Serendipity : Musings of an Islander

The Inconvenient Truth Life   under island conditions had been peaceful and content until the epic disaster christened the “Great   Sumatra-Andaman   Earthquake” rattled our islands on the   26 th   day of December 2004 at 6.29am  IST ; triggering a massive tsunami that washed away anything to everything coming its way. The multiple-disaster caught the islanders unawares, mostly in their sleep following the Merry Christmas celebrations. Before the “boxing day” nobody had the slightest idea that the sea, amid which they had been leading their life, could threaten their very existence. The disaster turned out to be a learning experience for majority of islanders who got to know the word   tsunami ,   though sounds   Indian to our ears, is in-fact a word of   Japanese origin; meaning giant harbor waves generated by undersea tectonic or volcanic activity. The   2004   slow slip undersea earthquake incidentally shif...

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...