Temporary Suspension of the Services Due to an Earthquake

[Kopa]

I really feel very pity about the last things happen to Japan...I hope with all my heart that everything goes well with the nuclear reactor.I was always interested in Japanese coulture and history.I thing Japan is one of the most beautiful countries in world and the peolpe who live there.I was always a fan of the SquareEnix videogames and I wish the quicker return to life before the earthquake...the last thing that matters now is when are we going to play ff14 again...JAPAN I WISH YOU COURAGE!!!!

[BaShaBeSho]

In solidarity with Japan, from all Kuwait players.

We love you Japan.

[XStruckX]

On behalf of my family and I and I'm sure I speak for all members of Beacon...we would like to offer our sincerest condolences and prayers to any and all children of God that were affected in this horrible disaster that happened in Japan.

Of course I'm sad that FFXIV is down but please...everyone in Square Enix should be focused on family and their own well being. Any player complaining about the game being shut down should really look into their hearts and souls and realize the gravity and severity of what really happened in Japan and what could happen. This message goes out to SE, take your time, take care of your family and your country first and foremost and then when all that is settled and ONLY when all that is settled we would love to see you back on the grind into making FFXIV the best MMORPG ever created...I have confidence that SE and their nation will bounce back with renewed potency and strive. For all those who are wondering yes I am a proud American Citizen but I am also a child of God. SE...hug your children and wives, take care of your country and community then come back and kick ass. Any TRUE Final Fantasy fan will wait as long as it takes...all you fake, heartless zombies go back to playing WOW, i'm sure they are expecting you. I apologize if I offended anyone but I have been an avid SE fan way back before they were SE. Final Fantasy will live on forever and you already know.

[Flower]

Just wanted to update everyone on Japan's current situation.

As workers at Japan's quake- and tsunami-stricken Fukushima I nuclear power plant struggle to bring a seven-day-long crisis under control, engineers Thursday finally installed a cable to connect the plant to the utility grid. This would enable workers to reactivate massive pumps that can provide high volumes of cooling water needed to keep damaged reactors and exposed assemblies of spent fuel cool.

According to a statement from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Japanese officials alerted the organization to the development and said they would hook Unit 2, one of six reactors at the plant, to the line first as soon as workers finish spraying water on Unit 3.

The development offers hope that the jury-rigged cooling system that workers have been forced to use in the Japan nuclear crisis will be replaced by the system originally designed to cool the reactors and spent-fuel.

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Meltdown 101: a glossary of nuclear terms

This comes as concerns have mounted along America’s west coast over a plume of radiation from the plant that could reach the skies over California as early as Friday. The prospect reportedly has triggered a rush to drug and health-food stores to buy potassium iodide tablets, which public-health officials say can reduce some, but not all, of the health risks posed by excessive amounts of radiation.

The concerns have largely arisen among the general public – not among many public-health officials and emergency management officials.

If an accident at one of California's two operating nuclear power plants led to a release of radiation, potassium iodide pills would go out to people living within a 10-mile radius of the plant, according to Kelly Huston, assistant secretary of the California Emergency Management Agency, in an interview with Bay Area affiliates of NBC News.

By contrast, the plume from Fukushima has had to travel 5,000 miles. Along the way, the plume – carried along by high-altitude winds – disperses as it broadens. Radioactive material in the plume, which survives the journey, has had time to decay.

If the plume were to remain corralled in a relatively small volume for the entire trip, it might pose problems along a similarly narrow corridor below it, some researchers say. But "the idea of transporting something thousands of miles so it would be contained would be a miracle in itself," says William Marlow, a nuclear engineering professor at Texas A&M University at College Station.

Still, reports are emerging that global supplies of potassium iodide pills are beginning to vanish as Americans buy them up, notes Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist specializing in nuclear energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington.

"Given the fact that Japan is thousands of miles from the United States, it is highly unlikely that Americans would be exposed to radioactive iodine from direct inhalation of a plume from the Fukushima nuclear complex," he said in the statement, adding that potassium iodide is used to counter inhaled radioactive iodine.

In the region surrounding the stricken plant, however, high radiation levels remain a deep concern.

