Nuclear-Free Japan Braces for Severe Power Shortages

TOKYO (Reuters) - The shutdown of Japan's last working nuclear power plant and the government's failure to convince a wary public about restoring production at dozens of reactors leaves the world's third largest economy facing another summer of severe power shortages.

Hokkaido Electric Power Co shut its nuclear plant late on Saturday - the last of Japan's 50 reactors to go off line - marking the first time since 1970 Japan has been nuclear power-free.

Japan's $5 trillion economy has relied heavily on nuclear power for decades, with its reactors providing almost 30 percent of electricity needs, but last year's massive earthquake and subsequent nuclear crisis spurred a public backlash against atomic energy.

Cabinet ministers have largely failed to win over the public to allow the restart of the country's plants - shut one by one for scheduled maintenance and unable to resume operations because of concerns about safety.

Japan's Asahi newspaper said public sentiment was "wavering between two sources of anxiety" - fear over the safety of nuclear power and doubts on whether Japan can live without it.

"The public shouldn't just criticize (the government) but make its own decision on energy policy that involves burden and responsibility, such as through cooperating in power saving," the paper said in an editorial on Sunday.

The government hopes to come up with an estimate by mid-May of expected shortages this summer, and will then produce a plan to conserve energy that could include compulsory curbs on use of power, Japanese media say.

But setting a long-term energy policy or a clear timeframe for restarting the plants will take time given strong public opposition and a divided parliament that has paralyzed policy-making, analysts say.

WIDESPREAD pain

Policymakers are worried about the damage to the budding economic recovery as the power shortages are expected to be more severe and widespread than last summer, when many areas in Japan were still running nuclear reactors.

Some also warn of the long-term fallout as the rising cost of electricity, coupled with a strong yen, hits production and could prompt companies to shift operations overseas.

"Depending on the weather, power supply could constrain output during the summer," the Bank of Japan said.

"But we must be mindful not just of such short-term effects but the chance (the power shortages) could hurt Japan's medium- and long-term growth expectations," the central bank said in a twice-yearly report on the economy issued on April 27.

Japan managed to get through the summer last year without any blackouts by imposing voluntary curbs on the use of power in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that left thousands dead.

Factories operated at night and during weekends to avoid putting too much stress on the country's power grids. Many big firms are already preparing to take similar steps this summer, but some also plan to generate power themselves to cut costs.

The last time Japan went without nuclear power was in May 1970, when the country's only two reactors operating at that time were shut for maintenance, the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan said.

Microsoft Bets Big on B&N's Nook

Amazon and Apple dominate the e-reader market. But Microsoft and Barnes & Noble are teaming up to make a serious run at the leaders. Microsoft is investing more than $600 million in Barnes & Noble's efforts to launch a digital book and textbook subsidiary called Newco, and to help the bookseller to expand its online business globally.

In return, Barnes & Noble will create a NOOK e-reading app for the new Windows 8 tablet and PC operating system and for smart phones running Windows Phone 7. The deal also settles a patent dispute between the companies.

The arrangement helps fund Barnes & Noble's efforts to compete with Amazon's Kindle business, which accounts for 60 percent of the e-reader market. Meanwhile, Microsoft wants to give Windows a better chance of competing with Apple iOS and Google Android as an e-reader operating system.

Here's where it gets really interesting: Would Microsoft and Barnes & Noble come up with a Windows-based NOOK tablet to go head-to-head against the Kindle Fire, which runs on Android? Neither company has committed to it—but they haven’t ruled it out either.

The Tablet Really Is Killing The E-Reader

E Ink Holdings, the firm behind the allegedly easy-on-the-eye daylight readable electronic paper that once made your Kindle or Nook so great, has just reported its first loss in 10 successive quarters. 

The company made a net loss of NT$787 million (a little under $27 million) for the first three months of 2012, after it saw a 63% slump in revenues from the previous quarter to NT$3.84 billion. The company says it's due to "off-season effects and inventory adjustments at clients." Yes, we're inclined to believe that the shift from the always-lucrative holiday season quarter to the dim, wintery first three months of the year could quite definitely adjust how many e-reader devices the average consumer buys. But a 63% slump in revenues is pretty enormous.

