Uh, It's Jayvee.

MANILA, Philippines (8th UPDATE) – A magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck between the islands of Negros and Cebu before noon Monday, killing at least 1 person and prompting government volcanologists to raise a tsunami alert.

Director Renato Solidum of the the Philippine Institute for Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said the quake struck 5 kilometers northwest of Tayasan, Negros Oriental at 11: 49 a.m. The quake was tectonic in origin, he said.

The main quake was followed by four aftershocks measuring between magnitudes 4.5 to 5.8. Phivolcs seismologist Dr. Ishmael Narag said the trend in their data suggests that the region is unlikely to experience another earthquake with a magnitude higher than 6.9.

Phivolcs raised tsunami alert level 2 in Negros and Cebu, warning residents in coastal areas to seek higher ground. The alert was lifted at 2:30 p.m.

National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) chief Benito Ramos said the quake has killed one person - a child from Tayasan, Negros Oriental who was killed after a wall fell on him.

A report from June Perez of DYAB Cebu said the quake caused slight panic in Cebu City as residents started running to different establishments.

READ MORE.

The alert was lifted at 2:30PM.

People particularly in Cebu City area are in a state of panic when hearsay that a tsunami was going towards Cebu spread like wildfire. Ironically, this happened just as the PHIVOLCS cancelled the Tsunami Alerts Level 2 in Negros and in Cebu which they issued earlier after the quake. These photos [1,2,3] by @candezehere on Twitter show people scrambling and panicking after hearing that a tsunami was coming.

Keep calm, folks.

(via uhitsjayvee)

MANILA, Philippines (6th UPDATE) – A magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck between the islands of Negros and Cebu before noon Monday, killing at least 1 person and prompting government volcanologists to raise a tsunami alert.

Director Renato Solidum of the the Philippine Institute for Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said the quake struck 5 kilometers northwest of Tayasan, Negros Oriental at 11: 49 a.m. The quake was tectonic in origin, he said.

The main quake was followed by four aftershocks measuring between magnitudes 4.5 to 5.8.

Phivolcs raised tsunami alert level 2 in Negros and Cebu, warning residents in coastal areas to seek higher ground.

“This means that people living near the shoreline must be watchful of rising sea level. We will be monitoring the levels and might lift the tsunami alert by 2 p.m.,” Science and Technology Secretary Mario Montejo told radio dzMM.

National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) chief Benito Ramos said the quake has killed one person - a child from Tayasan, Negros Oriental who was killed after a wall fell on him.

A report from June Perez of DYAB Cebu said the quake caused slight panic in Cebu City as residents started running to different establishments.

READ MORE.

newsaboutjapan:

(Reuters) - The Japanese government plans to dedicate up to 10 trillion yen ($127 billion) in crisis lending to businesses to help them finance day-to-day operations and repair damage from last week’s deadly earthquake and tsunami, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Saturday.

The government can provide special financing in the form of low-interest loans or interest payment subsidies backed by public funds when a natural disaster or other event triggers major economic instability, the Nikkei said.

The newspaper, without citing any sources, said that the government was considering allocating several trillion yen and up to 10 trillion yen to the scheme. Funds needed to support the scheme would be set aside in an emergency budget.

The government looks certain to need an extra budget to fund disaster relief and reconstruction after the triple blow of a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake, a tsunami and a dangerous radiation leak at a quake-crippled nuclear plant.

The authorities, struggling to contain the nuclear crisis, have yet to produce an estimate of how much government spending would be needed to help the economy get back on its feet.

Economics Minster Kaoru Yosano told Reuters in an interview earlier this week that the economic damage from the disaster would exceed 20 trillion yen, which was his estimate of the total economic impact of the 1995 earthquake in Kobe.

Yosano said government spending was likely to exceed the 3.3 trillion yen Tokyo spent after Kobe, which up to now has been considered the world’s costliest natural disaster.

