Major Earthquake Hits Japan

[Demon of Undoing]

Ok , that's funny.

Sorry. I'll shut up.

[~]

Not nearly as light hearted...

[Colonel Sun]

[~]

[Colonel Sun]

[Sennacherib]

The hysteria over radiation continues. Some Canadian supermarkets report that customers are reluctant to buy Japanese products, even those which were not produced anywhere near the Fukushima nuclear plant and were packaged and shipped before the earthquake.

[Colonel Sun]

[Endovelico]

Making fun of silly people all over the world will not make the Fukushima problem any smaller, and gives the impression that one wants to close one's eyes to the seriousness of that problem...

[Colonel Sun]

[~]

I think some of the "hysteria" may be due to the incomplete information the Japanese are releasing about important facets of what's going on at Fukushima, and the fact that they don't seem to have much of a plan, that TEPCO is obviously overwhelmed, and that this will likely go on for years before some less-than-satisfactory remediation happens.

And with radiation from Fukushima making its way to places like Massachusetts and Scotland, as well as many miles upwind from the plant in Japan, it's now become clear that this situation can spread and affect areas far removed.


There's also a lot of fissile material there. Something on the order of the combined US and Soviet above ground bomb testing programs.

And in almost 4 weeks, we've gone from, "Nothing to worry about" to, "Biggest nuclear disaster in 25 years" with lots of comparison to Chernobyl.

Meanwhile, the press, with little to go on from the tight lipped Japanese and faced with a difficult system of measurements, as well as conflicting reports from ill-informed authorities and experts, is winging it from hundreds and thousands of miles removed from the situation and producing a large spectrum of confusing and conflicting reports. There's also other news grabbing headlines and TV time, so the nuclear reportage is usually limited to headlines that sell papers and analysis pieces that run several thousand words or take an hour of off-prime TV time.


Personally, I don't trust the Japanese government to be any more forthcoming than Col Sun here, for a lot of reasons.
And even though I'd like to get back to good Hentai and tentacle porn as much as the next guy, I don't see a lot of reasons to be optimistic yet.

[Colonel Sun]

Not even wrong.
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[~]

[~]

[~]

[Colonel Sun]

[~]

[AzariLoveIran]

.

The Stuxnet Worm and Fukushima





.

[Torchwood]

Not big enough to fuel a tsunami, fortunately.

[Sennacherib]

[~]

[Colonel Sun]

[~]

[Colonel Sun]

Demographics of the dead and missing:



55.4% of the confirmed fatalities were over 65 years years of age.

27.9% were between 40 and 64 years of age.

[Colonel Sun]

Anecdotes. Was in Tokyo last week for a day. Tokyo station was packed and busy as usual although there did not appear to be as many travellers on the shinkansen.

In the evening, Tokyo was not it's usual brightly lit self as efforts are being made to conserve electricity.

No sign of radiation zombies or Godzilla. Or flyjin.

The cherry blossoms are at their peak bloom here this week. And it's a beautiful warm sunny day.
Life goes on.



On the other hand, with their response to this natural disaster, the senior management of TEPCO have covered
themselves in something that certainly does not smell like glory. No cherry blossom viewing for them.

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[Ammianus]

The govt just placed this whole catastrophe equivalent to the Chernobyl one 25 years ago.

At least some honesty and transparency is finally leaking through.