Units 5 and 6 in Fukushima didn't had severe problems despite being affected by the lack of power, and the Onagawa power station, closer to the epicenter of the earthquake, aside a small fire in the turbine building, survived unscathed. The main problem here is that TEPCO for menial reasons and hubris didn't make properly safety checks in their nuclear power stations before and they were caught red handed, so now that it is really important that their information should be believed, their previous record has destroyed their credibility and of regulators.
When you are dealing with products that face planned obsolescence in one year or less like cars and consumer electronics you need to plan for just in time unless you want to send huge swats of your production directly to the landfill.
Oriental girls are really cute, american girls too, but i think that the main difference is that in America being self centered is more accepted than in east asian countries, so east asian girls appear more cute and kind than their american counterparts.
Aside the first batch of CRT iMac I don't remember seeing another piece of Apple's hardware manufactured in Mexico. What I remember is that a friend that also worked in Flextronics told us that Apple sent there all the equipment that they were refurbishing. I will not defend the shitty pay or workplace conditions of electronics factories here in Guadalajara, but I doubt that manufacturing quality were that bad considering that Flex has many more customers beside Apple.
Tepco has translated the Monitoring data at Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Stations, with all the measures available from 17/march/2011 to 20/march/2011: http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/monitoring/index-e.html
You've just described how supply and demand prevents shortages, while claiming that it doesn't prevent shortages.
Think about it this way. Would you use less electricity if it cost more? If electricity cost enough, wouldn't it lower demand for electricity below the level of supply?
A shortage exists only when demand exceeds supply, and when that happens, it means the price is too low. Smart meters bring real-time price information to consumers, which helps reduce demand for electricity during peak times, and that eliminates the shortage.
But you can only reduce your demand up to a point. After that, you will need to pay the electricity no matter the price. Is like trying to live without air conditioners in Phoenix's summer or heaters in nordic countries at winter. You don't have choice. Even so, for the Japanese market, the least significant component of demand will be household demand; industry, transport and commercial customers have a far higher demand of electricity. That's why with the current energy shortages are many train lines stopped. If you had ever been in Tokyo, you will be aware that the city without trains will collapse, just like is happening at the moment.
Updates at the end since the following is necessary to put things in context.
They have 2 FC facilities able to exchange 1200 MW at best, but the exchange between the two grids goes around 7-8% yearly, both ways, far, far less than what is needed at the moment and what they could provide, I doubt that Japan doesn't have at least 15% spare capacity in both grids. The FC are only able to replace units 1 and 2 from Fukushima Power Plant. 1200 MW are nothing versus the demand of eastern Japan. The reason that eastern Japan blackouts will be more bad than needed and Tepco's problems with their nuclear power plants comes in this report http://www.ieej.or.jp/aperc/pdf/GRID_COMBINED_DRAFT.pdf from APEC:
But power interconnections are far less developed between Japan’s electric service areas than within them. Thus, an issue has arisen with respect to what might happen to the reliability of power supply in Japan when a particular class of generating capacity has to be taken out of service. In August 2002, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) was required by the Japanese government to take all of its nuclear power plants out of service since the utility had failed to report technical safety violations at some of the plants as required by law. Although subsequent safety inspections revealed that none of the violations presented an actual threat to public safety, continuing public distrust meant that nearly all of Tokyo’s nuclear plants remained out of service through the summer of 2003 and beyond. (emphasis mine) Since summer is when Tokyo’s power demand peaks, and since TEPCO relied on nuclear power for 29 percent of its generating capacity and 47 percent of its electricity generation in 200117, there were real concerns that power demand might not be met.
Normally, TEPCO would have had roughly 72 GW of generating capacity available to meet Tokyo’s needs during the summer of 2003, including 60 GW of its own capacity, 8 GW owned by Japan’s Electric Power Development Corporation (EPDC) and other generators in its area, and 4 GW from companies outside of its area. But with 13 GW of nuclear capacity remaining out of service (though about 4 GW of nuclear capacity had already been allowed to resume service), and with 4 GW of thermal power plants out of service for scheduled maintenance, the actual amount of generating capacity on which TEPCO could rely that summer was only around 55 GW. By comparison, the utility projected that peak demand would be around 61 GW if the weather were normal and 64 GW if the summer were hot. Hence, it had to plan for a possible 9 GW shortfall.
