Tohoku Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster!!!

[matsuki]

to drop prefab individual shelters in emergency evacuation zone...

I think you missed the "think outside zee box" part... and the borderline anticompetitive practice...

Prefab is one thing but they said "Each unit can be put up in a single day by two semi-skilled workers."

Need to remind you how "skilled" the average Japanese man is at DIY or manual labor?

[Coligny]

Prefab is one thing but they said "Each unit can be put up in a single day by two semi-skilled workers."

Need to remind you how "skilled" the average Japanese man is at DIY or manual labor?

Judging by dad in law l33t skills...

[Taro Toporific]

[Coligny]

So he's basically saying that Israel's nukes are as powerfull as a bundle of leaking cooking gas bottles...

This guy is not your average crackpot, it's a down to earth idiot... I'm surprised that he can even use a keyboard... and somewhat tired of those high visibility website running dry of anything relevant to publish and taking the easy road of dumpster diving to save their advertisement incomes...

[2triky]

So he's basically saying that Israel's nukes are as powerfull as a bundle of leaking cooking gas bottles...

While the rest of the sane world is certain that the weapons coming out of Dimona are a bit more powerful than Chinese firecrackers.

[matsuki]

Japan and Iran were in cahoots to develop nuclear weapons.

...and Iran was paying for them with drugs?

[2triky]

Volunteering with victims of Japanese tsunami

By Sarah Outen, Special to CNN

Editor's note: Sarah Outen is a British adventurer. In 2009 she became the first woman and youngest person to row solo across the Indian Ocean.Her book about the journey 'A Dip in the Ocean: Rowing Solo Across the Indian,' was published in 2009.

(CNN) -- Digging my hands deep into my pockets, I tucked my chin into my fleecy neck warmer and wriggled my toes to warm them up. Snowflakes had filled the sky with white and were now dusting the ground gently.

There was something beautiful about it, although somehow that doesn't seem right to say -- because I was standing amid acres of wrecked homes -- or rather plots where homes once stood. Fifty meters away a cemetery's toppled gravestones stood awkwardly.

One hundred meters beyond, at the foot of the hill, the scorched carcass of a school, grave and gray, watched over it all.

I was in Ishinomaki, a fishing town on the Tohoku coast of Japan. It was one of the worst-hit areas by the earthquake and tsunami which struck the country on March 11th 2011. Nine months later, it was slowly plodding along the path to recovery.

Read more

[Coligny]

From the article:

"Two volunteers preparing to go in and bleach and scrub the wooden frames of a house."

Ok...

Now we are reaching FAR beyond the point were Tchernobyl was just "better managed" than Fukushima.

It's a level were we should call Gorbatchev back to write manuals on crisis management and held seminars around the globe.

[2triky]

From the article:

"Two volunteers preparing to go in and bleach and scrub the wooden frames of a house."

Ok...

At least they use loofahs for proper exfoliation.

[Coligny]

New version of a previously posted visualisation:

[yt]eKp5cA2sM28#![/yt]

[GomiGirl]

IAEA reviews Japan's nuclear restart process

If nuclear reactors do not restart, Japan faces the challenge of meeting summer peak demand without a large part of its usual power supply, although it is thought that continued energy austerity might be able to bridge the gap.

The cost of this extended nuclear shutdown, however, is catastrophic: Importing an extra 4.3 trillion ($55 billion) of fossil fuel tipped Japan's trade balance into the red for 2011; and today Bloomberg reported financial results from six Japanese power companies that counted total losses of 463 billion ($6.0 billion) due to increased fossil fuel costs and idled nuclear capacity.

There is austerity? From where I sit, it is business as usual all over town.

[damn name]

Once the 17% increase in business electrical costs kick in, you'll see the effect. There is always some lag time, but demand will slow as costs go up because that kind of increase cannot be absorbed through increased efficiency or reduced material or labor costs.

From the end of this year on, it's gonna be Trouble City, with a capital T and that rhymes with D and that stands for Depression.

High yen, staggering existing losses, increasing energy costs soon, higher taxes, more retirees, half the population part-time workers, banks cutting off bridge loans are all dark clouds.

There's not a single ray of sunlight in any industry. Consumption is going to crash by Autumn.

