Twitter Stream with updates from Japan

[Xeth]

I work at a local game store and we just got this game yesterday. We probably won't sell it for a long time.

The ONLY reason I would buy this, would be for all the trophies between the 3 games, but only if previously played :P
I wont pay more than $20 for HD collections from PS2. I only paid $20 for Sly and $20 for God of War Collections :)

[Deadlyscorpion]

I also want to mention that I picked up a NY Times and I read a story about a school having to move some evacuees to make room for them to be able to hold a graduation ceremony for elementary school students. Breaks my heart to see the images of kids crying ans everyone dressed in black mourning the death of so many. For every success in getting power back in the country, more suffering turns up revealing the harsh truth that the Japanese people must face every day for years to come.

[RAIST]

bleh... latest TEPCO Press release looks to only cover activity up to about 5pm JST. They sent everyone out of the area b/c of the black smoke coming out of #3. Maybe after lunch some more information comes out.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11032307-e.html

Gonna have temps below freezing tonight...hope they've got some kerosene heaters. At least they are ending the blackouts after midnight.

[RAIST]

TEPCO is managing to get a little more power to the grid now--supply peaked at 38.5MW today, 1.5MW more than they've been able to get out in the last week or so. They aren't declaring for certain about running blackouts during the 5pm and 9pm peak JST times today--will evaluate and give at least 2 hour notice. Otherwise, no blackouts planned today.

Tweet from JapanTimes mentioned them detected a "neutron beam" (plutonium or uranium leak?), but unable to load the article. Having trouble getting to some Japan homed sites for info...timing out on page loads. Other sites are loading fine.

Just got an error message that Twitter.com is full to capacity... WTH?!!

[Macrom]

Just got an error message that Twitter.com is full to capacity... WTH?!!

Oh no the world is gonna end lol TWITTER IS FULL!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rather odd, ive never seen that msg before

[RAIST]

A few things from the blog at TheTokyoPost, can't get at JapanTimes for some reason:
http://www.thetokyopost.com/news-opinion/live-blog-general-updates-about-the-situation-in-japan/


Foreign Ministry: 25 nations have either closed their embassies in Tokyo or moved them elsewhere in the country.W7VOA

(Reuters Life!) - The risk of radiationcontamination from Japan's damaged nuclear power stations hassparked food bans across the globe and more surprisingly, abuying frenzy from South

6:55pm quake was 5+ in Iwaki, which is about 50kms from Fukushima 1 plant

[RAIST]

Found the blurb about the neutron beam at JapanTimes finally:


Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it has observed a neutron beam, a kind of radioactive ray, 13 times on the premises of its crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

Tepco said the neutron beam measured about 1.5 km southwest of the plant's Nos. 1 and 2 reactors over three days from March 13 and is equivalent to 0.01 to 0.02 microsieverts per hour. This is not a dangerous level of radiation, it added.

The utility said it will also measure uranium and plutonium, which could emit a neutron beam.

In the 1999 criticality accident at a nuclear fuel processing plant run by JCO Co. in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, uranium broke apart continually in nuclear fission, causing a massive amount of neutron beams.

In the latest case at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, a criticality accident has yet to happen.

But the measured neutron beam may be evidence that uranium and plutonium leaked from the plant's nuclear reactors and spent nuclear fuel have discharged a small amount of neutron beams via fission.

[RAIST]

Reactor5 @5pm yesterday, cooling pump stopped workin due 2 tripped electric fuse, temp was under 50c

Dolphin tossed by tusnami was rescued in a rice paddy in Sendai. Where does it go?
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&langpair=ja%7Cen&u=http://www.asahi.com/special/10005/TKY201103220507.html

various reports of supermartkets selling out of bottled water already due to contamination hysteria ginned up by the media--reports were that officials stated contamination likely too high for infants.


japantimes: Disasters' cost may hit ¥25 trillion; economic impact expected to surpass that of Hurricane Katrina
Banks eye lending ¥2 trillion to Tepco by monthend

Japan Times Article on Recent Bank System Failure:

Mizuho clears transaction backlog
Kyodo News
Mizuho Bank has resolved the majority of delays in money transfers caused by a recent computer system failure, sources said Wednesday.

