On March 11, 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, leaving 15,372 people confirmed dead and 7,762 reported still missing. In the wake of the largest earthquake in the country’s history, some people drew the courage to revive and rebuild from cherry-blossom season, which began within weeks of the tragedy.

Oscar-nominated this year for Best Documentary Short Subject, ‘The Tsunami And The Cherry Blossom’ shows how nature can be a rejuvenating – as well as a destructive – force when it debuts Monday, July 16 (10:00-10:40 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO. Directed by Lucy Walker (the Oscar-nominated documentary feature “Waste Land”), this poignant film debuts immediately after the debut of the SXSW Film Festival hit “Birders: The Central Park Effect,” which offers a different look at how nature touches people.

HBO Documentary Films presents another weekly series this summer, debuting provocative new specials every Monday through July 30. Other July films include: “Hard Times: Lost on Long Island” (July 9); “Birders: The Central Park Effect” (July 16); “Vito” (July 23); and “About Face: Supermodels Then and Now” (July 30).

‘The Tsunami And The Cherry Blossom’ is a stunningvisual poem about the ephemeral nature of life, and the healing power of Japan’s most beloved flower. The nation is transfixed by cherry blossom season, which runs from late March through April, with many people tracking the blossoms’ short lifecycle and attending “hanami,” or viewing parties, with family and friends.

Walker had originally planned to visit Japan to make a film about cherry-blossom season, but on March 11, 2011, while she was making final preparations for her trip, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck, triggering tsunami waves of up to 133 feet on Japan’s northeastern coast. Initially unsure whether to continue, she flew to Tokyo with a small film crew and headed north to the Tohuku region, where she captured both the utter devastation and stoic resolve of survivors, many of whom had lost family members and friends.

‘The Tsunami And The Cherry Blossom’ opens with harrowing home-video footage, shot from a hill, of a huge wave destroying the town below. A month later, a young woman stands on the same hill, remembering how she “watch[ed] people being consumed by the tsunami.” An older man tells how he tried and failed to save his oldest friend, proclaiming, “I don’t want a house. I don’t want clothes. I don’t want anything. I just want his life back.”

Others tell their stories of survival, escaping in their slippers and seeing whole houses rush toward them on a wave of black water. One couple living at a community center returns to the ruins of their house, hoping to rebuild. Their town is within the 30km exclusion zone around the Fukushima power plant, and many people wear cotton masks as protection from radiation.

Amidst the despair in the days following the tsunami comes a glimmer of hope in “sakura” (cherry blossom), a harbinger of spring in Japan and a national symbol of renewal. One man explains how the cherry blossom reflects the Japanese character, saying, “Each flower is tiny, and you can’t see one individually. But it’s beautiful when you see lots of flowers together. Japanese people see themselves that way too.”

Out of respect for the victims, many viewing parties were cancelled this year, but people still visit the blossoms and take pictures. A man who lost his house shows where new plant shoots have sprouted on the beach, commenting that if plants can hang in there, humans can too. A young woman looking at the cleanup and construction adds, “Every year that the trees bloom, they’ll give us the courage to keep going.”

In addition to its Oscar nomination, ‘The Tsunami And The Cherry Blossom’ received the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and was an official selection at the Toronto International Film Festival, the Hamptons International Film Festival and BFI London.

For more information on the documentary, please visit: Facebook: facebook.com/hbodocs; and Twitter: @HBODocs #tsunamiblossom.

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Exelon Nuclear has added seven mobile, high-volume diesel-driven pumps at its nuclear energy facilities, among thousands of equipment purchases, upgrades, and validations completed at Exelon’s 10 plants in the year following the tragic earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Exelon technical experts have verified readiness of more than 1,700 other pieces of equipment; inspected more than 1,900 flood barriers and seals; and invested more than 43,000 worker hours checking and testing equipment and procedures that might be needed in an emergency.

“We have a responsibility to communicate what we are doing as a company to learn from the lessons following the tragedy in Japan and we take that responsibility seriously. Our top priority is to assure the continued safe and reliable production of electricity at our nuclear facilities in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey,” said Mike Pacilio, president and chief nuclear officer of Exelon Nuclear.

“Since last March, we have taken the learnings from Fukushima, critically assessed our operations and taken immediate actions,” he said. “We have additional safety measures planned for Exelon and the entire U.S. nuclear industry in the months ahead with additional guidance being issued by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It is critical that we always be a learning organization dedicated to the safety of our facilities.”

The completed actions represent just a portion of the inspections, upgrades, and other work undertaken by Exelon Nuclear following the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster. The company operates the largest fleet of commercial nuclear facilities in the U.S., with 17 reactors at 10 sites.

Within a week of the March 11, 2011, events, teams of engineers and technical experts from Exelon Nuclear and others in the industry traveled to Japan to provide expertise and to begin understanding as many lessons as possible from the experience. The primary lesson: expect the unexpected, and prepare for the unimaginable.

