Twitter Stream with updates from Japan

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Originally Posted by Deadlyscorpion

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

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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 :)

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.

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...1032307-e.html

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

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?!!

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Originally Posted by RAIST

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

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

Rather odd, ive never seen that msg before

A few things from the blog at TheTokyoPost, can't get at JapanTimes for some reason:
http://www.thetokyopost.com/news-opi...tion-in-japan/

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

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(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

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

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Found the blurb about the neutron beam at JapanTimes finally:

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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.

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

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Dolphin tossed by tusnami was rescued in a rice paddy in Sendai. Where does it go?
http://translate.google.com/translat...103220507.html

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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.

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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

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Japan Times Article on Recent Bank System Failure:

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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.

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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/...iupdate01.html



From TEPCO press release at 21:00 JST, on 3/32/11
( http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp...1032308-e.html )

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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.

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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.

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

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

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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