But Mizuho was still working to restore a number of online services used by corporate clients, making it unlikely the bank would be able to normalize all operations by Thursday morning.

The large-scale glitch generated a backlog of up to 1.16 million unsettled transactions at one of Japan's biggest commercial banks with a nationwide presence.

Mizuho said Tuesday it had cleared the backlog but then found that tens of thousands of transactions remained unprocessed after receiving a raft of new complaints from account holders, the sources said.

Mizuho officials processed all remaining unsettled transactions later Tuesday night.

The retail banking arm of Mizuho Financial Group Inc. has launched a probe into the cause of the system failure. The breakdown forced Mizuho to suspend all ATM operations for three days from Saturday in a bid to repair its computer system.

Mizuho resumed almost all bank operations Wednesday, including over-the-counter services and transactions via ATMs. It also resumed operations at 2,175 ATMs at unmanned locations that had been suspended through Tuesday.

The bank hopes to process an estimated 1.9 million paychecks Friday.

[RAIST]

The IAEA.org site has started doing recaps of the situation in Japan. The latest one gives an overview of the status as of last night (JST). Aside from the detail about issues with one of #5's pumps (think it's one for the core system, not the spent fuel pool), at a glance it looked to be a pretty good report on the situation:

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html



From TEPCO press release at 21:00 JST, on 3/32/11
( http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11032308-e.html )


At around 5:24 pm on March 23rd, when we switched the temporary Residual
Heat Removal System Seawater Pump, it automatically stopped. We will
repair the pump and maintain the reactor water level and the temperature
in the reactor properly.



from midnight to 6am JST, power has been maintained to at/under a 30MW peak, of the 38.5 peak supply that TEPCO has been able to provide so far--with no blackouts going since @11PM last night. Hope they can continue to keep the power just under the limit and maybe drop another block of blackouts soon. <crossing fingers>

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/forecast/html/index-e.html

**they've added a CSV file (Excel may automatically open browser when you click Download) where you can see the actual numeric peak value of demand per hour now, if you are interested in seeing the figures--Download button is at bottom of the graph at the link above.



kenmogi: Tap Water scare in Tokyo. It is psychological more than factual at this stage. Bottled waters completely sold out


W7VOA Latest radiation data for Ibaraki-ken seems to show levels holdings steady at 25x above what they were on Mar. 15

[RAIST]

8am NHK news break:
white smoke still from #1-4--speculation it is just vapor--no dark smoke from #3 like yesterday.

No significant changes in radiation levels noted as yet

Two reactors showing surface temp drops: #3 @ 57C, #4 @ 22C

All buildings reading surface temps below 40C

Nurseries having difficulty finding bottled water for infant care--even tried getting it over the internet.

Only enough water delivery earmarked for infants up to ~12 months old.

TEPCO reporting no more black smoke visiable at #3 as of 6am JST

[Chrisstreb]

good news to hear regarding the temps and the lack of black smoke at the #3 Reactor

[RAIST]

From TEPCO's morning press release:


Today's work for cooling the spent fuel pools
-At approximately 5:35 am, we started injecting seawater into the fuel
spent pool of Unit 3, using Fuel Pool Cooling and Filtering(clean up)
system (FPC).
-We are considering further spraying at other units and others subject
to the conditions of spent fuel pools.


As of 11:00 AM JST today, TEPCO graph showing no blackout block in effect--power demand holding at just over 3700 at peak during the 8am-11am rush, compared to 3400's yesterday. Wonder if they can ramp up the conservation tonight and avoid a blackout during the 4:00-10:00 peak hours too? Tepco still holding to potentially doing blackouts during those evening hours with a 2 hour notice.

Radiation levels for the most part continuing a gentle slope downward again today. No big movers--but areas close and to the south of Fukushima seemed to be slightly bigger movers at roughly a 4% move again.



Japan finding it has lots of friends. Latest donors: Sudan ($100k), Gabon ($1m) and Botswana ($150k)

First we got news Gwen Stefani sending $1 mil. aid to quake-stricken Japan. Now Kim Jong-il (per KCNA) donating $500k

DailyYomiuri Intl Institute of Education says it will give $5000 scholarships to Japanese studying in the US whose families were victims of the disaster

stevenagata Tokyo to begin distributing water for use in baby formula to parents of children under 1 year

Saitama reports level excessive for infants also detected in its water supply

Tokyo government asks people to refrain from panic buying mineral water

13 days after the earthquake & tsunami, in Yamagata city, cars still standing in 500m line to get gas.