Learnings from Fukushima have translated into extensive reviews of equipment, structures, and procedures; purchases of additional backup emergency equipment; updates of emergency procedures; and additions to emergency training. At Exelon, the overriding goal is to reaffirm that its nuclear facilities and the professionals who operate and maintain them are prepared to deal with even the most severe unpredictable events.

Among other tasks completed over the past 12 months, Exelon Nuclear engineers and experts have:

• Revised more than 1,300 safety procedures and guidelines, and created new ones, based on Fukushima lessons.
• Verified the capability of all sites to withstand the most severe floods for their areas, and are in the process of re-evaluating base assumptions about maximum historical flooding.
• Broadened operator training to incorporate lessons from Fukushima.
• Inspected and validated the seismic supports and restraints for thousands of pieces of equipment and pipes.

Beyond the actions listed, in February of 2012, Exelon and the other U.S. nuclear operating companies unanimously agreed to purchase or order additional safety equipment for their plants by March 31. This includes emergency and portable equipment such as diesel driven pumps, electric generators, hoses, fittings, communications gear, and other equipment.

Well before the events at Fukushima, Exelon Nuclear facilities had multiple physical barriers and layers of backup safety systems to ensure safe operations even in extreme events, including floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes. Equipment purchases and work over the past year has strengthened those barriers and systems, and enhancements will continue for years.

All Exelon Nuclear facilities are protected from flooding by watertight doors, elevation of equipment above flood levels and specially engineered flood barriers. All sites can automatically and safely shut down and keep the fuel cooled even without electricity from the grid, using massive backup power generators that have second, third and fourth layers of backups. Reactors and other critical components are protected by concrete walls up to five-feet thick. All facilities undergo frequent emergency training and exercises involving government emergency response agencies at all levels.

Exelon Nuclear’s emergency operating procedures are constantly tested, challenged, and simulated to ensure that they will work properly when needed. Such drills are overseen by the NRC with NRC inspectors stationed at all U.S. nuclear facilities on a full–time basis.

Over the last twelve months, the U.S. nuclear industry has pooled resources to ensure the lessons fromJapan are systematically gathered, analyzed, and implemented. The process identified short and long-term actions that further increase the margin of safety at U.S. nuclear facilities.

“Exelon Nuclear is dedicated to full transparency,” said Pacilio. “We know that the more the public knows about the safety of the U.S. nuclear industry, the more confident they feel about nuclear power as a source of safe, abundant, and clean energy.”

Image Courtesy of   http://www.flickr.com/photos/m-i-k-e/

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The nation’s premier professional society for the nuclear community, the American Nuclear Society (ANS), is finalizing plans to unveil its “Special Report on Fukushima” in conjunction with the one year anniversary of the Japan earthquake and tsunami, ANS Special Committee Co-Chair and former Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Dale Klein, Ph.D., announced on March 2.

The report will be unveiled at a special press conference in Washington, DC on March 8 which will be broadcast live via a webcast at http://www.visualwebcaster.com/event.asp?id=85244.

In discussing the upcoming release of the report Klein said, “To prepare this report we gathered from our membership some of the world’s leading figures in the nuclear science and technology community. The report will look at all aspects of the events at the Fukushima plant after the earthquake and tsunami, and will include recommendations for the nuclear community, for citizens, and for policymakers as a result of the lessons we learned.”

The press conference will be held Thursday, March 8 at 10:00 a.m. EST at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Topics include Risk-Informed Regulation, Hazards from Extreme Natural Phenomena, Multiple-Unit Site Considerations, Hardware Design Modifications, Severe Accident Management Guidelines, Command and Control During a Reactor Accident, Emergency Planning, Health Physics, and Societal Risk Comparison.

For more information about the press conference call Jackie Clark at (301) 987-7113.  To participate in the webinar visit: http://www.visualwebcaster.com/event.asp?id=85244.

Committee Co-Chair Michael Corradini, Ph.D., Wisconsin Distinguished Professor Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin, concluded, “This report will also serve as an historical document for reference by those who wish to know what really happened, from a scientific and technically informed perspective, and we thank all of our Committee members for their dedication, time and service creating this report to help us understand these events and better plan for our future.”

For more information about the American Nuclear Society, please visit www.ans.org.

Established in 1954, ANS is a professional not-for-profit organization of engineers and scientists devoted to the peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology.  Its 11,600 members come from diverse technical backgrounds covering the full range of engineering disciplines as well as the physical and biological sciences.

Image Courtesy of   http://www.flickr.com/photos/kordian/

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“Tears of the Earth,” a memorial concert and photo exhibit for the Great East Japan Disaster will be presented on Sunday, March 11, 2012, 1 p.m., at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco on the first anniversary of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

The commemorative event and fundraiser will support the ongoing work of the Japan Recovery Project of the Public Health Institute (PHI) in Oakland. It will be a gathering for people to share their feelings and grieve about the disaster.