TEPCO’s plans for filling the gap between available capacity and possible peak summer demand included a variety of supply-side and demand-side measures. On the supply side, the utility anticipated that it could obtain 2,190 MW by restarting thermal plants that had been shut down due to their relative inefficiency and high cost, 760 MW by accelerating the testing and start-up of new plants, 700 MW by rescheduling thermal plant repairs, and 1,660 MW through extra purchases from neighbours. Somewhat more alarmingly, the utility hoped to obtain 3,200 MW if necessary through emergency supply measures such as power drawn from the trial operation of thermal
Around 3-5% of the electricity generated by a power plant is "wasted" in internal uses, it is used for running pumps, fans, valves and diverse equipment, maybe even for powering power plant's lights. For Fukushima 1, that should be around 141 Mw, more than enough to power a small city. The turbine and generators buildings are the ones between reactors buildings and sea, they got flooded so they cant be used at the moment, and even if they could be by a miracle intact, the HV electrical equipment in the surface had to bear the brunt of the impact of the 7.6 m high tsunami and his damaged. Also, the demineralized water necessary to generate the steam for the turbines is aparently gone, since the water deposits were destroyed/damaged too. To make matters worse, the emergency diesel generators were flooded and damaged too and really big power plants like this need external supply to start anyway.
The current situation is far worse than the worst case scenario that the engineers imagined when they built it. So, the only choice is a new HV transmission line and hope that most of the pumps are operational, since a single pump can move far more water than anything they have available at the moment.
Well, that's good news among this bad times. But really, at my company - CFE by the way - we were talking about the challenges that represent to build something tsunami proof, and simply, against a wall of water moving at 500 kmh 7.6m high like the one that struck Fukushima 1 they in the end couldn't have done almost nothing. You could have built a dam like wall in the perimeter, but you will still need big holes in that wall to let sea water go in and out for the cooling systems. The big trouble that faces Japan now is because they don't have a country wide electric grid. In moments like this I admire even more General Lázaro Cárdenas, his vision when he created CFE has spared us mexicans many times from problems like this in disaster zones. Now, if the last 4 governments didn't mismanaged the company, you can bet that CFE's moto, "a world class company" it would be true.
This remembers me the last year's AH1N1 scare. People scared around the world and here in Guadalajara, México, people enjoying the unexpected holidays going to restaurants and doing shopping. The ones that were worst affected were desperate mothers that had to deal with the children out of school.
Tomorrow I should be arriving at Narita Airport, but, with the scaremongering from mexican TV media, that I now hate even more than I thought previously possible, I canceled my trip. The worry of my family was simply unbearable, despite the fact that many of them live in one of the worst hit areas by the mexican drug war, while we had planed to stay in Kyoto, where everything is normal and safe. I canceled my bookings, but left them the money so they cab have some liquidity for the time being. My wife and I will be making donations to Save The Children and Japan Red Cross, but we will go forward with our travel plans next august.
I'm sad because two of my japanese teachers were in Iwate prefecture and we still don't have any news. The wife of my just married teacher is from Sendai, and she doesn't had news from her family neither. The school suspended the Setsubun Festival planed for last Saturday. This is very sad, but after seeing Kyoto Fire department in action and the equipment of Tokyo firefighters, and the standard equipment that smaller cities have, I'm sure that Japan will overcome this difficulties soon.
In fact, the overall transmission capacity to transfer power into Tokyo from neighbouring areas was quite substantial during the summer of 2003. Approximately 5,000 MW of power could have been transferred over transmission lines from Tohoku to the north, assuming the availability of surplus generating capacity. Another 300 MW of power could have been transferred from Chubu to the west, utilising DC links between the 50Hz and 60Hz power grids. (This amount will increase to 1,200 MW in September 2005, with the completion of new transmission lines.) So theoretically, as much as 5,300 MW in all might have been sent to Tokyo to make up for any capacity shortfalls...
Available firm transmission capacity into Tokyo will total 1,130MW as of September 2005 (930 MW from Tohoku and 200 MW from Chubu), about a fifth of the overall transmission capacity of 6,200 MW (5,000 MW from Tohoku and 1,200 MW from Chubu). So the ability of adjacent areas to make up for power shortfalls in Tokyo on an ongoing basis would be quite limited, even if adjacent areas had as much surplus generating capacity as the capital area required. (emphasis mine)
At best the Frequency Conversion Facilities can manage to provide 1200 Mw, give it or take. TEPCO owns at least 72 Gw of generating capacity, so at best they could get from the western grid only 3% of what they can produce. Personally, this affects me has I have a trip scheduled to Tokyo next Friday, and I believe that the best help that I can provide is to spend much needed money there has a tourist. My best wishes to all the people in Japan.
