EcocentricTechnology
UPDATE: Typhoon Ma-On has been downgraded to a tropical storm. It is expected to move over central Japan today, hitting south of Tokyo before moving out to sea, according to the U.S. Navy. At least one person was reported missing and dozens injured after the storm landed in Japan on Tuesday.
The smiling faces of the young …
EcocentricRegulation
Over 950 pounds of beef contaminated with radioactive cesium above the legal limit has been distributed and eaten in at least eight prefectures across Japan, Tokyo city authorities have announced. The beef, which came from cows raised on a farm in Minamisoma in Fukushima prefecture, contained cesium at a level of 3,240 becquerels per …
EcocentricEnergy
Tokyo Electric Power Company’s stock rose 25% after Japan’s cabinet announced it approved a plan to help the nation’s largest utility avoid bankruptcy and pay a huge compensation bill to victims of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant crippled in the March 11 tsunami.
For the last three months, the future of TEPCO, which …
EcocentricUncategorized
Tokyo Electric Power Company’s head honcho stepped down today as the company announced $15 billion losses for the fiscal year that ended in March. Here’s my post over at Global Spin on how — and if — Tepco can survive.
EcocentricRegulation
Chubu Electric Power Company agreed on Monday to suspend operations at the controversial Hamaoka nuclear power plant, three days after Prime Minister Naoto Kan made an unprecedented request for the company to shut down the plant, citing safety concerns. Like the beleaguered Daiichi Fukishima nuclear power plant further north, Hamaoka is …
EcocentricEcocentric
About a month ago, we posted an item about GoDaddy CEO Bob Parson’s elephant-hunting safari in Zimbabwe. (You can find it here.) Parsons came under a little criticism, though as he told us later, he wasn’t the least bit sorry. He claimed that the hunt was an act of charity, killing an elephant that had been destroying crops for hungry …
EcocentricFood
In the fishing town of Iwaki, uni is sold in the local market steamed, on the clamshell. Starting each May, free divers wearing weight belts and flippers gather urchin from a small cove and haul the spiny globes to shore in woven baskets. For years, tourists have been coming to this port in Fukushima prefecture to taste Iwaki’s uni, …
EcocentricUncategorized
Sawdust. It’s not the first thing most people would choose to put between themselves and highly contaminated radioactive water. But a mixture of sawdust — ogakuzu in Japanese — with chemicals and shredded newspaper is precisely what nuclear safety authorities and power plant officials turned to in trying to plug a 8-inch crack …
EcocentricUncategorized
Though some of you have expressed a desire to see Ecocentric move past the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, we’re not quite there yet. The good news is that crews have begun to restore power to the reactors, which should help accelerate the efforts to restore cooling to the still hot—and radioactive—nuclear fuel. Elevated …
EcocentricUncategorized
It’s worth stating at the outset: while more than 10,000 people have almost certainly died in the March 11 quake and tsunami in northeastern Japan, not a single person has been killed in the ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. As Abrahm Lustgarten reported in ProPublica yesterday, most experts believe that even in the …
