skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Typhoon Talas Kills 20 People In Japan
7:53pm UK, Sunday September 04, 2011
At least 20 people have been killed and many more are missing in Japan after typoon Talas struck the country's west coast.
Rescue workers search among houses destroyed by typhoon Talas
Towns were turned into lakes and mudslides wiped out houses and swept away cars.
Local media are reporting that as well as the dead, some 50 people are missing.
Thousands of people have been stranded by flooded rivers, landslides and collapsed bridges.
Evacuation orders were issued to nearly half a million people in the central and western region of Japan, hundreds of miles from the northeastern coast that was ravaged by a tsunami earlier this year.
Typhoon Talas is seen over Japan in this Nasa satellite image
The typhoon dumped record amounts of rain in some areas and was the country's worst storm since one in 2004.
The centre of the typhoon crossed the southern island of Shikoku and the central part of the main island of Honshu overnight Saturday.
Because of the storm's slow speed, weather forecasters warned that heavy rains and strong winds were likely to continue, prompting fears of further mudslides.
Quake-prone Japan looks at geothermal energy
by Staff Writers
Hachimantai, Japan (AFP) Aug 26, 2011
The forces that make Japan one of the world's most quake-prone and volcanic countries, and sparked a nuclear disaster, could become part of its long-term energy solution, experts say.
Steam and hot water billow and gush from deep below the ground at Japan's tens of thousands of famed hotsprings and could be harnessed to drive turbines that generate electricity in a clean, safe and stable way, they say.
Although Japanese high-tech companies are leaders in geothermal technology and export it, its use is miniscule in the island nation, which has for decades relied heavily on imported fossil fuels and atomic power.
Japan's parliament passed a law Friday to promote renewable energy such as wind, solar and geothermal by forcing power utilities to buy it at fixed prices and letting them pass extra costs onto consumers.
"Japan should no doubt make use of its volcano, magma and other geothermal energy," said Yoshiyasu Takefuji, professor of Tokyo's Keio University and a prominent researcher of thermal-electric power generation.
"The March 11 disaster caused a lot of sadness, but it has also changed people's thinking about energy."
Japan is located on the "Pacific Ring of Fire" at the juncture of four tectonic plates that slowly grind along, driven by the flow of super-hot magma below, creating stresses that are released in earthquakes.
The most powerful of these in Japan's recorded history, a magnitude-9.0 seabed quake, struck on March 11, triggering the huge tsunami that killed more than 20,00 people and set off the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The crisis has sparked a backlash against atomic power, which previously made up 30 percent of Japan's energy needs, and increased interest in alternative energies, which account for only eight percent, most of it hydro.
Artist Yoko Ono, John Lennon's widow, has called on her home country to tap its natural energy, following the example of Iceland which uses steam and hydroelectric power for over 80 percent of its energy needs.
In northern Japan, 60 kilometres (37 miles) from the tsunami-ravaged coast, lies Japan's first geothermal power plant, built in 1966 at the hot spring resort of Matsukawa in Hachimantai.
The 23,500-kilowatt plant, set amid mountains where the smell of sulphur hangs thick in the air, never stopped running after the quake, while in contrast, two-thirds of Japan's reactors remain offline for safety checks.
The head of the plant, Kazuhiro Takasu, said Japan must accept that switching to renewables will carry initial extra costs, but that a new 10-billion-yen ($130 million) geothermal plant would break even in "a few decades".
"People are now talking about renewable energy, but such excitement can easily ebb off after a while," Takasu warned.
For now, geothermal makes up less than one percent of the energy mix in Japan, a resource-poor economic powerhouse that imports its oil, coal and gas and has invested heavily in nuclear energy since the 1970s oil crisis.
The biggest hurdle to geothermal, most experts agree, is the high initial cost of the exploration and drilling of deep earth layers that contain hot water, and of then constructing the plants.
Another problem is that Japan's potentially best sites are already being tapped for tourism with popular "onsen" hot spring resorts or are located within national parks where construction is prohibited.
"We can't even dig 10 centimetres (four inches) inside national parks," said Shigeto Yamada, of Fuji Electric's geothermal team, adding that rules protecting nature sanctuaries would need to be relaxed for geothermal togrow.
Hideaki Matsui, senior researcher at the Japan Research Institute, said "geothermal energy is a decades-long project. We also have to think about what to do for now as energy supplies will decline in the short term".
