The potential Nankai megathrust earthquake would cause 220 trillion yen damage and 5 million evacuees
Posted by Mochizuki on March 20th, 2013 · No Comments
On 3/18/2013, the council for the potential Nankai megathrust earthquake announced in case of M9.1 class of the earthquake offshore South West offshore Japan, the economical damage would be 220.3 trillion yen and 323,000 people would die, 2,382,000 buildings would be destroyed. This is 42% of the whole GDP, 10 times worse than 311.
It is not explained if this assumption includes the damage of the potential nuclear accident in Hamaoka (188.7km from Tokyo) etc..
It is not explained if this assumption includes the damage of the potential nuclear accident in Hamaoka (188.7km from Tokyo) etc..
The Nankai megathrust earthquake… (from Wikipedia)
“The Nankai megathrust earthquakes are great earthquakes that occur along the fault that forms the plate interface between the subducting Philippine Sea Plate and the overriding Amurian Plate (part of the Eurasian Plate), which dips beneath southwestern Honshu, Japan. All of these great earthquakes have given rise to damaging tsunami.”
The council stated even if they take fire prevention measures and improve earthquake-resistant, the economical damage would be still 118 trillion yen.
They assume it may happen only less than once a thousand years but it could be tomorrow.
They assume it may happen only less than once a thousand years but it could be tomorrow.
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/study-warns-a-nankai-trench-earthquake-would-displace-10-million-people-in-japan/
March 20, 2013 – JAPAN – A Japanese government panel is estimating that a 9.0 magnitude earthquake in the Nankai Trough region will do damage worth $2.2 billion, a figure that is much higher than the $177 million from the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. Scientists are predicting that the earthquake is due “in the not-too-distant future”, based on historical rough calculations. These figures do not include the possible nuclear fallout from an earthquake of that magnitude. The panel also predicts the number of evacuees to reach 9.5 million a week after it hits and that 40 out of the country’s 47 prefectures will suffer damage to their infrastructure. 27.1 million will suffer power outages, while 34.4 million will be without water. In an earlier report released in August, the panel said around 323,000 could die from an earthquake with its epicenter in the Nankai Trough, also a big number compared to the 19,000 who died or were reported missing in the 2011 disasters. But if all houses and key buildings are already quake-resistant by the time the earthquake will occur, the damage can be cut to almost half at $836 million. That is why the government’s priority would be to come up with basic policy measures by the end of the month against future earthquakes. The Nankai trough runs from the gulf of Suruga, Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan, to the sea of Hyuga, off Miyazaki Prefecture in the southwestern Japan region of Kyushu. Historically, this area experiences 8.0 magnitude earthquakes once every 100 to 150 years, with the last one occurring last 1946, where around 1,330 people perished. –JDP
Is Japan flirting with disaster in new energy source? Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation, a Japanese state-owned prospecting company says it has successfully extracted methane gas from an undersea methane hydrate deposit in the Nankai trench south of Japan’s main island of Honshu. This marks the first successful extraction of methane from such deep sea deposits. The team expects their pilot rig could extract up to 10,000 cubic meters of methane gas per day. Deep sea methane hydrates could supply Japan’s energy needs for 100 years. For a resource-poor country still recovering from the aftermath of the March 2011 tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster, this sounds almost too good to be true. But methane hydrate mining carries unique risks which could make this one of the most dangerous sources of energy. Methane hydrates are also called methane clathrates. They consist of molecules of methane (CH4) trapped in a crystalline cage of water (H2O) molecules. The substance somewhat resembles water ice but it forms only under the extremely high pressures and cold temperatures of the deep ocean floor and, unlike water ice, methane hydrate ice is flammable and pr
one to explosive sublimation. Extracting methane (the primary component in natural gas) from methane hydrates is difficult because such deposits only occur in very deep water. The Japanese drilling ship Chikyu, also called Godzilla-maru for its enormous size and 100 meter tall drilling derrek, performed its methane extraction about 50 miles offshore from Japan’s Atsumi peninsula 300 meters (1000 feet) beneath the Pacific’s surface. Mining methane hydrates is risky because these are unstable solids. It is possible that BP’s 2010 deepwater horizon blow out which dumped millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico was triggered by the explosive sublimation of a methane hydrate deposit. It is also possible that mining methane hydrates near the edge of continental slopes may cause landslides and trigger tsunamis. A third risk of methane hydrates is their global warming potential. Any methane escaping from such deposits is 21 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Burning the methane trapped in undersea deposits would release twice as much carbon dioxide as all of the world’s coal, oil, oil-shale and gas deposits. Given Japan’s energy shortage it is understandable that its government might want to explore risky options such as undersea methane hydrate deposits, but we need to carefully weigh the risks against the benefits. –Green Prophet
The blackout was caused by a mouse in the panel board, the board has been left on the truck since 3/18/2011
Posted by Mochizuki on March 20th, 2013 · 2 Comments
According to Tepco, the power blackout of Fukushima plant was caused by a mousethat came in the terminals to have caused a short circuit.