[Coligny]

IAEA reviews Japan's nuclear restart process



There is austerity? From where I sit, it is business as usual all over town.

1- the alleged "high energy demand" numbers were debunked to be a lie in order to back nukular power use. (remember any blackout in Tokyo last summer ? me neither...)(seeing any blackout now ? me neither). When you can fully provide a country with nearly all your nuclear powerplant down... Maybe you should rethink your energy policy...

2- Base load powerplants are coal fired... (ok, that's called fossil fuel too, but...), Japan have been investing in Vietnam (hint, they have coal) for quite long time now and secured some important contract with Australia last year. So no dirka dirka instability in sight... just regular... skyrocketting prices...

Sure Tepco is screwed... one day they say they have to raise price to pay for the Daiichi compensations, another day it's because the fuel is to expensive... And you can bet they will also rise the price again to compensate for the falling consumer demand due to higher price...

It would be soooo nice if those companies were to understand they have no god given right to make fat profit no matter how badly they run their business... (and basic utilities like water/gas and electricity were to be nationalised, Enron being the posterchild of how bad it can sink. Especially in the field of nuclear power were public subventions are so generously dumped while the profit goes only to shareholders...)

"greed is good" was not to be taken litterally...

[Coligny]

And just in time to prove me wrong:

http://www.iol.co.za/business/business-news/mining-merger-poses-threat-to-japan-s-coal-1.1229351

When it's not the Dirka-Dirkas... it's the mining companies mergers...

Not the good time to buy a Nissan Leaf it seems...

[Yokohammer]

And here we go again. Stupid people in a panic over nothing.

Fearing radiation, Naha cuts Aomori snow fete

And before anyone cuts in with a "well, it's better to be safe than sorry" type comment, it should probably be noted that Towada is further from Fukushima Daiichi than Tokyo is.

Shades of the panic over using wood from Iwate in the Kyoto daimonji-yaki festival last year. Apparently nothing has changed.

[Mike Oxlong]

I think people are leery of trusting whether the information they are getting is accurate, whether they are getting all the information, and whether the information is delivered in time to be able to act upon. There was a case here of a supermarket relabeling vegetables from Ibaraki as from Kagoshima, of wood imported from Fukushima for pizza ovens being highly contaminated, and then the ash from those ovens used in the soba making process. The info about the supermarket got out quickly as they got caught in the act. The usual apology, claim it was a rare oversight, and back to biz as usual. The wood and soba contamination info was released after it was too late - the wood was burned, the ash was used to make soba, and the soba had been sold. Tough luck. No one knows if this sort of thing is as rare as local government officials say, or if it's commonplace, or what kind of numbers they are looking at if it's somewhere in between. It's not hard to see why people are stressed and very wary.

[Yokohammer]

I think people are leery of trusting whether the information they are getting is accurate, whether they are getting all the information, and whether the information is delivered in time to be able to act upon. There was a case here of a supermarket relabeling vegetables from Ibaraki as from Kagoshima, of wood imported from Fukushima for pizza ovens being highly contaminated, and then the ash from those ovens used in the soba making process. The info about the supermarket got out quickly as they got caught in the act. The usual apology, claim it was a rare oversight, and back to biz as usual. The wood and soba contamination info was released after it was too late - the wood was burned, the ash was used to make soba, and the soba had been sold. Tough luck. No one knows if this sort of thing is as rare as local government officials say, or if it's commonplace, or what kind of numbers they are looking at if it's somewhere in between. It's not hard to see why people are stressed and very wary.

Sure, but in this case the parameters are clearly defined. You have a truckload (or whatever) of snow, all from the same place, you have a geiger counter, problem solved! No convoluted distribution or back-office labeling involved. Just the fact that there's no profit involved clarifies things quite a bit. It was the same with the daimonji-yaki fracas. Everything was clearly defined. The fact that the wood was not contaminated was clearly defined. Yet certain "anonymous" parties objected and the whole thing was scrapped. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and it doesn't help to disseminate accurate information or allay unreasonable fears either.

EDIT: And ... if it had been snow from Tokyo, were that possible, would the reaction have been the same? I'm guessing snow from Tokyo would have been OK. But like I said in my post above, Tokyo is closer to the Fukushima Daiichi nuke plant than Towada in Aomori.

