Thanks for the calls, emails, facebook messages and tweets.... 4

March 27, 2011

Toyohashi, Japan

Hey guys, it has been a few days since my last update. I really had intended to write something sooner but life got a little crazy around here… I added some new people to the list so if you are interested in reading my previous emails, they should be all threaded below. 

Disclaimer: This email is really long… You have been warned.

I ended up moving from Toyohashi to Nara on the 20th because the life in Tokyo didn't seem to be improving much. People were still working as if nothing had happened, Tokyo was still having planned power outages which was hindering public transportation.  

I am sure everyone is tired of reading depressing news about the earthquake so I will try to summarize everything here.

Out of the 3625 publicly traded companies in Japan, 1597 have suffered some kind of damage in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami, out of which 1135 have taken direct hit. 33.1% had their building destroyed, 12.8% are facing major disruption to supplies and 12.1% had to stop their manufacturing line. Many of them have had to stop production to carry out safety checks and the prospect of rolling blackouts means further interruptions are likely over the coming weeks. I guess it goes without saying that Japan is about to face a major recession in the coming years even after excluding the effects of all the massive public debt amassed by the government.

So about radiation, I really don't think it will reach Tokyo at harmful levels. Contaminated food and tap water, however, have been circulating the country at some level. Every now and then we hear news saying that radiation has been found in tap water in greater Tokyo at twice the safety level. I have been told not to be obsessed about reading the news, but how can I, if these readings keep changing on an hourly basis?  

People have been told not to eat 11 types of green leafy vegetables because of contamination worries, and food produced in Fukushima prefecture has been completely banned. Importers of Japanese products are also finding low levels of radiation in some food. The sea off the Fukushima Daiichi plant have soared to 1,250 times normal. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, however, said that ocean currents will disperse radiation particles and so it will be very diluted by the time it gets consumed by fish and seaweed. Is there anyone checking this?

If someone comes up with some sort of watch-size portable radiation detecting device, that would make him/her the next billionaire. 

I came back to Tokyo on the 25th because I had an important meeting with a client. Many shops here are operating on limited schedule with limited products. Supermarkets are completely out of basic supplies such as mineral water, toilet paper, instant noodle (and other instant aliments), batteries, portable radios, etc ad infinitum. I spent the day talking to different people to see how they were coping with the whole situation, and was a bit surprised to see that people have chosen to take a rather pragmatic approach. Although everyone seems to be distressed about the whole situation, no one really talks about what will and what could happen. People take overly-crowded trains and wait for the power outage to end as if nothing happened. They have completely replaced tap water with bottled mineral water, which has become extremely scarce. People are checking the news every-other-minute but no one ever comments on it. When meeting a group of people, they usually start the conversation by saying things like "someone has found out that a convenience store somewhere in the sticks of Tokyo still has supplies of mineral water"… Talking about water has become a common conversation starter.

One thing that surprised me is that everyone is very positive about Japan's future outlooks. When I ask what is going to happen to Japan, they invariably say that no matter what happens, they will just have to rebuild the country from ground up (this should make Naoto Kan really proud of his ppl :P). One problem I noticed, however, is that people are not willing to get involved in the "bigger picture". They believe that the country will be able to rebuild itself as long as they keep fulfilling their daily duties just like worker ants. While millions of people around the world are going out to the streets to voice their opinions about the future of nuclear energy (200K people in Germany alone!! -> http://bit.ly/h3a4qt), only 1550 people took the streets of Tokyo (http://bit.ly/gjCcEo). This makes me feel a bit uneasy about the future of the country.

As the world's chief nuclear inspector (as well as the Japanese PM) said, the country is still far from the end of the accident. While 153 earthquakes of magnitude 5.0 or above have been recorded in Fukushima and Ibaraki in 2010, there has been 352 recorded so far this year. This means that in less than 4 months, the region affected by the earthquake has already endured over twice the average of high-risk earthquakes. Searches continue with more than 27,100 people dead or missing in northeast Japan. 