They have 2 FC facilities able to exchange 1200 MW at best, but the exchange between the two grids goes around 7-8% yearly, both ways, far, far less than what is needed at the moment and what they could provide, I doubt that Japan doesn't have at least 15% spare capacity in both grids. The FC are only able to replace units 1 and 2 from Fukushima Power Plant. 1200 MW are nothing versus the demand of eastern Japan. The reason that eastern Japan blackouts will be more bad than needed and Tepco's problems with their nuclear power plants comes in this report http://www.ieej.or.jp/aperc/pdf/GRID_COMBINED_DRAFT.pdf from APEC:
But power interconnections are far less developed between Japan’s electric service areas than within them. Thus, an issue has arisen with respect to what might happen to the reliability of power supply in Japan when a particular class of generating capacity has to be taken out of service. In August 2002, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) was required by the Japanese government to take all of its nuclear power plants out of service since the utility had failed to report technical safety violations at some of the plants as required by law. Although subsequent safety inspections revealed that none of the violations presented an actual threat to public safety, continuing public distrust meant that nearly all of Tokyo’s nuclear plants remained out of service through the summer of 2003 and beyond. (emphasis mine) Since summer is when Tokyo’s power demand peaks, and since TEPCO relied on nuclear power for 29 percent of its generating capacity and 47 percent of its electricity generation in 200117, there were real concerns that power demand might not be met.
Normally, TEPCO would have had roughly 72 GW of generating capacity available to meet Tokyo’s needs during the summer of 2003, including 60 GW of its own capacity, 8 GW owned by Japan’s Electric Power Development Corporation (EPDC) and other generators in its area, and 4 GW from companies outside of its area. But with 13 GW of nuclear capacity remaining out of service (though about 4 GW of nuclear capacity had already been allowed to resume service), and with 4 GW of thermal power plants out of service for scheduled maintenance, the actual amount of generating capacity on which TEPCO could rely that summer was only around 55 GW. By comparison, the utility projected that peak demand would be around 61 GW if the weather were normal and 64 GW if the summer were hot. Hence, it had to plan for a possible 9 GW shortfall.
TEPCO’s plans for filling the gap between available capacity and possible peak summer demand included a variety of supply-side and demand-side measures. On the supply side, the utility anticipated that it could obtain 2,190 MW by restarting thermal plants that had been shut down due to their relative inefficiency and high cost, 760 MW by accelerating the testing and start-up of new plants, 700 MW by rescheduling thermal plant repairs, and 1,660 MW through extra purchases from neighbours. Somewhat more alarmingly, the utility hoped to obtain 3,200 MW if necessary through emergency supply measures such as power drawn from the trial operation of thermal plants and requests for neighbouring utilities to raise the output of thermal plants above t
This is a perfect case of trying to be better safe than sorry. There is no radiation infection. There is radiation contamination, and this is what this 4 people had. I'm more sad about the crane operator that died yesterday. I hope that they can manage to control both units today. Oddly enough, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum as not issued a new press release since this http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/aij/member/2011/2011-03-11emergency.pdf at March 11, if they had been more careful with PR they could have stopped the wild rumors that are going at the moment. On the plus side, it appears that the great majority of the nuclear sites in earthquake area withstood the earthquake without problems. This is bad, but if the design troubles were true, this could have been far worse.
But had their license extended 10 more years. I guess that the officers that did this now must be contemplating suicide at the moment. If I were in their shoes, I would.
An additional systemic problem, that I expect that government officers and utilities managers from Japan at last tackle in view of the current emergency if politicians can stop the stupid political bickering that goes at the moment, is that the country has 2 separate electrical grids, one for eastern Japan and one for western Japan, working at different frequencies, so even if western Japan has spare capacity, and I bet that they have, they couldn't do anything to help to meet demand from the other half of the country, even if most transmission lines in eastern Japan are in good shape. I guess that this problem weighted in the decision to not get decommissioned the unit 1 as programmed.
Now Tepco, the plant operator has announced that it will implement rolling blackouts starting next Monday. Hopefully, they will manage to put a few of the conventional power plants units that got damaged online in a week. The neat thing is that all hydro power plants are online and undamaged, at least in Tepco's service area. Having witnessed the damage that suffered some of our company's power plants by the 7.6 earthquake of january 21st, 2003 in Manzanillo, Mexico, I believe that they could manage to get all conventional power plants online in a month. I was impressed that the lights were still on in many of the towns damaged by the tsunami.