On Friday, the Sankei newspaper said that the government planned to issue more than 10 trillion yen in emergency bonds to pay for the reconstruction and that the central bank would fully underwrite the issue. But Yosano and other government officials denied the report, saying no such plan was in place.

The Nikkei said the government was also discussing creating a recovery fund that would provide medium- to long-term lending for firms directly hit by the disaster. However, setting up such a fund would require several changes to the law. ($1 = 78.855 Japanese Yen)

(via omnomnomjapanesefood)

newsaboutjapan:

(Reuters) - From Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) new iPad to Chevrolet pick-ups and many of the world’s airplane kitchens, concern is spreading down the global manufacturing supply chain about the impact fromJapan’s earthquake last week.

Plant shutdowns across Japan following the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis threaten supplies of everything from semiconductors to car parts to manufacturers across the globe.

Even where factories in Japan are operating, power outages, shortages of fuel and raw materials and ruptured logistics mean products and parts face delays in getting to customers.

Honda Motor Co (7267.T) said on Friday it extended a production halt in Japan, where it makes more than a fifth of its cars, for a further 3 days until next Wednesday.

And, citing a memo distributed by the automaker, the Wall Street Journal reported Honda had warned U.S. dealers it was not sure if it could resume full production at some of its Japanese plants before May.

Japan’s grip on the global electronics supply chain is causing particular concern. The world’s third-biggest economy exported 7.2 trillion yen ($91.3 billion) worth of electronic parts last year, according to Mirae Asset Securities.

“Should the Japan crisis be prolonged, I expect a shortage of electronic parts in the second quarter,” said James Song, an analyst at Daewoo Securities, noting Japan provides 57 percent of the world’s wafers, used to make the chips that go into mobiles phones, cameras and other electronic devices.

Apple may face shortages of key parts for its newly-released iPad 2, according to a report from research firm IHS iSuppli.

Several parts of the new version of the popular iPad tablet PC come from Japan, including the battery and the flash memory used to store music and video on the device.

“Logistical disruptions may mean Apple could have difficulties obtaining this battery, and it may not be able to secure supply from an external, non-Japanese source,” iSuppli said.

Toshiba Corp (6502.T), one of the companies that produces the NAND flash memory used in the iPad 2, according to IHS iSuppli’s research, had briefly shut a flash memory facility in Japan, and warned it could face problems getting raw materials.

Apple launched the iPad 2 in the United States last week to strong demand, with many stores selling out and analysts estimating sales of 1 million units during the debut weekend.

Several other iPad 2 parts are sourced from Japan, said the IHS iSuppli report, noting some of these, particularly the chips, could be procured from alternative suppliers.

Goldman Sachs warned of potential bottlenecks in the supply of silicon wafers, conductive film used in LCD circuits and resin used to connect chips to boards — products made by Japanese companies such as Shin Etsu (4063.T) and divisions of Sony (6758.T), Hitachi (6501.T) and Mitsubishi (7280.T).

In Taipei, shares of electronics supply companies rebounded from recent falls, with Hon Hai Precision (2317.TW) and touch panel maker Wintek (2384.TW) both gaining more than 1 percent.

EVEN THE KITCHEN SINK

Japan’s top car manufacturers including Toyota Motor Co (7203.T) and Nissan Motor Co (7201.T) are struggling to restart production amid a shortage of parts, labor and power following the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami.

The largest U.S. automaker, General Motors Co (GM.N), said it would temporarily idle a pick-up truck plant in Louisiana, where it builds the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon models, due to a parts shortage stemming from the crisis in Japan.

“Like all global automakers, we will continue to follow the events in Japan closely to determine the business impact,” GM said in a statement on Thursday.

North American output is likely to be affected unless Japanese suppliers revive their plants and send parts within 10 days, Wolfe Trahan & Co analyst Tim Denoyer said in a note.

