Acjama comments

Japan and the US are just 2 countries on this planet.

Indeed. In my country you'd better be able to co-operate and behave professionally even with the "nails" in the group if you want to keep your job.

But Fukushima provided the lesson for the rest of the world and nuclear safety is stronger than a year ago, he said in a statement Friday from Vienna.

Not from Fukushima? Not even from Japan?!? Hmm...

Amano is building smoke and mirrors. There is no foreign nuclear power plant operator that would recognize themselves from how Tepco and NISA caused and handled the situation. There is no lesson to be learned, other than of type "Told you so". When looking for the reasons to the meltdown, there is no "we".

Amano took the reputation of IAEA down to his level.

Banned for 52 MORE roads, right? Because I've seen huge signs with picture of a whale/catfish/whatever over the local main roads (Oume, Hino...) saying that they will be off-limits to civilian traffic in the event of a major earthquake.

Here's link for the one in Oume: http://g.co/maps/cfxef

I went back to my country in very north Europe for the x-mas holidays, and we had a 9-day blackout due to a storm (dad's cottage is very remote). After returning to Tokyo, all Japanese asked "How did you manage, it must have been so cold?!?". I simply answered truthfully: "Yeah, not really. In my country we rarely heat with electricity. Even water pressure is based on gravity. It was nice reading books in candlelight during holidays".

What is the value of economic growth if something very probable as a blackout can bring everything to it's very knees? Growth should not be built on single source of energy and blind faith that nothing ever goes wrong.

The only way Tepco is going black is by overcharging people while putting everybody in constant danger for decades without any competition or control. Tepco equals North Korea!

Just take and delist the damn thing, the infrastructure isn't going to disappear is smoke! Break it apart, sell it to responsible people who are willing to create actual competition, get true freedom and capitalism finally to Japan also! This dictatorial communism of Tepco is not going to help anybody. Tepco's decades long streak of industrial and nuclear accidents will continue if allowed.

Santa is SO from Finland, and kids would bug him throughout the year were it not for the fact that his village of Korvatunturi can be found only by good kids, so you wouldn't know about it and santa will fill your socks with sand and rice and sticks so THERE!

(^-^)/ Happy christmas! Mine is sure to be, anyway!

Oh well... It's not just Japanese who blame the car for a car accident instead of the driver.

Corruption is not subject to points of view.

It is interesting to see time and time again, how resignation (with its golden handshakes, undoubtedly) is considered adequate a punishment for almost any imaginable crime in Japan.

Pawatan: actually it is incomprehesible as to why more science is needed. Do you believe that this nuclear accident is completely unique just because it happened in Japan, like J-gov? Or that the established science of measuring, estimation and modelling is unreliable alchemy just because you're not (again just like J-gov) familiar with it?

Thinking that things are automatically different just because it happens in Japan and to Japanese, is racial discrimination. And that was a Japanese who told me that. The world has a huge database on nuclear disasters, and the J-gov is failing to learn from it.

Thank you so much, NATO! We so really needed another "Taleban regime". Especially now the little girls who get acid thrown on their faces for going to school really sing you beautiful songs from now. But hey, after ten years, we can all discuss if this vicious tyrant was better or worse than the previous vicious tyrant. It's not like we would know already from what happened in Shah's Iran, Iraq in the '80's, Mujahadin of Afghanistan...

A victim, right... So, it was "souteigai" that a strange man giving a bag for transport would be suspicious? Is there a school for lousy excuses in Japan? The gross underestimation of human intelligence is so rampart these days.

It's near meaningless to point geiger counters at food or water. You need a lab and large amounts of concentrated testing material for reliable results. You also might want to avoid using sensitive equipment carelessly to avoid false readings that might be result of noise, voltage spikes, any number of reasons other than actual radiation. Sensitivity won't quarantee you reliable results, you need to understand how to accumulate reliable data sets.

Dude seemed to rely on "education of his own" instead of actual education with regards to radiation. Hmm, why does that sound so familiar...?

My wife insists that I "skim", so I do it openly. How else am I supposed to surprise her with something nice? Anyway, when I want to go to drink, I go with her, we have great time every time, and we pay out of household money. We have private accounts plus joint account. The household shopping list is cloud synchronized via smart phones, so both do household shoppings when convenient. The way of mutual respect works perfectly. She's just very happy that I did not adopt everything Japanese when I came here.

Maybe Japan needs a redefinition of "marriage".

Foxie-san, "dirty bombs" are quite an old form of terrorism. As of yet unrealized, thank god, but old.

j4p4nFTW, but we do know, don't we? Tepco was warned in 2008 of this exact thing, and was under current orders to improve the situation when the tsunami hit. Orders that it saw fit to ignore.

The tsunami that hit Onagawa nuclear plant was 13.5 meters high, almost three times higher than Tepco's tsunami barriers were designed to hold, so the 120km means nothing in Tepco's case. The Onagawa nuclear plant didn't have it's last line of defence, backup generators, positioned on the shoreline, on lower ground than the tsunami barrier could protect, like Tepco had.

Tohoku electric power company knew, accepted and acted on the risks like a responsible party. Tepco did not care for such things.

Tsunami occurring in Tohoku area is far from new thing and even far from "souteigai". We have history and we have science, but it takes a responsible people to learn from them. The tsunami did not destroy all the nuclear plants that it hit, and I believe the Japanese people are entitled to answers when they ask "Why?".

I can see why so few are interested in what the Japanese representation has to offer at a meeting on nuclear safety and security.

But sure, I'll give him time. What's the average come to, 10 months?

J4p4nFTW, do you realize that the very same tsunami hit the Onagawa nuclear plant also, just 120km north of Fukushima Dai-ichi? Why wasn't it damaged into meltdown?

Because it didn't belong to criminally negligent Tepco. Tohoku Electric Company followed standards.