Liverpool.

There's been an explosion in the nuclear powerplant and they've released some radioactive material and there's a lot of radioactive steam coming from the area. People are being told to stay indoors, turn off their air-conditioning and to not drink tap water. A guy on the telly said that the effect of this on the japanese may be as bad as the Chernobyl accident. There are also two more reactor cores quite close to the one which has leaked and who knows how the explosion has affected the other two?

Scary stuff and how are they supposed to go about fixing it with the radiation levels as high as they are in the plant (around 1000 times the normal amount). Luckily we learned a lot from Chernobyl and hopefully lives won't be lost. I can't imagine another zone of alienation in Japan though.

I hope it doesn't get any worse there. I've heard more than 45,000 residents within a 10-kilometre radius of the plant have been evacuated and they are still feeling aftershocks. And now it's just wait and see what happens now. Despite this being a horrible event, if anyone can handle this sort of crisis its the Japanese. They are a pretty efficient society, so I believe.

I don't know, but since their security systems have failed, it's hard to imagine any other way than sending in some poor bastards to clean it up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidator_(Chernobyl)

I think it's a sign of plate tectonics.

my sympathies are with the Japanese

pretty nail-biting watching the plant as it exploded just a coupla hours ago on CNN

Debunking the "Supermoon" Theory of Japan's Earthquake and Tsunami | Fast Company

Undoubtedly the tug of the moon does have an effect on the mantle of the earth and the effect is probably significant, but it seems a little silly to blame the moon when we already know that this is basically the most earthquake prone area in the world because of plate tectonics and the way the continental plates interact there.

Their farm crops have basically been obliterated because of the tsunami. For a country where agriculture is a huge industry, that's horrible. Japan's economy has been deep in the dumps for nearly 20 years because of huge loans from other countries (mostly the US), and it doesn't look like it will be improving anytime soon.

I heard that this earthquake was about 1000 times stronger than the one in Christchurch. And out of all earthquake prone nations in the world, Japan was the most prepared.

I can't even begin to imagine what the devastation would be like if the epicentre of the quake had been closer to Tokyo, a city with about 35 million people (that's including all the surrounding suburbs).

But what if next year the world goes into auto-reverse all of a sudden it's 2011 all over again, in reverse?

Oh you have thought this true haven't you? :D