For children to be born

I am living in Tokyo area. Today, still we had two relatively large earthquakes.
Since we lost 25% of electric power capacity, the number of the commute train is drastically reduced. Elevators in every building and public space are off, my office turns off the lights in daytime, so the places are dim in the building. To save the electricity, tens of thousands of households are suffering 3 hour long planned blackouts everyday. It's still cold out there, so blackouts from 6:00pm until 9:00pm really gives huge impact to our daily life.

TV media is broadcasting the elderly people dying in hospitals in Tohoku area, because they don't have enough medicines. Under these circumstances, TV showed one old gentleman looking for his missing wife at last got caught pneumonia, and were brought to hospital by helicopter. We know that we need to deliver water, food, medicines for refugees in each camp, but not have been achieved because roads to more than thousand of camps widely spread for 400km are totally collapsed. So those stuffs have been piled up somewhere on the way, and never arrived to the people in need.


At Fukushima power plant, two workers in the facility are severely injured from the dose of radiation, while they were trying to install electric power cable in the reactor to get back control system up and running. They were immediately taken away to the hospial by ambulance.

This is a huge disaster.

I am just wondering what we can learn from this disaster and make this painful experience useful for future. Otherwise,,,,,

It's too sad.


This is the song came out about 30 years ago. I didn't like that much when I listened at first time.
But now, this really sinks in.

Tsunami was more than １４M hight

It is getting apparent that the hight of Tsunami hit Tohoku area on Mach 11 was more than 14M.
Who could predict in advance that such enoumous lump of water would hit the towns, or nuclear power plant?

In Japan's history, we could go back at least 600 -700 years with certain reliable records, we can't see any records that shows such enourmous Tsunami hit Japan's sea coast.

According to the Japan Meteological Agency, this time's earthquake is the very rare case that three major earthquakes happened working together.

Don't think that those area have not prepared in advance. Each town actually prepared for Tsunami with building big bank along with the coast line, with periodical evacuation training etc.

But those banks were just 5 meters, which were good enough to avoid most Tsunami.
Last year, Government made special assgined to team to slash the national budget.
Ironically, the first budget being cut was to build Super-Bank to avoid huge Tsunami.
I would say nobody was against such budget cut. Rather, every Japanese see that the plan to build-out such huge bank was the evidence of how inefficient the government's budgetary plan is.

In terms of the preparation of the preparation of Tsunami, Fukushima power plant did emergency training last November, assuming one of their facilities totally lost electric power.

But this time, four out of six facility went out of controll at the same time.

Like this, this disaster shows nature is far beyond our imagination based on our historical experiences.

Earthquake again, again, again !!

This Saturday is the first Saturday we can stay relatively calm.
Everythig seems to be getting settle down.

Last week was so hectic. Through the entire week, every single day, small earthquakes continued to happen. (Not small, though.)

Since the electric deliery capacity lost its 25%.

Oh, just right now when I am writing this, the earthquake happed again.
Again, again, it never settled.

Now U.S Airforce's Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(Global Hawk) helps Fukushima Nuclear Plant

Due to the high radiation, onsite engineers are not able to close the failities.
More worse, nobody in war-room for remedy action can see what exactly the status of each reactor is.

Then, Japanese Government asked US Air force to send Global Hawk(UAV) to take pictures of the facities so that engineers can see and understand the exact conditions of the facility. (although they are still monitoring various figures at various points, those information has its limitation to know the actual situation.)

NHK news reported that this US airplane would be onsite from March 17 and work from March 18.

*****Update April 1, 2010
It seems that the pictures taken from this airplane are given to the Japanese Government. I don't know why. I think the most party in need to see the pictures is TEPCO people. As of today, none of those pictures are disclosed to the public.
Is this because U.S does not want to disclose the pictures that may reveal how much in detail the airplane can shoot in picture?

Fukushima nuclear power is an old facility operated since 1971

In a TV show where the security of nuclear power plant was discussed, some professors pointed out,
'it's too sad to hear from many countries, such as U.S, France,Germany, announcing the revisit of the nuclear power plant development plant by looking at the situation in Fukushima power plant. That facility is built and started it's operation couple of decades ago. The security and plant designs have been improved in more latest facilities. As Fukushima No.2 power plant shoes, which is located few miles away from Fukushima No1 power plant which is now deep in trouble and have been operated in a very stable manner even after the hit by same natural disaster, the facility with the latest technology showed the capability of much more reliant operations.'

Granted their claims are technically correct, new incidents coming out everyday get us frustrated and exhaisted so much.
Now it seems number 4 Is in the deepest trouble.

Refugees from Fukushima power plant are desparately wanting Gas

Now it turned out the fuel rods are fully exposed regardless of a huge efforts of the engineers to add more seawater to cool down the fuel rods. As authorities admit, this is severely critical situation.
The people living near from this power plant were ordered to keep away at least 20km from the facility.
They are spending their times in several emergent facilities which province had provided.