Because what we think is happening is that the era of the e-reader as a must-have device is drawing to a close. Back in March some research suggested that expectations for e-reader sales for the quarter were way down on the previous year's, and those predictions now look to have been right on target.

In fact, we called this back in 2010, though we thought 2010 itself was going to be the "Only Year Of The E-Reader," and the phenomenon bathed a little longer in the limelight than we thought.

The reasons why that time is over are a perfect storm of innovative competitors. It starts with Amazon's own Kindle Fire, a full-featured tablet PC at a bargain-basement price, sporting a forked version of Android beneath Amazon's own content-centric UI and thus capable of playing nicely with apps. You know, those lovely toys we like to play with for gaming, social networking, emailing and whathaveyou...all making the most of the full-color LCD screen. Amazon's sold so many of these that they now make up over 50% of all Android-powered tablets. Which, since they only were launched at the latter half of 2011, is a storming success.

The thing is, say e-ink afficionados, those Fire screens don't really work in the daytime, nor are they as gentle on the eye as e-ink, which is supposedly closer to the look and feel of real ink on real paper partly because of its high contrast, and partly because of the smooth edges e-ink can give to digital fonts. 

And that's where the iPad 3 comes in, of course. Its high-resolution LCD screen is astonishing, and it packs more pixels than probably any computer display you've used--e-book text on its screen is so flawless it's like reading a slightly glowing magazine page. And Apple has sold a ton of them, alongside its already hugely successful iPad 2.

Then there's the rumors of a super-low-price Google-branded Android tablet coming sometime soon. Would you hand over cash for an e-ink e-reader, knowing that for only a few dollars more you'd soon be able to buy a tablet that not only can display e-books, but also play videos, let you browse Facebook, get your Angry Birds game on, do some Instagramming, even, crazily, actually generate some content for work? The e-reader isn't going away overnight, of course...and its sales trajectory will soar onward for a few years yet. It's just that rocketing above it, faster, higher and more powerfully, is the tablet PC. Innovation in action.

Gerd Ludwig's 'Long Shadow of Chernobyl' project

I found this amazing photo sequence on boston.com

On April 26, 1986, operators in this control room of reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant committed a fatal series of errors during a safety test, triggering a reactor meltdown that resulted in the world's largest nuclear accident to date. Today, the control room sits abandoned and deadly radioactive. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)

2

Workers, wearing respirators and plastic suits for protection, pause briefly on their way to drill holes for support rods inside the sarcophagus. It is hazardous work: radiation is so high that they constantly need to monitor their Geiger counters and dosimeters, and they are allowed only one 15-minute stay in this space per day. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

3

For years desperate efforts were under way to shore up the roof of the shelter to prevent it from collapsing. Inside the sarcophagus, dimly lit tunnels lead to eerie rooms strewn with wires, pieces of shredded metal and other debris. Walls have collapsed, and rubble is covered with contaminated dust. The stabilization work has been completed, and today the reactor’s interior sits untouched and deadly radioactive, waiting to be dismantled. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

