“As (Toyota) continues to address its production situation in Japan following the disaster, it has decided that vehicle production from May 10 to June 3 will proceed at approximately 50 percent of normal.”-company statement
Basically the situation for “key component suppliers” (parts makers) is still too unreliable to resume full production.
Toyota says it will continue to evaluate the situation, and make the necessary adjustments to production.
Japanes reporters, crawling through the wreckage left behind by the March 11 tsunami, might have stumbled onto evidence of a failed tsunami warning system.
Reporters have written about finding bodies amid what’s left of residences, still wearing their natural disaster gear, like helmets. The odd thing is it looks like they barricaded themselves in their homes, instead of running to higher ground.
A reporter for ‘Spa!’, in Japan, said there are two kinds of tsunami sirens, one for waves under three meters, and a more shrill siren for waves over three meters.
For the small waves people are told to stay inside, which is what most of the victims, found in the rubble of their homes, did. Also, many of the residential areas were close enough to higher ground that the people should have been able to survive, if they knew a giant tsunami was coming.
The evidence suggests that for some reason the tsunami sirens indicated a small wave. Or, as one reporter pointed out, when tsunami drills are carried out, they’re only for small waves, suggesting that if the siren for the giant wave sounded, most people didn’t know what else to do, based on their training.
People had been trained so often to react to small tsunami, that, even though they had been told “when you hear the big tsunami siren sound run to the hills”, they automatically followed the small tsunami training.
8 employees were fired, and 25 had their pay cut by 30%, for not paying for tickets on their own monorail service.
JR East Tokyo Monorail, says most of the employees were in management positions. They would board the train for work, swipe their pay cards, then once at work, would use the company computers to delete the charge.
One employee almost got away with 590,000 yen worth of fares. Unpaid fares have cost JR East over 1.2 million yen.
“Since these people are having trouble getting to stores, we will bring the store to them.”-company spokesperson
A convenience store company, called Lawson, is sending “Mobile Lawson” stores to the areas of Japan devastated by the March 11 disasters.
The company is using food service trucks, originally designed for construction sites, to deliver food and other items. The trucks are small (you can say ‘cute’) by U.S. standards, but they get the job done.
Company officials say they have been considering such an idea, as a way of expanding their business, before the disasters struck.
Tokyo Electric Power Company can not keep up with the amount of contaminated water coming from their Fukushima Daiichi reactors. So far they’ve removed 660 tons of water, but the reactors and fuel pools hold more than 80,000 tons combined, and the water continues to pour out.
Water levels in the tunnel connected to Reactor 2 has risen to a point higher than before they started removing the water. They still aren’t sure where the water is coming from, but suspect damaged reactor vessels.
On top of that they’re now saying the radiation levels in the contaminated water are maxed out (they used a term similar to that). As of 15 April, the radiation levels in the leaked water are now 38 times what they were last week. TEPCo also thinks the contamination is getting into the groundwater, not just the Pacific Ocean.
It turns out that TEPCo was testing radiation levels, in the leaked water, only once per week! They say they will now test three times per week.
The high radiation indicates that not only could reactor vessels be damaged, but fuel rods have melted.
TEPCo says they won’t be able to transfer recovered water, to a waste plant, until the end of next week.
The Geographical Survey Institute surveyed 28 benchmarks in three prefectures, hit by the 11 March earthquake.
They confirmed that the land has dropped as much as 84cm (33 inches, just under 3 feet).
The land sunk in Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures. They are now dealing with high tide flooding caused by the loss of their sea walls, and their sunken land.
Tokyo Electric Power Company will try a new weapon against radiation spreading in the Pacific Ocean; sandbags. They already tried steel and silt fencing, now they will use sandbags full of zeolite.
Zeolite is an aluminosilicate mineral, used in commercial absorbents. It’s hoped it will absorb some of the high levels of radiation in the water.
The difficulties never stop. Now analysis by the Atomic Energy Society says fuel rods have melted in reactors 1 and 3. The rods dropped small pellets into the cooling water as they melted. The pellets have built up at the bottom of the vessel. There is concern that a large buildup of melted fuel could become a molten mass and damage the vessel, leaking huge amounts of radioactive material.
One evidence of damaged vessels is plutonium. For the third time plutonium contamination has been found around Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Just as Japan’s rice production takes a hit from radiation, Sanyo makes a hit with its rice bread maker.
Sanyo is resuming production of its bread make that uses rice, called “Gopan”, because they are getting swamped with orders.
Sanyo didn’t stop production because of the March 11 disasters, they stopped because their factory just couldn’t keep up with demand. In just the first three weeks on introducing their Gopan, orders hit 10,000 per month. They’re now ready to meet those orders.
A team from Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, has determined that the Aneyoshi district of Miyako City, Iwate Prefecture, suffered the highest tsunami damage.
They found evidence that the surge hit 38.9 meters (127.6 feet). This beats the 115 year old record, held by the same prefecture, of 38.2 meters. That record was set in 1896.
Professor Akio Okayasu said despite the high surge there was little damage. That’s because the town’s ancestors learned from the 1896 tsunami, and rebuilt most of their town on higher ground.
The Fukushima University will conduct high altitude radiation checks, using high altitude weather balloons.
On Friday they will release the balloon, it will take readings as high up as 30km (18.6 miles). Readings will be taken at 10 meter (32.8 feet) intervals.
The jet stream blows from east to west (towards North America). The testing will be done over a 20 day period.