Anyone in Japan? Tsunami alert - any more news ? PLEASE

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DH who gets these things has had a tsunami alert for Japan. Does anyone have any more info? Itsjust breaking news about the massive earthquake at the moment.

short report on NHK World

(sorry for hijack - Sakura, I thought you would like to know I have just received my copy of Gyn/Ecology )

my dad's not worried at all Steth His words were something along the lines of "there's radioactivity everywhere, even in the ground" and then went on to say the levels here are too small to worry about unless you're in Fukushima.

BUt that's my dad for you

It's a tough book to read, except at the same time you can't put it down. It's in 3 passages. Passage 1 was so hard that I initially skipped passage two and went straight to passage three, but she opened passage three with explaining that the first two passages were "initiation" into the third passage. In other words, you have to read them in order to be in the right frame of mind to "receive" the wisdom third passage Enjoy

Just had to watch some Toryboy on BBC world saying he knows and believes the nuclear energy industry will continue to grow into the future

sakura - it is on Kyodo News under the headline Spent nuke fuel pool may be boiling, further radiation leak feared.

Normally a subscription only English language Japan news channel but they have made the earthquake news open to all to read.

Its a bit slow to load as there is heavy traffic.

The nuclear energy industry probably will have to grow. Perhaps not in countries on several fault lines, though.

This is impressive:

'In an apparent show of solidarity, residents cut back on their electricity usage enough for the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) to scale back its initial blackout scenario.

Hiroka Shoji lives with her family in Chiba prefecture, close to Tokyo Disneyland.

"I feel blessed that we weren't in a place directly affected by the quake and tsunami. I'm sure those feelings are one big reason why people have cut back so much voluntarily on their electricity use."

Her family has moved into one room to try to reduce electricity consumption.'
(from BBC news website)

My admiration for the Japanese is growing by the hour.

I am not surprised by that story. My brother said he felt initially the Japanese morale had been dented, but subsequently where he is, there has been a surge of getting on and making it better for all.

I am getting very angry with the German press. Bild

"Is Fukushima totally out of control?"

"Just 50 people against the atomic inferno"

No wonder Germans are panicking.

And the BBC is reporting that radiation levels are falling. Which coincides nicely with the Geiger counter that I still have open.

DW has a very high regard for the Japanese people ever since she worked for a Japanese firm.

Since the beginning of this whole horrible episode she has had absolute faith they would pull together as a nation and is not one bit surprised that people have bene willing to make sacrifices for others.

"European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger: Tokyo has lost almost all control of events at #Fukushima #nuclear plant"

From BBC Twitter feed. Is there any substance to that claim?

Or is it electioneering, considering it is his state that is highly likely to lose the state election later this month? His successor is - or was until this week - a strong supporter of nuclear power.

I have read in a variety of places that TEPCO has had to pull all employees out of the plant because of radiation levels. However a few hours ago I read that cooling water levels in the No2 reactor were rising so that suggested they had some capability to monitor the plant remotely.

I also heard that the latest plan is to drop cold water by helicopter into the pool which contains the spent fuel rods and that they are working on restoring the external electric feed to the plant.

All that suggests that TEPCO has still some residual control of the plant. We shall see.

Morning all - sakura, PlasticFlamingo, Pennybubbles

Nice sunny day here in Kanagawa! kids at school, me at work, nice cup of tea, lovely

I got the message below on one of my Yahoo group talkboards, it is a report of a conference call yesterday at the British Embassy in Tokyo - long, but reassuring:

"I have just returned from a conference call held at the British Embassy in
Tokyo. The call was concerning the nuclear issue in Japan. The chief spokesman
was Sir. John Beddington, Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, and he
was joined by a number of qualified nuclear experts based in the UK. Their
assessment of the current situation in Japan is as follows:

• In case of a 'reasonable worst case scenario' (defined as total meltdown of
  one reactor with subsequent radioactive explosion) an exclusion zone of 30 miles
  (50km) would be the maximum required to avoid affecting peoples' health. Even in
  a worse situation (loss of two or more reactors) it is unlikely that the damage
  would be significantly more than that caused by the loss of a single reactor.

• The current 20km exclusion zone is appropriate for the levels of
  radiation/risk currently experienced, and if the pouring of sea water can be
  maintained to cool the reactors, the likelihood of a major incident should be
  avoided. A further large quake with tsunami could lead to the suspension of the
  current cooling operations, leading to the above scenario.

• The bottom line is that these experts do not see there being a possibility of
  a health problem for residents in Tokyo. The radiation levels would need to be
  hundreds of times higher than current to cause the possibility for health
  issues, and that, in their opinion, is not going to happen (they were talking
  minimum levels affecting pregnant women and children - for normal adults the
  levels would need to be much higher still).

• The experts do not consider the wind direction to be material. They say Tokyo
  is too far away to be materially affected.

• If the pouring of water can be maintained the situation should be much
  improved after ten days, as the reactors' cores cool down.

• Information being provided by Japanese authorities is being independently
  monitored by a number of organizations and is deemed to be accurate, as far as
  measures of radioactivity levels are concerned.

• This is a very different situation from Chernobyl, where the reactor went into
  meltdown and the encasement, which exploded, was left to burn for weeks without
  any control. Even with Chernobyl, an exclusion zone of 30 miles would have been
  adequate to protect human health. The problem was that most people became sick
  from eating contaminated food, crops, milk and water in the region for years
  afterward, as no attempt was made to measure radioactivity levels in the food
  supply at that time or warn people of the dangers. The secrecy over the
  Chernobyl explosion is in contrast to the very public coverage of the Fukushima
  crisis.

