全国の水道の放射能濃度

In the battle to contain radiation spewing from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station, Japanese authorities have deployed helicopters, riot-police water cannon and a 58-metre steel hose-arm normally used to spray concrete into high-rise construction sites.

Jakarta Post | Sunday 04/10/2011

ASEAN has offered Japan assistance in strategic policies to help the country recover from an earthquake and tsunami in March that killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands.

“We meet today [Saturday] to enhance cooperation and respond quickly at a time when one of us faces a grave disaster,” Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the Indonesia-initiated ASEAN-Japan meeting at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta on Saturday.

“Indonesia believes that a nation such as Japan, which has a strong work ethic, advanced science and technology and a good system in mitigating disasters, will be able to recover and rehabilitate itself quickly.”

He said Southeast Asia and Japan, which were prone to natural disasters, needed to cooperate with and strengthen solidarity with each other.

After the two-hour meeting, Indonesian foreign minister and current chair of ASEAN, Marty Natalegawa, said ASEAN foreign ministers and their representatives expressed their sympathy, solidarity and support to the government and people of Japan in their recovery and reconstruction efforts.

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
"There is a dire need for a real time radiation monitoring network to be set up in areas affected by the damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power plant," Atsuto Suzuki, head of the high-energy accelerator research organisation at Tsukuba University, explained. "This is where our expertise can begin to play a role."

FUKUSHIMA, Japan, Apr 7, 2011 (IPS) - My decision to visit Fukushima - the area worst hit by the massive quake, tsunami and nuclear power accident on Mar. 11 - was taken one afternoon last week after a long meeting with scientists.
The invitation to accompany the scientists on a private fact-finding mission to Fukushima was irresistible. The scientists and engineers who gathered that day, had, for decades, harboured misgivings over reactor safety design and policies and were active in the ongoing debate over the future of nuclear energy in Japan.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 5, 2011) — The huge tsunami triggered by the 9.0 Tohoku Earthquake destroyed coastal towns near Sendai in Japan, washing such things as houses and cars into the ocean. Projections of where this debris might head have been made by Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Maximenko has developed a model based on the behavior of drifting buoys deployed over years in the ocean for scientific purposes.

The debris first spreads out eastward from the Japan Coast in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. In a year, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument will see pieces washing up on its shores; in two years, the remaining Hawaiian islands will see some effects; in three years, the plume will reach the US West Coast, dumping debris on Californian beaches and the beaches of British Columbia, Alaska, and Baja California. The debris will then drift into the famous North Pacific Garbage Patch, where it will wander around and break into smaller and smaller pieces. In five years, Hawaii shores can expect to see another barrage of debris that is stronger and longer-lasting than the first one. Much of the debris leaving the North Pacific Garbage Patch ends up on Hawaii's reefs and beaches.

The Yomiuri Shimbun

A supplementary budget the government and the Democratic Party of Japan are crafting for postquake reconstruction likely will total more than 3 trillion yen, sources said Wednesday.

The extra budget, the first for this fiscal year, would be used mainly for disposing of rubble and constructing temporary housing for survivors of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

The government and the ruling party have decided not to issue government bonds to finance the budget, the sources said.

Instead, they are considering using 2.5 trillion yen allocated to shoulder 50 percent of basic pension benefits and could revise policies from the DPJ's manifesto for the 2009 House of Representatives election, such as making expressways toll-free, according to the sources.

The government intends to enact the supplemental budget late this month or early next month after holding talks with opposition parties.

But some members in both the ruling and opposition camps have criticized the funding plans.

Initially, the government was considering an extra budget of more than 1 trillion yen, but later revised the amount upward in the face of the enormous damage to areas affected by the disaster.