One other thing that makes me a little apprehensive about the whole situation is that the company responsible for handling the crippled nuclear power plant has a history of nuclear disaster cover-ups (http://bit.ly/hde7v0). None of the scientists or nuclear experts in the country were being consulted. If you are not tired of reading, here are some interesting articles about TEPCO…

Japan nuclear plant operator ignored tsunami warnings (http://bit.ly/h1vRzp)

Bungling, cover-ups define Japanese nuclear power (http://bit.ly/fCZbPM)

So currently, TEPCO engineers are STILL trying to stabilize the radioactive emanation from the nuclear plant by pumping out radioactive water after it was found in buildings housing three of the six reactors, raising the fear that the core's container could be damaged. On Thursday, three workers were taken to hospital from reactor No. 3 after stepping in water with radiation levels 10,000 times higher than usually found in a reactor. TEPCO made a formal apology to the three contaminated workers saying that they had told them to enter the turbine building despite knowing that the water in the building contained high-levels of radiation.

Here's a good article describing the current situation at the Fukushima Daiichi plant -> http://bit.ly/hOnJCj

Some people wanted my opinion about Japan's future. I believe the nuclear reactors, though never completely cleaned up and "sterilized", will be under control in a matter of weeks or months. As aforementioned, it is very unlikely that radiation is going to reach Tokyo at harmful levels so life here will be relatively unscathed. The problem I see moving forward, however, is power distribution. (I am going to try to explain here without writing too many numbers.) There is a reason why the power outages are only happening in the eastern side of Japan. Japanese powerlines have two different frequencies : 50Hz in the east (which includes Tokyo) and 60Hz in the west. These two frequencies are unable to coexist so the electricity produced in the western side of Japan cannot be used in the east. Electricity in Japan is comprised of about 60% thermal, 30% nuclear and 10% hydroelectric (TEPCO accounted for nearly 35 percent of Japan's electricity). Currently, with most of the nuclear and some thermal power plants at inoperable state, Eastern Japanese power companies can only produce about half of the energy consumed. People have been asked to conserve energy but that is clearly not going to cut. It is predicted that people are going to spend less electricity once it gets warmer, but summers are usually the worst time because of all the air-conditioners. Building new power plants can take years (usually about two years) and they need at least one year to run complete safety checkups (unless it's TEPCO who's in charge :P). The lack of power in Japan will definitely hinder progress and delay recovery.

In the midst of all the confusion, as I was starting to pack my belongings, I was approached by a researcher at Riken who asked me to do research with him. I have spent the past couple of days debating what to do...

The prank that life plays on you can be cruel sometimes…

Thanks for the calls, emails, facebook messages and tweets.... 3

March 17, 2011 1:43pm

Tokyo, Japan

Hey guys,

It has been a couple of days since my last update so I am writing to say that despite all the chaos, I have managed to stay safe and sound. I left Tokyo yesterday and I am now staying at a relative's place in a city called Toyohashi (550km from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant). Heaps have happened since my last email so I will try to provide a brief summary of what is actually happening here. I have added a few more people to the list so if you missed my first two emails, please refer to the emails below.

As I have explained before, there are actually two nuclear plants in state of emergency: one in Fukushima and one in Ibaraki, 250km and 150km from Tokyo respectively. So far, the plant in Fukushima has been getting a lot of attention from the press because it has undergone explosions that resemble some of your favorite action movies except that instead of sitting on the front row, you are actually inside the screen. At one point, after the explosion of the second reactor, the radiation level has reached harmful levels, which is equivalent to ten years worth of radiation in one hour. To put this in another perspective, levels of 400 millisieverts/hour had been recorded. Exposure to over 100 millisieverts a year is a level which can lead to cancer.

The latest news is that 750 workers were pulled out from the plant leaving behind just 50. We never found out who they actually were, but we know that they are working hard to save the country. Over 170,000 people were evacuated after officials voiced the possibility of a meltdown, and a 30-km no-fly zone has been imposed around the reactors.

