Natural Disaster

Lethal Levels of Radiation Detected at Fukushima

In many ways, it looks like daily life in Fukushima is slipping back into its familiar routines. In Koriyama, a town south of Fukushima City, a group of taiko drummers set up in front of the train station to perform in an annual summer festival. Girls cruise by on bicycles in their plaid skirts and white socks in the unusually mild …

How Will China’s Food Supply Weather the Year of Drought?

In China food supplies and food prices are deeply sensitive topics. So by the time the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization issued a special alert warning in February that a prolonged drought in the North China Plain was a “potentially serious problem” for the country’s winter wheat crop, China’s leaders had already …

Japan’s Unlikely Saviors: Elderly Willing to Toil in a Nuke No-Go Zone

In ancient Japan, or so the folktale goes, there used to be a mountain where old people were taken and abandoned once they reached 60 years of age. Although the practice of obasute was probably more rural legend than actual reality, it is a chilling reminder of the perils of old age in a nation where roughly one-quarter of Japanese are …

Did Haiti Commit Disaster Inflation? A U.S. Study Raises the Possibility

Updated 5/31/11

Those of us who cover the developing world deal increasingly today with a new kind of inflation: disaster inflation. I first really noticed it in 1998, while reporting Hurricane Mitch. The storm ravaged Honduras and Central America, but governments felt compelled to inflate the death toll. Even today, the official …

Fukushima: Er, Sorry…Worse Than We Thought.

In the two months since Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was pummeled by a quake and tsunami, no news has generally been good news.

Unfortunately, today, there’s some news.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) announced on Thursday that the damage to fuel rods inside Unit 1’s reactor core is worse than the …

How to Make a Dramatic Exit: Japan’s Nuke Advisor Quits

Like apologies, resignations are a delicate art in Japan. But the leave-taking of scientist Toshiso Kosako made waves not so much for its skilful dodging as for its remarkable bluntness. The University of Tokyo professor had been employed since mid-March as a nuclear advisor to the government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who is still …

After the Earthquake, Not All Quiet on China’s Western Front

One year ago today, an earthquake hit the northeastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, leveling a small, majority-Tibetan town. The magnitude-6.9 temblor shook buildings from the hills and pulled monasteries and mud-brick homes to the ground. The first images from the scene showed crimson-robed monks digging though the rubble by hand. They …

With No End to Crisis in Sight, Residents and Fishermen Are Fighting Back

From the earliest days of Japan’s triple disaster, the residents forced to flee their homes in the evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have not had a lot of information to work with. Many only found out that they were supposed to leave by grace of the internet or the evening news, and when they …

What’s in Store for Japan’s Embattled Nuclear Workers?

As more details emerge from inside the evacuation zone in Fukushima, it’s becoming more and more evident that workers at the Daiichi power plant, feted as heroes since the early days of Japan’s nuclear crisis, will be bearing their burden for years to come.

Tepco gave its workers the option not to go to Fukushima days after …

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