Earlier today, ANN reported that this year’s Tokyo International Anime Fair (TAF) and Anime Contents Expo (ACE) will be cancelled due to the recent earthquake. The decision was made in the interests of the safety of the participants and attendees, as well as consideration of power use due to rolling blackouts hitting the nation and uncertain transportation accessibility. The committee apologized for the inconvenience.
This is the first time that the TAF was cancelled in its nine-year history. However, given the fact that the country just underwent an earthquake that pushed the island of Honshu eight feet to the east, and sped up the planets’ rotation by 1.6 microseconds, it’s beyond justified. This simply isn’t a time for exuberance and pandering to the media. In a time when basic necessities are scarce and the threat of radioactive chaos becomes increasingly dire, the country needs to focus on what’s really important.
The nuclear threat is paticularly frightening in this picture, as the situation degrades with each passing day. Currently, the fuel storage pool at Fukushima Daiichi plant’s #4 reactor is believed to have completely boiled away. At the same time, temperatures are rising at the #5 and #6 reactors at the same plant, and units #1, #2, & #3 were damaged by explosions. A partial meltdown is believed to have already occurred in reactors #1-3. In the case of meltdown, the possibility of radioactive material spreading across the region would be beyond certain.
At this point, radiation levels are so high that Japan’s Self Defense Force have been dropping water from helicopters to keep reactors cool, and plan on using a high pressure water cannon to cool Reactor 4. The country stopped sending in the Self Defense Force’s ground units, for fear of exposure to high radiation levels.
This is only the top of a list of problems to befall the nation in the past day, which range from Magnitude 4-plus aftershocks in Chiba to evacuation requests from abroad. At the present, we can only hope that this threat can be averted, and Japan as a nation can begin healing, and rebuilding.
