7.1 Earthquake in Japan
data.jma.go.jp749 points by krembo 13 hours ago
749 points by krembo 13 hours ago
- at least 50 hospitalized due to various injuries[1]
- 9 missing, 12 house collapses, 4 trappings, 7 fires so far[1]
- multiple highway road bridges snapped, roads damaged[2]
- AEON brand shopping mall exploded following evacuation, cause unknown[3]
- chimney collapsed at Nippon Seishi paper factory[4]
- TSMC, Sony, Fujifilm chips, imagers, materials plants evacuated[4]
- epicenter reported as 32.6N 130.7E[5], roughly 20km/12mi south of previous major earthquake[7],
320km/200mi SE from Busan, 650km/400mi from Seoul, 900km/550mi WSW from Tokyo, likewise 900km/550mi
due east from Shanghai, 1200km/730mi due south to Vladivostok, etc
- stone wall behind a moat damaged again at Kumamoto castle[8]
On top of that, one of the toughest part could be the extent of the power outage.
It's reported at around 46000 homes, the region has many elders and the outage will impact air conditionners, but also medical equipment they keep at home and supporting appliances.
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/55a0a3ebb9d0087ae8492ce85c...
> TSMC, Sony, Fujifilm chips, imagers, materials plants evacuated
This makes me think, is it wise to build these places in regions with known earthquake trends.
Almost no earthquakes in Korea and Samsung fabs are also located in the most safe area within Korea.
Japan itself is involved with a lot of the R&D, the factories are there because of that and because of major buyers also being there. It’s not like we’re going to evacuate the hundred million plus of Japan.
This was my first real earthquake since moving to Kyushu. After it stopped I looked it up, and the first place to post the epicenter and shindo was NERV's twitter...which is named after the org from the anime and has an anime screenshot as its banner (https://x.com/EN_NERV). Apparently it's a real disaster information service, though.
It's been mentioned before but maybe interesting to some (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38835419).
It started as a Twitter account during the Tohoku 2011 earthquake, and then subsequently became a “real” service; the IP owners for the Eva agreed to let them use it going forward.
The Nerv app is quite good. It usually gives real-time alerts faster than the official sources.
You can even have the weird experience of being notified of an earthquake, watching the shockwave move outward from the epicenter, and feeling it as it passes.
You can keep an eye on this english tracker in the browser too https://earthquakesjapan.com
Somewhat unrelated but how did you find the process of moving to Japan (assuming you emigrated there)
In parts of Kumamoto Prefecture, it registered 7 on the Japanese shindo (seismic intensity) scale, which reflects the amount of ground shaking at a particular location. The shindo is a better indicator of the likely amount of damage than the magnitude is. A shindo of 7 is extremely strong [1].
Ten minutes ago (at around 17:15 p.m. Japan time), NHK was reporting that there were many emergency calls coming in from Uki City, where shindo 7 was recorded, but that the extent of the damage or injuries was not yet known.
There have also been many aftershocks, including some strong ones, and tsunami warnings.
[1] https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/jishintsunami/jishin...
NHK TV is showing extensive damage including fallen smokestacks at Nippon Paper Factory facility, bridge road separation, fallen bridge lane, road cracks, fire, water coming out of drainage etc. It was a huge earthquake and will take some time to assess the damage.
I at least can see English translated version of NHK here https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/live_tv/
There is a collapsed roof of a shopping centre as well in Kumamoto. The Aeon Mall.
The mall had a (most likely gas) explosion, and there are many dead being found inside https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/-/2833412?display=1
> The mall had a (most likely gas) explosion
If the internet searches are to be believed, that is indeed sadly likely to be the cause.
The internet suggests the explosion happened on the second floor of the mall where a large food court is located.
A hundred years from now people are going to be absolutely flabbergasted how we just piped gas everywhere all the time.
Electricity allows for so many more automatic safeguards.
> Electricity allows for so many more automatic safeguards.
Since the mid-2000s there has actually been a push by Japanese utility companies for adoption of what they call "all-electric" オール電化.
Adoption has been reasonably good with new-builds because they can also have solar panels. But adoption in older properties has been slower.
First in general, electricity in Japan has tended to be more expensive than gas.
Second, a large Part of the slow adoption comes from cooking related inertia.
A lot of traditional (and therefore very common) Japanese cookware just will not work on electric, full stop. For example, traditional donabe (clay pots).
Beyond that, for example, aluminium pans being non-ferromagnetic will not work on induction. Yes you find aluminium pans in the West with extra ferromagnetic bases attached, but that is not common in Japan.
Finally, the Japan Society of Cookery Science did commission a study[1] where they had two groups of people cook four dishes on both gas and induction. The conclusion was gas was preferred across all four.
[1]https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/cookeryscience/47/6/47_...
I’ve worked in appliance repair and have worked on induction cook tops.
I wouldn’t recommend buying one. The fancier models have a stupendous number of circuit boards in them, and obviously a lot of power electronics, as well as cooling fans. Probably buy the cheapest model with the least number of features that you can bear the sight of, style matters in a kitchen, if you have to buy one at all.
I’ve simplified by cooking to an electric pressure cooker, which also functions as a slow cooker and pot for frying, an air fried, and a microwave. No kettle, no pots or pans, no cooktop, no oven. An oven would be useful I suppose if I were cooking for more people. The pressure cooker plus air frier is a faster and more convenient substitute for roasting meat.
As they become more common and age, I predict induction cooktops will have a much higher failure rate than dumb rheostat controlled resistive element cooktops. Everything has a much higher failure rate than dumb resistive element cooktops. And they are much easier to repair with very few parts: a resistive element and a rheostat.
