Tokyo Disneyland is set to open on April 15. Even thought it is more than 200 miles from the epicenter of the 11 March 2011, 9.0 earthquake, Tokyo Disneyland suffered damage from liquefaction.
They hope to open Tokyo DisneySea by April 28. One of the conditions to opening, is a steady and reliable source of electrical power, to run the amusement parks.
Professor Susumu Yasuda of Tokyo Denki University conducted a survey of the effects of liquefaction, caused by the 11 March 2011, 9.0 quake.
He looked at the Tokyo Bay area and found at least 4,200 hectares (10,378 acres) of land had suffered liquefaction. Tokyo is 370km (230 miles) from the quake’s epicenter.
Liquefaction also destroyed residential areas built on reclaimed land in Chiba Prefecture.
Professor Yasuda says more liquefaction will occur in the future unless the underground water is removed and the ground solidified. Left on its own the ground will take more than 100 years to stabilize.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan has told quake-hit Miyagi Prefecture that 70,000 temporary houses will be built ASAP.
The Prime Minister met with Miyagi officials on 10 April 2011. They expressed their concerns for how they were going to rebuild after the 11 March disasters. Kan said he’s putting together a panel to address that, and that the temporary housing was just the beginning.
“Iran’s gold reserves have hit unprecedented levels and the country has supplied its domestic gold market for the next ten years.”-Mahmoud Bahmani, Governor of the Central Bank of Iran
Iran announced that their gold reserves now stand at 4 million tons, and that’s from just one mine.
The Zarshouran mine is located in the West Azarbaijan province. But don’t let the 4 million figure fool you. For every ton of gold ore, they get only 5.81 grams of gold. I should say ‘only’, hah, when you think about how much gold is selling for it’s still worth the effort.
The mining and extraction systems are being upgraded at the Zarshouran mine, and they hope to get 3,600kg of gold bullion and more than 1200kg of silver bullion.
Iran isn’t relying on their nuclear plant for providing lots of power. They’ve been developing other forms of power generation.
It includes hydroelectric, steam power and natural gas fired plants. At the end of 2009 they finished a solar powered plant. Now they are going to build more steam powered plants and even wind farms.
The goal is to add another 5,000 mega watts to their system. Officials claim that all the non-nuclear energy programs use 100% domestically produced materials. Gee, isn’t that kinda what President Obama talked about for the United States?
“We should not only be able to use all our capacities and potentials in the (civilian) nuclear technology, but also export nuclear know-how.”-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
During a speech for ‘National Day of Nuclear Technology’, President Ahmadinejad stated that Iran should master all nuclear technologies. He also said Iran should join other countries, like the U.S., in exporting its nuclear know how.
Sharp has announced that production of their Liquid Crystal Display TVs will be halted, due to parts shortages in Japan, due to the ongoing disasters.
Sharp is not too worried as they say they still have a one months supply of parts on hand.
The recent huge aftershock, in Japan, has resulted in one thousand ATMs being shut down.
Japan Post Bank blames it on the power outage caused by a big aftershock on April 7. The power outage caused a computer glitch that shut down the Automated Teller Machines.
On 09 April 2011, fish samples off Japan were found still contaminated with cesium.
On 07 April 2011, one in four fish samples had levels of contamination above set limits.
The fish tested were lance fish, and two kinds of flat fish.
Thanks to the nuclear crisis, rice planting has been banned in Japan.
The problem is that the areas directly affected by the 11 March 2011 quake, actually sunk. Add to that the tsunami destroyed the sea walls. Now high tides have been flooding the land with ocean water contaminated with cesium-137 (as I warned in an earlier posting). There is also airborne cesium being detected, falling onto the ground.
The Japanese government will now test farm soils for cesium contamination. Any farm found to have cesium will be banned from planting. Cesium contamination is why Chernobyl city is still uninhabitable almost 30 years after that nuclear accident in Soviet Ukraine.
Rice planting normally begins by May. Rice is important to Japan: 8.5 million tons of rice were produced in 2010, and almost all of it stayed in Japan. The current situation will now make Japan dependent on foreign sources of rice.
Cesium is still found in soil in Germany, Austria and France 25 years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Chernobyl is 1,160 kilometers (720 miles) from Germany.