[Mike Oxlong]

Sure, but in this case the parameters are clearly defined. You have a truckload (or whatever) of snow, all from the same place, you have a geiger counter, problem solved! No convoluted distribution or back-office labeling involved. Just the fact that there's no profit involved clarifies things quite a bit. It was the same with the daimonji-yaki fracas. Everything was clearly defined. The fact that the wood was not contaminated was clearly defined. Yet certain "anonymous" parties objected and the whole thing was scrapped. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and it doesn't help to disseminate accurate information or allay unreasonable fears either.

You'll recall how rice was "tested safe" and approved for sale and consumption, only to be later shown to be contaminated and not as promoted. This sort of deception is what people remember and have come to expect. When the government is playing games, the media is complicit, and any information hard to come by, let alone accurate, timely information, people are going to balk at assurances - those assurances have proven false too many times. It's like the story of the boy who cried wolf in reverse, and now everyone acts surprised that the boy again cries "it's safe! it's safe!", and this time it is, but no one believes him.

[Yokohammer]

You'll recall how rice was "tested safe" and approved for sale and consumption, only to be later shown to be contaminated and not as promoted. This sort of deception is what people remember and have come to expect. When the government is playing games, the media is complicit, and any information hard to come by, let alone accurate, timely information, people are going to balk at assurances - those assurances have proven false too many times. It's like the story of the boy who cried wolf in reverse, and now everyone acts surprised that the boy again cries "it's safe! it's safe!", and this time it is, but no one believes him.

I can understand that there's fear, but if it's unreasonable it needs to be dealt with, otherwise it just begets more unreasonable fear. And the kids lose out once again. That's what irks me most about this and the Kyoto case.

There's nothing "for sale." There's no profit to be protected by concealing anything. Proper analyses were done by independent entities, the wood/snow was found to be safe, which stands to reason considering where it came from.

At the extreme this kind of rejection of "stuff" that has come vaguely from the general direction of Fukushima becomes a kind of discrimination that can be (and has been) directed at people as well. That is why it bugs me, and why I contend that the line has to be drawn somewhere. This kind of silliness can easily get out of hand.

Of course there's no way to force people to accept things they're afraid of, but it'd be nice to know that the voice of reason is at least being broadcast and heard.

[Coligny]

Have to side with mighty Mike here... Reaching the point in trust where saying "fuck it" to anything coming from North of Tokyo can be considered as a reasonable reaction... And in line with the central party guidance... "stress more dangerous than radiation", snow from upnorth=stress, no snow= all is safe.

Stop calling panic any decision made against not only one event but taking into account the whole picture allowing to also send a message to the central governement. Fool me once, shame on you... fool me twice...

Quarantine and boycott are not panic. They are more a strong expression of distrust.

[damn name]

^^ Bullshit.

The people complaining fled to Okinawa last year from Honshu, thinking that the entire mainland was a radioactive wasteland. They, like you, are irrational and unreasonable.

Just because you or anyone else is batshit crazy doesn't mean we have to be.

[Yokohammer]

Have to side with mighty Mike here... Reaching the point in trust where saying "fuck it" to anything coming from North of Tokyo can be considered as a reasonable reaction... And in line with the central party guidance... "stress more dangerous than radiation", snow from upnorth=stress, no snow= all is safe.

Stop calling panic any decision made against not only one event but taking into account the whole picture allowing to also send a message to the central governement. Fool me once, shame on you... fool me twice...

Quarantine and boycott are not panic. They are more a strong expression of distrust.

That's OK. I certainly won't begrudge you or Mike of your opinions, but in this case mine is quite different.

We're talking about cases that have little or nothing to do with the government or corporate greed, so the argument that they're "sending a strong message to the central government" doesn't really apply.

We're talking about a limited and well defined single quantity of "stuff" that can be unequivocally deemed safe.

What it is, is another case of uninformed people allowing a knee-jerk fear reaction to overpower their reason, and treating all of Japan north of Ibaraki as some kind of leper colony. If that's the attitude, there's not much chance of people cooperating to resolve the problems. It's sort of related to the attitude of happily taking advantage of all the "cheap, clean" power that's available, but objecting vehemently at the slightest suggestion that a power plant might be built in or anywhere near their own town.

