That’s a joke! Most of the channels are owned by a few companies, so there is major censorship. Thanks goodness we get international news to get the real stories. Things are slightly better now with the current Administration, but we have a long way to go!
They are now started to cooling it down using sea water.
Храни Вас Бог - God bless you.
@ NON and everyone else in Japan, we are all thinking of you and wishing the best.
My deepest condolences to the victims and the people of Japan. 
Some balance, folks.
The media love melodrama. At times, watching the various commentaries about this, I have felt the distinct impression that they would actually like a meltdown (or worse) to happen.
The reactors went into emergency shut-down as a result of the earthquake; a design feature in case of serious damage.
As a result, the power they had been supplying to the grid was no longer present (of course) and the power supply to the reactors failed in overload.
A reactor takes quite a long time to shut down and start cooling down; heat (serious heat) is still produced in the core for several hours afterward. A supply of cooling water is essential.
The water would have been pumped and there would have been no drama if the mains supply held up. It didn’t. The generators used to supply emergency power were flooded shortly afterward by the tsunami. So, no coolant.
It appears the explosion at no. 1 reactor was as a result of cooling water being applied to the superhot core, which also produces hydrogen gas, which then exploded, blowing the roof off in a spectacular fashion. This was not a nuclear explosion.
The authorities are now using sea water to remove excess heat. This will probably work. It will also pretty much be the end of the useful life-span of the reactors. (They don’t like salt water; a maintenance/longevity issue; it’s not intrinsically hazardous.)
It would seem to me that the authorities are likely to be so busy trying to control this situation during a time of crisis, and take the precaution of an evacuation space around the plants, and monitor anyone who was there for effects of radioactivity (there has been radioactive gas released) that they are probably unable to offer a definitive and authoritative statement of reassurance to the watching media.
This could go to a melt-down scenario. My feeling is that it probably will not. If it does, it would be quite different from the Chernobyl situation, where the containment area was destroyed, allowing a vast radioactive release. Provided the containment area remains intact a melt down is very serious, but not catastrophic.
Catastrophic is better defined by the huge number of people near the coast that did not have time to escape the tsunami - it was too close, despite the warning system working correctly.
Please avoid scaremongering, and I’d suggest not buying into the “fear” mantra that the worlds’ media - as Safesurf mentioned, run by a very small number of organizations - are trying to sell us.
My sincere condolences to anyone who has lost loved ones in Japan. A horrid thing to happen. Best wishes.
you got an example of a major info that was kept silent by CNN, just one - taking the current situation in Japan for instance - ??? :
well I guess the medias have to be owned by a few companies, it’s the same here in France, so what? they wouldn’t survive economically otherwise… the end result is that the US/Canada and(some countries in)the EU have anyway the freest press on the planet.
Oh one last thing, when you mention “international” news, you mean who? if you don’t trust CNN/BBC/Reuters/AFP/AP etc… then who do you trust?
That’s why I am glad I live in Canada:
Japan’s nuclear crisis grows
Partial meltdown already underway at one reactor in quake region
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/03/13/japan-quake-nuclear.html
I agree with Tarq57
My sincere condolences to anyone who has lost loved ones in Japan. A horrid thing to happen. Best wishes.
I agree with you.
Please remember the energy of earthquake is tremendous.
Using log E=4.8+1.5M to convert the magnitude to energy (where E is energy [J] and M is magnitude of an earthquake), the energy of this earthquake (M9.0) in Japan is 10^(4.8+1.5x9.0) = 10^18.3 = 2.00E+18 [J].
The energy of “Little Boy”, the atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima, is 6.28E+13 [J], so that it is equal to x30,000 of Hiroshima.
Even if this earthquake brings the great deal of harm, it is not mysterious.
However, the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan is still enduring.
The current stage of the nuclear plant in Fukushima is still far from Three Mile Island.
Chernobyl is the farthest land.
Many people including the Self‐Defense Forces of Japan are working hard to make the reactor core cooling.
I wish and guess the nuclear power plant in Fukushima is made cool down by this week end.
Now excellent rescue parties from Europe (Swiss, German, UK …), USA and the other countries came in Japan and they are rescuing the victims as well as they can.
And USA ships (an aircraft carrier, destroyers etc) were arrived and they are also undertaking the duty of the rescue.
I wish to express our gratitude to them as one of Japanese and wish a lot of people are rescued.
I wish to express my gratitude for consideration of everybody to say nothing of me.
Iso-G
P.S.
@Trevor
I’m alive in Tokyo.
I’ll send an email to you with the file tomorrow. 
Iso-G, grad to hear you’re alright.
Shamefully I forgot to say thanks to all of the support from many countries :-[
Again thanks to all of your support and consideration.