[NightDagger]

I do not mean to come across dis-respectful, but do you think that when the servers come back online that the JP player base will cause blackouts to happen again? I mean with the t.v. & console's running plus the increase of bandwidth will be sure to draw a huge amount of power.

Just hope this does not cause more problems.

[RAIST]

That is the big question...if TEPCO would just let the system do it's job and stop with the @#$@#$ blackouts....

The hydro plants and such ramp up their output when demand gets within a certain range of the supply--we saw that happen yesterday. For the longest time they've been saying potential supply is 36/37 MW... yet, last night, they managed to pull 38.5MW out of their @$$ somehow.

Methinks the power company is just holding out on everyone for fear of the grid going down I guess, which I can understand... but you need to test the limits somehow gdi.

[RAIST]

powered up control center to #1's control center about 11:30 JST--looking foward to getting cooling systems going once they can get a fair assesment of the plant's systems/gauges. Unclear of just what their expectations for #1 are today until they know more of the plant's status.

[RAIST]

WOW--they actually updated the blackout schedule for today already:


The planned rolling blackouts on 24 March (Wed) will not be implemented for Group 2 (6:20am to 10:00am, 1:50pm to 5:30pm), Group 3 (9:20am to 1:00pm, 4:50pm to 8:30pm), Group 4 (0:20pm to 4:00pm) and Group 5(3:20pm to 7:00pm). Rolling blackout will be implemented for Group 1(6:20pm to 10:00pm) .

Group 5 (3:20pm to 7:00pm) and group 1 (6:20 to 10:00pm) were still in question earlier--now they are only planning to do it during the evening prime time from 6:20pm to 10:00pm.

Now.. if we could just get rid of that last one..... DOOOO EEEET!!!!!



marcysensei: Tokai-mura in Ibaraki Pref. distribute water bottls. to infants up to 3yrs old. 2Lt p/pers until exhausting stock

Just got an update on some radiation sensors... gamma radiation detected in Ibaraki down almost 7% in the last 16 hours. Been maintaining a drop of close to 9-10% a day the last 2 days.

[RAIST]

grr... was about to go to bed, but TEPCO started a press conference... but can't find an english stream...NHK is still looping recorded content. Here's a JP stream if anyone can follow it:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/iwakamiyasumi

[RAIST]

this shouldn't have amused me like it did, but....


DailyYomiuri: The govt says it's been flooded with calls about "yellow radioactivity" falling from the sky. It's actually just pollen

my light blue car is turning green from all the pollen here....

[Altheav]

I downloaded the latest earthquake data and did another pivot, this time looking at March 2011 quakes by date. The # of quakes is definitely going down. On the other hand, they've had a few fairly strong quakes (6.3, 6.4, 6.6) in the last 24 hours.

March 2011 Earthquakes through 23rd (http://www.flickr.com/photos/althea_valara/5555207820/) by Althea Valara (http://www.flickr.com/people/althea_valara/), on Flickr

[NightDagger]

this shouldn't have amused me like it did, but....



my light blue car is turning green from all the pollen here....

Imagine if they saw the smog we have in the major cities of Ontario. O.o

[RAIST]

TEPCO released an updated report on repairs at Kashiwazaki plant--hard to read. Only thing I noticed that changed was they resumed seismic reinforcemnts to unit 2 on 3/23, and on unit 4 on 3/22. I guess they are also continuing with closure of Unit 3 as well (started 3/03/2011), though it doesn't specifically state it. It doesn't project any date for when repairs to #2 and #4 are expected to be completed, much less when either reactor may come back online. That site has 3 of 7 reactors that have beeen offline since the quake in 2007. Would surely help a lot if they could get 2 and 4 up soon.

Looks like they are going to try to run pretty much all day with no blackouts again today--the prime time evening block is still in doubt though:

The planned rolling blackouts on 25 March (Fri) will not be implemented for Group 3 (6:20am to 10:00am, 1:50pm to 5:30pm), Group 4 (9:20am to 1:00pm, 4:50pm to 8:30pm), Group 5 (0:20pm to 4:00pm) and Group 1(3:20pm to 7:00pm). As for Group 2 (6:20pm to 10:00pm), we will notice by 2 hours ahead of the starting time.

