Word's out on my friend in Ishinomaki. He's alive! His father got a short e-mail from him about 20 minutes ago.

Apparently he went to the town hall that day to get some documents, and it's pretty far inland.

good!!!! i'm glad you've heard!!!

lucky... ive yet to hear from my host family who lives in tomiya machi kurokawa district near sendai IM SO WORRIED

from the satellite images, it seems like Tomiya machi is comparatively quite far inland. The houses at the edge nearest to Tomiya on the new satellite image are all standing, and the cars seem to be parked in an orderly fashion, so it sounds pretty good for the waves not having reached Tomiya.
Hopefully you just haven't heard because of power outages and stuff...

edit: found this: □富谷町…停電が続いているが、大きな被害はなし。
http://innerpanther.iza.ne.jp/blog/entry/2191985/

thank you for that. now I can sleep a little better tonight. I still don't know if they are safe because I don't know if they were home but this makes me still feel a lot better. I will wait for their emails thank you icecream ))

Japan Meteorological Agency
"Estimating from the occurrence of aftershock so far, the possibility of aftershocks with magnitude of 7 or higher is 70% until 10 a.m., 16 March, followed by 50% until 10 a.m., 19 March."

Yay, power from Eastern and Western parts of Japan have different frequencies (50Hz and 60Hz).

Did anyone else see Bill Maher's last show? It was the strangest one I have ever seen him do. His entire monologue was jokes about the earthquake in Japan. He then went for the throat interviewing a Muslim politician. He was extremely short with the Republican guests as well. I like the guy, but... wow.

Seamoby Wrote:Yay, power from Eastern and Western parts of Japan have different frequencies (50Hz and 60Hz).

Yea there's some Japanese chain mail going around mixi and facebook asking western Japan to conserve energy for Tokyo....except it's not possible to transfer energy from this part of Japan.

kitakitsune Wrote:

Seamoby Wrote:Yay, power from Eastern and Western parts of Japan have different frequencies (50Hz and 60Hz).

Yea there's some Japanese chain mail going around mixi and facebook asking western Japan to conserve energy for Tokyo....except it's not possible to transfer energy from this part of Japan.

Actually, the two parts are linked -- there are frequency converters (that one has a maximum transmission rate of 300 MW; comparison: Fukushima I reactor #1 generates 460 MW; google says TEPCO has three converters, two 300MW and one 600MW). So there is an extent to which reduced demand in western Japan will avoid making demands on the east, I guess, but the limit would be the point at which the converters are all transferring west-to-east at their maximum limit. I wouldn't be surprised if the western half had enough spare generating capacity to do that anyway at normal demand levels [*] though; if that's so then domestic-user demand reduction would presumably be unnecessary.

[*] or at normal minus asking industrial consumers to stop drawing power; at least in the UK I believe you can buy electricity more cheaply under a "and we'll cut you off for a bit if demand is high" sort of tariff, which lets the utility company do demand management.

Okay I see.

France is asking all it's citizens to leave Japan's Tokyo region

Edit: Thanks kitakitsune

bodhisamaya Wrote:France is asking all it's citizens to leave Kanto

Fixed

http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/0...-reactors/

The last 2 days have been very intensive studying for me.

As I have friends in Japan, I just cant keep my eyes closed.
One is in Fukushima

kitakitsune Wrote:http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/0...-reactors/

Good to know the nuclear plant is a non-issue.

I agree the nuclear plant is non-issue
The problem is the possible and very probable grade 7 earthquakes and if they will or will not affect destructively the massive populated kanto region.

Here, I am living quite west of tokyo (Kokubunji). there is no milk, bread, rice, cookies, natto, juices in the supermarkets. People is just preparing for the worst.

[Katsuo]

Power cuts (due to shortages) are starting from tomorrow. Each area is given a number that corresponds to a time of day when the power will be down in that area.

For example here is the page for Tokyo. My district is a "5" and it seems we will be without power every day until the end of April for three hours at some time between 3:20 pm and 7:00 pm.
Number-to-time key
Area look-up

kitakitsune Wrote:http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/0...-reactors/

That was very informative, but it's just one guy's best guess. No one knows for sure what is going on. Physicists that have appeared on CNN and on the Japanese news are much more cautious in their explanations.

Looks like a lot of trains in the Tokyo area will be affected by the rolling blackouts. Just listening to NHK, lots of 運休 for various lines.

Eikyu Wrote:

kitakitsune Wrote:http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/0...-reactors/

That was very informative, but it's just one guy's best guess. No one knows for sure what is going on. Physicists that have appeared on CNN and on the Japanese news are much more cautious in their explanations.

The only real thing that I have heard a lot of people questioning is the use of sea water in the plants. Not many people are sure how that will effect the cores. One thing that is clear though is that reactors 1-3 at Plant 1 are pretty much scrap metal now. Sea water is highly highly corrosive and because they have used it now the reactors will no longer be usable. In addition, I wouldn't be surprised if they find the fuel rods melted somewhat in reactor 1 and 3. They have played back and forth saying "Oh we might have had a partial meltdown" to "No chance of a meltdown." yet no one has tried to explain the cesium and iodine detected, which occur BECAUSE uranium rods start to break down (ie: meltdown).

Either way, even if the plants went into full meltdown and some how melted through their encasing, the damage would still be pretty localized. But just as the blog post says, Light water plants (what Fukushima plants are), are extremely safe even in catastrophic failure, compared to Chernobyl.

Honestly the only things to worry about now are: how is Japan going to find the power to support the country with nearly 3 reactors totaling 2GigaWatts, pretty much scrapped. We aren't even in the clear yet, plant 2 has some issues at the moment as well. In the long term I fear this small issue is going to polarize the public against nuclear power even more, and the 3 reactors which were planned to be built at Fukushima 1 in about 5-6 years will either be scrapped or pushed back another decade due to safety issues and political fighting. During this time Russia will be profiting from supplying Japan with liquid gas. It's a mess.

vix86 Wrote:During this time Russia will be profiting from supplying Japan with liquid gas.

Yay.

Well, if nothing else, there will be a boom in internet-educated nuclear engineers.

But yeah, dumping sea water into any kind of precision machine means that you no longer intend to operate that machine anymore. Sea water hates precision machines.

Not like there's a whole lot we can do about it either way right now, other than push our governments to take on more responsible energy policies for better long-term solutions.

Speaking of Russia: http://en.rian.ru/russia/20110313/162985847.html

Perhaps the only reason why I am not ashamed of having grown up in the same city as that man is the fact that he was declared persona non grata there. But if his proposal means that we will have a brand new Akihabara in the middle of Siberia, then I am all for it!

"The politician said he was serious since "the Japanese nation is under the threat of extinction in the near future." "

I seriously want to know, what will be the end of globalization. What will be the result?
One human language and culture, or something different?