I’ve don’t quite a good many replacements of fully functional dumb resistive cooktops and ovens with the new version of the same model, simply because the 70 to 80 year old residence wanted something newer and shinier, even though the new model is almost identical to the 20 to 30 year old model they’re replacing.
Improper installation of induction cooktops in older kitchens with out the necessary cabinet work to correctly ventilate them is a big problem too.
Anyways, gas is a great source of energy especially for commercial and industrial cooking and heating, where electric is simply impractical due to the immense amount of power required.
At home, sure. The typical setup requires less than 10kW. Trivial.
In a food court or restaurant strip currently serviced by gas, the electricity requirement could easily exceed 1 megawatt, which means major infrastructure upgrades, and you’ll never get the rapid heat control like gas provides, which is essential in reasonable service times, along with the fact that gas cookers are infinitely simpler and have very low failure rates compared to anything electric that is put through repeated thermo cycling 16 or 24hrs a day.
Counterpoint - my dirt cheap entry level induction cooktop has been incredibly reliable. We cook intensely with it almost every day and have done so for years. Do I wish it was smarter? Sure. Is it faster to heat water than my old gas stove? Yup. Do I want even more power? Heck yeah.
Only having 1 large burner is stupid, and the 1 large burner it has could stand to be another inch or so wider.
But it has been a definite upgrade over gas. From better air quality to not heating my house up in the summer, to being faster to get pots hot.
> As they become more common and age, I predict induction cooktops will have a much higher failure rate than dumb rheostat controlled resistive element cooktops. Everything has a much higher failure rate than dumb resistive element cooktops. And they are much easier to repair with very few parts: a resistive element and a rheostat.
Agreed, resistive elements are simple, you can still find ones that are 30+ years old and working fine. Same with old gas stoves, easy to repair, dirt simple.
Induction requires fancy electronics, and modern circuit boards just don't have a long life expectancy.
“People used to cooking with gas, cook better with gas”
Induction offers the benefits of not emitting noxious fumes, the dangers of transporting gas over long distances in bulk, the fire hazards inside the home, and dependency on single source energy.
Electricity, via induction cooktops, is often faster, more energy efficient, safer for everyone, and doesn’t depend on whatever regime or state wants to play games with the supply. Where I live, electricity is often sold at negative rates for most of the day and that electricity is now going into batteries at a massive scale. It seems unlikely gas has any future, outside of niche cooking or industrial/commercial uses.
> Induction offers the benefits of not emitting noxious fumes,
I don’t understanding this criticism.
Who in their right mind ie cooking inside at all without an externally ventilated exhaust fan? The moisture control issue leading to mould growth will destroy your health faster than hoofing nat gas combustion products.
I believe the nat gas combustion product health risks for home and commercial cooking are wildly overblown. Commercial kitchens are required to have certain ventilation requirements, as are all new home builds, at least in any jurisdiction anyone would want to live in.
> electricity is often sold at negative rates for most of the day and that electricity
Is it? Is it though? What evidence is there?
Negative rates may apply to the wholesale price, but I’m not aware of anywhere that passes that on to the residential retail customer.
In Australia, electricity retailers are require to offer a plan that has a 3 hour free period, which is usually in the middle of the day when everyone is at work, and the plans non-free-period rates are worse, as well as the daily supply charge being higher. Thereby resulting, in all likelihood, in people on those plans likely ending up paying the same or more, if they’re not obsessively fussing over their electricity usage.
What are you going to do? Set your induction cook top to fry your eggs for the next morning at 1pm? How’s that supposed to work? Cook your roast chicken in the tumble dryer, because your oven doesn’t have a 12hr delay timer? Admittedly some newer ovens do, because leaving a raw chicken at room temperature in the oven for hours on end is a great idea.
Like everything the Australian Labor government touches, it’s a sham. Including the battery subsidy, which just moves wealth from everyone else (taxpayers), but especially poor people, to already relatively wealthy home owners. All the while alleviating government and energy infrastructure industries of the responsibility of making investments they’ll have to maintain.
Not to mention Australia already has electricity prices that are ridiculously high, so even if you benefit from the three-for-free plan, you’re still worse off than you were five years ago.
And with the propensity of batteries to spontaneously combust and be nearly impossible to extinguish, EV and home battery owners, scooters and ebiked too, are soaking up resources of fire departments.
See StacheD on YouTube for an in exhaustible stream of battery fire nightmares.
Ah, the good old unintended consequences of poorly thought out government policy. Which are always poorly thought out, because a very few number of Australian politicians have ever had to worry about energy prices, because they are nothing but glorified career dole-bludgers.
Jacinta Allan’s, the recent former Premier of the once great state of Victoria, industry experience extended to a brief period as a grocery bagger before her and her drunken uni mates messed around with an Ouija board and some other gray magic and accidentally summoned demons who took their souls and parasitised their bodies.
Or did they summon the demons on purpose? Probably, comrades.
Nyet Zero, as Topher Field is fond of saying.
I see some places in the Japanese countryside where homeowners get propane tanks delivered to them for cooking? I believe in an earthquake prone country, this is safer than having natural gas piped to their homes?
The problem I think is that Japanese culture values hot baths daily. Heating water for the bath using electricity is still too costly.
Propane tanks strapped to your house is common even in cities since it's cheaper to install (but then costs more per cubic meter).
The downside to propane tanks is they become fireworks if a neighbor has a fire which heats them up.
In Japan anyone who goes all-electric these days is getting a heat pump water heater ("eco-cute") by default, resistive electric heating doesn't really exist out of small plugin units like kotatsu and radiant heaters.