[11th March 2011] 8.9 magnitude quake hit northeast Japan
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The dead they sleep a long, long sleep;The dead they rest, and their rest is deep;The dead have peace, but the living weep.~Samuel Hoffenstein
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea…
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
- T S Eliot
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Radiation in sea off Japan nuclear plant 4,385 times limit
OSAKA - THE level of radioactive iodine in the sea off Japan's disaster-hit Fukushima nuclear plant has soared to its highest reading yet at 4,385 times the legal limit, the plant operator said on Thursday.
The level of iodine-131, reported a few hundred metres south of its southern water outlet has risen in a series of tests since last week, carried out by plant operator the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco).
Previous readings there were 1,250 times the legal maximum on Friday, 1,850 times the limit on Saturday and 3,355 times the limit on Tuesday.
A 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami on March 11 knocked out the cooling systems of the Fukushima plant's six reactors - triggering explosions and fires, releasing radiation and sparking global fears of a widening disaster. -- AFP
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They are stilling fighting to contain the radiation leak...so horrible.
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Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.- Edgar Allan Poe
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Japan activist rams gate of nuclear plant near stricken reactors
JAPAN - A MAN drove his truck into the compound of a nuclear power plant on Thursday just kilometres from Japan's quake-stricken reactors, managing to evade police for two hours and embarrassing the country's already heavily criticised nuclear authorities.
He had driven inside the government's 20km evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant which has been leaking radiation after it was by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
The man's motives were unclear but he appears to have been a right-wing activist. Apart from breaking down a gate to get in, he caused no other damage.
'At 12.21pm local time this afternoon, a man in a propaganda truck drove up to the main gate of Fukushima Daiichi plant and demanded entry. The plant's personnel refused, so the truck then drove to Daini (nuclear plant, 12km away),' Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told a daily news briefing.
'Being refused entry at the main gate there, he went around to the western side gate, rammed it, and entered,' said Mr Nishiyama, who looked surprised at the interest shown by reporters in the incident.
The man had driven around the area briefly before leaving. He was eventually caught two hours later after a police chase. -- REUTERS
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the most horrid tsunami arises from politics than nature -
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
- T S Eliot
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No nuclear health threat if advice taken: Japan PM
TOKYO - JAPAN'S Prime Minister Naoto Kan said on Friday that the radiation leaking from the Fukushima nuclear plant presents no public health threat as long as people follow the government's advice.
'Japan decides on the area (of evacuation around the plant) based on experts' advice and proposals,' Mr Kan said. 'In Japan, we ask people to follow the rules because if they do, there will be no damage to their health.'
Japan has resisted a nudge from the UN nuclear watchdog this week to widen the 20-kilometre evacuation zone around the nuclear plant and clear people out of the village of Iitate, 40km northwest of the facility.
The government has also halted shipments of farm and dairy produce from four prefectures near the plant, while authorities in and around Tokyo last week urged parents not to use drinking water in baby formula after elevated iodine levels were found.
'The government has summoned the capabilities of all experts possible to stabilise the plant. But the situation has not yet reached the point where we see it as stabilised,' Mr Kan said. -- AFP
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Plant leaking radioactive water into Pacific Ocean
TOKYO - JAPAN'S tsunami-stricken nuclear power plant was leaking highly radioactive water into the sea Saturday, nuclear safety officials said.
The plant has been spewing radioactivity since March 11, when a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami knocked out power, disabling cooling systems and allowing radiation to seep out of the overheating reactors.
The water was seeping Saturday from a newly discovered crack in a maintenance pit on the edge of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear site into the Pacific Ocean, Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said.
Measurements show the air right above it contained 1,000 millisieverts of radioactivity. Exposure to 500 millisieverts over a short period of time can increase the long-term risk of cancer.
But experts say radiation is quickly diluted by the vast Pacific and that even large amounts have little effect.
It wasn't immediately clear whether workers who have been rushing to bring the reactors under control were exposed. People living within 12 miles (20 kilometres) of the Fukushima plant have been evacuated. -- AP
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There's no life
that couldn't be immortal
if only for a moment.
Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.
In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you've come
can't be undone.- Wislawa Szymborska
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Already your eye
glows half-broken,
already your dew’s
tear drops are welling,
already runs still over white seas
your love’s purple,
your last hesitant blessedness.
