospect of regular power cuts over the next six weeks, threatens to hamper efforts to divert supplies to the quake zone, where millions are suffering food and water shortages. Scientists said higher radiation levels near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where more than 200,000 people have been evacuated or told to stay inside, posed no immediate threat to the capital, which is 150 miles to the south. Naoto Kan, the prime minister, urged 140,00 people living within 19 miles of the plant to remain indoors. About 70,000 people living within 12 miles have already been evacuated. “I know that people are very worried, but I would like to ask you to stay calm,” Kan said. “Radioactive material will reach Tokyo but it is not harmful to humans, because it will be dissipated by the time it gets there,” said Koji Yamazaki, a professor of environmental science at Hokkaido University on Japan’s main north island. Prolonged fears of a serious accident could weaken Tokyo’s role as an international financial hub. Several firms said they were pulling staff out, including 350 Indian employees of the software services exporter Infosys Systems. But major financial firms in Japan were going about their “business as usual,” said the International Bankers Association, which represents firms such as Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. The French embassy advised its citizens to leave and the German embassy advised people with families to do the same. China is poised to evacuate its nationals from badly affected areas of north-east Japan. Several international airlines said they would avoid Tokyo until they were certain the danger had passed. Lufthansa became the first European airline to announce its daily flights to Tokyo would switch to Osaka and Nagoya at least until the weekend, and Air China cancelled flights from Beijing and Shanghai. Taiwan’s EVA Airways said it would not fly to Tokyo and Sapporo for the rest of the month. British Airways and Virgin Atlantic said services to Narita and Haneda, Tokyo’s main airports, were not affected.

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March 15 2011, 3:22pm | Comments »
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Japanese nuclear plant hit by fire and third explosion

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/15/japanese-nuclear-plant-hit-by-fire-and-third-explosion

Radiation around Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has reached levels damaging to human health, prime minister reveals

This article titled “Japanese nuclear plant hit by fire and third explosion” was written by Jonathan Watts in Ishinomaki and Tania Branigan in Beijing, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 15th March 2011 12.53 UTC Japan is facing the world’s biggest nuclear crisis for decades after radiation around its failing power plant hit levels damaging to human health following a fire and another explosion. Fifty technicians are still battling to cool reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi facility but non-essential personnel were ordered to leave and the Kyodo news agency reported that radiation levels had become too high for staff too remain in control rooms. The government had already called in international help in tackling the spiralling crisis. Early Tuesday, the third explosion in four days rocked the struggling power plant in the country’s stricken north-east, followed by a fire that broke out at the No 4 reactor, which appeared to be the cause of the leaks. It was later extinguished but Kyodo reported that that the pool containing the spent fuel rods was subsequently boiling, with the water level in the pool falling. If the water boils off there is a risk that the fuel could catch fire. The government ordered any inhabitants remaining in the 12-mile (20km) radius exclusion zone to leave immediately, told those between 12 miles and 19 miles away to stay indoors and imposed a 19-mile no-fly zone. Experts backed their assessment that health risks beyond that area were minimal at present. The news was a fresh blow for a region already reeling from the impact of Friday’s magnitude 8.9 earthquake and devastating tsunami. At midday today, Japan’s national police agency said 2,475 people were confirmed dead and 3,611 were missing, while NHK reported 3,000 dead with 15,000 unaccounted for. Emergency broadcasts on NHK television underscored the near-apocalyptic scenario that was unfolding at Fukushima. “For those in the evacuation area, close your windows and doors. Switch off your air conditioners. If you are being evacuated, cover yourself as much as possible and wear a facemask. Stay calm.” Fears of fresh contamination are an extra concern for refugees across the region. Water, food and fuel are in desperately short supply in Ishinomaki, one of the cities worst affected by the disaster. According to the deputy mayor, Etsuro Kitamura, 40,000 refugees in evacuation