11/3/11 - two years later.

Right now, I am sitting in my parents' kitchen in North Wales, warming my hands on the radiator and planning my return to Prague, where I currently live. The snow swirling around through the window reminds me of some of the images on screen two years ago today.

I was sitting in the teachers' room at my main junior high school, writing my "About Me" page for this very blog, when the ground started to sway. It didn't feel like an earthquake - it was more like a giant ship swaying back and forth. I glanced up at the secretary and asked "Jishin?" She nodded. A few second year girls cowered on the floor and squealed, one of them holding her arms over the others and shouting "I am desk!" for my benefit, while Mr Ohuchi, the English teacher, yelled "Urusai! (Shut up)" The ground continued to sway, and a siren started to sound. Panic gripped my stomach as my Facebook newsfeed was flooded with messages - "Earthquake!" "OMG, there are cracks in the ground in Tokyo!" "They say a big tsunami is coming!"

At that point, I wasn't sure of where the earthquake was centred. The ground continued to sway, and nobody thought to translate the message on the loudspeaker for the ALT - I caught the words for earthquake and tsunami, though, and knowing that the Hamamatsu was expecting a massive earthquake and was on the coast, I couldn't help but worry. I picked up my phone to text Jeff, my boyfriend, and see if he was OK - but the phones had stopped working.

Japan's Nuclear Power Plants: A History of Accidents

Fukushima Power Plant on March 12th, 2011

You can't have escaped the recent panic over the raised radioactivity around Fukushima nuclear power plant, following damage to the cooling systems after the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11th, 2011. All over the world, people have been panicking. Press reports claim that people in the U.S. and Canada, in fears of radiation spreading across the ocean, are buying up iodine tablets (thought to be ineffective as it is actually potassium iodide that should be taken, which is perhaps even harmful if taken without exposure to radiation - see "Should Americans Take Iodine..." on About.com). But while the media is acting as if this is a world-shaking event, a disaster that could be "worse than Chernobyl", something set to shake up the power industry as we know it, to redefine the way we view nuclear energy and to make governments question their choices about power; it has come to light that this is definitely not Japan's first nuclear accident. A brief search into Google's news archives from the last couple of decades has brought some interesting things to light, which I am too young to remember. It seems, though, that the media and the Japanese population have largely forgotten about these incidents, too.

Before you read on, this is not meant to be a full-frontal attack on the nuclear power industry. My interest is more in the short attention span/memory of the media and the public, although the amount of accidents - while long-term or serious damage doesn't seem to be reported - should surely raise eyebrows, if not questions.