Japan’s Nuclear Exclusion Zone Shows Few Signs of Life:

What’s most striking about Japan’s nuclear exclusion zone, is there are no people, few cars, no sign of life, aside from the occasional livestock wandering empty roads. While workers of the Fukushima plant are bused in daily, the government has maintained a 12-mile no-go zone around the area for everyone else.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/fukushimas-nuclear-exclusion-zone-shows-signs-life/story?id=15521091#.TzG8NV3gLoh

The government has said it will take at least 30 years to decommission the crippled reactors. This nuclear wasteland may not be livable for decades.

My name is Liliana Galvis and currently I work as a research assistant at my home university. I’m eager to learn about economic model (regional or individual) in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Do you have any information on the matter?

Report: Japan, utility at fault for response to nuclear disaster

Ultimately, the series of failures led to the worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/12/japans-march-11-earthquake-and-tsunami-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-power-plant-meltdown.html

Workers failed to immediately seek alternative sources of water to cool the overheating reactors because they assumed the system was working, even though numerous warning signs told them otherwise. “This accident has taught us an important lesson on how we must be ready for a disaster,” concluded the panel, headed by University of Tokyo professor emeritus Yotaro Hatamura.

Here’s an update on what’s going on at Fukushima, just 125 miles away from Tokyo.

Fukushima disaster’s marine fallout: Nuclear contamination poses long-term threat to ocean ecosystem and to Japan’s fishing industry.

A new report shows the March 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan is now also responsible for the world’s worst nuclear sea contamination. During the peak of Ukraine’s Chernobyl cataclysm of 1986, the Black Sea was registering 1,000 becquerels per cubic metre of water; this appears miniscule in comparison to nuclear levels at Fukushima’s peak recorded at 100,000 becquerels.

Akio Morita: if you’ve never heard of him, you’ve surely heard of his company, Sony. Sony’s first product was a rice cooker that didn’t cook rice so much as burn it, selling less than 100 units. This first setback didn’t stop Morita and his partners as they pushed forward to create a multi-billion dollar company.

http://www.sony.com/SCA/press/morita_bio.shtml

Marine archeologists say that the ancient wreckage of a ship discovered in the seabed off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan, belongs to the ancient “lost fleet” of ships deployed by China’s 13th century Mongol ruler Kublai Khan.

Naomi Campbell to stage Fashion Relief for Japan at Cannes Film Festival: Her May 16th show will be followed by an auction, which includes artworks by Tracey Emin and Dennis Hopper. It’s being staged in collaboration with Vogue Italia and all funds raised will go to the Japanese Red Cross. Rock on Naomi!

Japanese language traced to Korean Peninsula - study: Japan’s many dialects originate in a migration of farmers from the Korean Peninsula some 2,200 years ago, a groundbreaking study borrowing the tools of evolutionary genetics reported Wednesday.

I look at this great Japanese print by Hokusai differently now…

Japan Turns to Desperate Measures to Cool Nuclear Reactors