Renault Samsung, the South Korean unit of French car maker Renault SA (RENA.PA), said it will cut back on weekend and overtime production because of a potential parts shortage, and

GM’s South Korean unit said it was considering a similar move.

“We have an inventory until the end of March. But we expect the crisis to be prolonged until April before being normalized in May,” said a spokesperson for Renault Samsung, which makes one in every 10 Renault vehicles.

A Japanese company that makes galleys for the long-awaited Boeing (BA.N) 787 Dreamliner, said it could face delivery delays due to scarce gasoline supplies.

Jamco (7408.T), which ships the galleys from Yokohama port after making them at a plant in Murakami, Nigata, in northwest Japan, said production was unaffected, but delivery could be hampered by gasoline supplies and higher prices.

(via omnomnomjapanesefood)

newsaboutjapan:

The devastating impact of the Japanese earthquake on the country’s ageing population was exposed on Thursday as dozens of elderly people were confirmed dead in hospitals and residential homes as heating fuel and medicine ran out.

In one particularly shocking incident, Japan’s self-defence force discovered 128 elderly people abandoned by medical staff at a hospital six miles from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. Most of them were comatose and 14 died shortly afterwards. Eleven others were reported dead at a retirement home in Kesennuma because of freezing temperatures, six days after 47 of their fellow residents were killed in the tsunami. The surviving residents of the retirement home in Kesennuma were described by its owner, Morimitsu Inawashida, as “alone and under high stress”. He said fuel for their kerosene heaters was running out.

Almost a quarter of Japan’s population are 65 or over, and hypothermia, dehydration and respiratory diseases are taking hold among the elderly in shelters, many of whom lost their medication when the wave struck, according to Eric Ouannes, general director of Doctors Without Borders’ Japan affiliate.

This comes after Japan’s elderly people bore the brunt of the initial impact of the quake and tsunami, with many of them unable to flee to higher ground.

Although the people from the hospital near Fukushima were moved by the self-defence forces to a gymnasium in Iwaki, there were reports that conditions were not much better there. An official for the government said it felt “helpless and very sorry for them”. “The condition at the gymnasium was horrible,” said Cheui Inamura. “No running water, no medicine and very, very little food. We simply did not have means to provide good care.”

Japan’s deepening humanitarian crisis came as the military was enlisted to try to douse the damaged nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools at the Fukushima plant using helicopters and high-powered hoses. Chinook helicopters dropped several tonnes of water, much of which seemed to miss its target. More workers were drafted into the danger zone to prevent the spread of radiation and the plant’s operator said it had managed to connect an electric cable to allow it to restart critical water pumps in one of the six units.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman, Gregory Jaczko, said the commission believed “radiation levels are extremely high” at the plant, while Britain said citizens should not go any closer than 50 miles from the plant, much further than Japan’s recommendation to stay 12 miles away or take shelter indoors if evacuation was not possible within an 18-mile radius.

Sir John Beddington, Britain’s chief scientific adviser, also said he believed cooling water essential to preventing radioactive emissions from the spent fuel pools alongside reactor 4 had almost totally evaporated and he was “extremely worried” the storage pools at reactors 5 and 6 were also leaking.

The Japanese government revised the estimated disaster death toll up from 10,000 to 15,000. It confirmed that 5,178 people had died and 2,285 were injured. The number of missing was increased to 8,913 from 7,844. Almost 200,000 households regained electricity, but this left more than 450,000 without power. Approximately 2.5m households still do not have access to water.

Pat Fuller, of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which met on Thursday in the earthquake zone to plan longer term relief with the Red Cross of Japan, said the lack of heating oil was critical.

“They don’t have enough kerosene to run heaters for all the evacuation centres,” he said. “Only a small percentage of the petrol stations are functioning which affects efforts to get food back into the shops. There had been an outbreak of gastric flu at one health centre we visited and if that hits old people there could be serious complications.”