At the most fundamental level this isn't a government or corporate problem. It's a people problem, and the only solution is education. Now providing that education may partly fall within the government's sphere of responsibility, but it's not entirely the government's problem either. Simply assigning blame to the government is an excuse that is used too often when people don't want to take responsibility for their own actions.

We have a distinct lack of balance here. It isn't simply a matter of either trusting everything or nothing. A certain amount of discrimination (the good kind) must be applied. And when it becomes OK for people to simply refuse, block, ostracize, demonize (etc.) anything that comes from the northern half of Japan, then we have a real problem.

[Coligny]

We have a distinct lack of balance here. It isn't simply a matter of either trusting everything or nothing. A certain amount of discrimination (the good kind) must be applied. And when it becomes OK for people to simply refuse, block, ostracize, demonize (etc.) anything that comes from the northern half of Japan, then we have a real problem.

No, this is a basic consumer and citizen decision right. There is no legally required balance in citizens choice toward what they might accepet or buy as gifts. Discrimination at the personnal level is one of the most basic consumer right. If people by their own choices refuse to buy or use something because of its components, colors or origin, you have basically not a single right to force it upon them. that what's american love to call "voting with your wallet". And the best part of all of this, they can send it back without having to give a reason. end of the story.

The same way people can wholly boycott MMC because they made and covered up dangerous cars losing wheelhub at speed. People can refuse anything "offered" to them from places they don't like, either because of potential health threat or because they don't want to have anything to do with local governement that have shown ABSOLUTELY NO RESPECT for human life. Prefering to export potentially dangerous wastes in other part of japan in order to grease the corporate entities instead of evacuating population kept as precious captive taxpayers instead of proper citizens.

Parent from Okinawa don't want their kids to have snow. That is their complete right as parents and citizen. You or anybody upnorth have the right to say anything you want it have 0 relevance or power on them. What's next ? people from Okinawa should only buy cars from Hondas tohoku plant JUST BECAUSE. What make you think you have the right to tell people what they should buy, judge them if they don't and then go on a tirade build on a fantaysist prevision of what might happen next... It's as insane as the slogan saying that if you don't boycott french fries you support terrorism and other nonsense...

[Yokohammer]

Coligny, nobody is "buying" anything.

I'm addressing an irrational fear that is becoming an unfair stigma, not the people's right to "vote with their wallet."

I'm talking about a social problem in which the people and produce of north-eastern Japan are likely to be stigmatized and ostracized by their own countrymen and countrywomen in much the same way that lepers were before leprosy was properly understood.

It's not impossible to determine whether there's a real health threat or not. And that effort should at least be made, rather than simply slamming the door.

I sincerely hope you're not advocating slamming the door in the face of half the country without at least making an effort to understand the situation or learn the truth. Unfortunately, that's what it sounds like. And that is the effect that refusing perfectly safe wood from Iwate in a purely ceremonial/social context, or perfectly safe snow from Aomori in a similarly non-governmental,
non-corporate context has on public perception.

[Coligny]

Coligny, nobody is "buying" anything.

I'm addressing an irrational fear that is becoming an unfair stigma, not the people's right to "vote with their wallet."

And that is not the point. Be it free for people getting it or not don't change anything. It's a citizen decision not to accept product or ressource from upnorth with or without money compensation. I'm not focusing only on the usual corruption ruling most of these transaction in Japan.

For me, their refusal would be exactly the same thing as people refusing to buy Olympus camera or refusing Olympus branded free T-Shirt.

The message is quite simple:

"As long as your house is not in order, we don't want to have anything to do with you."

And without making it a full job to track who might be the least corrupt or dishonest upnorth, deciding on a blanket refusal of anything coming from north of Tokyo can be considered a valid reaction totally within their right.

Resident of Tohoku have let the situation with Tepco go on for decades. The shit hit the fan, then instead of improvement Tepco and local crooks are given free reign to continue making as much bucks as possible without taking any responsibility. NOT A SINGLE TEPCO employee is actually in jail. In France a guy who put industrial grade silicone in breast implant instead of medical one is awaiting trial in a jail cell since few weeks. (mostly to avoid people firebombing his house...)
It's cute to say shoganai people are powerless. But if they don't revolt now after losing everything. nothing will ever get done. So instead of complaining against people who don't want their radioactive trash they'd head up against Tepco headquarter and start some beheading maybe they'd have more support. For now they are just crybabies who complain because nobody wan't to buy their broken or rotten eggs.