Both western classical and Japanese music and performers will be featured. Artists will include Alexander Barantschik, concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra; Shoko Hikage, playing the koto; Brenda Wong Aoki, storytelling artist; and a photography exhibit of the earthquake area by Satoshi Ueda.

The magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami that followed took more than 15,000 lives, and 3,200 people are still missing. More than 320,000 survivors evacuated from the disaster and continue to live in temporary housing. In addition, people who live close to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plants as well as people who live throughout Japan are anxious about the long-term effects of exposure to radiation through the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat.

In the past year, a slogan, “Gambare Nippon” (Fight for Recovery of Japan), was repeatedly uttered in the Japanese news media. Some progress has been made in recovery, such as cleaning up debris, building temporary housing for evacuees and recovering basic infrastructure of communities. However, a large number of evacuees and those who lost relatives and friends still experience lingering effects of depression and trauma.

The Japan Recovery Project at PHI aims to address post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health issues for the people affected by the disaster – including evacuees from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant area – in collaboration with government and nonprofit agencies. See www.jrpphi.org for more information.

The March 11 event will include remarks by Hiroshi Inomata, the Counsel General of Japan of San Francisco, Mary A. Pittman, DrPH, president and CEO of PHI, and Tooru Nemoto, Ph.D., Director, Japan Recovery Project. The event will be introduced by well-known Japanese news anchor Junko Kubo.

The multi-faceted cultural program will include a performance of the Cesar Franck Violin Sonata by Barantschik and Akimi Fukuhara, piano. Also featured will be a performance of the Vivaldi Concerto for Four Violins by violinists Yasuko Hattori, Yukiko Kurakata, Beni Shinohara, and Anni Asuka Yano accompanied by Timothy Bach. The performers include members of the San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Opera Orchestra as well as the faculty and alumni of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Traditional works from Japan for koto will be performed as well as duets for koto and violin. In addition, Brenda Wong Aoki will present a piece for story teller and Japanese instruments that were inspired by the March 11, 2011, events. The memorial will open with a solemn prayer chant by Buddhist monks accompanied by bass player Shinji Eshima of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra and bassoonist Steven Dibner of the San Francisco Symphony.

Photographer Satoshi Ueda is a resident of Rikuzen-Takata, Iwate who has devoted himself to chronicling the disaster, its aftermath, and its ongoing story on film. He has exhibited this work in Europe and Russia and will be exhibiting for the first time in the U.S. Some of his images will be projected in the theater accompanied by the solo violin music of J.S. Bach.

Violinist Yukiko Kurakata, on behalf of the performers says of the event, “This will be an occasion for all, audience members and performers, to come together as one through music to remember last year’s event and send our compassionate support for the recovery of Japan.”

Tickets are available through City Box Office at 415-392-4400 or www.cityboxoffice.com. Prices are $30 for adults and $15 for students in advance and $35 for adults and $20 for students at the door.

For more information please visit www.jrpphi.org or contact Dr. Tooru Nemoto, Project Director, tnemoto@phi.org; Mariko Iwamoto, 510-302-3373; miwamoto@phi.org

Image Courtesy of   http://www.flickr.com/photos/kordian/

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The earthquake and tsunami that destroyed parts of eastern Japan in March 2011 washed vast amounts of debris into the Pacific Ocean. The buoyant portion of that debris is making its way toward the US. Based on models, first landfall of the debris could occur in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) — designated as Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument by President George W. Bush — as early as January/February 2012.

A free 90-minute webinar this Monday, Dec. 12, will examine how US and Hawaiian resource managers and partners are preparing for impacts of the tsunami debris on the NWHI ecosystem, which includes Midway Atoll. A webinar is a Web-based seminar that allows the public to interact directly with panelists via computer or phone.

The webinar “Japanese Tsunami Marine Debris: Anticipating and Mitigating Its Impacts on the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands” starts at 10 am Hawaii time (noon Pacific; 3 pm Eastern), and is open to the media and public. To register, go to https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/864409841

The NWHI are home to 23 endangered or threatened species including the Hawaiian monk seal and several sea turtle species. The ecosystem also provides habitat for 14 million sea birds.

Lessons from the NWHI tsunami debris response, including on the nature and quantity of debris encountered, will inform responses when the debris eventually reaches the US West Coast, expected in 2013.

Panelists for the webinar will include:

• Carey Morishige, Pacific Islands Regional Coordinator, NOAA Marine Debris Program
• Ray Born, US Fish and Wildlife Service Permit Manager, Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument
• David Swatland, NOAA Deputy Superintendent, Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument
• Scott Godwin, NOAA Resource Protection Specialist, Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument
• Andrea Neal, President, Blue Ocean Sciences; and Administrator, Digital Ocean Collaborative on Marine Debris

The webinar is hosted by Marine Affairs Research and Education, or MARE. MARE is founder of the MarineDebris.Info online discussion forum and also publishes the newsletter MPA News on marine protected areas.

Co-hosting the webinar are Blue Ocean Sciences and the EBM Tools Network.

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