Archive - Mar 13, 2011 - Story

For all who want to be up to speed with all the latest developments out of Japan, below we provide our readers with a live feed from the NHK, or the Japan Broadcasting Corporation.

Breaking news from Kyodo: the cooling system at Tokai, a third nuclear power plant now said to have cooling failures, has stopped according to the fire department. Tokai was Japan's first nuclear power plant. The plant has two reactors: a 1965 built Magnox-type 166MW, and a 1978 built Boiling Water Reactor generating 1100MW. As Wikileaks reports: "This Boiling Water Reactor  was the first nuclear reactor built in Japan to produce over 1000 MW of electricity. By some formalities in the paperwork, the unit is technically separate from the rest of the nuclear facilities at Tokai-mura, but it is managed with the rest of them and even shares the same front gate. The power produced at the unit is sold by both the Tokyo Electric Company and the Tohoku Electric Company." SkyNews adds that the cooling has failed at the bigger, BWR reactor.

As Gulf stock markets celebrate the lack of Days of Rage in Saudi Arabia on Friday, Bahrain is again reminding that not every country can buy the undying love of its citizens.  Per the AP, "thousands of anti-government demonstrators cut off Bahrain's financial center and drove back police trying to push them from the capital's central square - shaking the tiny island kingdom Sunday with the most disruptive protests since calls more freedom erupted a month ago." As a reminder, in February, Bahrain was the location of some of the most graphic atrocities against protesters. Since then, a swift surge in pressure from Saudi to moderate tensions resulted in an uneasy "ceasefire" although that now appears to have ended. "Demonstrators also clashed with security forces and government
supporters on the campus of the main university in the Gulf country, the
home of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet." And as we pointed out before, should the Bahrain situation reach melting point, religious tensions across the area are sure to flare up: "The clashes fueled fears that Bahrain's political crisis could be stumbling toward open sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, who
account for 70 percent of the nation's 525,000 people."Add to this resumption of violence the fact that there was another round of protests in Saudi Arabia in front of the Interior Ministry on Sunday, and the "good" news from Friday are now long forgotten.

Something very serious is happening with Japan's underlying geology: while the north has been paralyzed by the aftermath of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and resulting Tsunami, and is scrambling to prevent a nuclear disaster, the south is issuing flashing red light signals of its own: the Shinmoedake volcano, which had resumed eruptions after last known was reported in 2009. As Wikipedia notes: " As of February 2011, a lava dome was growing in the volcano's crater." It is unclear if the volcano's activity, which is notable for having been used as a location in the 1967 James Bond film, You Only Live Twice, as the volcano in which the villains' secret rocket base is located, is related to the geological tremors beneath Japan but it is very likely. The question is just how many faultlines will have shifted after all is said and done, and just what may have precipitated all of this.