Search and rescue teams began scaling back their operations as relatives began to lose hope of finding missing loved ones alive. In the town of Kamaishi, American and British teams completed their final sweeps, and Japanese mechanical diggers began the task of clearing collapsed homes, offices and stores.

Crews found more than a dozen bodies, some trapped beneath homes flipped on their roofs, another at the wheel of his overturned car. In three days of searching the battered coast, they found no survivors. “We have no more tasks,” said Pete Stevenson, a firefighter heading Britain’s 70-strong team. “The Japanese government have told us they are now moving from search and rescue to the recovery phase.”

Heather Heath, a British firefighter, said: “There are probably dozens of bodies we just can’t reach. The water can force people under floorboards and into gaps we can’t search. It’s such a powerful force.”

In Rikuzentakata Katsuya Maiya, whose home was hit by the tsunami, said he had accepted he would not find his 71-year old sister-in-law and her husband. The elderly couple fled their home on foot, but they could not keep up with their neighbours and fell behind as the tsunami rushed in.

“I think there is no hope,” he said. “The only thing that I can do is wait until members of the Japanese self-defence force collect their bodies.”

The very young too were suffering. Save the Children on Thursday reached Ishinomaki, Nobiru and Onagawa, north of Sendai, and reported children living in miserable conditions. “There were some terrible scenes, in some places like Onagawa there was nothing left,” said Ian Woolverton, who led the mission. “In other places like Ishinomaki we found children in evacuation centres huddled around kerosene lamps.”

The charity said they met Kazuki Seto, eight, at an evacuation centre not far from Sendai. He told them: “We are really worried about the nuclear power plants. We are very afraid of nuclear radiation. That’s why we don’t play outside.” Another, Yasu Hiro, 10, added: “We know about the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we are very scared. It makes us really worry. If it explodes it is going to be terrible.”

New footage also emerged of the tsunami striking last Friday, filmed by a local reporter who fled to safety as the wave swept in. The footage showed a wave crashing down a street moments after he found safety on a staircase.

Buildings and cars were swept away, while a father and two children were stranded on the side of an upturned car. A woman clung to a tree. She was rescued using a fire hose. “Thank you. Thank you. I thought I was going to die,” she said.

(via omnomnomjapanesefood)

newsaboutjapan:

Online posts from families and colleagues pull back the curtain on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant workers whose heroism has inspired the nation.

 Who are the “Fukushima 50” — the workers trying to take regain control of Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant?

Twitter messages and blog posts by the workers’ families offer an inkling of the “Fukushima 50,” so nicknamed because the 180 employees at the site work in 50-person shifts.

One of the workers is a veteran power plant worker, a 59-year-old who volunteered to take on the assignment, according to Jiji Press, a Japanese news wire service, quoting a woman who claimed to be his daughter on Twitter. The job puts him at risk of exposure to dangerous amounts of radiation that could cause death or lead to a higher risk ofcancer.

“I fought back tears when I heard that my father, who is to retire in six months, had volunteered,” @NamicoAoto wrote. “At home, he doesn’t seem like someone who could handle big jobs…but today, I was really proud of him,” she wrote. “I pray for his safe return.”

@nekkonekonyaa said her mother wept when her father left work to head to the nuclear plant. “Please dad come back alive,” she said in her tweet.

Power plant employees were running out of food, read one e-mail from a worker’s daughter.

“He says he’s accepted his fate. Much like a death sentence,” the e-mail said, which was read aloud on the national television network, NHK.

It has been reported that five employees of the operator of the nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co., known as TEPCO, have died and 22 have been injured since last week’s massive earthquake and tsunami.

Michiko Otsuki, an employee who evacuated from Fukushima No. 1 (Daiichi) on Monday, expressed pride in the coworkers who stayed behind.

“The staff of TEPCO have refused to flee and continue to work even at the peril of their own lives. Please stop attacking us,” Otsuki wrote on her blog, which has since been taken down but wasreprinted by the Singapore newspaper Straits Times.