centres are having to live on just one rice ball a day. For Hiroko Kodo, news of the nuclear explosion was a rude return to the world of mass communications. Since Friday, she had been cut off from television, internet and mobile phone networks. But the Red Cross provided her with a radio among an emergency kit it distributed to all the refugees. “When I turned it on, I heard about the radiation. It is terrifying. I’m afraid now to drink the water from the mountains in case it is contaminated.” Workers at the Fukushima plant have been struggling since Friday to avert a catastrophe after cooling systems failed in the aftermath of the natural disaster. Hundreds of thousands of people have already been evacuated from areas within 12 miles of the facility as a precaution. Readings in parts of the facility hit levels indicating an immediate risk of damage to people without protective gear, the government’s chief spokesman, Yukio Edano, said. The prime minister, Naoto Kan, asked people to remain calm in a televised address but warned: “Radiation has spread from these reactors and the reading of the level seems high … There’s still a very high risk of further radioactive material coming out.” He added that workers were “putting themselves in a very dangerous situation” to try to contain the problems. With confidence diminishing in the ability of the plant owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), to handle the crisis, Kan had already said he would personally lead a new joint response headquarters. According to Kyodo, the prime minister called executives at the power company to demand “what the hell is going on?” Tokyo has asked the UN nuclear watchdog for expert help and the US nuclear regulatory commission for equipment. Officials have also begun to distribute potassium iodide, which can help inhibit the uptake of radioactive iodide by the thyroid, to evacuation centres. Tuesday’s leak appears to have been caused by a fire at the No 4 unit, where spent fuel rods were stored. The nuclear safety agency said the blaze was extinguished several hours after it broke out. But the No 2 unit’s containment structure – which prevents radioactive materials from leaking in the event of meltdown – also appears to have been damaged after an explosion shortly afterwards. That is of particular concern because the building housing the reactor was damaged by the hydrogen blast at neighbouring unit No 3, experts told Kyodo news agency. Edano told reporters that workers were continuing to inject water to cool units 1 to 3. The No 2 reactor was not as stable as the others, but the water injection was working “to a certain level”, he added. Tepco admitted for the first time that there was a possibility of partial meltdown, Kyodo reported. Officials have already gauged that as a “high possibility”. Edano told reporters that beyond the 12-mile radius the level should be reduced to one where harm to human health would be minimal or non-existent, although that would depend on wind speed and direction. He said a “minimal amount” of radioactive material might spread to metropolitan areas, but not at harmful levels, adding: “We want you to keep calm. We can continue with our daily lives.” In Tokyo, the metropolitan government said radiation reached around 20 times normal levels in the capital this morning but said governor Shintaro Ishihara said the levels would “not immediately cause health problems” Readings at the plant, taken at 10.20am, varied considerably. Edano told reporters that the highest level around one of the reactors was 400 millisieverts (mSv), with a reading of 100mSv around another. Professor David Hinde, head of the department of nuclear physics at the Australian National University, said it was the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, but stressed it was on a far smaller scale. The maximum radiation level was “very, very serious” for workers on site, who would only be able to remain there for the briefest periods. But the risk to those outside the exclusion zone was very small, particularly when seen in the context of their situation as a whole. “Compared to the risk of being on a plain near the sea it’s negligible … No one is looking at the black smoke from the fires and wondering where those carcinogens are going,” he said. An expert told the broadcaster NHK that the situation was “very grave”, warning that without protective gear a level of 100mSv could be enough to cause male infertility in a short time. He also said those in the 12-mile to 19-mile zone should dust off their hair and clothes before entering their building, including brushing off the soles of their shoes. Once inside they should close windows and turn off air conditioning. Any laundry hanging out should be left outside. Japan’s central bank pumped billions more dollars into the economy as stocks plunged more than 10% on the back of the news, following a major injection on Monday.

