Serendipity : Musings of an Islander

Following the 9.0 magnitude undersea earthquake tsunami that hit J apan on M arch 11 th 2011, wide ranging discussions on safety aspects relating to nuclear power has taken centre stage. The earthquake triggered giant tsunami waves washed away almost anything and everything coming in its way, in some of the places upto 10 km inland. The J apanese   N ational P olice A gency   has confirmed over 13000 deaths and many more injured or missing. The multiple disasters further caused extensive and severe damage to over 125000 buildings,   roads, railways as well as fires in many areas. The worst however was the effect on F ukushima D ai-ichi N uclear P ower P lant (NPP). Though the structure could survive the “strong ground motion” and shut down automatically, failure of ancillary system to cool the reactors (necessary to remove  decay heat  after the reactor has been shut down, and to maintain spent fuel pools) resulted in multiple explosions creating a pa...

Six years back, on 26 th day of Dec 2004, when the giant tsunami waves struck A&N Islands , there was absolute mayhem.  Everybody ran uphill to protect themselves, yet those nearest to the sea, stood firm and bore the burnt of natures fury silently, for they bear on their back the responsibility of protecting our coasts and they did it with firm determination. Who are they? They are the Mangroves; the silent sentinels of our coasts. Debkumar Bhadra | Musings of an Islander Mangroves are a group of salt tolerant tree species that grows in the saline marshy areas between the shore and the sea in tropical and sub tropical latitudes. They are found in the inter-tidal zones along the coasts, bays, estuaries, lagoons, creeks and backwaters which are exposed during low tide and flooded by sea during high tide everyday. Globally there are nearly 70 species of true mangroves found dominating three quarters of the tropical coastline.   Ind...