Otsuki said employees at the plant worked bravely after the magnitude 9 quake, after the plant lost power and alarms sounded.

“We carried on working to restore the reactors from where we were, right by the sea, with the realization that this could be certain death,” Otsuki wrote.

“The machine that cools the reactor is just by the ocean, and it was wrecked by the tsunami. Everyone worked desperately to try and restore it. Fighting fatigue and empty stomachs, we dragged ourselves back to work.”

Otsuki apologized for the unfolding disaster.

“To all the residents [around the plant] who have been alarmed and worried, I am truly, deeply sorry,” she wrote.

(via omnomnomjapanesefood)

producermatthew:

Wearing goggles and masks sealed with duct tape, 304 workers are racing against time to cool several reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

It’s unknown how many of the 304 are employed by the plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company, and how many are contract workers. Still, every worker is attempting to prevent a meltdown at the plant out of a sense of duty and order.

“I think they’re doing it of their own free will,” Tokyo construction worker Masato Furusawa told Reuters.  “They don’t need convincing; it’s something that they have to do.”

The identities of the workers have not been made available, but the Jiji news organization reported on one 59-year-old nuclear power employee who volunteered for the job.

Online, several Facebook pages and Twitter hashtagss have been established honoring the men and women who brave high levels of radiation to prevent a Chernobyl-like disaster.

On Friday, Japan’s nuclear safety agency raised the incident level at the Daiichi nuclear power plant’s number 1, 2 and 3 reactors to “Level 5,” indicating an “accident with wider consequences” on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

(Original report, some information via Reuters)

monkfishjowls:

Sayuri Okamoto, contributing editor to Asymptote, emailed this from Japan on Tuesday and I asked her if I could post the text here. I hope that all of the events of the past few years cause the industrial world to reflect on our current path.

As you all have probably known already, the…

lickystickypickyme:

Reporters not allowed to speak to children to guard against false hope

Even amid the carnage and despair of Japan’s tsunami victims, the plight of the 30 children at Kama Elementary School is heartbreaking.

They sit quietly in the corner of a third-floor classroom where they have waited each day since the tsunami swept into the town of Ishinomaki for their parents to collect them. So far, no one has come and few at the school now believe they will.

Teachers think that some of the boys and girls, aged between eight and 12, know their fathers and mothers are among the missing and will never again turn up at the gates of the school on the eastern outskirts of the town, but they are saying nothing.

Instead, they wait patiently reading books or playing card games watched over by relatives and teachers, who prevent anyone from speaking to them.

Officials fear that even the sound of the door sliding back might raise false hope that a parent has come to collect them. Their silence is in marked contrast to other children playing in the corridors of the four-storey building, whose parents survived due to a complete fluke.

Sports teacher Masami Hoshi said: ‘The tsunami came just when the parents of the middle age group were starting to arrive to collect their children so we managed to get them inside and to safety.

‘The younger ones had left with their parents a little earlier. The ones who went to homes behind the school probably survived, the ones who went the other way probably didn’t.’

more

(via lickypickystickyme)

newsaboutjapan:

(Reuters) - - A week after their lives were turned upside down by the biggest recorded earthquake in Japan’s history, many survivors are too shocked to contemplate the future.

“My house does not exist anymore. Everything is gone, including money,” said Tsukasa Sato, a 74-year-old barber with a heart condition, as he warmed his hands in front of a stove at a shelter in Yamada, northern Japan.

“This is where I was born, so I want to stay here. I don’t know how it will turn out, but this is my hope.”

He spoke as snow fell gently on what remains of the town — once home to nearly 20,000 people but now a wasteland of shattered and charred rubble.

Much of what wasn’t destroyed by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake was smashed to bits by the subsequent tsunami; what escaped the giant waves was torched by fires that broke out in the aftermath.