On Thursday, pilots with Japan's Self Defense Forces as well as police temporarily joined workers at the plant in efforts to douse reactors and spent-fuel pools with seawater to keep them cool. Four of the six nuclear reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima I plant have been damaged by explosions and fire following last Friday's magnitude 9 earthquake and ensuing tsunami.

Spent-fuel pools associated with the damaged reactors appear to have lost some or all of their water, allowing the highly radioactive spent-fuel assemblies in the pools to spew radiation into the environment and to heat up. If the fuel gets too hot, the cladding that encases the uranium fuel burns, releasing additional radioactive byproducts into the air.

The overwhelming geophysical disaster left the plant, whose reactors automatically shut down during the quake as they were designed to, with no electricity from the wider grid to keep cooling systems running. The tsunami neutralized the plant's emergency generators and the stored fuel they need to operate, leaving the plant without emergency power.

Japanese authorities have evacuated people living within 12 miles of the power plant and have posted an additional six-mile zone where people must stay indoors if they elect not to evacuate. A 36-mile-diameter no-fly zone has been set up with the plant at the center. The US ambassador to Japan, John Roos, has urged Americans living within 50 miles of the plant to remain indoors, hunkering down in a shelter-in-place mode.

Although a transpacific plume of radioactive material triggers images of the globe-circling plume from the explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986 in what is now Ukraine, that event differs considerably from the Fukushima crisis.

The risk of contamination beyond the region around the Fukushima reactors – especially as far away as the US – "has got to be extremely small," says Peter Caracappa, an assistant professor and radiation safety officer at Rensselaer Polytechnic institute in Troy, N.Y. "The biggest reason for that is in thinking about how that material is being released into the atmosphere," he says.

At Chernobyl, the reactor, made of graphite, exploded and burned in a building with no shielding surrounding the reactor. The force of the explosion and extreme heat from the burning graphite sent plumes of highly radioactive smoke and gas some three miles into the sky, where upper-level winds could begin transporting the substances over long distances.

At Fukushima, damaged reactors remain encased in their steel-and-concrete containment structures. The radioactivity is being released as workers vent steam from inside the reactors. Thus the plume initially travels at the whim of lower-altitude weather patterns, which can disrupt and disperse the plume more quickly.

So far, the Japanese haven't released detailed information on the relative abundance of radioactive elements that the plant has been releasing. Still, the components that raise the most concerns include radioactive iodine, a gas; radioactive forms of nonreactive gases such as krypton or xenon; and radioactive cesium, Dr. Caracappa says.

Weather patterns provide an opportunity to loft some of the plume to altitudes where prevailing winds can ship it eastward. As low-pressure systems move across the plume, they can loft the material to altitudes more favorable for long-range travel.

Meanwhile, each day the material remains in transit, the radioactive elements have been decaying – if rainfall or even so-called dry deposition haven't removed the material first.

Thus, specialists say, the long journey and dispersion of the plume, along with radioactive decay, so significantly reduce the risk of increased radiation levels at ground level and at thousand-mile distances that while radiation from the incoming plume will be measurable, it is highly unlikely to rise to the level of an additional public-health risk.

[Hetare_P]

Thank you for your encouraging words!

I seem people all over the world are worrying about the situation of reactors in Japan.
Japan government has been passive to making information of nuclear accident. So it has made people uneasy. We want to say sorry for about that.
If you want to read official reports of government, refer this site (in English).

http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/index-e.html

At this point, 7 nuclear reactors of two power plants have problem.

There are four reactors in Fukushima Daini (“Daini” means “No.2” or “2nd”) nuc power plant. 3rd reactor succeeded in being shut down safe and rest of three reactors also were shutdown automatically. The problem is core cooling of those three was not enough, but it is not serious that condition of those reactors at this time.

Fukushima Daiichi (“Daiichi” means “No.1” or “1st”) nuc power plant has 6 reactors. 4th to 6th reactors have been shut down before the earthquake for regular maintenance (but now the 4th reactor has a problem).
Most experts on nuclear engineering thought that nuclear fuels (that is called Core) of 1st to 3rd reactors have began to meltdown, but they said final shield of all reactors are not broken yet.

