Feeling better

2011-03-18T14:18:20Z

Yesterday's news from the IAEA that TEPCO engineers had managed to pull a mains power line to Fukushima #1's reactor #2 made a huge difference in my mood, despite the later correction saying that they'd started pulling a power line, not completed it. The lack of major new catastrophes, the apparent effectiveness of the water spraying from the SDF trucks, and a hefty dose of THE BLUE HEARTS helped too. It's funny, because yesterday's weather here was quite gloomy, and the weather of the previous days was bright and sunny, but in both cases my mood was exactly the opposite.

In other news...there seem to be an increasing number of blogs written by nuclear scientists, students, etc, stepping in to "fill the gaps", as it were, and explain the basics of nuclear fission and how nuclear power plants fit together. http://plainenglishnuclear.blogspot.com/ is one of them; it answered a lot of the lingering curiosities that were kicking around in my head ("How are they pumping seawater if they have no power?" etc.)

As an aside, though I've got a decent general-science-student's knowledge of how reactors and their safety systems work, I've been reading up on the details lately, as I'm sure many of us have. I love (for some value of "love") how the term "excursion" gets used in the nuclear literature (eg "power excursion" , "criticality excursion" ), as if the reactor had, you know, just snuck out to go for a nice stroll when nobody was looking.

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地震

2011-03-16T18:49:56Z

In my high school days, I was an exchange student; I lived for a year in Maebashi, Gunma-ken, Japan (日本群馬県前橋市).

Although for various reasons I haven't kept in touch with anyone there, I've still been following matters very closely. Despite how long it's been, Japan still feels like my second home. My third host family's house is a bit more than a kilometer away from this radioactivity monitoring point, and they have relatives in Sendai whom we went to visit while I was there, so this all strikes pretty close to home for me.

When it comes to the problems at Fukushima #1, a lot of the foreign news coverage has been inaccurate, sensationalist, or both. It doesn't help that most of us don't have an in-depth understanding of nuclear power plants and ionizing radiation, so we don't have any context to evaluate what information we're given and try to deduce the scope of the dangers facing Japan. Moreover, the nuclear plant troubles may not be the biggest problem in the country right now -- there are still many people in Tōhoku with little or no food, water, gas, power, or heat, going on six nights now. Logistics are hugely problematic, with fuel being in short supply.

With that being said, here are some of the resources I've been using to keep up on what's going on:

Maki (of JustBento and JustHungry fame) has been following several Japanese media sources (eg NHK, TBS) and tweeting updates in English. Unfortunately, it's not very easy to donate to Japanese charities from overseas (you need a Japanese bank account or cellphone to do so) but she's compiled a list of other ways to help.
The students & faculty of MIT's Nuclear Science and Engineering department have been posting updates and detailed backgrounders explaining the events at Fukushima. The nuclear industry backed NEI also has updates; so too does the IAEA.
Evelyn, a Geology Ph.D student, has been posting interviews with her dad, a retired nuclear engineeer, on her blog.

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shadowspar

Feeling better

地震