Deputy mayor Shopichi Sato declines to give even approximate casualty figures for the town as he has bigger immediate problems: how to dispose of hundreds of corpses at a crematorium that can only handle five at a time — and with fuel for the furnace fast running out.

Mirroring Japan’s national demographic, Yamada was home to a significant population of elderly people who now make up a majority of survivors gathered at an elementary school gymnasium that escaped the carnage on the edge of town.

Bundled in blankets against the biting cold, they huddle around stoves — some chatting to pass the time, others just staring blankly into the distance, or at their hands.

A TOUCH OF HUMANITY

Rescue and salvage workers have tried to bring some humanity to their plight. Photo albums, pictures and other keepsakes recovered from the rubble have been placed near the entrance to one shelter in the hope that survivors might find some of their memories.

Some 50 kms further south the once-picturesque seaside town of Rikuzentakada, which boasted a population of around 23,000 people, is now a muddy wasteland.

Inside the skeletal remains of a resort hotel, loose broken pipes are blown about by an icy wind, the sound of colliding metal mingling with the cries of seagulls.

Dozens of firemen, Self Defense Force personnel and other helpers comb the area, ostensibly searching for survivors but only finding bodies. The squawk of radios breaks the muted silence to announce another grim discovery.

“Three bodies found. One is male, in his 70s; gender and age of the other two unknown,” says a disembodied voice.

Hayato Murakami, 73, an amateur photographer, had returned with his son to where his house once stood to see if anything could be salvaged.

Last Friday he escaped the tsunami by running up a hill, making it to safety with seconds to spare. Many of his friends and neighbors were not so lucky.

Scrambling through the debris, Murakami and his son had collected a tray of his clothes, two 10,000 yen bills, a sepia-toned baby photo of the elder Murakami, and another picture of his son and grandchild.

He was most excited about finding his wallet with the membership to a Tokyo art club.

“I must have spent about 32 million yen on all kinds of camera equipment over the years,” he said. “You could build two houses with that kind of money. Its all gone.”

(via omnomnomjapanesefood)

newsaboutjapan:

(Reuters) - Japanese engineers raced to restore a power cable to a quake-ravaged nuclear power plant on Friday in the hope of restarting pumps needed to pour cold water on overheating fuel rods and avert a catastrophic release of radiation.

Officials said they hoped to fix a cable from the grid to at least two of the six reactors on Friday, but that work would stop in the morning to allow helicopters and fire trucks to resume pouring water on the Fukushima Daiichi plant, about 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo.

Even if the engineers manage to connect the power, it is not clear the pumps will work as they may have been damaged in the earthquake or subsequent explosions and there are real fears of the electricity shorting and causing another explosion.

“Preparatory work has so far not progressed as fast as we had hoped,” an official of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) told a news briefing, adding that engineers had to be constantly checked for radiation levels.

Washington and other foreign capitals have expressed growing alarm about radiation leaking from the plant, severely damaged by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami a week ago that triggered a series of destructive explosions and compromised the nuclear reactors and spent fuel storage tanks.

Worst case scenarios would involve millions of people in Japan threatened by exposure to radioactive material, but prevailing winds are likely to carry any contaminated smoke or steam away from the densely populated Tokyo area to dissipate over the Pacific ocean.

Nuclear agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said the priority was to get water into the spent fuel pools. He was unsure how effective the helicopters had been inn cooling the reactors.

“As to what we do beyond that, we have to reduce the heat somehow and may use seawater,” he told a news conference. “We need to get the reactors back online as soon as possible and that’s why we’re trying to restore power to them.”

Asked about the “Chernobyl solution” of burying the reactors in sand and concrete, he said: “That solution is in the back of our minds, but we are focused on cooling the reactors down.”

Japan’s nuclear disaster is the world’s worst since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine.

U.S. President Barack Obama said the crisis posed no risk to any U.S. territory. He nevertheless ordered a comprehensive review of domestic nuclear plants.