Gotta love the advice they add towards the end of their blackout plan:

●In order to prevent fires, please make sure to switch off electric
appliances such as hair driers when you leaving home.
●Please carefully pay attention to the traffic at the crossings in
case the traffic lights are suddenly turned off.
●As for the building and apartment, please be aware that equipment
and facility such as elevator, automatic door, automatic lock, and
multilevel parking lot will not function. In particular, please avoid
using elevators not to be trapped during the blackout.

. . .

This morning's data dump of radiation levels seem to be showing the same trends as the last 48 hours...gentle slopes downward for the most part. Still a few sensors closer to the Dia Ichi site that are showing some variances, tending to creep up a little still. hopefully they will turn around also once they get more control of the cooling systems.

[RAIST]

W7VOA RT @wsjindia: High Radiation Levels Seen Outside #Japan Safe Zone
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704425804576220411744719054.html?mod=wsj_india_main

That tweet is a little misleading though... the article actually talks a bit about how levels have actually been seeing some decreases (particularly, the water supply being declared for infants in some areas after further testing).

A good bit of the confusion/hysteria has come from inconsistencies in how sensor data is being collected by TEPCO (reading locations vary)--but the government reports coming out now are using stationary sensors provided by groups that have been monitoring readings in areas since before the incident, so you get a more accurate picture of the progression. Media outlets are starting to follow suit finally and are starting to report changes in these stationary sensors as well. Hopefully as more reliable estimates come down the pipe it will put more people at ease. However, things like this have started cropping up:


ASAHI: US Navy aerial measurement & MEXT computational model show > 125μSv/high radiation areas NW of reactor and outside of 20km evac line
As mentioned in the above linked WSJ article, JP officials are declining to comment on US findings of higher radiation levels in outlying areas from methods independant of JP gov. data collections.

[RAIST]

as power supply demand data over the last few days is being reviewed...a trend has been noticed during the off-peak times between when blackouts were/weren't in effect: seems to be roughly a 1-1.5% variance in demand. There is potential based on last nights demand ratings, that the primetime block MIGHT be able to stay within the limit of the 38.5MW peak supply TEPCO has recently been able to provide.

The big question now is whether TEPCO comes to that assessment as well, and just how much faith they put in the conservation efforts to let things go a full 24 hours with no blackouts soon.

[RAIST]

Japan Times Article:

No. 3 cooling pump test-run readied
Smoke rises from reactors 1-4; two workers hospitalized with suspected radiation burns
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110324x2.html

They were working to setup a test run of cooling pump in #3 today. While workers were running cables, they received radiation burns from concentrated radiation in the standing water inside the plant. TEPCO later issued evacuation of unit 3.


Efforts are currently under way to reactivate the cooling pumps in reactors 3 and 4, and engineers will also be checking whether the same could be done with reactors 1 and 2.

Tepco said a test-run of the cooling pump in reactor 3 would be conducted once it can be determined whether there was any water left in the water storage tank, as an empty tank would risk damaging the pump.

[NightDagger]

Raist,

I think it is awesome how well you keep us informed. You have helped everyone realize the problems & progress in Japan. This is like your own personal blog, I think you should create one now & we can read everything you want to talk about. ^^

[RAIST]

bah.. actually thought about it. Once the game goes back online, I'll probly be too focused on it again though. 10 jobs leveled up and none of them have their AF3 +1's completed yet. Too much to do...not enough time--or maybe I'm too much of a freaking FFXI addict.

[RAIST]

oh boy... just caught a local news blurb. Some radiation fears on the US west coast have kicked off a run on Geiger Counters. One company sold 500 units in 5 days and is having to restock warehouses...

here we go...someone keep the loonies on the path

[RAIST]

Apparently, today's IAEA breifing covered a LOT of topics on the Japan situation. A nice write-up was done on their Fukushima log:

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

Right out the gate, they gave a good report on what's going on with the reactors, followed by details on the radiation exposure. Here's the first few paragraphs on the reactor statuses:


With AC power connected, instrumentation continues to be recovered in Units 1, 2 and 4. Workers returned after being evacuated from Units 3 and 4 on March 23, following confirmation that black smoke emissions from Unit 3 had ceased.