They believe that God will make another world, more perfect that this if they pray loud and long enough. As a mexican, is in times like this when I can honestly say thank you to the american tax payer and take my hat off to the US scientists. This is a far better investment of tax dollars than new boomers.
In less than 30 seconds you could get under a table or desk and take cover. The most demanding thing in terms of time, manpower and resources in emergencies is the care of injured people, since is something that can't wait. Instead, the material loses can be dealt after the emergency with more planning and time, even if they demand more money. My city, Guadalajara, was struck by an industrial accident in 1992, more than 200 deaths and 12 km of destroyed streets, but the most pressing thing at that time was the care of injured people, the city emergencies services simply collapsed. I have been seeing this feed of NHK http://www.ustream.tv/channel/foxtokimekitonight and their earthquake alerts come so fast that when they switch to a live cam in the affected areas it is still quiet before being reached by earthquake's wave. But against a tsunami, you really need at least 15 minutes of warning to do anything meaningful.
Well, if it was a remote exploit, that wouldn't be the only instance of this case and certainly it would be news. After all, we are reading a story about a single mac getting cracked. More probable, is that because the strong belief in Macs being secure because are Macs, if GP story has some truth, they had unprotected admin accounts but then, a severe mistake like that could make easy to destroy any OS.
In essence yes, but in practical terms it isn't since they have a more fragmented browser market, so for the common use for browser exploits today they have an smaller attack area an are of less interest for hackers outside security researchers. After all, despite all those Macs that Apple sells, you can't be sure that all of them will be running OS X and Safari. On the other hand, there are still more millions of machines running Windows Xp that are an even easier and larger target.
That said, Apple is being lucky of have gained a little bit of security thorough obscurity up to this time. But now that the guys at Vupen had developed the tool chain neccesary to develop exploits against OS X Apple will need to step up significantly their security efforts.
The interesting part is that in Windows and OS X the exploits successfully bypassed DEP and ASLR. The vulnerabilities that they found are in Webkit so all Webkit based browsers so Chrome and other OS's like iOS and Android are also vulnerable. But well, at least things like this should be a welcome wake up call to the security team at Apple. There is still the checkbox to open "safe" files automatically in the latest iteration of Safari. I will check latter if at least that checkbox is unchecked by default.
Thats exactly the use for my GTX460 and a Radeon 6850 that I have in my BOINC computer. This machine alone does several times the computations that used to do on 3 desktops and one laptop before.
The difference is that sexual crimes, specially against children have a very negative connotation. After all, even after serving their time in prison, sex offenders in many USA's states have to be in a sex offender registry. If a student calls his teacher pedophile and some parent reads the accusation and sees that the school doesn't do nothing against the accused teacher he could try to take the matter in his own hands legally or illegally.
Two days ago the documentary "Presunto Culpable" (Presumed Guilty) that deals with the incredibly corrupt and inefficient mexican judiciary was subject to an injunction by a female judge that would have stopped the screenings of the movie nation wide. Instead of the desired effect, it managed to make it the most viewed mexican documentary to date and provided additional embarrassment to the mexican justice system since that injunction was based on declarations of a man that was caught in the movie lying accusing an innocent man of murder.
Another documentary that the powers that be in Mexico want buried, Sicario (Gunman) was subject to a boycott by all movie distributors here in Mexico but, being the third largest market for piracy in the world, by word of mouth it became one of the most viewed movies in this year. Really, the use of an internet kill switch in USA to censor some information will make it the most commented story for decades in the whole world.
I really enjoyed "Black swan"; especially, I liked the sparse use of special effects, just the necessary amount to tell the story. On the other hand, when my wife rented "Lovely bones" we looked it to the end just because we already paid for it and had too much popcorn. It had at least 10 unnecessary minutes filled up with special effects that didn't bring anything to the plot.
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Units 5 and 6 in Fukushima didn't had severe problems despite being affected by the lack of power, and the Onagawa power station, closer to the epicenter of the earthquake, aside a small fire in the turbine building, survived unscathed. The main problem here is that TEPCO for menial reasons and hubris didn't make properly safety checks in their nuclear power stations before and they were caught red handed, so now that it is really important that their information should be believed, their previous record has destroyed their credibility and of regulators.
When you are dealing with products that face planned obsolescence in one year or less like cars and consumer electronics you need to plan for just in time unless you want to send huge swats of your production directly to the landfill.
Oriental girls are really cute, american girls too, but i think that the main difference is that in America being self centered is more accepted than in east asian countries, so east asian girls appear more cute and kind than their american counterparts.