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March 15 2011, 8:14am | Comments »
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Japan’s nuclear emergency prompts panic buying in Tokyo

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/15/japans-nuclear-emergency-prompts-panic-buying-in-tokyo

Tokyo is 150 miles away from Fukushima but residents are right to be worried about the unfolding nuclear disaster since the authorites have been failing to communicate truthfully. Tokyo citizens are prepared for a possible lockdown as foreign embassies advise citizens to leave the city.

This article titled “Japan’s nuclear emergency prompts panic buying in Tokyo” was written by Justin McCurry in Osaka, for The Guardian on Tuesday 15th March 2011 08.52 UTC News of a serious radiation leak at the Fukushima nuclear plant has sparked panic buying in Tokyo, as some residents started to leave the capital to escape potential contamination. Several embassies advised their citizens to leave affected areas, including Tokyo, and some multinational companies either told staff to leave or were considering relocating outside the city. As officials urged people living near the stricken plant to stay indoors, residents in the capital, 150 miles to the south, began preparing for the possibility of a similar lockdown. Experts were keen to stress, however, that only “minute” levels of radiation had been detected in Tokyo. Weather forecasters said winds near the atomic plant, which experienced a third explosion on Tuesday morning, were blowing in a south-westerly direction – towards Tokyo – but would move in a westerly direction later in the day. People in the capital, home to 12 million, snapped up radios, torches, candles, fuel containers and sleeping bags, while for the fourth day there was a run on bread, canned goods, instant noodles, bottled water and other foodstuffs at supermarkets. Retailers said the panic buying was reminiscent of the oil crisis in the 1970s. The electronics firm Panasonic said it was increasing production of batteries, which were being bought in large quantities as far away as Hiroshima in the south-west. Fears are rising that if the hoarding frenzy continues it will affect the ability to deliver emergency supplies to the disaster zone. “The situation is hysterical,” said Tomonao Matsuo, a spokesman for the instant noodle maker Nissin Foods. “People feel safer just by buying Cup Noodles.” Foreign journalists covering the nuclear crisis, including reporters from the BBC and CNN, withdrew from the Fukushima area. On Monday, the German magazine Der Spiegel said its veteran war correspondent was being pulled out of Tokyo. Tourists cut short holidays and descended on international airports in Tokyo and Osaka, seeking flights home. They included about 200 South Koreans who have now arrived back in Seoul. Liezel Strauss, a South African, said on Twitter on Tuesday morning: “I just woke up to several calls & emails, family & husband freaking out, it’s time to go, flight booked to singapore this pm.” She added: “Realised no use staying stressing + freaking my family out if i’m not helping and physically contributing, I want to but reality is I’m not.” The number of people stranded at Narita airport, near Tokyo, rose after airlines cancelled flights but officials said there had been no surge in passenger numbers. Air China cancelled flights to Tokyo from Beijing and Shanghai. Other airlines in the region said they were monitoring the situation but had no immediate plans to cancel services. South Korea has urged its nationals in Japan to stay away from the quake zone while Germany advised its citizens to consider leaving the country. The French embassy warned in an advisory that a radioactive wind could reach Tokyo on Tuesday evening and advised its citizens to leave. Britain’s Foreign Office advised against all non-essential travel to Tokyo and north-eastern Japan. “Our advice is people should take their lead from the Japanese authorities,” the Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne told Sky News. The US state department urged its citizens to avoid tourism and non-essential travel to Japan. “[Our] travel advice is not to go to that part of Japan in any case unless you have an extremely compelling reason for doing so,” it said. Japan’s government has ordered people within 12 miles of the Fukushima No 1 plant, about 150 miles north-east of Tokyo, to evacuate. Those living between 12 and 19 miles from the plant were told to stay indoors due to fears of exposure to radiation. In Saitama, a prefecture north of Tokyo where safe but higher radiation levels have been detected, residents struggled to secure food. Yoshiyuki Sakuma was one of many who could not find a single bag of rice. “I couldn’t find any anywhere,” he said, adding he was now searching for bread. “If you lose electricity, water and gas, at least you can still eat bread.”

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March 15 2011, 4:01am | Comments »
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Fukushima nuclear power plant second nuclear reactor explosion – Video

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A second nuclear reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has exploded, and another nuclear core has lost it’s cooling system. A third explosion may follow Friday’s historic earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan.

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March 14 2011, 5:05am | Comments »
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Japan counts death toll after biblical scenes of destruction

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/13/japan-counts-death-toll-after-biblical-scenes-of-destruction

Even though Japan has endured earthquakes and natural catastrophes for centuries, the scale of this tsunami disaster and nuclear power problem will take time to sink in.