The nuclear plant in Fukushima was built in 1971 and had three layers of emergency cooling procedures. The first cooling procedure is activated automatically whenever an earthquake is detected in Japan. It is basically an electric pump that sends water into the inner core of the reactor to cool down the nuclear fuel. If the first cooling procedure fails for any reason, the second procedure kicks in. The second cooling procedure is pretty much a diesel engine that does the same thing as the electric pump. If all that fail, the third procedure, which is a long tube that operates by passing the water from the tank through a radiator (just like in a car) and sending it back to the tank. 

When the tsunami swallowed the nuclear plant, all three emergency cooling procedures failed miserably. The electric pump stopped due to a massive blackout in the region, the diesel engine was completely immersed in water after the tsunami and the radiator just wasn't efficient enough to cool down the reactor. When they realized that the reactors were overheating despite the triple layer of cooling procedures, they started to pump sea water into the tank in an attempt to prevent complete meltdown of the nuclear core.

There are (or were) a total of six nuclear reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi plant, conveniently named 1-6. By coincidence, reactors 4-6 had been turned off a few days before the earthquake for an annual maintenance procedure.

The explosion of the reactors 1 and 3 (Saturday and Monday respectively) were caused by an accumulation of hydrogen in the building surrounding the nuclear core. Since the core itself did not get penetrated, no radioactive leakage was detected after the blast. The explosion of the reactors 2 and 4 (Tuesday), on the other hand, was due to a partial meltdown of the nuclear fuel within the core and led to substantial radiation leakage. Pathetically, reactor 2's explosion was caused by one of the operators who did not realize that the engine that was used to pump sea water into the tank had run out of fuel. 

When a nuclear reactor undergoes maintenance procedures, the remains of the nuclear fuel rods are moved to a suppression pool located within the tank until they cool down while trapping majority of cesium, iodine and strontium. This time, since they had diverged attention from reactor 4 in an attempt to save reactors 1-3, they did not notice that reactor 4 started to overheat. Reactor 4 ended up blasting with a fire break-out releasing significant amount of radiation. Currently, there have been rumors that reactors 5 and 6 have also "awaken" and are now starting to overheat.

It is predicted that in the event that reactor 2 undergoes a complete meltdown, people within 20km radius will not survive and people within 50-100km will suffer severe health disorders. If the explosion spans multiple reactors, it will resemble Chernobyl in 1986 and the radioactive cloud will cover the entire country.

I had decided after first explosion on Saturday that I would leave Tokyo and find shelter somewhere further west if another reactor exploded. When I woke up on Monday, I found out that the train system in Tokyo wasn't operating in its entirety due to the planned power outages, and queues extended a few hundred meters. I didn't think it was worth spending a couple of hours in the queue in order to squeeze myself in a train just to get to school for which I was already late so decided to skip school and started to head back home. When I dropped by the supermarket on my way back home, I found out that people had already beaten me to buying basic survival items such as water, instant food, and toilet paper. I got home, had enough time to put away my purchases and the second nuclear reactor popped.

I didn't allow myself to wait for details of the explosion since it was already a premeditated thing. I picked up a backpack that had already been packed and left the house. On the way to the station I remembered that taking the train was not going to be an option so I redirected my path to a car rental shop and rented myself a nice little economy car. The plan was to leave Tokyo for a couple of days until dust settled. Already on the freeway, I called a couple of relatives to see if I could crash in their houses for a few days finally deciding to go to Toyohashi.

In the past couple of days, however, a sequence of unfortunate events made me believe that "a couple of days" wouldn't suffice. Not only things were not improving, but they were falling apart so quickly that I felt like I was never going to be able to return to Tokyo. I planned at some point to drive back to Tokyo to return the car and take the bullet train back, but another magnitude 7 aftershock stopped all trains and blocked the road leading to Tokyo. I decided to lie to the rental company and tell the Toyohashi branch that I had already asked the Tokyo branch if I could return the car there.