What the evacuees are desperately hoping is the gas to fulfill their motor vehicles to run further away from the facilities,which currently they don't have.

Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant #2 needs to be stopped

Following the operation stop from Plant #1 and #3, both of which had exploded, now Plant #2 came to a situation to stop operations.

All of those nuclear power plant's problems came from the break-down of the redundant generators which were all soaked by Tsunami. They were supposed to pomp up pure water to cool down the core poles. But they didn't work.

Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant has been covering 25% of electricity consumption of Tokyo area. With the outage of Plant #1, #2 and #3, now the capability of providing enough electric power is extremely decreasing.


Now planned black-outs started to executed from Group 5. For the area categorized as Group 5, they won't have traffic lights and hospitals neither. Large hospitals might be fine because they have generators, but small clinics may not.

Planned Black-out

Fukushima nuclear plant also exploded, and several workers are injured.
This explosion is because of the Hydrogen accumulated in the building. Authorities emphasized that the explosion blow away outside wall but core facilities are safe.

But it is obvious that we are lacking the electric power supply against demands.
Tokyo Denryoku (Substantially dominant power company for eastern Japan) divided Kanto Area into five segments, and announced the time frame which may occur black-out.

Segment1: 6:20 am-　10:00am and/or 16:50pm -20:30pm
Segment2: 9:20 am - 13:00pm and/or 18:20pm - 22:00pm
Segment3: 12:20pm - 16:00pm
Segment4: 13:50pm - 17:30pm
Segment5: 15:20pm -19:00pm

Fortunately, as of now, electric power keeps coming. But it is anticipated the demand for electricity is high around 7:00pm, so planned black-out might be executed sometime tonight.
(Railways may be also affected.)

So, some of office workers in metro area have already started leaving their offices before black-outs come.

We are still in serious situation.

Here is explosions of Fuskushima nuclear plant 1,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMEV-_X5b_8

Exactly the same eplosion happened for Plant#3.

In this case, the engineers are doing very good to regain controlls.

Still Struggling to control NueClear Plant

After posting my last comment, I quickly run out and went several supermarkets to buy water and batteries. But they were all gone, it was too late. All disappeared from the shelf.

The news of Fukushima nuclear plant changed everything for the living of Kanto area residential directly.

Last late night, the government announced that they stated to pour seawater and boric acid into the plant #1, the one which exploded, too cool down. Pouring seawater and boric acid will make it very difficult to resume its operation. (It is said that progress to cool down is going well, but it will take about one week to completely cool down the facility.)


This early morning, the government also announced that plant #3 is also starting to decrease the water, so determined to add more water and boric acid, too.

Operation stops will bring severe shortage of the electricity for Tokyo area, and it will last relatively long period.

No mention that it is tremendous disaster for the people living in Tohoku area.
But this earthquake severely hits the livings of the people who lives nearly 400km away from the hypocenter.

Fukushima NewClear plant exploded

Media is broadcasting that one of the facilities of Fukushima newclear plant exploded at about 4 pm JST because of the other strong earthquake hit the area directly.

While many concerned parties are trying to controll the plant, especially trying to cool down the facilty, it is going to unforeseeable what will happen next.

Planned Blackout will be coming from tomorrow Sunday for Kanto are residential

Yesterday's earthquake gave huge impact even for the Kanto are residential.
First off, every railway had to stopped its operation since they needed to check out the safety of the physical rail. So, more than several hundred-thousands of people were forced to stay in their office area.

I, personally, walked back to my home with 6 hours strait walk. Luckily I was out of my office when earthquake hit, and was about to have a meeting at Shinjulu-area. Shinjuku was 25km away from my home, while my office is more than 30km away.
(I didn't have any experience to walk such long way. Given that marathon runners run 42Km, I thought it was relatively easy to walk 25km. But that idea was totally wrong!! it took 6 hours to finish 25km walk. It was cold last night, and I didn't know the way to home, so Google Map was useful, but the mobile device went out of juice at the most complicated area. So, I lost the way. It guided a short-cuts, but I had to go back to the main street which I Iknew for a drive.)

First, most foods went out from stores, next batteries for mobile phones, while voice communications were stopped by network carrier. Internet from mobile phone was barely-available,

Many people who have a physical confident went back to their home by walk. So, many pubic facility opened its facility for the rest of such walkers. (It was quite helpful.)
Media reported that many bicycles were sold out instantly from bicycle stores.
I, personally stopped by the bicycle along the way my home, but the least cheapest one costs 15,000 yen, so I didn't buy it. It was bad idea, too. I should have bought it given the long way home to go back.

Aftermath still continues. Since Nuclear power stations in Fukushima was damaged heavily and stopped operations, the capacity to generate for Kanto area has been decreased significantly.
Authorities has just announced that they are planning to stop supplying electricy to area. Residentials, offices will have planned blackout from tomorrow, which is expected to continue about two to three hours per area.

Still, many small earthquakes continues. We really needs to be careful.