Aside the first batch of CRT iMac I don't remember seeing another piece of Apple's hardware manufactured in Mexico. What I remember is that a friend that also worked in Flextronics told us that Apple sent there all the equipment that they were refurbishing. I will not defend the shitty pay or workplace conditions of electronics factories here in Guadalajara, but I doubt that manufacturing quality were that bad considering that Flex has many more customers beside Apple.
Tepco has translated the Monitoring data at Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Stations, with all the measures available from 17/march/2011 to 20/march/2011:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/monitoring/index-e.html
The next link points to the page in japanese that shows the monitoring data since the emergency was declared:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/monitoring/index-j.html
You've just described how supply and demand prevents shortages, while claiming that it doesn't prevent shortages.
Think about it this way. Would you use less electricity if it cost more? If electricity cost enough, wouldn't it lower demand for electricity below the level of supply?
A shortage exists only when demand exceeds supply, and when that happens, it means the price is too low. Smart meters bring real-time price information to consumers, which helps reduce demand for electricity during peak times, and that eliminates the shortage.
But you can only reduce your demand up to a point. After that, you will need to pay the electricity no matter the price. Is like trying to live without air conditioners in Phoenix's summer or heaters in nordic countries at winter. You don't have choice. Even so, for the Japanese market, the least significant component of demand will be household demand; industry, transport and commercial customers have a far higher demand of electricity. That's why with the current energy shortages are many train lines stopped. If you had ever been in Tokyo, you will be aware that the city without trains will collapse, just like is happening at the moment.
I will repost again this updated http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2035046&cid=35472440 post.
Wikipedia has a inaccurate map of Japan's power grid:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Power_Grid_of_Japan.PNG
A better map, more detailed that shows how really is actually the grid:
http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/national_energy_grid/japan/graphics/japangridmap.gif
Updates at the end since the following is necessary to put things in context.
They have 2 FC facilities able to exchange 1200 MW at best, but the exchange between the two grids goes around 7-8% yearly, both ways, far, far less than what is needed at the moment and what they could provide, I doubt that Japan doesn't have at least 15% spare capacity in both grids. The FC are only able to replace units 1 and 2 from Fukushima Power Plant. 1200 MW are nothing versus the demand of eastern Japan. The reason that eastern Japan blackouts will be more bad than needed and Tepco's problems with their nuclear power plants comes in this report http://www.ieej.or.jp/aperc/pdf/GRID_COMBINED_DRAFT.pdf from APEC:
But power interconnections are far less developed between Japan’s electric service areas than within them. Thus, an issue has arisen with respect to what might happen to the reliability of power supply in Japan when a particular class of generating capacity has to be taken out of service. In August 2002, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) was required by the Japanese government to take all of its nuclear power plants out of service since the utility had failed to report technical safety violations at some of the plants as required by law. Although subsequent safety inspections revealed that none of the violations presented an actual threat to public safety, continuing public distrust meant that nearly all of Tokyo’s nuclear plants remained out of service through the summer of 2003 and beyond. (emphasis mine) Since summer is when Tokyo’s power demand peaks, and since TEPCO relied on nuclear power for 29 percent of its generating capacity and 47 percent of its electricity generation in 200117, there were real concerns that power demand might not be met.
Normally, TEPCO would have had roughly 72 GW of generating capacity available to meet Tokyo’s needs during the summer of 2003, including 60 GW of its own capacity, 8 GW owned by Japan’s Electric Power Development Corporation (EPDC) and other generators in its area, and 4 GW from companies outside of its area. But with 13 GW of nuclear capacity remaining out of service (though about 4 GW of nuclear capacity had already been allowed to resume service), and with 4 GW of thermal power plants out of service for scheduled maintenance, the actual amount of generating capacity on which TEPCO could rely that summer was only around 55 GW. By comparison, the utility projected that peak demand would be around 61 GW if the weather were normal and 64 GW if the summer were hot. Hence, it had to plan for a possible 9 GW shortfall.
