News in Japan - July

GEJET
Fukushima Watch: Lawmakers Rank the Safety of Japan’s 50 Reactors
Japan's atomic disaster due to "collusion:" panel report
Quake left 20-meter crack in Fuji

Massive anti-nuclear power rally held in Tokyo

Fukushima reopens first beach to swimming since nuclear disaster

Japan’s tsunami towns go green to create jobs, bypass nuclear

Japan reviews nuclear plant sites as faultline worries mount

Japan utility takes out 2 Fukushima nuke fuel rods

Radioactive strontium detected in 10 prefectures

Japan

Torrential rain in Kyushu spurs evacuation advisories

Average income of households in 2010 down to 1988 level

A Lost Deal for South Korea and Japan

Govt looks to buy Senkakus / Noda says talks with islands' owner have already begun In 1971, the Taiwanese and Chinese governments officially began to declare ownership of the islands after the U.N. issued a report about possible gas and oil reserves in the Senkaku area. 

Japan's battered men suffer abuse in silence

Japan agency says high chance El Nino to emerge this summer

Japanese town selling land for pocket change

50,000 flee as record rain in Japan kills 10

Japan's low-profile military steps up during flood rescue (+video)

Death toll at 27 in Japan floods

More couples seek to select child gender / 90 couples went to Thailand for diagnosis in '12

Japan best place to be a child, India ranking poor

Rain ends in Kyushu, Yamaguchi

Heatstroke patients doubled last week

Japan report finds Hong Kong women have overtaken Japanese as longest living
Volcano erupts in Japan, showers nearby Kagoshima City with rocks and ash

Netherlands

Hindrances due to bad weather (Dutch)

Other
More than half of female workers are employed on nonregular basis

Russian floods

Drought in USA, Drought Monitor USA

Satellites See Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt     

Kyuushuu's heavy rains

These pictures map the progress of the storms that hit Kyuushuu last week, where 250,000 people evacuated their homes due to heavy storms and the associated impending floods and landslides. And people say the Netherlands is experiencing too much rain...

50,000 flee as record rain in Japan kills 10
Death toll at 27 in Japan floods

Japan's low-profile military steps up during flood rescue (+video)

Kyuushuu is currently expecting a typhoon to rush by.

The Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI) reports the following about the rain in the month June this year: 
June was a wet month, with 94 mm precipitation on average over the whole country, in contrast to a long term average of 68 mm. The regional differences in precipitation amounts were very large this month. In the south several places experienced over 100 mm of rain, the highest value being 123 mm. The center and north of the country many places experienced less than 75 mm. Due to the precarious nature of the weather every day had some precipitation. Nationally, 3, 4, 18, 21 and 24 June were very wet days with 10 mm or more precipitation. 

On the 7th of June a whirlwind caused damage in Montfoort, and on the 21st of June a thunderstorm caused local water damage and wind gusts; and lightning caused power failure.

Discovery's Building the Future

Discovery Channel had a series, Building the Future, also touching on the South-North Water Diversion Project in China, and the Edogawa Project in Japan. More information here.

South-North Water Diversion Project (Beijing, China) (#1)

Beijing, with a population that has swelled to nearly 15 million people, is struggling with an increasingly dire water shortage worsened by 30 years of drought. The Chinese government's answer is the largest water diversion undertaking ever. First envisioned by Mao Zedong in the early 1950s but not begun until 2002, the project will transport 300 million gallons of water each day from the Yangtze River in southern China to the parched, populous north via three concrete rivers, each nearly 1,000 miles long. (The most difficult part of the project will be the western route, which will require construction on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, at 10,000 to 16,000 feet above sea level.) Plans call for the project to be completed by 2050 at a cost of $62 billion. But whether it will be enough to alleviate China's water woes is a difficult question. Experts say that even with the extra water, the Chinese capital will have to dramatically reduce average household water consumption just to keep up with population growth. Another problem: pollution from China's rapidly growing industrial sector threatens to make the diverted water unfit to drink.

Edogawa River Project (Tokyo, Japan) (#2)
With Tokyo in the path of as many as two dozen typhoons each year, the city and its 12 million inhabitants are continually endangered by flooding. The answer: one of the most massive pumping systems ever constructed. Begun in 1992, with completion scheduled for 2009, the $2 billion system includes a four-mile-long network of tunnels connected to an 83-foot-tall storage tank and a cathedral-like structure of 59 massive pillars. The system's powerful turbines can pump 200 tons of water into the Edogawa River each second. The system has become a Tokyo tourist attraction, and it also has been used by television and movie crews as an eerily dramatic backdrop.