SilverHammer comments

This is a generous offer but the US should politely decline to accept it. The debris is a result of a natural disaster and it is not Japan's fault that it is floating towards the US. There are a lot of people still suffering from the affects of the tsunami and the money should be going to help those people rebuild.

Gary Maxwell Lynnwood, Washington U.S.A.

Rolling blackouts is a poor approach to rationing. It is going to cost a lot of money for Japan to rebuild after this disaster. Shutting down businesses for several hours a the day will be a big hit to the economy.

It would seem to me like it would be better to turn off non-essential things like street lights (I have heard that the just the vending machines consume as much power as a small city). Tell businesses to shut off as many lights and other systems as possible. Set the heating systems to a very low setting. Tell home owners to shut off everything during business hours. I would think that the power consumption could be reduced enough to be able to keep electricity flowing to the commercial users. This is a national emergency for Japan and I expect that they would get a very high level of compliance if they just asked people to dramatically cut consumption for a few months.