EcocentricUncategorized
A colleague in Japan just drew my attention to this video on YouTube that was shot inside the beleaguered Fukushima nuclear power plant. It was shot on April 22 by Aoyama Shigeharu, a member of the Japanese government’s Atomic Energy Commission.
I don’t know a whole lot more about it than that — such as how it ended up on Japanese …
EcocentricPopulation
Pencil in October 31, 2011 on your calendar. It’s not just the one day of the year you get to dress like Edward Cullen without everyone thinking there’s something deeply wrong with you. According to the United Nations Population Division (UNPD)—the demographers who rule over all demographers—that’s the day when the 7 billionth person …
EcocentricEnergy
A U.S. medical group has slammed the Japanese government and senior nuclear adviser Toshiso Kosako has tearfully resigned over the levels of radiation exposure Tokyo says are safe for students at elementary and junior high schools in Fukushima prefecture. In a statement quoted by Kyodo news agency, Physicians for Social Responsibility …
EcocentricEnergy
FUKUSHIMA — A Geiger counter isn’t something you ever want to know how to use. It’s definitely not something you want to need. Not that it’s an intimidating piece of equipment – the one I used last week in Japan was roughly the size of a mobile phone circa 1998. Our Terra MKS-05, made in the Ukraine, almost blended into the …
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, …
EcocentricEcocentric
There are storms and then there is what happened to the town of Sanford, North Carolina on the night of April 16. A boisterous storm system had begun in Oklahoma on April 14, bringing flash floods, tornadoes and thunderstorms from the Midwest through the Southeast, part of a massive weather system that could be felt as far as the New …
EcocentricRegulation
Assessing the full impact of Japan’s crisis has been a moving target since the first minutes after the 9.0 earthquake struck on March 11. So it’s with a cautious sense of optimism that Sunday’s news from Tokyo Electric and Power Company (TEPCO) – that the crippled power plant could be in cold shut down before the end of the year …
EcocentricEcocentric
Photos of big tuna hanging from their tails usually leave me a little cold, particularly when those tuna have been caught in Japan, the world’s largest consumer of the endangered bluefin.
But this picture released today by the Yomiuri, a Japanese daily, makes me feel… if not exactly warm and fuzzy… at least a little relieved. It’s …
EcocentricUncategorized
On Sunday, over 17,000 people took to the streets of Tokyo to let their government know they’ve had it with nuclear power. It was an unusual display of mass disgruntlement in the Japanese capital, but these are unusual times. Residents walked through the neighborhood of Koenji – reportedly the birthplace of Japanese punk – with …
EcocentricUncategorized
On Friday, Japan faced another round of assessing the damage from a massive aftershock — the strongest in over 400 in the last month — that struck off the north coast late last night. At least three people were killed in the quake and more than 140 injured, and as of Friday evening, millions in the disaster-struck region were again …
