Incompatible power connectors...

Short-term destructive thinking is Democracy!

"Only invention here is a new catalyst"?

I would not be so quick to downplay the significance of finding a _CHEAP_ catalyst, when platinum was what was used before. That's pretty damn significant if it means mass-produced wafers costs plummet.

Yeah... Hysterical people now get better emergency aid than those of us who manage to remain calm in stressful situations?

Actually... PM Naoto Kan (a physicist by education) was furious with TEPCO for keeping too positive a spin on their reporting to him, to the point where he refused their request to evacuate all workers and told them to keep working until they died.

Towelheads don't know how to handle democracy, didn't you get the memo?

Please don't do that... my family is panicking enough as it is demanding I take the first possible flight home.

I can predict with 100% certainty that you can't read the difference between Chile and California.

Also, lol at not understanding what the numbers actually mean and why they are useful. These earthquakes are caused by stress having been built up between tectonic plates, and the predictions give you an indication of how likely that stress is to be released at a certain magnitude. Your prediction of >7.5 with 80% likelihood the next 30 years is useless because it is an intentionally low-ball figure that doesn't give us any useful information abut the estimated stresses in the fault lines.

Yeah... And WWI was started by an assassination, lol.

Not to mention Telenor, the Norwegian telecom company, has been in long court battles fighting what is essentially a russian-style theft of the company Wimpelcom. The Wind Mobile company isn't worth anywhere near 6 billion dollars.

After dozens of phone calls from mom I have to say I'm pretty damn fed up by her attempts at pressuring me to leave. There's no ostrich impression going on here, we're quite perfectly capable of assessing the situation and come to the right conclusions on evacuation plans.

Hell, I grew up in the Nordic countries during the time the radiation from Chernobyl was blowing around so why should brief periods of 10x background radiation levels worry me?

And speaking of epicenters... What really _does_ worry me is the Tokai fault line, the one that is predicted overdue to cause the great Tokyo earthquake and is now under even more stress.

How is it misleading? Do you have information that BFDI was the ones holding up the request?

It might very well have been the American side that kept demanding better identification, account activity, etc. (That BFDI didn't officially 'send' the request doesn't mean they didn't try getting the asked for paperwork done)

My mother is freaking out as I live in Tokyo, almost demanding I come home with the first possible flight. (No, I won't)

I guess it's good for the green lobby who wants everyone to burn coal instead. ;)

Comparing Daiichi/ni to Chernobyl shows your ignorance and we can safely ignore your opinion.

Just as safe as ever?... Those 40 year old reactors survived a 9.0 quake and the only reason we're in problem now (how ever slight, the radiation leakage isn't that scary yet) is that they messed up by putting the diesel generators the wrong place.