Reactor pressure is increasing in Unit 1, pressure readings are unreliable in Unit 2, and stable in Unit 3 as water continues to be injected through their feed-water pipes. The temperature at the feed-water nozzle of the Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) is decreasing at Units 1 (243 ºC) and 3 (about 185 ºC), and stable at Unit 2 (about 102 ºC).

Units 5 and 6 are still under cold shutdown, they are undergoing maintenance using off-site AC power and existing plant equipment.

Dose rates in the containment vessels and suppression chambers of Units 1 and 2 have decreased slightly.

[annewandering]

When we are all back up this place is going to seem like a ghost town compared to lately. You have done a great job keeping us up to date on all the power problems in Japan. Thank you, Raist.
While I wouldnt wish the situation on any one it has been very educational.

[RAIST]

some car production to resume soon, some are going to be down longer:

Toyota Motor Corp. will resume production of three hybrid models in Japan on March 28....
...Honda "will extend closures at its two car assembly factories until April 3, spokesman Tomohiro Okada said today.
Nissan planning to resume parts and auto production next week, but...

it may be several months before inventories and other elements of the country's auto industry return to normal
Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/03/24/134821494/toyota-to-resume-hybrid-production-honda-extends-shutdown

[Relinaa]

I agree, Thank you Raist and love the sig Anne :)

[Haglaz]

werent the servers supposed to be up by now? it's 0800 in Japan right now.

[Macrom]

I think they come back on at 4am on friday morning.

I could be mistaken though..

[RAIST]

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/business/news/20110324p2g00m0bu033000c.html

NEC Corp. resumed operations at five plants in three prefectures Wednesday (Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima).

Suzuki Motor Corp. will continue to assemble engines and cast components, but will decide when to resume operations next week.

Mitsubishi Motors Corp. to mke cars in Gifu Prefecture Thursday, and in Aichi Prefecture Friday--suspending operations in Okayama Prefecture on both days.

Isuzu Motors Ltd. will resuming parts manufacturing but will continue suspending operations at two domestic factories until Friday

Hino Motors Ltd.suspended manufacturing one more day until Thursday.

[Xeth]

8PM in Japan, not 8AM.
It says 4:00 PDT which is 8PM in Japan.

Japan is 12 hours ahead of me, exact, and the servers go on, for me, at 8AM tomorrow, which is 8PM in Japan Friday night.

EDIT: Servers are scheduled to be up in 11 hours, 40 minutes from this post.

[RAIST]

werent the servers supposed to be up by now? it's 0800 in Japan right now.

11:00 GMT/UTC time.

If you are on Winblows, you can check how your time relates to GMT by viewing details of your timezone in your clock properties (double-click clock in systray in XP)--just remember to adjust for Daylight Savings if your region does it (+1 hour).

Alternatively, you can check the current time differences here:
http://www.timezonecheck.com/
(London is GMT)

[RAIST]

Kyodo: Singapore finds radioactive substances in Japanese greens

NHK: Radioactive water detected in 6 prefectures

jt_masami: Japan hit with radiation in tap water but Tokyo improves, lifts alert

glad I'm watching things on Twitter feeds too....news articles going out today are saying water in Tokyo too tainted....been seeing news reels on TV today for news that was old YESTERDAY. Guess everyone over here is just too concerned over Libya now.

[annewandering]

I agree, Thank you Raist and love the sig Anne :)

TY!! I did change it to make a little smaller and add some text. Hope its still nice :)

[RAIST]

info on TEPCO employees that suffered radiation burns from TEPCO's last press release:

- On March 24th, it was confirmed that 3 workers from cooperative
companies who were in charge of cable laying work in the 1st floor and
the underground floor of turbine building were exposed to the radiation
dose of more than 170 mSv. 2 of them were confirmed that their leg skin
were contaminated. Although they were decontaminated, since it is
judged that there is possibility of beta ray burn injury, they were
transferred to Fukushima Medical University Hospital. After medical
examination at Fukushima Medical University Hospital, they will be
transferred to National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba
Prefecture today (March 25) and stay for around four days to survey
the situation. Inspection result of the water that the workers stepped
in will be announced when it is reported.