“We do not expect harmful levels of radiation to reach the United States, whether it’s the West Coast, Hawaii, Alaska, or U.S. territories in the Pacific,” Obama said. “That is the judgment of our Nuclear Regulatory Commission and many other experts.”

Yukiya Amano, head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was due back in his homeland later on Friday with an international team of experts after earlier complaining about a lack of information from Japan.

Graham Andrew, his senior aide, called the situation at the plant “reasonably stable ” but the government said white smoke or steam was still rising from three reactors and helicopters used to dump water on the plant had shown exposure to small amounts of radiation.

“The situation remains very serious, but there has been no significant worsening since yesterday,” Andrew said.

read more here.

(via omnomnomjapanesefood)

newsaboutjapan:

(Reuters) - By Thursday morning the last line of defense came down to this: a police water cannon, a helicopter maneuver designed for wildfires and a race against time to get the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant rewired to the grid.

As a crew of about 100 Japanese workers and soldiers battled to keep a string of six nuclear reactors from meltdown just short of a week into Japan’s nuclear crisis, the arsenal of weapons at their disposal remained improvised, low-tech and underpowered.

A police riot control truck was hauled in over uneven roads to keep a spray of water on the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors. In the air above, Japan Self-Defense Forces helicopters made runs with baskets of water in a desperate attempt to cool exposed fuel rods believed to have already partly melted down.

Meanwhile, technicians were dashing to complete what amounts to the world’s largest extension cord: an electric cable to connect the stricken plant from the north and allow Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which runs the plant, to restart critical water pumps taken out by the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on the afternoon of Friday, March 11.

An examination by Reuters of Japan’s effort to contain its escalating nuclear disaster reveals a series of missteps, bad luck and desperate improvisation. What also emerges is a country that has begun to question some of its oldest values. Japanese have long revered the country’s bureaucratic competence, especially when it is contrasted with its political dysfunction. Japan has also proudly often chosen to go its own way and turn down outside assistance. But what happens when competence begins to break down? And what happens when a disaster is so overwhelming that outside help is vital?

The Fukushima plant was designed to withstand a violent earthquake. But the massive tsunami that followed knocked out both the plant’s electric-powered cooling system and its diesel-powered backup generators.

As the first pictures of the destruction around the northern town of Sendai were beamed across Japan and around the world in the hours after the quake, authorities initially said they had safely shut down the four nuclear plants closest to the earthquake and tsunami zone.

It wasn’t true. With no power to the plant’s cooling system, the water that circulates around the fuel rods inside the six reactors at Fukushima had already begun to boil off. Within a few hours authorities declared a “nuclear emergency situation” at the plant. While no radiation release had been detected, they said, residents around the plant should evacuate.

It was the beginning of a new nightmare. Over the ensuing days, as Japan has struggled to come to terms with what could be more than 10,000 dead and raced to bring food and clean water to more than 500,000 people who lost their homes in the quake and tsunami, rapidly deteriorating conditions inside Fukushima have threatened a meltdown with the potential to spread radioactive particles across the country and beyond.

“They might have been prepared for an earthquake. They might have been prepared for a tsunami. They might have been prepared for a nuclear emergency, but it was unlikely that they were prepared for all three,” said Ellen Vancko, an electric power expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

FIRST TROUBLE

Before last week, Japan’s 55 nuclear reactors had provided about 30 percent of the nation’s electric power. That percentage had been expected to rise to 50 percent by 2030 with a boom in new plant construction.

But nuclear power plants stop if they don’t have enough power. Stranded nuclear reactors cannot circulate water to cool their fuel rods. When the existing water boils off, the nuclear fuel begins to heat, a process that can set fire to surrounding materials and touch off powerful hydrogen blasts.

“Power is the lifeblood for a power plant,” said Harold Denton, who headed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission team that handled the 1979 Three Mile Island crisis in the United States. “If you’ve got power, you can do a lot, but if you don’t have any power, the water in the reactor vessels heats up and boils away and the fuel begins to melt. It’s a problem they’ve gotten into now.”

