20110518

How one village defied the tsunami
Japan Times
FUDAI, Iwate Pref. - In the rubble of the northeast, one small village stands as tall as ever after the tsunami. No homes were swept away. In fact, they barely got wet. Fudai survived thanks to a huge wall once deemed a mayor's expensive folly and now vindicated as the community's salvation. The 3,000 residents living between mountains behind a cove owe their lives to a late leader who saw the devastation of an earlier tsunami and made it the priority of his four-decade tenure to defend his people from the next one. (Japan Times)

More nuclear reactor shutdowns lie ahead
Japan Times
Electricity supply from nuclear plants, already down by almost 20 percent following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, will drop further during peak summer demand as operators shut reactors for maintenance. Six reactors are scheduled to be offline for checks and maintenance by the end of August. Chubu Electric Power Co. last week shut two reactors out of fear of a natural disaster causing a crisis similar to the one at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The planned shutdowns mean 75 percent of Japan's nuclear power capacity will be idled or damaged by August when air conditioning demand surges as temperatures can rise to as high as 40 degrees. (Japan Times)