Tag Archives: japan

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

U.S. housing contractors may profit from Japan disaster

The Japanese government announced that in order to build enough temp homes, fast enough, they will have to use foreign contractors.

The temporary homes are needed for survivors of the March 11 disasters, and people who have, and others who still might have to, evacuate from radiation danger zones.

The Land and Infrastructure Ministry said foreign contractors must meet certain conditions. They must have the capacity to build more than 100 units in 2 months, and they must meet Japanese electrical codes. On top of that they must form joint partnerships with Japanese contractors.

Local governments will be taking bids.

Fukushima, Technology

Geiger Counters don’t work on Food!

“Just pointing a measuring device at your food before dinner is pretty much meaningless.”-Katayama Atsushi, Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry.

The Japanese Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry says you should use scintillation counters to detect iodine-131 in milk and vegetables.  Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometers should be used to trace uranium.  Nitric acid and dehydrated samples are turned to ash over a 24-hour period in temperatures exceeding 400 degrees Celsius, in order to detect strontium.

“Just to know what the radiation levels are in your home, it’s relatively straightforward, but when you get to measuring it in food, milk and soil it gets much more complicated.”-Joseph Rotunda, Thermo Fisher Scientific

You could spend $400.00 on a Geiger counter just to measure radiation in and around your home, but lots of things can affect the reading.  Things like concrete walls and driveways, granite counter tops and even cell phones.

To save some money, if you don’t think it’s safe to eat, don’t eat it.

Fukushima

Toyota to halve production in Japan

“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.

International

Tsunami sirens may not have worked properly, Tsunami drills trained victims to expect small wave

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.

 

Fukushima

Japanese public transport employees caught not paying for tickets

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.

Business/Economics, International

Business owner dedicated to customer service to the rescue in Japan

“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.

Fukushima

TEPCo swimming against a current of contaminated water. Radiation levels at Max!

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.

 

Fukushima

Atlantis Syndrome: Officials confirm land sunk after 9.0 quake

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.

Fukushima

Melt downs: TEPCo sandbagging, with Zeolite

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.

Business/Economics, International, Technology

A Bread maker that uses Rice

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.