Japan Marks 3rd Anniversary of Tsunami Disaster 77
AmiMoJo writes "Today Japan marks the third anniversary of the 11th of March 2011 disaster when the country was hit by a magnitude 9 earthquake huge tsunami and severe nuclear accident. More than 18,500 people were killed or went missing. Nearly 3,000 others died while evacuated from their homes, and over a quarter of a million people were still living in temporary housing as of February. Work to build new housing on higher ground is lagging behind schedule.
Three reactors melted down at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant following the quake and tsunami, but the exact cause of the accident is still unknown. How massive amounts of radioactive materials from the reactors were dispersed is also unclear. Today was also the day when hundreds of former residents announced that they were suing TEPCO, the plant operator, and the government for additional compensation." Although the nuclear accident was dwarfed by the other devastation, the effects of the meltdown will be felt for much longer. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published an article today on the reactors that didn't meltdown, and the NRC chair has some comments on the progress at Fukishima.
Three reactors melted down at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant following the quake and tsunami, but the exact cause of the accident is still unknown. How massive amounts of radioactive materials from the reactors were dispersed is also unclear. Today was also the day when hundreds of former residents announced that they were suing TEPCO, the plant operator, and the government for additional compensation." Although the nuclear accident was dwarfed by the other devastation, the effects of the meltdown will be felt for much longer. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published an article today on the reactors that didn't meltdown, and the NRC chair has some comments on the progress at Fukishima.
Dwarfed? yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
Although the nuclear accident was dwarfed by the other devastation,
Yet the nuclear accident is all people panic about, completely forgetting the actual tsunami.
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Yeah, but the amount of death, destruction, and long term economic cost was lower. This is like saying that the sun doesn't dwarf the earth because a lot of people don't know that.
Re:Dwarfed? yeah right (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean the 20,000 deaths caused by the Tsunami compared to the 0 deaths related to anything nuclear, where the handful of deaths surrounding the incident were caused by inaction and fear of radiation?
http://fukushima.ans.org/
The physical effects of the Tsunami were incredibly more devastating than the Fukushima meltdown, however the psychological effects of the meltdown are truly staggering. It's a difference between facts and perception that, three years later, isn't going anywhere it seems. Nuclear is only scary if you don't look at what it actually is.
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There are two kinds of people, those that try to quantify everything, and an abstract, unclear bunch of other groups.
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No, it was a joke. About how some people aren't quantifiers like us slashdotters have a natural tendency towards.
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One must not generalize.
Yea, that's a group activity.
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One must not generalize.
Always? Or just in this specific case?
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Maybe both?
Re:Dwarfed? yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
The key difference being that the tsunami was a natural disaster that was difficult to prevent. The Fukushima accident was caused by incompetence and could have been avoided, as it was at other nuclear plants.
Focusing on deaths is arbitrary and designed solely to try and underplay the devastating effects of the nuclear disaster on the people forced to evacuate and on Japan's economy. As TFA points out there are still too many unknowns to say exactly how bad Fukushima is.
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Then you can focus on numbers other than $Deaths, like:
Some 160,000 people were evacuated as a precautionary measure, and prolonging the evacuation resulted in the deaths of about 1100 of them due to stress, and some due to disruption of medical and social welfare facilities.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i... [world-nuclear.org]
Or perhaps look at a chart showing the magnitude of radiation around Fukushima with respect to time:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Fukushima7.png
There is always radiation around us from natural sources (cosmic, ground, foods), so when the background radiation of the surrounding area is at a normal level, then why are people concerned? The numbers don't add up, but the perception of fear continues.
O
Re:Dwarfed? yeah right (Score:4, Informative)
Some 160,000 people were evacuated as a precautionary measure, and prolonging the evacuation resulted in the deaths of about 1100 of them due to stress, and some due to disruption of medical and social welfare facilities.
So you are basically agreeing with me. There was no way to know how bad the disaster was at the time they evacuated, and the levels in the evacuation area above safe limits in parts so clearly it was necessary. Your map has hundreds of metres per pixel, it doesn't show hot spots which are the problem, only an average.