So far there has been 168 magnitude 5 aftershocks, 45 magnitude 6, and 3 magnitude 7. Our level of paranoia has reached a point that we start clinging on things when we feel what before was considered an insignificant tremor. We are constantly watching the news on TV and following tweets related to the earthquake despite knowing that it just gets us stressed out.

Leaving Tokyo was definitely not an easy decision to make. I am still a full-time student, work part time in a patent office and I do volunteer work (and didn't tell anyone, but I was trying to start up a company). I left Tokyo against the recommendation of the Japanese government which is telling people to refrain from moving. Today, life in Tokyo had returned to normal and I received several work-related emails from many places. I still haven't gotten a single email from my school checking if I am ok or suggesting me on how to cope with the situation.

Today, the radiation level in Tokyo reached 1.62 uSv/h (over 10x higher than the normal background radiation level of 0.04 uSv/h). Tomorrow, no one knows...

I will keep you guys updated.

Thanks for the calls, emails, facebook messages and tweets.... 2

March 14, 2011

Tokyo, Japan

Hello everyone, I am writing to update you guys on what's happening here in Japan.

I managed to get home safely on Saturday afternoon (about 20 hours after the earthquake) and my apartment was relatively unscathed. I found a few things on the floor but nothing was really broken. Interestingly, life in Tokyo seemed to have gone back to normal.

Now the reality...

So far, 1300 bodies have been found and over 10,000 people are still unaccounted for. Japan death toll is currently estimated at 10,000. 

On Saturday, a nuclear reactor in one of the power plants in Fukushima (240km from Tokyo) blasted causing the roof of the building surrounding the reactor to collapse, leading to significant radioactive leakage and injuring four people. You can watch the footage here -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHfR_wybvw0

Two nuclear plants have been affected by the earthquake. The plant in Fukushima, which is under state of emergency, has (or had) a total of six nuclear reactors. One has already blasted, and two other are currently on the verge of collapsing as well. Just a bit of background info... Nuclear reactors use the heat generated from radioactive elements to heat up water and generate power. Even after the reactor is turned off, it can take days for it to cool down requiring massive amounts of water. So when the earthquake stroke on Friday, the reactors were immediately turned off and entered the self-cooling mode. The earthquake, however, caused a major power outage in the area and the water pump stopped working. There were a couple of more layers of emergency cooling procedures in place but they have all failed miserably. Long story short, as I write this email, the nuclear reactors continue to heat up and the government is trying to cool them down using their last reaort: pumping sea water into the tank. Japan's nuclear safety agency said the number of people exposed to radiation from the Fukushima plant could reach 160. Workers in protective clothing were scanning people arriving at evacuation centers for radioactive exposure. Around 140,000 people had been evacuated from areas near the plant and another nuclear facility nearby, while authorities prepared to distribute iodine to people in the vicinity to protect them from radioactive exposure.

The last news we had was that they haven't been able to successfully contain the heat in the reactors, and another one could explode at any moment. Even if that happens, however, they are predicting that there probably won't be much radiation leakage so people in Tokyo shouldn't be affected. Currently, Japan is still being hit by several aftershock quakes ranging from magnitudes 3 to 5. While this is nothing to be alarmed about, experts are predicting that there is still 70% chance of another major earthquake (7 or higher) striking Japan.
(http://wireupdate.com/wires/15821/japan-says-70-percent-chance-of-a-new-major-earthquake-by-wednesday/). Unless another catastrophe or accident happens, it is said that everything should be under control in a few weeks. Moreover, even though radiation can reach Tokyo in a couple of hours if something happens in Fukushima, it is unlikely that it is going to reach Tokyo.

The French embassy, however, thinks otherwise and has told French people to start evacuating Tokyo (use google translator if you can't read French -> http://www.ambafrance-jp.org/spip.php?article4569). My French friend has already purchased a ticket back to France.

What concerns me is that the Japanese media is currently under what they call "press restraints" and they are limiting information to reach the population. Historically both the Japanese government and Tepco, Tokyo's power company, have had cases where they have hidden information from the population causing some controversies. The idea this time is to avoid major panic in Tokyo until it is really necessary. If people decide to evacuate Tokyo all at once, there is no way the transportation system is going to sustain the massive outflow of people, not to mention the economic impact that it could cause. 