The panel board was provisionally installed on the bed of a truck on 3/18/2011. Knowing the risk, Tepco has been leaving it there.
The panel board was for ractor3 and 4. There are 6 more provisional panel boards for these reactors.
The terminal and the wall were burnt and the mouse was dead underneath.
recent posts at Fukushima diary - slow death of a nation.....
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444657804578052331690080520.html
China Row Hangs Over Japanese GDP
MORE IN JAPAN »
By CHESTER DAWSON in Tokyo and JAMES T. AREDDY in Shanghai
![[image]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/WO-AL399_ISLESP_G_20121012174907.jpg)
Zuma Press
China Marine Surveillance ships patrol near the islands at the center of a Sino-Japanese spat on Wednesday.
The recent flare-up in a long-standing territorial dispute between China and Japan is emerging as a potential new threat to Japan's economy, broader regional growth and multinationals' global supply chains.
In the latest warning sign, the Japanese government cut its growth assessment for the third straight month on Friday and cited—for the first time—China as a reason for "uncertainty about the external economic prospects" affecting export growth.
It is unclear how long the standoff will last, which makes it difficult to assess the long-term impact. But experts warn the spreading paralysis in bilateral trade could cast a pall over everything from Japan's economic growth to unemployment in China to supplies of auto and electronic parts around the world. "It's starting to create serious rifts on the economic front," said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at IHS Global Insight. "China and Japan are at the heart of regional trade."
From the Archives
The territorial dispute between Japan and China sent Asian markets lower Wednesday. The WSJ's Ken Brown tells us why shares of Japanese and Chinese companies suffered losses.
It also could undermine other trade-dependent Asian nations, such as South Korea, and eventually affect world-wide supplies of innumerable products made in China—many with Japanese subcomponents or with Japanese factory machine tools. That, in turn, may put a kink in supply chains and spur global inflation.
"If supply of intra-Asia trade between these two really gets affected, it'll have a big effect on multinationals world-wide, and it can lead to shortages of finished goods and it can lead to rising prices, all the way over to the other side of the globe," said Rob Subbaraman, Nomura's chief Asia economist. "A lot of the processing and assembly is getting done in China, and Japan is a huge supplier of the inputs for that."
The conflict escalated last month when the Japanese government nationalized previously privately-held East China Sea islets also claimed by Chinaand Taiwan. That sparked widespread and sometimes violent anti-Japanese street protests in China and an economic Cold War of sorts as Chinese consumers have shunned Japanese brands and customs inspections in Shanghai have delayed inbound and outbound shipments marked "Japan."
The biggest impact so far has been on sales of Japanese cars in China, which plummeted in September to half the levels of a year ago, and Japan-based air carriers and hotels suffering from thousands of cancellations by Chinese tourists during this year's longest holiday earlier this month.
There is growing concern that the chill could spread across Asia. "Investments and international trade activities in the East Asian region may be affected by the heightened state of geopolitical uncertainties," Standard & Poor's said in a report dated Oct. 3.