TEPCO’s plans for filling the gap between available capacity and possible peak summer demand included a variety of supply-side and demand-side measures. On the supply side, the utility anticipated that it could obtain 2,190 MW by restarting thermal plants that had been shut down due to their relative inefficiency and high cost, 760 MW by accelerating the testing and start-up of new plants, 700 MW by rescheduling thermal plant repairs, and 1,660 MW through extra purchases from neighbours. Somewhat more alarmingly, the utility hoped to obtain 3,200 MW if necessary through emergency supply measures such as power drawn from the trial operation of thermal
Around 3-5% of the electricity generated by a power plant is "wasted" in internal uses, it is used for running pumps, fans, valves and diverse equipment, maybe even for powering power plant's lights. For Fukushima 1, that should be around 141 Mw, more than enough to power a small city. The turbine and generators buildings are the ones between reactors buildings and sea, they got flooded so they cant be used at the moment, and even if they could be by a miracle intact, the HV electrical equipment in the surface had to bear the brunt of the impact of the 7.6 m high tsunami and his damaged. Also, the demineralized water necessary to generate the steam for the turbines is aparently gone, since the water deposits were destroyed/damaged too. To make matters worse, the emergency diesel generators were flooded and damaged too and really big power plants like this need external supply to start anyway.
The current situation is far worse than the worst case scenario that the engineers imagined when they built it. So, the only choice is a new HV transmission line and hope that most of the pumps are operational, since a single pump can move far more water than anything they have available at the moment.
Well, that's good news among this bad times. But really, at my company - CFE by the way - we were talking about the challenges that represent to build something tsunami proof, and simply, against a wall of water moving at 500 kmh 7.6m high like the one that struck Fukushima 1 they in the end couldn't have done almost nothing. You could have built a dam like wall in the perimeter, but you will still need big holes in that wall to let sea water go in and out for the cooling systems. The big trouble that faces Japan now is because they don't have a country wide electric grid. In moments like this I admire even more General Lázaro Cárdenas, his vision when he created CFE has spared us mexicans many times from problems like this in disaster zones. Now, if the last 4 governments didn't mismanaged the company, you can bet that CFE's moto, "a world class company" it would be true.
This remembers me the last year's AH1N1 scare. People scared around the world and here in Guadalajara, México, people enjoying the unexpected holidays going to restaurants and doing shopping. The ones that were worst affected were desperate mothers that had to deal with the children out of school.
Tomorrow I should be arriving at Narita Airport, but, with the scaremongering from mexican TV media, that I now hate even more than I thought previously possible, I canceled my trip. The worry of my family was simply unbearable, despite the fact that many of them live in one of the worst hit areas by the mexican drug war, while we had planed to stay in Kyoto, where everything is normal and safe. I canceled my bookings, but left them the money so they cab have some liquidity for the time being. My wife and I will be making donations to Save The Children and Japan Red Cross, but we will go forward with our travel plans next august.
I'm sad because two of my japanese teachers were in Iwate prefecture and we still don't have any news. The wife of my just married teacher is from Sendai, and she doesn't had news from her family neither. The school suspended the Setsubun Festival planed for last Saturday. This is very sad, but after seeing Kyoto Fire department in action and the equipment of Tokyo firefighters, and the standard equipment that smaller cities have, I'm sure that Japan will overcome this difficulties soon.
Good luck everyone!
I have posted this before http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2035046&cid=35472440 but I will post an extract of it anyway again:
he reason that eastern Japan blackouts will be more bad than needed and Tepco's problems with their nuclear power plants comes in this report http://www.ieej.or.jp/aperc/pdf/GRID_COMBINED_DRAFT.pdf from APEC:
In fact, the overall transmission capacity to transfer power into Tokyo from neighbouring areas was quite substantial during the summer of 2003. Approximately 5,000 MW of power could have been transferred over transmission lines from Tohoku to the north, assuming the availability of surplus generating capacity. Another 300 MW of power could have been transferred from Chubu to the west, utilising DC links between the 50Hz and 60Hz power grids. (This amount will increase to 1,200 MW in September 2005, with the completion of new transmission lines.) So theoretically, as much as 5,300 MW in all might have been sent to Tokyo to make up for any capacity shortfalls...
Available firm transmission capacity into Tokyo will total 1,130MW as of September 2005 (930 MW from Tohoku and 200 MW from Chubu), about a fifth of the overall transmission capacity of 6,200 MW (5,000 MW from Tohoku and 1,200 MW from Chubu). So the ability of adjacent areas to make up for power shortfalls in Tokyo on an ongoing basis would be quite limited, even if adjacent areas had as much surplus generating capacity as the capital area required. (emphasis mine)
At best the Frequency Conversion Facilities can manage to provide 1200 Mw, give it or take. TEPCO owns at least 72 Gw of generating capacity, so at best they could get from the western grid only 3% of what they can produce. Personally, this affects me has I have a trip scheduled to Tokyo next Friday, and I believe that the best help that I can provide is to spend much needed money there has a tourist. My best wishes to all the people in Japan.