Japan is heavily reliant upon nuclear power and stopping them can lead to serious consequences. Today, Tepco has announced some planned power outages in the city for the next few weeks which will have a negative impact on the economy. Without power, public transportation and water distribution will be limited. 

My plan is to follow the news closely and if there is any sign that things could get worse, I will be ready to jump off the boat.

Thanks for the calls, emails, facebook messages and tweets....

I know this is an old message but I decided to post it here because I reckon it will be good to have some record.

It was originally sent to my friends around the world.

-----------------------------

March 12, 2011 4:05pm

Tokyo, Japan

Hello,

Apologies for crossposting... and please feel free to forward this email in case I forgot to include anyone...

I am sending a mass email to thank everyone who has tried to contact me regarding the earthquake. I ended up crashing in my friend's place in Roppongi and woke up to the sound a random car driving around the city with an oversized megaphone notifying people to refrain from using electricity and gas because there is still a possibility of additional aftershock earthquakes hitting Tokyo and other regions in Japan. I was actually planning on snowboarding this weekend but I just saw on the news that not only the ski resort was completely destroyed by avalanches, but there are no more roads that lead to the place. 

The entire country was in panic yesterday and most of the people had to walk home since there were no public transportation, gas, and in some areas, not even electricity. The mobile phone network was completely down throughout the night (still is) so we were having a hard time checking up on our friends. We all spent the night trying to contact each other to make sure nothing major happen to anyone. Fortunately I was able to contact most of my friends and although some of them had to walk for 10 hours to get home, they were all well sheltered without major injuries. Unfortunately, however, I still haven't been able to contact a friend of mine who lives in Sendai which is the city that was hit directly by the earthquake.

The tip of the Tokyo tower is bent, some buildings are crumbling down and the ground is shattering in some places. Large areas of Tokyo were built upon reclaimed land and they are usually the first ones to give. Fortunately most buildings in Tokyo are earthquake-proof and they withstood the magnitude 5 quake that hit Tokyo (8.9 in other places). Some cities in the Northern side of the country, however, were not as lucky and have either collapsed or are completely under water. Many people in Japan had to spend the night in cold warehouses and some in their cars. Apparently the quake that hit Japan was 700 times stronger than Haiti's recent magnitude 7.0 earthquake (more here -> http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20042270-503543.html). 

Radioactive leakage has been detected in one of the nuclear plants in Fukushima and there are some factories and power plants still on fire. As of right now, the fifth largest earthquake in history has already killed 300 people (100 by the quake itself and 200 by the flood) but there are 1000 people still missing. Tsunami Waves have already hit the US causing damage in Hawaii and in California so for those of you who live near the coast (SMC people included), please be safe. 

Yesterday we all fell asleep hoping things would be different when we woke up today. Even though the sun rose just like any other day in "the land of the rising sun", many people woke up to face a sad reality. Some people were finally able to contact their family just to find out that their houses  were completely destroyed or relatives went missing. Although we were all trying to contact each other to make sure everyone was safe, people in my lab/school, my supervisor included, kept sending work-related emails to each other throughout the night (this is really sad)... Not a single word on how people are coping with the earthquake. It really makes me reconsider my decision to get a PhD in Japan.

I am sure you have already searched for videos on YouTube but just to simplify your life a bit, these are the craziest videos I was able to find online....

This is the craziest one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctb4qTIIaQA

And more here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84kVUDP0wtc

And here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsHn3yvySQY

Some live footage here

http://live.nicovideo.jp/watch/lv43019860

Trains are finally starting to run in Tokyo so I am gonna try to go home now.

At this point, I would like to send my condolences to everyone who lost houses, properties, and loved ones in this catastrophe. Please let me know if there is anyone else MIA and I will do my best to find them.

Thanks again to all of you who have thought of me and other people in Japan.

Cheers~!