South Korea, for example, isn't "sitting there and feeling happy" about Japan's predicament in China, said Bark Tae-ho, the country's trade minister—even though Korean car makers have benefited from Japanese car makers' woes and Seoul has its own territorial dispute with Tokyo over another set of islands. Noting that the three countries have crucial trade ties, he said in an interview Wednesday: "It will hurt trilateral economic cooperation because, invisibly, we are all interconnected."
Beijing upped the ante earlier this week when it declined to send top officials to the annual International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings held in Tokyo. When asked about the Sino-Japanese tensions, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde voiced hope relations would warm.
"We hope that differences, however long-standing, can be resolved harmoniously and expeditiously," Ms. Lagarde told reporters Thursday. "Economic players and partners in this region are very critical for the global economy."
Japan's Foreign Ministry said Friday a high-level Chinese ministry official visited with his Japanese counterpart in Tokyo Thursday to discuss the island dispute, and that talks on the vice ministerial level are being planned.
Upcoming leadership changes in China and a looming possibility of a shake-up in Japan's government complicate the diplomatic outlook.
Officials in Tokyo have played down the standoff and been keen to delink the diplomatic tussle over the islands from the broader economic relationship. "We want to limit the negative economic impact while seeking to resolve this problem," Japanese Economy Minister Seiji Maehara said in an interview Thursday. "It's important to nurture Sino-Japanese ties by taking a long-term view," he said, while reiterating support for the move to nationalize the islands.
Yet Beijing is sending a strong signal that territorial sovereignty remains a higher priority than even economic and diplomatic relationships, partly because the Communist Party leadership is united around such issues and they tend to galvanize the public. "They are willing to sacrifice a lot just to make a point," says Xiao Geng, research director at Fung Global Institute, a Hong Kong think tank.
Mr. Xiao said that while Beijing has an "almost unlimited" capacity to maintain the tough posture, he expects tension to ease quickly after next month's party congress to start a once-a-decade leadership change as China's focus turns to what he expects will be "very dramatic reform measures" that simply drown out anti-Japanese sentiment.
At this point, economists say the damage to Japan Inc. and the Japanese economy is still marginal, but say that Japan stands to lose more from the spat than China. A 30% drop in Japanese exports to China over the course of a one-year period could slice off 0.6% of Japan's nominal GDP, according to S&P estimates, which currently forecast growth of only 2.0% this year and 1.6% in 2013.
The immediate impact on China is more muted as only 8% of total Chinese exports go to Japan each year, driven by food and textiles—compared with the 20% of Japan's total exports bound for China, largely capital goods. But if ties continue to deteriorate, the Chinese economy wouldn't be immune and indeed Chinese partners of Japanese car makers have already felt some pain as sales have plunged.
Japanese firms may reassess their exposure to China and consider cutting back, which would show up in the statistical form of lower foreign direct investment.
"If the Japanese cut or withdraw existing FDI then there are more implications. The immediate impact is employment," said Shuang Ding, senior China economist at Citi Research in Hong Kong.
Mr. Ding said the number of Chinese employed by Japanese firms could be as high as 5 million people, but other estimates are considerably lower. A March 2011 report by Capital Economics cited data from Japan's Trade Ministry putting the number at 1.5 million—a significant source of jobs in a country where employment is closely linked to social stability.
Some 4,600 Japanese firms currently operate in China, an eightfold increase from the early 1990s, For now, there are few indications of a widespread pullout by the Japanese.
Major Japanese retailer Aeon Co. 6599.KU +3.47% plans to resume operations by late November at a store in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao that was heavily damaged by anti-Japan protesters last month, causing an estimated ¥700 million ($8.9 million) in damage. "We would like to go ahead with our new store opening in China without any changes," said President Motoya Okada Friday.
Even small and medium-size Japanese businesses, which have been slower to expand in China, are concerned about the trade tensions but are still committed to following the footsteps of Japanese blue-chips as they seek out faster growth.
"Japanese companies can't ignore the Chinese market and I think it's the same way China thinks about Japan. It's impossible to cut the cord that binds us," said Hiroshi Takada, a former executive at Toyota Motors Corp. 7203.TO +1.86% who now heads Japan's Trade Ministry-financed Organization for Small and Medium Enterprises.
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