I'm not sure what your point is... It was a disaster, people died as a result.
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I'm not agreeing, I'm just trying to point out a few more numbers that show the magnitude of the damage caused by radiation is significantly less than the magnitude of psychological damages and unwarranted fear of radiation that seems to espoused throughout the internet.
While not everyone is expected to be an informed citizen on every topic (nuclear science and engineering in this case), it's harmful to let dis-information spread and generate more fear.
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But most of it isn't unwarranted fear of radiation, it was due to a necessary and prudent evacuation and the subsequent delays in returning due to high measured levels.
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The Fukushima accident was caused by incompetence and could have been avoided, as it was at other nuclear plants.
I glanced through your posts to get an idea of what you thought "incompetence" was. It appears [slashdot.org] that you think not building the seawall higher at Fukushima was an example and that you agree with the blithe and wrong assumption that it was "corporate culture" which was at fault - even though the same TEPCO corporate culture also existed at the Onagawa plant.
Focusing on deaths is arbitrary
Death is a very concrete measure of harm.
underplay the devastating effects of the nuclear disaster on the people forced to evacuate and on Japan's economy
Keep in mind that a lot of the harm comes from hysteria not nuclear accidents. For example, why are no Japanese n
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I glanced through your posts to get an idea of what you thought "incompetence" was. It appears that you think not building the seawall higher at Fukushima was an example and that you agree with the blithe and wrong assumption that it was "corporate culture" which was at fault - even though the same TEPCO corporate culture also existed at the Onagawa plant.
You are not very good at reading comprehension.
Death is a very concrete measure of harm.
Except that it ignores all the people who survived by are now suffering. In the case of Fukushima it is often chosen deliberately to ignore those people because the speaker is trying to make out that it was not very harmful.
For example, why are no Japanese nuclear plants on line? There's no safety issue for most of the nuclear plants which weren't effected by the earthquakes.
Actually there is. Many of them experienced near or above their lateral force limits during the earthquake, and it is standard procedure after one to shut down and do a full inspection to look for damage. It takes a lot of time to do, and si
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You are not very good at reading comprehension.
That's what's written there. I'll quote it in full so we don't have this particular disagreement again:
The key paragraph:
Most people believe that Fukushima DaiichiÃ(TM)s meltdowns were predominantly due to the earthquake and tsunami. The survival of Onagawa, however, suggests otherwise. Onagawa was only 123 kilometers away from the epicenterÃ"60 kilometers closer than Fukushima DaiichiÃ"and the difference in seismic intensity at the two plants was negligible. Furthermore, the tsunami was bigger at Onagawa, reaching a height of 14.3 meters, compared with 13.1 meters at Fukushima Daiichi. The difference in outcomes at the two plants reveals the root cause of Fukushima DaiichiÃ(TM)s failures: the utilityÃ(TM)s corporate Ãoesafety culture.Ã
A natural disaster is a tragedy. A man-made disaster due to corporate culture is a crime.
TEPCO runs both the Fukushima Daiichi and Onagawa plants. It's the same corporate culture which in one case you laud and another you declare a "crime".
Also, note that Onagawa remains off line. When is it going to be rewarded for its good "corporate culture" by being allowed to restart?
Death is a very concrete measure of harm.
Except that it ignores all the people who survived by are now suffering. In the case of Fukushima it is often chosen deliberately to ignore those people because the speaker is trying to make out that it was not very harmful.
If we're going by that measure, the earthquake still caused a lot more suffering. Also a lot - if not most - of that suf
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Are you sure other deaths from the tsunami couldn't have been prevented? Perhaps some of them could have been avoided if there hadn't been incompetence and official neglect. Even a few cases of badly placed construction and inadequate disaster planning could have resulted in a lot of deaths. We don't hear about those.
Many of the devastating effects from the Fukushima disaster proper were because of ignorance and irrational fear of radiation. You're claiming that nukes are scary because people are sca
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Because the people are dead and the destruction has been done and is over. The meltdown is ongoing and will affect the region for a lot longer than the tsunami ever could.
It also highlights not the threat of nuclear power, but the threat of politics and nuclear power combined make. That plant should have been shutdown for years, a new one should have been built using upgraded technology. But thanks to politics, that wasn't done and they extended the reactor for many more years than it was made to be oper
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That's be cause while 20,000 died as a direct result of the devastation, and and billions upon billions was lost and millions lives were displaced because of the matter, there is an end in sight for those people where they can rebuild. There are no concerns in the long term for their life. That doesn't make their loss any less insignificant, just their loss will not linger as long as those of the Fukushima area. Look at Chernobyl 28 years later. We still have concern for what happened there.
While I am
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Right. Your life was altered because somebody you love was near the disaster.
Consider that with twenty thousand deaths, there were a lot of people who died who were loved by people who came out OK. They can't be rebuilt. The effects of that are going to last more than 28 years.
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Why do you hate the Japanese? The A-bombs likely saved a million+ Japanese lives. Invasion or starving them out, would have cost much more.
No they weren't ready to surrender. That's pure bullshit.
Has there ever been any conclusive proof on this? I'm sure that's the thought process the US wanted everyone to think, as the US is the only country to ever use a nuclear weapon outside of testing. But the victors usually do get to write history, and I've never seen any kind of historical (or even statistical) consensus that dropping the bomb saved lives. Seems to me that the Truman administration -and any administrations following- would want the prevailing narrative to be "dropping the bombs saved lives."
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The main points I see are the comments that even at the end of the war at most 1-3% of Japanese soldiers would surrender and the killed to wounded ratio of Japanese vs anyone else. Also note the low number civilian casualties among the Japanese relative to anyone else.
The Japanese Invasion? Better Do Your Homework (Score:3, Interesting)
Study what you know nothing about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... [wikipedia.org]
"Nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan; the number exceeded that of all American military casualties of the 65 years following the end of World War II, including the Korean and Vietnam Wars. In 2003, there were still 120,000 of these Purple Heart medals in stock."
That's right: we're STILL awarding Purple Heart medals manufactured for that invasion.
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Still parading your ignorance, eh?
There were 26,000 allied casualties in Iwo Jima alone and 50,000 in Okinawa. 20x Iwo Jima or 10x Okinawa for the invasion of the main island of Honshu sounds, if anything, conservative.
Another guideline: in the battle of Berlin the allies suffered 260,000 casualties which too make 500,000 purple hearts seem like a rather low ball estimate.
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I wouldn't say that Japan started the conflict. They fired the first shot but the US pushed them into a corner where the war became inevitable. That push came after the Japanese invades south east Asia and French forces had surrended to them. The US them came out swinging demanding that Japan leave south east Asia and withdraw from China. The US had not previously demanded Japan withdraw from China when all the atrocities were going on. When Japan made a counteroffer of withdrawing from south east Asia and
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Read what you just wrote. You can't be serious.
After Japan invades China, it invades SE Asia. The USA then gives them no choice but to 'go to war'. WTF? They've been at war for a decade at that point.
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I wasn't aware that when the Japanese invaded french indochina in 1940 that they had been at war with the US for a decade. Shit, context is hard.
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At war; not at war with the USA.
You knew that, but think being cute is better then being smart.
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It's a little thing called context, which you blatantly disregarded in your attempt to be pedantic. The entire post was phrased in the context of US-Japanese relations on how individual acts of Japanese aggression caused various responses by the US. Until December 7 (8), 1942 the Japan and US were not at a state of war. Being in a state of war with one country does not prevent you from going to war with a country you were previous not at war with.
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You want to ignore the context of the Japanese having invaded their neighbors prior to going to war with the USA but claim you are the one including context in your thinking?
I wouldn't take such an inconsistent position. It's your argument, so go for it.
Also 1942? You could learn history watching old Belushi movies.
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In the meantime, the US had been supplying the Japanese with oil and iron, that they needed to support their war machine so they could continue to commit atrocities in China. Japan attacked the US because the US cut off that supply, not because of hostile diplomatic notes.
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The following has a good summary of what lead up to the Pacific War but to summarize... the US embargo was not coupled with any reasonable demands that Japan take. The final embargos came after the Japanese invasion of French Indochina but the demands were over territory that the US had shown no significant previous interest in and had no strategic or economic interest in (China). The American demands to give up on their empire, coupled with the embargo, was telling Japan that they needed to submit to subse
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Never forget that a lot of civilians were killed by those bombs.
Be really careful about trying to rationalize civilian deaths. Claim its necessary all you want, just be clear about the kind of company youre keeping when you let "the greater good" rationalize mass killings.
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Unlike the rest of WW2 where no civilians died?
You also realize that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were part of the war machine in Japan, right? Hate to say it but bombing cities was a common tactic by all sides back then. War has never been fair. If we ever found ourselves in a situation similar to WW2, I dare say it would happen again, too, by every side.
War... war never changes.
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Conclusive proof? Probably not but it was a reasonable expectation. America was well aware of many of the atrocities that were going on during the 2nd Sino-Japanese war leading up to World War II. Japanese soldiers in the army were infused with an utterly bastardized form of bushido and were treated barbaricly by their superiors.
Hiroshima was very must a strategically justified target on military grounds. It was the headquarters of the Japanese 2nd General Army which was responsible for the defense of a sig
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Hmm, Kokura, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Yokohama, and Niigata were put on a list of cities that were not to be bombed conventionally, so as to allow for a good analysis of the effects of atomic bombing, if, as and when.
So it's pretty safe to say that the populations of Yokohama, Kokura, and Niigata were saved as a result of the decision to use the bomb.
This ignoring that the Tokyo bombings killed more p
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Kokura's population wasn't saved by the decision to use the atomic bomb. It was the primary target for Fat Boy but due to cloud cover the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki instead.
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There is no conclusive proof of what the Japanese were going to do, but it doesn't look encouraging.
See "Downfall", by Richard Frank, for a good account of Japanese (lack of) decision-making and what the US knew. Japan asked Stalin to serve as a mediator, but never could come up with a proposal to pass on. The Liaison Council was deadlocked. Japanese strategy all along had been to make the US pay bitterly for every advance in order to discourage them, and fighting on the home islands was consistent wi
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Trying to justify anything in a war, particularly one operating on a principle of "total war", is a fool's errand.
Im not sure anything, even the supposed lives it saved or the apparent necessity, could justify the indiscriminate bombing of a civilian population. Yes, that goes for the various firebombings. Claiming that they were potential combatants doesnt change that they werent actual combatants.
Bombing Japan may have been the lesser of two evils, but dont let anyone tell you that it wasnt one of the t
Re:Why can't this shit happen to North Korea? (Score:4, Insightful)
Japan was close to surrender before the bombs were dropped. It's a well established historical fact. The situation was already dire, the Pacific fleet was mostly resting on the bottom, Russia was threatening to attack from the west, it was obvious that victory was impossible and defeat was only a matter of time. Even the military knew it, which is why they were resorting to ever more desperate tactics like suicide attacks.
There are plenty of letters written by those in positions of power at the time stating all this, it was very clear to them. The political will to do it was proving hard to muster, but it was building and it's doubtful that the bombs shorted the war by more than weeks or a few months at most. In particular the threat of being split in two like Germany if Russia attacked meant that surrender would actually have been preferable.
America had developed this terrible new weapon and realized that it was only a matter of time before others did too. They wanted to find out what the effects of a nuclear attack would be, especially on cities and human beings. Computer modelling and the like didn't exist, but here was an opportunity to try it out.
If the goal was simply to end the war swiftly the bombs could have been dropped on unpopulated or remote military only targets. They were not, they were dropped on civilian cities. I have yet to hear an explanation of why that was, other than to conduct tests. How do you explain it?
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The _fact_ they didn't surrender between Hiroshima and Nagasaki makes you wrong. The rest of your position sits on that mistake.
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What? Your post doesn't make a lot of sense and doesn't seem to disagree. Japan was not on the verge of surrender.
The fact that some Japanese people were in denial doesn't change the fact that they knew or should have known (we were telling them) that we had nuked Hiroshima. It took a second city being destroyed to get them to give up.
Claiming that we could have just nuked a rock in Tokyo bay is laughable, but is frequently repeated by the likes of the GGP.
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The Japanese were aware that the Hiroshima bomb was an atomic bomb, and what it could do. There had been a couple of Japanese nuclear programs (one Army, one Navy), and Japan did not lack good scientists. However, they concluded that refinement of U-235 was a very long process, and didn't expect the US to have another for a year. The Nagasaki bomb, which used plutonium instead of uranium, proved that the US could have many more bombs.
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The two were only a short time apart and it took them time to evaluate what had happened and then build up the political will to agree to the surrender. It was never going to happen overnight.
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Hiroshima was the headquarters of the Japanese 2nd General Army which was responsible for the defense of Western Japan. The effect of the bomb was to write off the entire army as nearly its entire command staff was killed, it's logistics were thoroughly wrecked, and numerous combat units for that army were entirely written off by the bomb.
Additionally, it didn't matter if plenty of people in high positions believed the war was over and that surrender was the only option. You're ignoring the political climat
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why do you hate them so much? A legitimate target for atomic bomb could have naval bases such as Yokosuka. but you prefer tens of thousands of incinerated civilians.
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Why do you hate the Japanese? The A-bombs likely saved a million+ Japanese lives. Invasion or starving them out, would have cost much more.
No they weren't ready to surrender. That's pure bullshit.
He didn't say he didn't hate them.
He did say he hates Koreans a lot more.
Man-made disaster (Score:3)
The key paragraph:
Most people believe that Fukushima Daiichiâ(TM)s meltdowns were predominantly due to the earthquake and tsunami. The survival of Onagawa, however, suggests otherwise. Onagawa was only 123 kilometers away from the epicenterâ"60 kilometers closer than Fukushima Daiichiâ"and the difference in seismic intensity at the two plants was negligible. Furthermore, the tsunami was bigger at Onagawa, reaching a height of 14.3 meters, compared with 13.1 meters at Fukushima Daiichi. The difference in outcomes at the two plants reveals the root cause of Fukushima Daiichiâ(TM)s failures: the utilityâ(TM)s corporate âoesafety culture.â
A natural disaster is a tragedy. A man-made disaster due to corporate culture is a crime.
It's happening again (Score:2)
Doesn't this sound very familiar?
Japanense Government calls it something else (Score:2)
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No it doesn't.
And that, folks, is how you can tell apart arrogant people who are spouting propaganda from arrogant people who don't. The guys spouting the propaganda habitually make up lies. They put words into people's mouths that they would have liked them to have said, because it would prove their point.
Google [google.com] finds exactly one place on the whole of the internet, in which this quote appears:
Japan Marks 3rd Anniversary of Tsunami Disaster - Slashdot ... else (Score:2). by JoeyRox (2711699) writes: "An unfortunate wave and harmless radiation that inconvenienced a small group of our citizens" ...
slashdot.org/.../japan-marks-3rd-anniversary-of-tsunami-disaster
Slashdot
1 hour ago -
You may recognize this as your very own sorry piece of shit.
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I watched it on TV (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember when this happened it was like 1am or so.. maybe a bit later and I was flipping through channels and I saw this weird looking flood type thing.. and a bunch of Japanese looking text.... it was the NHK channel
it was going for a very long time, perhaps an hour or more, before it appeared on your CNNs and and NBCs and such..
It was shocking and compelling footage from a helicopter of the tsunami rolling over the landscape..
it was an interesting way to come up on a news story... it was in a language I didnt understand, not on a "news" channel (this channel normally just had japanese language variety type programming) and I couldn't even quite tell what was happening at first.. but by the warnings on the screen, and the tone of the voices of the people talking you knew it was a huge event.. you could see that it was..
over the next few days that channel was what I watched almost exclusively.. I never understood a word of it.. but the scope of things just got worse and worse.. and that was something that seemed missing from the American coverage.... it never quite conveyed the violence, the horror and the magnitude.. ..it is kind of hard for CNN do when they need to cut away for Cheerios commercials
Re:I watched it on TV (Score:5, Interesting)
I was in Japan when it happened.
It was mid afternoon and I was doing some shopping in a model train shop in Akiba. 5th floor. Everything started to sway a lot and I knew it was big, but at the time didn't really appreciate just how big. Japan is mostly earthquake proof so it's not like buildings were falling down around me or anything, but the shop took some damage as stuff was knocked over. When it finally stopped everyone made their way down the stairs and out onto the street, away from buildings in case of aftershocks and falling debris.
I sent an email to my mother from my phone, letting her know I was okay. After a while people just went back to shopping again, or wondering around seeing if there was much damage. There wasn't really in Tokyo, a few burst pipes and bits fallen off buildings but nothing too terrible. Some shops closed, others stayed open for a while but then decided to close early as news came in that the trains were not running.
I was actually kind of annoyed about the trains and eventually walked home since it was only maybe 5-6km. Watched some coverage on the news that evening with friends and it slowly started to become apparent just what had happened and how bad it was. More and more footage kept coming in and we just couldn't stop watching. NHK covered it 24/7 for the next week or so.
The next day we were hearing that Fukushima was in crisis, but there was little information to go on. Foreign news agencies were hyping it up, CNN called it worse than Hiroshima. People were mostly quite calm about it though, more worried than anything. Over the next few days it got worse and worse, but even so there wasn't mass panic.
The real concern now is the long term effects. People are aware that it took years for children near Chernobyl to be diagnosed with cancer, so they want their own children checked regularly to catch it as early as possible. Some people say it isn't needed, but if you had been in Japan at the time and seen the lack of information and clarity from the government and TEPCO you would understand why they feel they can't take their word for that.
Tsunami Survival Gear (Score:2)
A while back I caught a local story about a company making tsunami survival pods that are being sold in Japan now. After that disaster, I guess it doesn't seem like such a far-fetched thing to be prepared for one of these if possible. It would be nice if the price could come down to the point that ordinary people could actually afford them. Unfortunately, there's just no way to run far enough with so little warning like they had back then.
http://mynorthwest.com/11/2297725/Mukilteos-tsunami-survival-capsu [mynorthwest.com]
Hmm.... some way to mark high water mark (Score:1)
Onagawa linked article : Worth reading ! (Score:2)
Onagawa plant article [thebulletin.org] is very insteresting.
It explain how a more stressed nuclear plant on the sea shore hadn't catastrophic consequences after the tsunami:
Safety culture impulsed by a man.
Onagawa was only 123 kilometers away from the epicenter—60 kilometers closer than Fukushima Daiichi—and the difference in seismic intensity at the two plants was negligible. Furthermore, the tsunami was bigger at Onagawa, reaching a height of 14.3 meters, compared with 13.1 meters at Fukushima Daiichi. The difference in outcomes at the two plants reveals the root cause of Fukushima Daiichi’s failures: the utility’s corporate “safety culture.”
[...]
Yanosuke Hirai, vice president of Tohoku Electric from 1960 to 1975—a time period that preceded the 1980 groundbreaking at Onagawa—was adamant about safety protocols and became a member of the Coastal Institution Research Association in 1963 because of his concern about the importance of protecting against natural disasters. With a senior employee in upper management advocating forcefully for safety, a strong safety culture formed within the company.
See what they did in Onagawa in the article: plant built on higher ground, five times the estimated average tsunami height, plus tsunami response aware teams.
Tepco did the oposite: "to make it easier to transport equipment and to save construction costs, in 1967 [they] removed 25 meters from the 35-meter natural sea