If you have friends or family in Japan, Google has a crisis center with a person finder, shelter resident lists, and more. You can donate to the Japanese Red Cross through Google's page, or to the American Red Cross at RedCross.org.
Doctors Without Borders is working in Miyagi Prefecture, and could also use your donations.
Here are some useful links for keeping up with the news out of Japan:
- Al Jazeera's live blog
- Reuters live updates (includes user commentary)
- Kyodo news headlines
- Osha Davidson's blog on Forbes
- Business Insider's running updates
- New Scientist's Short Sharp Science blog
For more background on nuclear reactors:
- Nuclear energy 101
- How to cool a nuclear reactor
- How nuclear reactors work and how they fail
- The Chernobyl site 25 years later
ETA: Things are taking a turn for the worse.
ETA 3/14/11 11pm CDT: A decent USA Today update. Kyodo News Headlines says that small amounts of radioactive substances have been detected in Tokyo, but doesn't have an accompanying article at this time.
ETA 3/15/11 8:30 am CDT: This is bad. Scroll down to the paragraph with the IAEA update. According to AFP, the disaster has now been upgraded to a 6 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
A summary of more-or-less current statistics about the disaster by the Telegraph.
ETA 3/15/11 9:45 am CDT: Good update from the NY Times. One piece of encouraging news: the most recent radiation levels reported from outside the plant have fallen off from their highest levels.
ETA 3/16/11 10:35 pm CDT: A bleak update from the NY Times.
No comments:
Post a Comment