Japanese nuclear disaster and its impact on alternate energy strategy

The March 11th earthquake and tsunami has caused an incalculable damage to the Japanese coastal towns and villages in terms of both loss of life and loss of property. However the drama unfolding now in Fukushima nuclear power plan could have a far greater impact on Japan than any physical damage of this natural disaster. If this nuclear calamity unfolds fully, it will put into question the safety of nuclear power and wreck an enormous psychological damage on the supporters of nuclear power who want it to become a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

It is well documented Japan relies heavily on nuclear energy; close to 30% of the Japanese energy needs today are met by nuclear energy, and this is expected to rise to 40% by 2017. For a nation so heavily reliant on nuclear power, safeguarding the nuclear power facilities should have been a top priority. But the experience of Fukushima shows that the measures undertaken to protect the nuclear power plants from natural disasters are not adequate. If this is the situation in Japan, a country with the world's most advanced civilian nuclear power program, I can't help but wonder what the situation must be in countries like China, India and Pakistan where resources have been lacking and some of the nuclear power facilities are known to operate under very primitive conditions!

There is hope now that the Japanese will be able to prevent the nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima complex. But if this cannot be averted, this will not only cause radiation exposure damage to the exposed locals, it will also cause a huge setback to proponents of nuclear power as our alternate source of energy. Psychologically, it will be impossible to defend nuclear power as a safe source of energy and will set the strategy back by decades.

Let's hope that this is not the case, and yet let this incidence serve as a wakeup call to the policy makers looking to develop alternate energy strategies. We need to redouble our effort to look for alternate sources of energy to oil. In this, the priority should be to improve the safety of the nuclear energy, while we are working on developing solar and wind energy technology.

The Amazing Brazilian Carnival

As usual, SacBee Photoblog has a coverage of the Brazilian Carnival. I was wondering if the carnival would take place this year, because a major warehouse where the floats are usually stored had gone up in flames just a month or so ago. But the pictures suggest that the carnival not only was held per schedule, it was more beautiful than ever!

Pictures are worth a thousand words. See for yourself on the Sacbee photoblog.

Photo Credit: AP / Felipe Dana

Down From The Mountain

If you are a lover of American BlueGrass/Country music, you are in for a treat! LionsGate Films has released a film called Down From The Mountain", a documentary that recorded the live concert held in Nashville, performed by the bands that recorded the songs of the movie "O'Brother Where Art Thou". Its available for free on Youtube.

Mystery of Daylight Saving Time

I had often wondered about this, and now this video makes it easy to understand why daylight saving time was implemented.

The Future of Education

Salman Khan of Khan Academy talks about how Khan Academy is changing the way children are and will potentially be taught in the future. Its a very interesting idea worth exploration in every class room around the world.

A Vacation Planner

Recently, I was planning my vacation days for the year and realized that it would be nice if there were a easy vacation planning tool to look at the entire year's plan all on one page. Not finding anything suitable on the web, I turned to google docs and created a spreadsheet that essentially does this for me.

I found this tool incredibly useful, so decided to share it with anyone who is interested in it. All you have to do to use it is, click on this link which opens up the calendar view of 2011. You will need to save it as a separate document if you want to use it.

If you have a Google docs account, simply sign in, click on "File"..."Save As" and save it as your own calendar. If you do not have Google docs account and would like to download it to your computer, simply click on "File"..."Download as"..."Excel or OpenOffice". Open the document in the program of your choice and start using it.

The instructions to use the calendar are provided right in the file towards the bottom.

Enjoy!