Please have a look at this Japanese grid, they are isolated grids, based on this is what I based my observations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Power_Grid_of_Japan.PNG
My bad for believing in Wikipedia. Thank you for your critic, it prompted me to research more the subject.
A better map, more detailed that shows how really is actually the grid:
http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/national_energy_grid/japan/graphics/japangridmap.gif
They have 2 FC facilities able to exchange 1200 MW at best, but the exchange between the two grids goes around 7-8% yearly, both ways, far, far less than what is needed at the moment and what they could provide, I doubt that Japan doesn't have at least 15% spare capacity in both grids. The FC are only able to replace units 1 and 2 from Fukushima Power Plant. 1200 MW are nothing versus the demand of eastern Japan. The reason that eastern Japan blackouts will be more bad than needed and Tepco's problems with their nuclear power plants comes in this report http://www.ieej.or.jp/aperc/pdf/GRID_COMBINED_DRAFT.pdf from APEC:
But power interconnections are far less developed between Japan’s electric service areas than within them. Thus, an issue has arisen with respect to what might happen to the reliability of power supply in Japan when a particular class of generating capacity has to be taken out of service. In August 2002, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) was required by the Japanese government to take all of its nuclear power plants out of service since the utility had failed to report technical safety violations at some of the plants as required by law. Although subsequent safety inspections revealed that none of the violations presented an actual threat to public safety, continuing public distrust meant that nearly all of Tokyo’s nuclear plants remained out of service through the summer of 2003 and beyond. (emphasis mine) Since summer is when Tokyo’s power demand peaks, and since TEPCO relied on nuclear power for 29 percent of its generating capacity and 47 percent of its electricity generation in 200117, there were real concerns that power demand might not be met.
Normally, TEPCO would have had roughly 72 GW of generating capacity available to meet Tokyo’s needs during the summer of 2003, including 60 GW of its own capacity, 8 GW owned by Japan’s Electric Power Development Corporation (EPDC) and other generators in its area, and 4 GW from companies outside of its area. But with 13 GW of nuclear capacity remaining out of service (though about 4 GW of nuclear capacity had already been allowed to resume service), and with 4 GW of thermal power plants out of service for scheduled maintenance, the actual amount of generating capacity on which TEPCO could rely that summer was only around 55 GW. By comparison, the utility projected that peak demand would be around 61 GW if the weather were normal and 64 GW if the summer were hot. Hence, it had to plan for a possible 9 GW shortfall.
TEPCO’s plans for filling the gap between available capacity and possible peak summer demand included a variety of supply-side and demand-side measures. On the supply side, the utility anticipated that it could obtain 2,190 MW by restarting thermal plants that had been shut down due to their relative inefficiency and high cost, 760 MW by accelerating the testing and start-up of new plants, 700 MW by rescheduling thermal plant repairs, and 1,660 MW through extra purchases from neighbours. Somewhat more alarmingly, the utility hoped to obtain 3,200 MW if necessary through emergency supply measures such as power drawn from the trial operation of thermal plants and requests for neighbouring utilities to raise the output of thermal plants above t
Sorry to reply myself, but this is the last report from JAIF:
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/aij/member/2011/2011-03-11earthquake4.pdf
Still, almost 3 days without new info and Tepco's website down, this will be a PR nightmare.
This is a perfect case of trying to be better safe than sorry. There is no radiation infection. There is radiation contamination, and this is what this 4 people had. I'm more sad about the crane operator that died yesterday. I hope that they can manage to control both units today. Oddly enough, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum as not issued a new press release since this http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/aij/member/2011/2011-03-11emergency.pdf at March 11, if they had been more careful with PR they could have stopped the wild rumors that are going at the moment. On the plus side, it appears that the great majority of the nuclear sites in earthquake area withstood the earthquake without problems. This is bad, but if the design troubles were true, this could have been far worse.
But had their license extended 10 more years. I guess that the officers that did this now must be contemplating suicide at the moment. If I were in their shoes, I would.
An additional systemic problem, that I expect that government officers and utilities managers from Japan at last tackle in view of the current emergency if politicians can stop the stupid political bickering that goes at the moment, is that the country has 2 separate electrical grids, one for eastern Japan and one for western Japan, working at different frequencies, so even if western Japan has spare capacity, and I bet that they have, they couldn't do anything to help to meet demand from the other half of the country, even if most transmission lines in eastern Japan are in good shape. I guess that this problem weighted in the decision to not get decommissioned the unit 1 as programmed.