Even if there was absolutely no contamination problem, refusing trade with Tohoku (boycott) as long as Tepco is let free reign over the mess would be a perfectly valid reaction the same way you can boycott Iranian Oil because you don't like the bearded in charge, beef from england or... anything from NK.

[Yokohammer]

...
Resident of Tohoku have let the situation with Tepco go on for decades.
...
Even if there was absolutely no contamination problem, refusing trade with Tohoku (boycott) as long as Tepco is let free reign over the mess would be a perfectly valid reaction the same way you can boycott Iranian Oil because you don't like the bearded in charge, beef from england or... anything from NK.

No, sorry, not the same thing at all. At least I can't see it that way.
And I think blaming the residents of Tohoku, and in particular sanctioning them for this mess, is very unfair.

I guess we'll just have to disagree on this one.

'nuff said.

[Coligny]

At some point, citizens have to bear the responsability of what their governement allow to happen.

Even if that means missing their daily TV show or samurai drama reruns...

Especially in a so called democracy.

Participating in the life of a country is not just pretending to work hard 9-22 and getting back home drunk with the proud feeling of carrying mighty japan upon your shoulders. Sometimes checking were the ship is heading can also be important...

[Mike Oxlong]

For me the big story here is that the local government was responsive to the complaints...

[Catoneinutica]

At some point, citizens have to bear the responsability of what their governement allow to happen.

Even if that means missing their daily TV show or samurai drama reruns...

Especially in a so called democracy.

Participating in the life of a country is not just pretending to work hard 9-22 and getting back home drunk with the proud feeling of carrying mighty japan upon your shoulders. Sometimes checking were the ship is heading can also be important...

This. One of the places I was most eager to visit when I first visited Japan twenty years ago was Matsushima. Pretty dismaying to see there was a big hellish industrial site right there in the bay. But then Tohoku has always been the Moldova of Japan: poor, exporter of agricultural products, coolies, and indentured sex workers. And people in poor areas sometimes do stupid things, like trade environmental quality for shiny municipal buildings (lots of chrome and formica!) and construction jobs. And the Japanese national government has leaned heavily on inaka regions to accept all manner of nuclear tomfoolery (Monju - the fuck?). Still, it couldn't have been done with the connivance of generations of democratically-elected local politicians: own it, constituents.

-catone
-I sold off all of the AAPL in my 401(k) and scored some mighty stashes of demerol and oxycontin. Now I'm broke and incontinent and need to wear bath towels pinned around my buttocks like giant, man-sized diapers, like Elvis. Can I have a hug, yokohammer?

[Yokohammer]

This. One of the places I was most eager to visit when I first visited Japan twenty years ago was Matsushima. Pretty dismaying to see there was a big hellish industrial site right there in the bay. But then Tohoku has always been the Moldova of Japan: poor, exporter of agricultural products, coolies, and indentured sex workers. And people in poor areas sometimes do stupid things, like trade environmental quality for shiny municipal buildings (lots of chrome and formica!) and construction jobs. And the Japanese national government has leaned heavily on inaka regions to accept all manner of nuclear tomfoolery (Monju - the fuck?). Still, it couldn't have been done with the connivance of generations of democratically-elected local politicians: own it, constituents.

-catone
-I sold off all of the AAPL in my 401(k) and scored some mighty stashes of demerol and oxycontin. Now I'm broke and incontinent and need to wear bath towels pinned around my buttocks like giant, man-sized diapers, like Elvis. Can I have a hug, yokohammer?

You live in Tokyo and you have the gazongas to say that?

You gotta be kidding.

And sorry, the cute little "do I get a hug" analogy simply doesn't analogize.

People seem to be forgetting that the Fukushima nuke plant was supplying power to Tokyo, which I guess was fine at the time. But now that it's a complete mess it's the fault of the people of Tohoku? Now somehow the people of Tohoku are responsible for TEPCO?

That's "TEPCO," which stands for Tokyo Electric Power Company.

Complete, utter, unadulterated bullshit.