- Walter Kaufman
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suddenly you turned so serious
when the corpse was carried past -
it wasn’t death, or dying,
but permanent departure that breaks
thy fragile heart;
deeper into the soul
when the corpse was carried past
from yesterday to the after world
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And eternal sleep took her hence.
Why do you weep at her grave
And raise your hands to the cloud of death -
Gone like leaves, leaving white words
on this waste land.
Only a few days, we walked here -
But today,
The roaring waves took you away:
Give me your hand, my pale love,
And until you have repossessed
By dying and rebirth,
This moment
You shall sleep gently in my arm
Again and again
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Two tsunami victims found at Japan nuclear plant
TOKYO - THE bodies of two workers killed when a tsunami hit Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant more than three weeks ago have been found and recovered, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) said on Sunday.
A Tepco official cited physicians as saying Mr Kazuhiko Kokubo, 24, and Mr Yoshiki Terashima, 21 had died of bleeding from multiple injuries.
The utility said their remains had been found last Wednesday in the reactor four turbine building of the Fukushima plant, where the tsunami knocked out cooling systems and sparked an emergency that has released high radiation.
Their bodies required decontamination from radioactive materials, and they were only formally declared as deceased on Saturday, it said.
Tepco said in a statement: 'We extremely regret losing the two young employees who tried to secure the safety of the plant while it was being hit by the quake and tsunami.'
The crippled plant is continuing to release radiation into the air, ground and sea in Japan's worst ever nuclear crisis. -- AFP
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Tsunami survivor Chieko Matsukawa holds up her daughter's graduation certificate, which she found in the debris in Higashimatsushima. (Yasuyoshi Chiba, AFP/Getty Images / April 3, 2011)
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Rain, torrents hurt the wounds
Earth, moves through mindless motions
Buddha, blesses the bleeding pain
Enlightens the dispossessed hearts of rain
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you said there were no souls
but my ethereal imaginations.
to relive this love, this hope
in mortal times:
this sadness cannot be destroyed
or, these words were never written
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The hour of the waning of love has beset us,
And weary and worn are our sad souls now;
Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us,
With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.- William Butler Yeats
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Under the boughs of cherry blossoms
My sun relived over you at noon:
be welcome that you come
as you were gone -
once that sudden wind,
once that chilly spirit of afternoons,
once the love birds sing each to each;
Stay strong, faint heart!
Joy is still playing over our sad abyss
Towards the evening when you leave
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Before death, life is a seeker.
After death, the same life becomes a dreamer.
- Sri Chinmoy
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far away a candle burning -
darkness no longer scares you
And shadows forever lose their ancient power;
death has charmed you come
in the love of night, which created you
where you awake to my yearning flame
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Radioactive water leak into sea stops at Fukushima: Jiji
TOKYO - RADIOACTIVE water stopped leaking into the Pacific Ocean from Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant on Wednesday, Jiji Press reported, citing the operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco).
Tepco had on Tuesday injected sodium silicate, a chemical agent known as 'water glass', to solidify soil near a cracked pit, from where large volumes of highly radioactive water had been seeping through and running into the sea.
Run-off from the plant has measured more than 1,000 millisieverts and is believed to be the source of radioactive iodine-131 readings in ocean waters more than 4,000 times the legal limit.
The pit, which has a 20cm crack in its wall, is linked to the plant's reactor No. 2, one of those which had its cooling systems put out of action by the quake and tsunami of March 11, triggering the nuclear crisis.
Several unsuccessful attempts had been made to try to plug pipes that run to the pit, using a polymer and even newspapers and sawdust, and an effort to seal the crack with cement had also failed to stop the leak. -- AFP
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Today
Reality became a dream
A whisper of hope
Reverses this summer into winter palace
Sounds took heed of your music
Rising from the submerging piano
Shadow has no hold on me
Death has no reprieve
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Confirmed dead in Japan quake rises to 12,600
TOKYO - THE number of people confirmed dead in the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan's north-east rose to 12,608 on Thursday, with a further 15,073 listed as missing, police said.
The updated toll revised the number of dead and missing people to 27,681, after it briefly topped 28,000 last week, the National Police Agency said.
The quake has become Japan's deadliest natural disaster since the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which killed more than 142,000 people.
Nearly 160,000 people were still sheltered in emergency facilities nearly four weeks after the double disaster. -- AFP