This article titled “Japan counts death toll after biblical scenes of destruction” was written by Justin McCurry in Tokyo and Tracy McVeigh, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 12th March 2011 19.13 UTC As a beautiful sunny day broke over a shattered eastern Japan, the toll of dead and missing began to rise and the scale of the destruction to unfold. Survivors in the worst affected areas recalled the moment the ground began to shake so violently that items flew off shelves and people on the street fell to their knees, unable to stay upright. “I thought I was going to die,” said Wataru Fujimura, 38, a sales representative in Koriyama, about 150 miles north of Tokyo. “Our furniture and shelves had all fallen down and there were cracks across the building, so we spent the whole night in the car. Now we’re back home trying to clean everything up.” In the hours after Friday’s earthquake and tsunami, the government had warned people to prepare for 1,000 dead. On Saturday the figures told a different story. More than 600 bodies had been recovered from a region still being hit by aftershocks. The coastal town of Minami Sanriku was missing 9,500 people, more than half its population. Japanese officials in the worst-hit prefectures of Miyagi and Iwate said they had yet to account for 88,000. The whereabouts of four trains that had been running along coastal lines were still unknown, said the East Japan Railway Company. One, a bullet train, had 400 people on board. As entire communities remained cut off, one exhausted emergency worker said: “We witnessed biblical scenes. Huge container ships were tossed around like matchsticks. There was nothing anyone could do.” As the possibility of a nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor gripped the nation and the world, hundreds of fires continued to burn in Kesennuma, a seaside fishing town of 74,000 people. A third of the town remained under water. A boat carrying 80 dock workers was swept away in the 500mph tidal wave while a cruise ship with 100 passengers was missing. “More than 90% of the houses in three coastal communities have been washed away by tsunami,” said a municipal official in Futaba, a town in Fukushima prefecture. “Looking from the fourth floor of the town hall, I see no houses standing.” In Sendai, the nearest city to the epicentre, where 300 bodies had yesterday been recovered from the beach, long queues of residents snaked through the rubble outside the few shops still open, anxious to stock up on water and instant noodles. Here the tsunami waves swept some six miles inland. A convenience store three miles from shore was open for business, without power and with a floor thick with muddy grime. “The flood came in from behind the store and swept around both sides,” said the owner, Wakio Fushima. “Cars were flowing right by.” Many Sendai residents spent the night outdoors, wandering debris-strewn streets, unable to return to homes damaged or destroyed by the earthquake or the wave. The Wakabayashi district, facing directly onto the sea, was a swampy wasteland with murky, waist-high water. Most houses were flattened, as if a giant bulldozer had swept through. By Saturday afternoon the estimated death toll had risen to 1,700, many of the victims having drowned in the waves that breached an 800-mile stretch of coastline. Some 3,400 buildings had been destroyed while 212,000 people spent last night in temporary shelters. Even among the homes still standing, around 5.6m households were without power, a tenth of the total in Japan. The world’s third-biggest economy is only just beginning to come to terms with the size of the disaster, but the rescue effort was fast and immediate. On Saturday some 3,000 people had been plucked by Japanese military helicopters from rooftops, boats and any other structures that people had managed to clamber or hang onto to escape the waters. Prime minister Naoto Kan announced that 50,000 military personnel had been assigned to rescue duties, along with 190 military aircraft and 25 ships which were already in place in the hardest-hit areas. However, their work was being severely hampered by the debris, wreckage and floodwater that has radically changed the landscape and destroyed roads, bridges and other transport links. Widespread damage to Japan’s infrastructure has raised fears that the earthquake and tsunami will derail efforts to revive the economy, just as the government is striving to drive funding bills for a £600bn-plus budget through a deeply divided parliament. While the government sought to build support for an emergency budget for the huge relief operation ahead, the Bank of Japan vowed to move quickly to stabilise markets. Analysts warned that businesses vital to Japan’s economic wellbeing face repair bills that could run into tens of billions of pounds. As the international community mobilised, Andrew Mitchell, Britain’s secretary of state for international development, said that “highly trained” teams of rescue workers were being dispatched to help the Japanese search for survivors. “The scale of widespread devastation is severe, leaving many people unaccounted for and vast areas of the country devastated,” he said. “The Japanese government has appealed directly to us for help. We will immediately dispatch a team to help Japan search for survivors as quickly as possible.” President Barack Obama offered every assistance in the aftermath of what he called a “catastrophic” disaster. A US aircraft carrier was already in Japan and a second was on its way, it is reported. The earthquake was the fifth strongest recorded anywhere in the world in the past century, although not the most costly in terms of loss of life in Japan, a country that accounts for 20% of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater. Over one September night in 1923 the Great Kanto earthquake killed 140,000 people in the Tokyo area. But the physical force of Friday’s quake was calamitous, shaking buildings 235 miles away in Tokyo, where office workers poured on to the streets in search of safety. Some 116,000 people in the city, including hundreds of Japanese schoolchildren, who often commute alone to school by train, were unable to get home that night as a series of powerful aftershocks crippled public transport. Yesterday in the capital, where many have long feared the prospect of another earthquake of the scale that struck in 1923, the streets were filled with people walking to their destinations, while others emptied supermarket shelves of food, candles and other essentials. Nicholas Roberts, a market researcher from Britain who arrived in Japan only months ago, said he feared buildings would collapse from the force of the quake. “We looked around at the surrounding skyscrapers visibly swaying, like trees blowing in the wind,” he said. “It was only talking to people later that I learned that this bendiness is part of what makes them resistant to quakes. At the time I was genuinely scared that one of these 100-storey buildings could come down on top of us.” Chris Bunting, a British resident of Tokyo, said: “There was a great rattling as things started to fall off the shelves in my office. Some of the other staff were yelping. Others of a more practical frame of mind were trying to hold the moveable things down. I just stood rooted to the spot. After the room stopped rattling, everyone in my ninth-floor office started trying to get in touch with their families and friends.” Several airports, including Narita – Tokyo’s international hub – were closed immediately after the earthquake and train services in and around the capital ground to a halt. While many residents were relieved the damage in the capital was not greater, there was fear over the continuing chaos elsewhere, especially as radiation leaked from the nuclear reactor in Fukushima. “People make manuals for earthquakes, but when the earthquake actually happens, can you actually follow the manual?” said 60-year-old office worker Kiyoshi Kanazawa. “Everyone runs away when things are shaking, and they ask you to stop the gas and fire in your house, but you do not have enough space for this in your brain.” Nonetheless many people in this, the most seismically active country in the world, spoke of how the disaster had seen people looking out for each other, both foreigners and Japanese. But as they coped with the aftershocks and with the sorrow for those who had died or been injured or lost their homes, there was a sense that the news would get worse. Announcing the latest body count to reporters, the chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, was grim. “Unfortunately, we must be prepared for the number to rise greatly,” he said.

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March 13 2011, 11:31am | Comments »

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