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South Carolina, USA

Jersey girl here :)

SoCal US

@Karen Warren Yea... But I don't have family in this, just good friends. And I am also in Las Vegas.

@Pedro Jesus Saw a report on Kyodo yesterday that the PM visit may have delayed venting operations for fear of contaminating him with radiation. I didnt' catch if that was before or after the explosion

Pretty amazing Band of Brothers and Sisters.

Madison, AL...just west of Huntsville.

williamsburg va still in the colonial times... mail comes by horse and buggy if you get it.. and what is DSL anyway!!!! but we have great crabs

A few examples of TEPCO's missteps: finance.yahoo.com

-- For the first week after the tsunami, TEPCO radiation reports showed that hourly readings of airborne levels near the plant had were twice as high as recommended health levels. In fact, they had been off by one decimal point for dozens of readings for days. Radiation doses had actually exceeded the limit by 13 times.

-- When three TEPCO workers were hospitalized after wading into radioactive water, the company gave their condition only as "unknown." Days later, the hospital and government officials reported the workers' conditions -- but TEPCO still refused to say anything.

-- TEPCO officials said two of those workers were injured after they were issued ankle-high protective boots to walk into highly radioactive knee-high water. The company has yet to explain how that happened.

When pressed for details, TEPCO officials often simply don't answer. They say they will check, insist an answer would disclose personal information or say they don't know.

Also baffling has been the obvious lack of coordination between TEPCO and its main government regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

TEPCO and NISA give separate news conferences, often releasing conflicting information. At one point, NISA acknowledged the possibility of a partial meltdown in much stronger language than TEPCO officials, only to tone it down later.

Crisis management experts say it is critical to have a central crisis office to release consistent information to the public and the media to avoid raising fears and to coordinate information from the utility, government, regulators and local officials.

But in Japan, responsibility tends to be spread out, imperiling crisis management.

The 24-hour "media center" at TEPCO headquarters, with its crammed desks, disorganized handouts and lack of scheduled briefings, looks more like a sloppy classroom. Officials often give just a few minutes warning before they make announcements, sometimes long after midnight.

Adding to the uncertainty is TEPCO's troubled history of cover-ups and scandals.

The company has been repeatedly penalized by the government over the years for misbehavior that includes tampering with reports on plant safety.

Surrounded recently by worried reporters, TEPCO manager Hikaru Kuroda promised that the workers now tackling the crisis were fully in control.

"I may be losing my grip on things, but they aren't losing theirs," he said with a smile.


As Japan shutdowns drag on, auto crisis worsens - AP

@Bev...we have been having lower than normal cold here...I wondered if it was the weather pattern from Japan..I thought of the reality of all those people without electricity or heat in the cold

L.A., CA USA

London

Northeast US. Personally I've watched little of the tsunami video, no friends or family in that area. The nuclear part is, to me, the bigger problem overall, but I worked building doors for a shed this weekend, and get in lots of exercise time.

Southern California

New York -- just 4.25 miles from Indian Point NPS

East coast guy, now in Texas for past 6 years.

too close to Hanford NR...

@Joshua Diamond ...I have 2 nuclear plants within "striking distance"...one 100 miles north of me and a second about 130 miles northwest of me...but that one is right in my prevailing wind stream...

@all - Anyone looking at a new car in the next few months will likely run into higher prices. Stores that don't markup from MSRP will be holding the line or start marking up with second stickers. Stores that markup already will be far less likely to negotiate anything lower than MSRP. Consider yourselves warned.

Ich kanns ja mal versuchen.. versteht mich jemand?

@ifz guess not...

@VeenOui,