4

Although radiation levels only allowed for a few minutes of access, workers initially had to pass over hazardous ladders to a section underneath the melted core with life threatening contamination. To facilitate faster access, a daunting hallway called the leaning staircase was erected. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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Workers near the sarcophagus expose themselves to hazardous levels of radiation while building the New Safe Confinement, estimated to cost $2.2 billion. The arch-shaped, 29,000-ton metal structure, 105 meters high and 257 meters wide, will slide over the existing structure to allow demolition of the ailing shelter. To provide an indestructible base for the new confinement, 396 enormous metal pipes are hammered 25 meters deep into the ground. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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A rooftop view from the Polissya Hotel in the center of Pripyat shows the proximity of the ill-fated Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant to this former home of 50,000 people. Today, Pripyat stands a ghost town overrun by nature. Pripyat, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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Built in 1970 for the scientists and workers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the city of Pripyat, located less than 3 km from the reactor, was once inhabited by nearly 50,000 residents and brimming with life. Authorities did not immediately warn residents of the accident and ordered the evacuation a full 36 hours after the explosion. Pripyat, Ukraine, 1993 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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When Soviet authorities finally ordered the evacuation, the residents’ hasty departure often meant leaving behind their most personal belongings. The Soviet Union only admitted to the world that an accident had occurred three days after the explosion, when the nuclear cloud reached Sweden and scientists there noticed radiation on their shoes before entering their facility. Opachichi, Ukraine, 1993 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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Nineteen years after the accident, the empty schools and kindergarten rooms in Pripyat - once the largest town in the Exclusion Zone with 50,000 inhabitants—remain a silent testament to the sudden and tragic departure. Due to decay, this section of the school building has since collapsed. Pripyat, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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On the day of the disaster, children oblivious to the nuclear accident played in this kindergarten in Pripyat, the reactor’s company town. The following day they were evacuated, leaving behind everything—even their treasured dolls and toys. Pripyat, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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Wind blows through the desolate town of Pripyat. On April 26, 1986, this amusement park was being readied for the annual May Day celebrations when reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded less than 3 km away. Pripyat, Ukraine, 1993 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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On April 26, 1986, this amusement park in Pripyat with bumper cars and a Ferris wheel was being readied for the annual May Day celebrations when the nearby reactor blew up. Rotting away for 25 years, it has since become a symbol of the utter abandonment of the area. Now it is an attraction for tourists who have started flocking to the zone in droves. Pripyat, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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In 2011, the Ukrainian government officially legalized tourism in the Exclusion Zone. In Pripyat, visitors get to wander through the debris-strewn corridors and empty classrooms of a school. Hundreds of discarded gas masks litter the floor of the canteen. One tourist brought his own gas mask—not to protect himself from the radiation but simply for photographs and giggles. Pripyat, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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The nuclear accident contaminated tens of thousands of square kilometers, forcing 150,000 people within a 30 km radius to hastily leave their homes. Today, nearly all the small wooden houses in the scattered villages within the Exclusion Zone are abandoned, and nature slowly takes over these remnants of civilization. Korogod, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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Kharytina Descha, 92, is one of the several hundred elderly people who have returned to their village homes inside the Exclusion Zone. Although surrounded by devastation and isolation, she prefers to die on her own soil. Teremtsy, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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Homegrown tomatoes are washed in the sink at the home of deaf couple Ivan Martynenko, 77, and Gapa Semenenko, 82. After the evacuation, a few hundred elderly evacuees subsequently returned to their former homes, subsisting mostly on produce grown on contaminated soil. Ilyintsy, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

17

Suffering from thyroid cancer, Oleg Shapiro, 54, and Dima Bogdanovich, 13, receive care at a thyroid hospital in Minsk, where surgery is performed daily. As a liquidator, Oleg was exposed to extreme levels of radiation. This was his third thyroid operation. Dima's mother claims that Chernobyl’s nuclear fallout is responsible for her son’s cancer, but his doctors are more cautious; Belarusian officials are often instructed to downplay the severity of the radiation. Minsk, Belarus, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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As his mother worries, Dima Pyko, 16, receives treatment as a lymphoma patient at the Children’s Cancer Center (Oncology and Hematology Center) in Lesnoy near Minsk. The facility was built with much financial support from Austria as a direct result of cancers occurring in the fallout regions in Belarus after the Chernobyl accident. Lesnoy, Belarus, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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Severely physically and mentally handicapped, 5-year-old Igor was given up by his parents and now lives at a children’s mental asylum, which cares for 150 abandoned and orphaned children with disabilities. It is one of several such facilities in rural southern Belarus receiving support from Chernobyl Children International, an aid organization established by Adi Roche in 1991 in the aftermath of the world’s worst nuclear disaster. Vesnova, Belarus, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

20

In the days, weeks and months after the Chernobyl accident, strong winds pushed the radiation released by the explosion northwest into the Gomel region of Belarus, contaminating thousands of square kilometers with the radioactive fallout. Today, girls born around the time of the accident are having children of their own. Many find themselves anxious about the contamination and what it might have done to their reproductive organs and genes. Gomel, Belarus, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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Only 5 years old and suffering from leukemia, Veronika Chechet is hospitalized at the Center for Radiation Medicine in Kiev. Her mother, Yelena Medeyeva, 29, was born four years before the Chernobyl accident in nearby Chernigov, a city heavily affected by nuclear fallout. According to doctors at the hospital, many patients’ conditions are a direct result of the radioactivity released after the accident. Kiev, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