[RAIST]

interesting story on Wal-Mart and their response to the Japan crisis:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703784004576220231359924402.html?KEYWORDS=mariko+sanchanta

tldr: within 12 hours, they had 22/24 stores in the region handing out food and water in their parking lots (over $650,000 worth by nightfall). By Wednesday morning after the incident, they had coordinated with various agencies and arranged to have a plane land in Narita with 10 tons of water, flashlights, batteries, some food items for the USAF to deliver to the affected areas.

In addition to their direct relief efforts, Wal-Mart Foundation also donated 5 Million dollars to recovery.

jpeg of the company's timeline to date:
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-NF289_WALMAR_NS_20110324140702.jpg

Just amazes me that I haven't seen this in the mainstream until now.

[Deadlyscorpion]

By the way, I don't know if this has been mentioned at all, but will the game be on a day to day basis or are they planning to keep it on for the weekend and turn it off for the work week?

[Relinaa]

TY!! I did change it to make a little smaller and add some text. Hope its still nice :)



Too cute ^^ Love it :D

[RAIST]

By the way, I don't know if this has been mentioned at all, but will the game be on a day to day basis or are they planning to keep it on for the weekend and turn it off for the work week?
Good question. It could be touch and go if the demand gets too high on the weekends. It looks like they are getting some repairs underway on other facilities. I forget the exact details...but they were announcing repairs to hydro and other facilities, and 2 days later.. we hit a new peak supply of 38.5MW in the region. Maybe SE has some insider projection about more power hitting the grid soon...who knows.

[RAIST]

reminds me.. never did hear more about the Baseball leagues over there. Went to the JP Baseball blog and found a few posts on it:
( http://japanesebaseball.com/blogs/index.jsp)

PL announced they were going to hold off on opening day until April, while CL was holding out for 3/25. CL eventually pushed it back to 3/29. Both leagues are now listing their seasons as startting 4/12 at the Nippon site:
http://www.npb.or.jp/eng/

[RAIST]

0.o and hot off a twitter feed:


TOHOKU power estimates it will not have to implement any rolling blackouts from March 28 - April 3.
8 minutes ago via web

sign of good things to come, maybe? Is it too early to /dance?

[Alhanelem]

By the way, I don't know if this has been mentioned at all, but will the game be on a day to day basis or are they planning to keep it on for the weekend and turn it off for the work week?
Service will resume normally, unless something happens to reduce power capacity.

[RAIST]

martyn_williams: Japan may consider adopting daylight savings time to help reduce power consumption in summer - Kaieda via Kyodo

Hmm... idk about this idea being batted around. People get confused enough converting time zones as is... lol

But I like this idea (provided they can afford it--we've had some banking snafus over here with this kind of thing in the past):


DailyYomiuri: The govt announced it will offer no-interest loans of 100,000 yen to households hit by the March 11 disaster, with some eligible for 200,000

[annewandering]

Too cute ^^ Love it :D
You are so kind!

[annewandering]

0.o and hot off a twitter feed:



sign of good things to come, maybe? Is it too early to /dance?


Oh I am ready to put my dancing boots on!!

[RAIST]

NHK cut into a press conference briefly.

pressure in #2 stabilizing, still working on getting systems working properly in #3. Then they cut out to weather report...probly go back to the recorded loop again next.

[Relinaa]

Oh I am ready to put my dancing boots on!!


Me too...lol

[RAIST]

Heavy tweet dump just now. A lot of duplicate entries, stuff not related to Japan. A few notable entries:


daniel_garcia_r: Morning FNPP1 dose rate update (Main Gate): Yesterday's slow downwards trend continued today; now (6am) bellow 200uSv/h

daniel_garcia_r: Same downwards evolution observed at FNPP2 (10km south of FNPP1), bellow 10 uSv/h at 5am

daniel_garcia_r Slight increase (up to 11uSv/h) at 6am likely to come from wind direction change at sunrise, also observed in Ibaraki


jtnatsuko:Prince hotel spared wrecking ball to house evacuees

hopefully TEPCO will release some updated statuses soon at their website This morning's rush hour power usage looks like it may come in a little under yesterday's numbers--the 9:00-10:00am block was 150Kw under.



