Monday Morning

Another day and more bad news - things are not getting any better over here unfortunately. Latest reports from the stricken nuclear plant down in Fukushima say that there has been an explosion at the No. 3 Reactor. It is, apparently, a similar explosion to the one that occurred at the No. 1 reactor on Saturday. At the moment they say three employees in the plant have been injured while another 7 are unaccounted for.
This, to be honest, is beginning to get a tad worrisome. While here in Muroran we are far way from immediate danger I am not so sure I can confidently say we are far away enough to be comfortable. Chatter on various mailing lists here in Japan and conversations and emails with friends scattered across the country have begun to take on a "What if.." attitude, with various contingency plans being knocked around about getting out of the country if worst comes to worst.
At the same time I don't want to be too alarmist. As I said, we are far to the north, there is a large winter-type, low pressure system coming in from Siberia at the moment bringing with it strong westerly to north-westerly winds and is due to effect us for the next number of days. Therefore, should there be a serious radiation leak it will blow the debris well way from us, out over the Pacific ocean.
Just to put some figures on the distances involved. The current exclusion zone is 20km around the affected nuclear plant. Tokyo is some 240 km from the plant, while Muroran is close on 550 km.