The threat for the Fukushima plant, 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, is compounded, experts say, by the design of its 40-year-old reactors, known in the industry as the General Electric Mark 1.

read more here.

(via omnomnomjapanesefood)

newsaboutjapan:

WASHINGTON — The first readings from American data-collection flights over the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeastern Japan show that the worst contamination has not spread beyond the 19-mile range of highest concern established by Japanese authorities.

But another day of frantic efforts to cool nuclear fuel in the stricken reactors and the plant’s spent-fuel pools resulted in little or no progress, according to United States government officials.

Japanese officials said they would continue those efforts, but were also racing to restore electric power to the site to get equipment going again, leaving open the question of why that effort did not begin days ago, at the first signs that the critical backup cooling systems for the reactors had failed.

The data was collected by the Aerial Measurement System, among the most sophisticated devices rushed to Japan by the Obama administration in an effort to help contain a nuclear crisis that a top American nuclear official said Thursday could go on for weeks. Strapped onto a plane and a helicopter that the United States flew over the site, with Japanese permission, the equipment took measurements that showed harmful radiation in the immediate vicinity of the plant — a much heavier dose than the trace levels of radioactive particles that make up the atmospheric plume covering a much wider area.

While the findings were reassuring in the short term, the United States declined to back away from its warning to Americans to stay at least 50 miles from the plant, setting up a far larger perimeter than the Japanese government had established. American officials did not release specific radiation readings.

American officials said their biggest worry was that a frenetic series of efforts by the Japanese military to get water into four of the plant’s six reactors — including water cannons and firefighting helicopters that dropped water but appeared to largely miss their targets — showed few signs of working.

“This is something that will likely take some time to work through, possibly weeks, as eventually you remove the majority of the heat from the reactors and then the spent fuel pool,” said Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, briefing reporters at the White House.

The effort by the Japanese to hook electric power back up to the plant did not begin until Thursday and was likely to take several days to complete — and even then it was unclear how the cooling systems, in reactor buildings battered by a tsunami and then torn apart by hydrogen explosions, would help end the crisis.

“What you are seeing are desperate efforts — just throwing everything at it in hopes something will work,” said one American official with long nuclear experience who would not speak for attribution. “Right now this is more prayer than plan.”

After a day in which American and Japanese officials gave radically different assessments of the danger from the nuclear plant, the two governments tried on Thursday to join forces.

Experts met in Tokyo to compare notes. The United States, with Japanese permission, began to put the intelligence-collection aircraft over the site, in hopes of gaining a view for Washington as well as its allies in Tokyo that did not rely on the announcements of officials from the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates Fukushima Daiichi.

American officials say they suspect that the company has consistently underestimated the risk and moved too slowly to contain the damage.

Aircraft normally used to monitor North Korea’s nuclear weapons activities — a Global Hawk drone and U-2 spy planes — were flying missions over the reactor, trying to help the Japanese government map out its response to the last week’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake, the tsunami that followed and now the nuclear disaster.

President Obama made an unscheduled stop at the Japanese Embassy to sign a condolence book, writing, “My heart goes out to the people of Japan during this enormous tragedy.” He added, “Because of the strength and wisdom of its people, we know that Japan will recover, and indeed will emerge stronger than ever.”

Later he appeared in the Rose Garden at the White House to offer continued American support for the earthquake and tsunami victims, and technical help at the nuclear site.

But before the recovery can begin, the nuclear plant must be brought under control. So American officials were fixated on the temperature readings inside the three reactors that had been operating until the earthquake shut them down, and at the spent fuel pools, looking for any signs that their high levels of heat were going down. If they are uncovered and exposed to air, the fuel rods in those pools heat up and can burst into flame, spewing radioactive elements.

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(via omnomnomjapanesefood)