22

In an orphanage in Belarus, a mentally disabled boy enjoys the scent of a tulip. Children born in the fallout region are said to have a higher rate of birth defects and retardation, a belief supported by many—but not all—in the scientific community. International aid organizations established in the aftermath of the disaster continue to provide much needed financial support to homes and orphanages housing children affected by the fallout. Vesnova, Belarus, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

23

Each year on April 26 in a midnight vigil at the Monument to the Firemen, shift workers in Chernobyl honor those killed by the explosion. Two plant workers died immediately in the blast, and another 28 workers and firemen soon succumbed to radiation poisoning. Thousands more have since died of cancer and the social upheaval caused by mass relocation. Chernobyl, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

By the Numbers: Autism Is Not a Math Problem

At a meeting of the Icelandic Medical Association last week, Yale University child psychologist Fred Volkmar gave a presentation on how the American Psychiatric Association (APA) is changing the definition of autism. In his talk, Volkmar came to a startling conclusion: more than half of the people who meet the existing criteria for autism would not meet the APA’s new definition of autism and, therefore, may not receive state educational and medical services.

The APA defines autism in a reference guide for clinicians called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM). The newest version of the manual, the DSM-5, is slated for publication in May 2013.

In Iceland, Volkmar presented data from an unpublished preliminary analysis of 372 high-functioning autistic children and adults with IQs above 70. He plans to publish a broader analysis later this year. On a key PowerPoint slide that Volkmar shared with Scientific American, he notes that there are 2,688 ways to get a diagnosis of autistic disorder in DSM-IV, but only six ways to get a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder in DSM-5. Although intriguing at first glance, it turns out that both these numbers are slightly wrong—and that they are pretty much useless when comparing the DSM-IV and DSM-5. You cannot reduce autism to a math problem.

Hubble Fellow Joshua Peek of Columbia University was asked to code a computer program that would calculate the total possible ways to get a diagnosis of autistic disorder in DSM-IV and the total possible ways to get a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder in DSM-5. You can do the math by hand, too, if you like: It all comes down to factorials. The DSM-IV criteria are a set of 12 items in three groups from which you must choose 6, with at least two items from group one and at least one item each from groups two and three. The DSM-5 criteria are a set of seven items in two groups from which you must choose five, including all three items in group one and at least two of the four items in group two. Peek's program crunched the numbers: there are 2027 different ways to be diagnosed with autism in DSM-IV and 11 ways to be diagnosed with autism in DSM-5.

One might think that those statistics make it absurdly easy to qualify for a diagnosis of autism in DSM-IV and incredibly difficult to meet the criteria for autism in DSM-5, but those numbers alone don't tell you anything unless you understand how common each symptom of autism is in the general population. Symptoms of autism are not randomly distributed throughout the population and the symptoms do not cluster together in random combinations. Research in the past decade has shown that some symptoms appear together much more often than others. In fact, that is one of the main reasons that the APA has consolidated the DSM-IV criteria for autism into fewer, denser and more accurate criteria in the DSM-5. The idea is that the DSM-IV criteria allowed for too many possible combinations, many of which rarely occur; the DSM-5 criteria, in contrast, better reflect the most common combinations of symptoms.

Specifically, the APA has merged two distinct groups of symptoms from the DSM-IV—deficits in communication and deficits in social interaction—into one group in the DSM-5 because someone with autism almost always has both kinds of symptoms.

Most psychiatrists applaud this consolidation because, as several recently published studies have shown, the new criteria are more precise: they rarely assign autism to people who do not have it. However, the DSM-5 criteria may be a little too strict, ignoring some autistic people with milder symptoms. Two recently published studies suggest an easy fix: if the new criteria require that patients meet one fewer symptom—four out of seven instead of five out of seven—high-functioning autistic people will not be excluded.