Nonetheless, argue its proponents, geothermal energy has vast potential.
Japan is estimated to have some of the world's largest reserves of usable underground heat -- behind the United States, the Philippines and Indonesia -- but is ranked only sixth in terms of geothermal generation capacity.
Washington-based environmental think-tank the Earth Policy Institute in April estimated that Japan could produce 80,000 megawatts and meet more than half its electricity needs with conventional geothermal technology.
Ironically, Japanese giants such as Toshiba and Mitsubishi are already global leaders in geothermal technology, with a 70 percent market share. Last year Fuji Electric built the world's largest geothermal plant in New Zealand.
http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Quake-prone_Japan_looks_at_geothermal_energy_999.html
Untangling paradoxes in the debtcrisis
by Staff Writers
Paris (AFP) Aug 5, 2011
For the average observer, the unfolding world economic crisis offers some bewildering paradoxes: untangling them however, helps give a clearer picture of the true state of play.
The eurozone may be in crisis but the euro remains strong.
Ratings agencies, say the critics, are punishing some countries but sparing others whose economies are equally weak.
And never the mind that Japan has the biggest debt burden among industrialised nations as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product --investors are still backing the yen.
First the euro, which is still strong against the dollar even as Greece is on the brink of a debt default despite a second international bail-out.
Italy and Spain meanwhile are being forced to borrow at unprecedented rates on the markets, threatening to force the eurozone's third- and fourth-largest economies into a debt bailout.
The reason the euro remains strong is that the dollar has never been so unattractive to investors. US growth slowed perceptibly at the beginning of the year and analysts have voiced fears of a recession in the second half.
The US Federal Reserve's programme of injecting money into the economy, known as quantitative easing, has weakened the dollar since it began. Its recent end has stoked concerns of a recession.
That explains why the euro is strong against the dollar. In contrast however, it is weak against the yen and the Swiss franc, two currencies seen as safe havens.
Ratings agencies Moody's, Standard & Poors and Fitch have all been applying pressure to the most fragile of the eurozone economies, while sparing some equally indebted economies the same harsh assessments.
To look at the reports from S&P, Greece would appear to be the world's most unstable economy with a debt burden that comes to 152 percent of its GDP. Jamaica, with a hefty debt burden of 137 percent gets a far better rating.
But the ratings agencies are still smarting from the roasting they got for failing to sound the alarm before the US sub-prime crisis that triggered the last global recession.
This helps explain why this time they have taken a stricter line with the eurozone economies -- all the more so given that the prospect of Greece defaulting is no longer being spoken of in purely hypothetical terms.
The voluntary restructuring of part of Greece's debt by some private creditors planned under its second bailout is considered a selective default by the ratings agencies -- and that is why the ratings agencies have downgraded its rating.
For the critics however, the ratings agencies are part of the problem.
An agency's negative assessment is effectively a self-fulfilling prophecy, they argue: for by downgrading a country's rating, they make it harder for them to borrow their way out of trouble.
The final paradox is that despite Japan's serious economic problems, investors are still rushing to buy the yen, to the point that the currency has reached its highest levels since 1945.
The strength of the currency seems to be totally at odds with the economic reality in Japan.
Japan even took steps Thursday to weaken the yen in an effort to help safeguard the nation's post-quake recovery after the currency's recent surge.
But the currency has always enjoyed the status of a safe haven for investors, even more so when economies are struggling.
And even if Japan has the world's highest debt burden -- running at a staggering 252 percent of its GDP -- it is to a great extent financed by the savings of the Japanese.
But the strength of the yen has threatened Japan's economic recovery, still struggling to recover from the effects of the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters.
That perfect storm of calamities meant some of Japan major export industries, such as the automobile industry, lost a great deal of money: and a strong yen just adds to their troubles.
But most observers think the government's intervention to weaken the currency will have only a limited effect.
Then there is another problem: not so much a paradox as a circle that needs to be squared.
For at a time when growth is slowing on both sides of the Atlantic, the governments of the United States and the eurozone countries are pursuing austerity programmes that involve tough cuts in public spending.
Tightening the purse strings is not going to help launch the economic recovery -- but their debt burdens are threatening to overwhelm them and the ratings agencies are pressing them to cut their deficits.
So they are left with the difficult task of stimulating a recovery without increasing public spending.
The road to London.
Miss World Japan 2011 Mudori Tanaka
Courtesy of Miss International/World Japan