DailyYomiuri: The mayor of Shibuya Ward has asked the city of Iida, Nagano Pref, for water for its infants, and the city is sending 4 tons by truck.

0.o the 10am-11am morning rush block came in 230Kw below yesterday. If this trend continues...wonder if they'll drop that 6p-10p blackout block?

Wish I could be online in the morning when the servers go live to see just how it all works out--will be dragging the taru out of bed and dragging her nappy head to school.

[RAIST]

japanstatus: Just published today's radiation readings. Fukushima slightly up from yesterday, but still varying widely

Not all sites have applied them to graphs yet...but Tokyo saw a very slight drop. Ibaraki is still decreasing faster then most, but it's rate of decline is slowing to about 7%/day on average--Speedi still picking up over 800 on it's gamma sensor. It's getting closer to where it was before they vented the reactors though--might get there by Saturday if the trend holds up.

Areas close to Fukushima are still seeing some slight increases--a couple sensors jumped a little higher than they typically have been, but that could be more due to changes in the wind. Nevertheless, it is raising some eyebrows:


W7VOA: Edano hinting evac radius may be expanded to 30km from Fukushima-1 but not yet.
Edano speaking now, but about electricity restrictions. Awaiting word on Reactor 3.

grrr... JapanTimes went AWOL again...one twitter feed just went blank on me and is refusing to update. Hope it's just the particular servers and not a sign of the web's infrastructure over there buckling under the load.



DailyYomiuri: The N-safety panel releases its 1st infant radiation risk estimates, saying babies outside the evac zone may be at risk

W7VOA: Top #Japan gov't spokesman now essentially saying perhaps it's best if those in the 20km-30km zone from #Fukushima-1 voluntarily evacuate
Yomiuri: TEPCO detected zirconium 95 at 0.23 Bq 330m south of Fukushima-1 drainage outlet on Wednesday.

[RAIST]

DailyYomiuri: Ferry carrying 1,400 tons of food, medical supplies arrived at Sendai-Shiogama Port today

omfg.. I can't believe I just heard this on NHK...they are talking about raising tariffs on energy to try to discourage use of AC systems when warmer weather hits the region. Say it with me now...

W T F ??!!


...and here we go again with another cycle of newsdumps about Wacky Qaddafi...guess it's a good time to go to bed.

One last nugget before I crash:
During morning rush, Japan kept power usage under yesterday's usage by at least 150 Kw and as much as 230Kw from 9am to 12pm JST. Hope they can keep it up so we don't have issues when servers come up.

[Deadlyscorpion]

Service will resume normally, unless something happens to reduce power capacity.

Well, yea... that's what we're all assuming, but I'd venture a guess that we're gonna tip over the scale in usage over the weekend, and at that point, when people go back to work on monday (Sunday for us still), if they can't supply enough power they MIGHT have to turn off the power again. My guess is at that point they'll turn off the servers again, which is why the idea of playing on weekends only for now isn't so farfetched.

And believe you me, that's the last thing I want, but based on what I see it's a very likely scenario. Here's hoping...

[Alhanelem]

Hmm... idk about this idea being batted around. People get confused enough converting time zones as is... lol

But I like this idea (provided they can afford it--we've had some banking snafus over here with this kind of thing in the past):
That's only around $1k (or 2k for the higher maount) you know, right? Not saying it won't help, because it will. Just saying, 100,000 yen isn't as much as it sounds like

[RAIST]

Poking around a bit between weather cycles... found a few tidbits to share:


gakuranman: Possibility of crack in the pipes supplying water to unti 3 - maybe be which caused high levels of rad in water where workers were harmed


On March 25th,
remaining worker was also transferred to Fukushima Medical University
hospital. All 3 workers are now being transferred to National Institute
of Radiological Sciences in Chiba Prefecture.

TEPCO holding off on blackouts for the next 48 hours, then will review the situation. Expecting weather changes may increase demand.

[Deadlyscorpion]

I read this morning that particles with radiation levels were found in the sea water near the fuki plant. Said to not have any immediate effects but I wonder what'll happen long-term. No fishing for a while in that area. Unclear what that will do to sea creatures in the area.

[Alhanelem]

That radiation decays pretty quickly. Probably won't have substantial long term implications.