The world has eyes on Japan for past few days. An undersea quake of 8.9 magnitude and the subsequent tsunami have put Japan in the “worst crisis since WWII”. Mother Nature monsterously wiped away (part of) a Japanese town. I am eyeing on how Japanese leaders are managing their own country’s crisis and how panic the world is. CNN (continuous negative news) kept repeating their reels. Fox
is not too far from its root.
What disturbs me is, these media companies’ having brought one geologist/meterologist to another onto the tube to explain “what caused the tsunami”, and also the “scientists” out of nowhere to talk about the possibility of nuclear meltdown if the reactors are not in control… It’s all hypotheses. Yes, everybody knows Japan is prone to quakes/tsunami, then I am confident Japan must be prepared for it to certain extent, if not the worst. While people in Europe are protesting the nuclear power plants, why can’t they protest against North Korea for it secret nuclear weapons. Let’s not forget dealing with North Korea. Nuclear energy has served Japan’s economy well but costs highly when Mother Nature still rules the world. Nuclear weapons cost even worse.
While some media news reported “explosion”, others referred to them as “blast”. There is quite a difference between the two. And there are “nitrogen blast”, “hydrogen blast”,… I got tired from the repetitions of the same news from one channel to another. So I resorted to online news at the House of the state. It was a relief to see Japan got all the expert help with the “cooling issues” from GE, US as reported by Reuters in reference to Hillary Clinton’s saying “We just had our Air Force assets in Japan transport some really important coolant to one of the nuclear plants. You know Japan is very reliant on nuclear power and they have very high engineering standards but one of their plants came under a lot of stress with the earthquake and didn’t have enough coolant.”
While Japanese leaders show their calmess and confidence, their people are so postive as in the videos and their saying “what will be will be” on WSJ news.
My Japanese coworker ‘s brother sent her a picture of 2 porcelain/clay cats (he bought them from his trip to Vietnam) with broken legs and said “that’s all the damage he had”. That’s such a “humor in the middle of crisis”.
I admire them for their resilience during the time of crisis. That is outstanding.
Let’s hope the people in charge will get their work done with the best of their efforts. I am in peace of mind thanks to the insights and reasonings at Dr. Josef Oehmen’s blog , (now moved to MIT Dept. of Nuclear Science and Engineering) – it is a good resource to follow, but a bit worried more for their people’s current living and health conditions.
I am sure Japan will overcome as they did after WWII, knowing the road to recovery is always a challenge.
Perspectives and Perspirations 