My deepest condolences to victims or these who lost anyone in Japan.
I also hope Japan will resolve all the issues and recover fast.
I cant imagine what it must be like there but I hope things recover quickly, my condolences go out to those that have suffered and those who have lost loved ones it is a deeply tragic event that no one should have to bare
Hi, Yanto
Thank you for your message to Japanese forum, too. I would like to say thank you to everyone who feels sad and sorry for Japanese people.
I don’t know what else to say…
Microsoft says 'sorry' after Japan quake marketing gaffehttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/14/microsoft_apologises_about_bing_japan_quake_tweet/
Our news just told about a tsunami warning for the Pacific area,
following a sea-quake rated to 7,9. Thats a lot
Good luck, dear friends from down under -
and lets hope it wont come that bad.
It is difficult to stop my tears when I saw that clips. There are tragic scenes and helpless people who could not do something. But believe God. He is Owner of this Universe. He can do as His will.
I’m afraid there will be no such thing here as a quick recovery. This one is going to take a serious length of time and much dedication to even come close to getting things back on track.
Aftershocks and other earthquakes are still a constant strain on the nerves along the entire coast from Miyagi down through Shizuoka. I mean we had one right near Mt. Fuji a few nights ago that was mighty strong and sincerely freaked me out because I could feel very strong P waves instead of the usual S waves we had been feeling from the other quakes and I knew straight away it was a new quake somewhere near. That sort of scares you first and then makes you kind of angry at whatever Gods are doing this to us. They had a very good shake a day or two before the Shizuoka one and that was in Nagano. The experts will tell you there is no connection with those that are going off all up and down the coast from Miyagi right into Tokyo Bay, but something is going on, for sure. I’ve been here for a couple decades and we’ve never had this level of intensity of quakes on Honshu from Tokai to Tohoku. Like I wrote above, it does tend to get on one’s nerves.
Shortages are severe up in Miyagi and less so as one moves south into the Kanto region where it’s not too rough right now, but could be in another week, if food distribution does not improve.
Obviously, everyone along the coast and further inland have very serious worries about whether they can maintain get a handle of the containment ponds holding those fuel rods. The latest efforts today seem to be providing some success and tomorrow they may get power to the cooling pumps to containment pools for reactors 5 and 6, which would be a major relief. The other four are going to require continued fire truck shooting of water because the damage to the pumps isn’t clear yet, so even having power to the pumps may not help. It’s a very tough job the SDF and other personnel are performing.
Unfortuanely, some lives have been lost right in the evacuation centers in the hardest areas due to lack of heat, food, and medicine. I’m referring to people that survived the initial hours of the disaster and were gotten into evacution centers, but because of a lack of supplies getting in they weakened and died. True, not a whole lot, but it shows the degree of suffering still be felt by those that are supposedly safe – the infrastructure is just busted all to heck. And there are just so many choppers to go around.
Yep, Mother Nature kicked us real good in the butt and then add the Fukushima Plant 1 disaster on top of that and … Well, I’m just trying to give you some idea of what we have going down here. You might think I’m painting a grim picture, but there’s no other way to paint it – it really is very bad. But if they can get control of the Fukushima Plant No. 1 (Daiichi) under control and slowly improve that situation I think we’ll see a lifting of spirits and then it’ll possibly make the other hardships a little easier to cope with.
Oh well, just thought you might have been asking for that sort of explanation from someone who is here.
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ManyQ,
Thanks for the update. This way those of us on the forum at least know exactly
whats going on.
It is hard to hear without getting a little emotional.
Unfortunately the only help most of us can offer are the contributions we make to the relief organizations.
Please take care and keep every one informed. If you can thing of anything specific any of the forum members
can do that will accomplish more than the standard contributions, please let us know that too,
I still haven’t forgotten the help I received from some on here 5 years ago before my wife’s transplant.
Well, bob3160, since I read your post I had been putting notes onto a text document for an eventual response with some thoughts on how y’all folks could really help us out here once the primary emergency is over, but one thing or another has kept me from refining that document and so let me just do a quick post to state that the situation is improving in areas outside the hardest hit; improving significantly at the Fukushima power plant; frequency of aftershocks and other quakes has dropped quite a bit; but the hardest hit areas are really still in the thick of trouble of all kinds. Well, there are some improvements up there, but obviously not as fast as one would think they’d be.
I’m quite serious in that first sentence about an idea I have that I’d like to pass along to all members and guests here in the Avast Community about something you can do for us here in Japan, other than making donations, but I am also a bit worried about the topic being locked, as this isn’t really about the main reason for this sub-forum. Any chance this thread/topic will be allowed to remain for a bit before it’s locked?
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