The only hope is to resign all of 1st to 3rd reactors and inject water into those shields to cool down core and prevent being broken reactor shield.
Injecting sea water seemed succeed at 1st reactor, but at 2nd and 3rd reactor, the operations had many troubles and lagging behind.
Elec company has tried another method 2 days ago.
It uses high-pressure water spray car and helicopter to jettison water on the reactors.

Radiation level near the reactor is 400mSv/h max.
Information about radiation unit can read at Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert
It is so far from safety level. However, evacuation area (20km) is enough to decrease radiation level.
In these 2 days, it is increasing radiation level at all of Kanto-region (including Tokyo), but all sensor reports very few radiation level. Then people in Tokyo do not have to evacuate.
You can see real-time radiation level near the plants below link (in Japanese).

http://www.atom-moc.pref.fukushima.j.../C0013-PC.html

(ATTENTION: Please do NOT leave this site opened. Graphs are automatically reloaded and it may increase this site traffic)

Green character shows nuclear plants (right one is Fukushima Daiichi, left one is Fukushima Daini).
Showed time is JST (UTC +9 hours).
Top graph shows transition of radiation level today, middle shows a week, bottom shows a month.
Blue line shows sensor reports; red line means the highest level of radiation level from sensor settled (Most red line shows Tokai-mura nuclear criticality accident in 1999). Light blue graph area means rainy.

If you live in US, also refer below report.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...-fallout-risk/

I’m very worrying about workers in the plants who belonging Japan Ground Self Defense Force, Tokyo police, and Tokyo Electric Power Company.
They continue cool-down try under dangerous radiation area.
And I am also worrying people belongs America’s Navy No.7 to continue rescue mission near the plants.
I want to say thanks all of them from my heart.

[Flower]

I’m very worrying about workers in the plants who belonging Japan Ground Self Defense Force, Tokyo police, and Tokyo Electric Power Company.
They continue cool-down try under dangerous radiation area.
And I am also worrying people belongs America’s Navy No.7 to continue rescue mission near the plants.
I want to say thanks all of them from my heart.

Yeah I agree with you. I really hope everyone makes it through ok. They are really hero's you know.

[JapanFTW]

Just installed a new graphics card yesterday, looking forward to trying it out on FFXIV *hint hint* Hope that we all are able to play on the 20th or 21st *crosses fingers*

[JapanFTW]

On behalf of my family and I and I'm sure I speak for all members of Beacon...we would like to offer our sincerest condolences and prayers to any and all children of God that were affected in this horrible disaster that happened in Japan.

Of course I'm sad that FFXIV is down but please...everyone in Square Enix should be focused on family and their own well being. Any player complaining about the game being shut down should really look into their hearts and souls and realize the gravity and severity of what really happened in Japan and what could happen. This message goes out to SE, take your time, take care of your family and your country first and foremost and then when all that is settled and ONLY when all that is settled we would love to see you back on the grind into making FFXIV the best MMORPG ever created...I have confidence that SE and their nation will bounce back with renewed potency and strive. For all those who are wondering yes I am a proud American Citizen but I am also a child of God. SE...hug your children and wives, take of your country and community then come back and kick ass. Any TRUE Final Fantasy fan will wait as long as it takes...all you fake, heartless zombies go back to playing WOW, i'm sure they are expecting you. I apologize if I offended anyone but I have been an avid SE fan way back before they were SE. Final Fantasy will live on forever and you already know.

I've never actually tried WoW, but this wait kinda makes me want to give it a try >.>

[Hayabusa316]

I hope you can recover fast from that Nightmare. I´m with you, and i hope most family´s find together soon.

Greetings from Austria.

[lolan]

I have already posted on french forum but, I just wanted to say here again:
Please, forget the game for now and please, focus on your families and friends. Japan is a great and powerful nation, I'm sure you would be stronger after all that disaster but for now take care of yourself. Any decent person can understand your pain and you difficulties, so please don't apologize. I think I could talk, in name of all the french players from FFXI and FFXIV:
Take care of yourself, families and friends, work can wait...
We are all praying for you and your country. Gangare Nihon!