Now Tepco, the plant operator has announced that it will implement rolling blackouts starting next Monday. Hopefully, they will manage to put a few of the conventional power plants units that got damaged online in a week. The neat thing is that all hydro power plants are online and undamaged, at least in Tepco's service area. Having witnessed the damage that suffered some of our company's power plants by the 7.6 earthquake of january 21st, 2003 in Manzanillo, Mexico, I believe that they could manage to get all conventional power plants online in a month. I was impressed that the lights were still on in many of the towns damaged by the tsunami.
They believe that God will make another world, more perfect that this if they pray loud and long enough. As a mexican, is in times like this when I can honestly say thank you to the american tax payer and take my hat off to the US scientists. This is a far better investment of tax dollars than new boomers.
In less than 30 seconds you could get under a table or desk and take cover. The most demanding thing in terms of time, manpower and resources in emergencies is the care of injured people, since is something that can't wait. Instead, the material loses can be dealt after the emergency with more planning and time, even if they demand more money. My city, Guadalajara, was struck by an industrial accident in 1992, more than 200 deaths and 12 km of destroyed streets, but the most pressing thing at that time was the care of injured people, the city emergencies services simply collapsed. I have been seeing this feed of NHK http://www.ustream.tv/channel/foxtokimekitonight and their earthquake alerts come so fast that when they switch to a live cam in the affected areas it is still quiet before being reached by earthquake's wave. But against a tsunami, you really need at least 15 minutes of warning to do anything meaningful.
Well, if it was a remote exploit, that wouldn't be the only instance of this case and certainly it would be news. After all, we are reading a story about a single mac getting cracked. More probable, is that because the strong belief in Macs being secure because are Macs, if GP story has some truth, they had unprotected admin accounts but then, a severe mistake like that could make easy to destroy any OS.
In essence yes, but in practical terms it isn't since they have a more fragmented browser market, so for the common use for browser exploits today they have an smaller attack area an are of less interest for hackers outside security researchers. After all, despite all those Macs that Apple sells, you can't be sure that all of them will be running OS X and Safari. On the other hand, there are still more millions of machines running Windows Xp that are an even easier and larger target.
That said, Apple is being lucky of have gained a little bit of security thorough obscurity up to this time. But now that the guys at Vupen had developed the tool chain neccesary to develop exploits against OS X Apple will need to step up significantly their security efforts.
At Zdnet I found a link to this essay by Dennis Fisher that is very interesting and I agree completely with him:
https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/why-pwn2own-whats-right-security-030911
The interesting part is that in Windows and OS X the exploits successfully bypassed DEP and ASLR. The vulnerabilities that they found are in Webkit so all Webkit based browsers so Chrome and other OS's like iOS and Android are also vulnerable. But well, at least things like this should be a welcome wake up call to the security team at Apple. There is still the checkbox to open "safe" files automatically in the latest iteration of Safari. I will check latter if at least that checkbox is unchecked by default.
Thats exactly the use for my GTX460 and a Radeon 6850 that I have in my BOINC computer. This machine alone does several times the computations that used to do on 3 desktops and one laptop before.
The difference is that sexual crimes, specially against children have a very negative connotation. After all, even after serving their time in prison, sex offenders in many USA's states have to be in a sex offender registry. If a student calls his teacher pedophile and some parent reads the accusation and sees that the school doesn't do nothing against the accused teacher he could try to take the matter in his own hands legally or illegally.
Two days ago the documentary "Presunto Culpable" (Presumed Guilty) that deals with the incredibly corrupt and inefficient mexican judiciary was subject to an injunction by a female judge that would have stopped the screenings of the movie nation wide. Instead of the desired effect, it managed to make it the most viewed mexican documentary to date and provided additional embarrassment to the mexican justice system since that injunction was based on declarations of a man that was caught in the movie lying accusing an innocent man of murder.
Another documentary that the powers that be in Mexico want buried, Sicario (Gunman) was subject to a boycott by all movie distributors here in Mexico but, being the third largest market for piracy in the world, by word of mouth it became one of the most viewed movies in this year. Really, the use of an internet kill switch in USA to censor some information will make it the most commented story for decades in the whole world.
I really enjoyed "Black swan"; especially, I liked the sparse use of special effects, just the necessary amount to tell the story. On the other hand, when my wife rented "Lovely bones" we looked it to the end just because we already paid for it and had too much popcorn. It had at least 10 unnecessary minutes filled up with special effects that didn't bring anything to the plot.