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Japan suffers from power shortages
  • New car sales in Japan slumped to a record low in June due to parts shortages caused by the March 11th disaster.
    The Japan Automobile Dealers Association says sales of new cars for June, excluding mini-vehicles, totaled 225,000 units -- the lowest figure since record keeping began in 1968.
    The plunge of more than 23 percent year-on-year was 14 points lower than in May.


    Source - http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/01_32.html




    All manufacturers and other firms must cut power consumption by 15%. :-)

    Tokyo's subway system has begun temporarily stopping air-conditioning at stations because limits have been placed on heavy electricity users from Friday.
    The system run by the Tokyo government began suspending the use of air-conditioners for one and half to two hours from noon to 3 PM at nearly half of its 106 stations.


    The Japanese auto industry has begun weekend operations on Saturday in an effort to avoid electricity shortages this summer.
    Thirteen automakers and their parts suppliers are shifting factory operations to weekends because power demands on Saturday and Sunday are lower than weekdays. To compensate, the factories will shut down on Thursday and Friday.


    Looks like improvement, isn't it?
  • 8 Replies sorted by
  • Don't forget about the earthquake. Most of the nuke stations affected went off line and will never go back online because, while they didn't leak big like Fukushima, they were just damaged enough to make restart impossible.
  • nuclear plants provide 40% of total energy in japan. they have dozens of old plant sites like fuk-u-shima site.
  • Plants based on a design older than Chernobyl and in earthquake country.
  • and... it's a small island with over 100 millions people...

    thanks to japan. the prices of oil and natural gas have gone up. opec and usa are trying to sell more oils... but the uptrend will continue. i tell ya. just small shortage can cause the price gone up crazy.
  • You forget that this "design older than Chernobyl" withstood a magnitude 8 earthquake AND a fucking tsunami! And it still didn't fucking blow up. How can you even think to compare the two?
  • I was being deliberately provocative with that statement. The reason Chernobyl blew up was because it was a new design that wasn't understood properly.

    While the Fukushima reacter didn't blow up on the Chernobyl scale, it did partially melt down, it's a loss and they had to dump boric acid(the main ingredient in flea powder) on it to get it to not go full China Syndrome. It's a 40 year old design not built to withstand a tsunami and 8 magnitude quake and it broke down. Not a lethal break down....but still catastrophic.
  • I heard Fukushima is still leaking lots of radiation. Full blown meltdown isn't out of the woods yet, right?
  • Well...wikipedia says they did go full meltdown, though not "melt through". They melted down, but didn't get hot enough to burn through the containment vessels....probably. The reactors are cold now, but the possibility of slow leaks is real. Even though the radioactive material is "cold", it's still radioactive.

    http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/06/06/japan.nuclear.meltdown/index.html?iref=NS1