On 04/09/2013 22:10, dennis@home wrote:
On 04/09/2013 21:12, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Japan is suffering a massive balance of payments problem, spiralling
import bills and regular power cuts.

Understandable given that Tepco made such a pigs ear of managing the
crisis at Fukushima. It isn't their first MFU either they had a serious
passive criticality incident at Tokaimura a decade or so before. That
was by procedural cock-up with highly enriched research grade fuel.

It'll be fine once winter starts.

Yes. It will be. The most heavily populated parts have dry winter
weather that apart from a few days of snow is shirt sleeve weather for
us most of the time. The west coast and Hokkaido get lots of snow and
the latter gets very cold but it isn't heavily populated.

The places that do get cold they have high tech paraffin powered space
heaters or just run their aircon in reverse but it isn't really forced
to work very hard by comparison with summers at 35C and 90+% humidity.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown