I came home and turned on NHK, which is all disaster, all the time. The announcer was saying that rolling blackouts may be necessary "through next month."
It is better to announce a blackout. Since everyone in Tokyo knows when and where the blackouts will happen, no one needs to be caught in an elevator. Hospitals can check their backup generators. Police departments can dispatch officers to direct traffic. There are even a few advantages. They have turned off some of the obnoxious building-sized televisions and neon signs. That's good as far as it goes, but industrial production is suffering. I think they said that every automobile manufacturer has presently shut down all production lines, because of disruptions in supplies and electricity. A lot of people must be thinking it is unwise to put all your eggs in gigawatt baskets. As Jones Beene remarked, the Toshiba mini-reactors must be looking good right about now. Ed Storms expressed reservations about them. In news from the lunatic fringe, the governor of Tokyo, Shitaro Ishihara, said the tsunami was "punishment from heaven" because Japanese people are too "selfish" and "greedy." He is a wealthy right-wing extremist, so this is like Gingrich lecturing on fidelity in marriage. It goes to show there are obnoxious people everywhere. He is running for re-election, the 4th time, so evidently many voters agree with him. Here is the article quoting him, in Japanese: http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0314/TKY20110... Ohhh . . . kay, they just announced another explosion, in Unit #2. I guess everyone here has heard this means the containment pool under the reactor is leaking. It was another B-grade movie moment. The broadcast was interrupted. The announcer said, "we will take you now to an announcement from the Nuclear Safety Division . . ." <delay, voices in background> "We will take you momentarily . . ." Announcer waits . . . 'dead air' in broadcast lingo. The scene abruptly shifts to show a 30-ish engineer standing in front of a whiteboard full of handwritten calculations and a wall full of schematics and graphs held up with pins and tape. The guy has not shaved in a couple of days and probably not slept. His hair is a mop, and he is not wearing a necktie. This is NOT how Japanese officials and power company spokespeople usually present themselves to the public. He makes a few comments and then hands the mike over to middle aged guy with a tie and an attitude -- as in: 'stop bothering us, we have this situation under control. Nothing to see here folks." A few minutes later they cut away from the announcement abruptly. The announcer turns to a Resident Expert and says "so what does this latest explosion mean?" Resident Expert: "Well, first of all, an explosion in a nuclear plant is a extraordinary event. It was coupled with readings of 800 microsieverts, which is 10,000 times background. Together these events suggest the possibility of continued severe difficulties . . ." That's telling 'em! - Jed