• The Head of the British School asked if the school should remain closed. The
  answer was there is no need to close the school due to fears of radiation. There
  may well be other reasons - structural damage or possible new quakes - but the
  radiation fear is not supported by scientific measures, even for children.

• Regarding Iodine supplementation, the experts said this was only necessary for
  those who had inhaled quantities of radiation (those in the exclusion zone or
  workers on the site) or through consumption of contaminated food/water supplies.
  Long term consumption of iodine is, in any case, not healthy.

The discussion was surprisingly frank and to the point. The conclusion of the
experts is that the damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami, as well as the
subsequent aftershocks, was much more of an issue than the fear of radiation
sickness from the nuclear plants"

God morning all,

Tante Rose thanks for taking the time to post that. It is reassuring.

The french embassy has been actively encouraging people to leave the country (even tokyo). China is also evacuating its citizens from the worst affected areas. In both instances the underlying reason is fear of aftershocks and not being able to reach out to them rather than radiation (as far as I know from the people we spoke to).

We've had sms messages in HK and Sing,( purportedly from the bbc). announcing that radiations would travel this far (accross philippines) and that people should shelter themselves from acid rain! The main papers had to release statements at the end of the day to confirm it was a hoax!
Many people did get scared though (and have to admit I am concerned). There is a very high level of pollution/haze at the moment.
We frequently have haze from distant forrest fires or industrial activity traveling hundreds of miles so it is not an implausible scenario.

thanks for that tanterose - can i steal it and put it on our Mamas website here in Shanghai? We're obviously nowhere near as close to the action as the MNers based in Japan but there is a certain amount of low level panic starting to brew here and some expats are starting to "take impromptu holidays" as a precaution to the wind changing. Im staying but it's good to read reassuring things like this from a reliable source.... the chinese media isn't exactly trustworthy! thank goodness for the internet hey!

please use it, Shanghai, if it will help

what I have taken from all of this is what a lot of fakers nuclear "scientists" are. You know the way doctors use latin in their textbooks and drug packets, to make out their science is too advanced for the lay person, but when you actually translate the latin term into English the actual word is "water" or "chalk" or something. But they knew that writing "water" in English wouldn't have justified their god-like status (and salaries)

And here, the "coolant" they use is water???

oh and thank you for that last post tanterose
Can I breathe my sigh of relief now? I heard last night it was dramatically cooler than it was before

Reactor coolants are not always water though, so if you are versed in the area you will automatically use the catch-all term. It could also get confusing as water is used for other purposes in the plant so you'd have to say "coolant water" not just "water". I don't think you can hold that against them.

no fair enough
I'm not happy with nuclear power atm. I see why you wouldn't want to rely on imports, I see that when there's no problem nuclear energy is clean, but it can just go so horribly wrong, and I can't see how the world can justify building more and more and more of these damned things to line the pockets of a few men.

Would it be such a crime to get humans to limit their energy expendature. Do we need Neon? No. Do we need shops open all night. No. Do we need half the things we buy. No

I kind of agree with you there Sakura but I believe neon tubing and fluorescent strip lights are a lot cheaper to run than normal lighting; something to do with the initial jolt of electricity required to start the gas in the light up, then it only needs very low amounts to keep it alight. So turning fluorescent lights on and off apparently uses more electricity than leaving them on. Or so I was told.

But I do agree that there should be no more nuclear power stations. They were looking at building one, maybe more, in Australia but I think this will scotch that plan! Why on earth they don't just build massive solar plants, or insist that every new build has full solar panelling, I don't know. It's not like we're short of sunlight here! They're pushing people to have solar-powered hot water; they just need to push harder for solar to take over the majority of the household electricity supply.

The trouble is that all technology requires electricity - so the more technology we have, the more electricity is needed. And there's no slowing down the pace of technology - they're always creating some new way of saving human energy (probably contributing to the obesity explosion) by using electricity. Of course you know all this, I'm not trying to teach you anything here! just having a tiny rant.

I'm following this thread with interest, as I am due to go on a ski trip to Hokkaido this weekend with my family.

Our tour operator is clearly relieved that we have not yet cancelled (and there is no point in cancelling at this point as we would not get any money back anyway; insurance won't cover for this (act of god) and as there is nothing wrong in Hokkaido, the best the tour operator will do is transfer some of the value of our package to next season), as they are losing a lot of money, despite the fact that life is going on as normal there. They are desperate for us to come and spend our money and I'm finding it hard to see why we shouldn't go. The ski resort is around 650km from Fukushima (and in any case, I'm finding it hard to find any hard evidence that Hokkaido would be affected seriously enough to have any negative impact on our health) and we are not flying via the Japanese main island to get to Sapporo, so not getting in the way of essential travel in/out of Tokyo.

I feel that the knee-jerk reactions of people across the world will mean that Japan's already weakened economic situation will be made worse by thousands of tourists staying away for months, or even longer. Arguably, there is a case to stay away from Tokyo/further north at the moment, but I don't see why we as a family should stay away from Hokkaido. We will be bringing much-needed cash into somewhere which will be losing out in a big way right now.

If any of you MNers living in Japan feels I've got this all wrong, I'd be keen to hear your views. DH & I are talking about not much else at the moment!

Having experienced the protest situation in Bangkok last year, I know how the media can blow things out of all proportion: friends and family were worried for our safety at that time, yet we - living only minutes' walk from one of the main flashpoints! - felt safe nearly all the time. From the BBC reports you would have thought the entire city was under fire at times.

I wonder how much this is the case now?

Hokkaido is perfectly safe - have a lovely time!