Land Of The Rising Core Temperature, Part 9

As Japanese officials continue to struggle to cool the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, the US State Department is offering to pull families of American government personnel in the country out.  The real problem isn't the radiation however, but something far more mundane:  a massive blackout due to loss of power generation capacity.

An unscheduled, large-scale power outage is possible in Tokyo and surrounding areas on Thursday evening if power demand exceeds that of this morning, Japan's trade minister said.

Trade minister Banri Kaieda said demand this morning almost reached the available capacity of Tokyo Electric Power Co due partly to lower temperatures than normal, adding that electricity demand usually peaks in the evening or early night.

"There is a possibility of unpredictable, large-scale blackout. In order to make sure to avoid the unexpected, we'd like to ask industry users to save electricity and ordinary people to save electricity in the evening and at night," Kaieda said at an extraordinary news conference in the afternoon.

TEPCO's power supply capacity is 33,500 mega watts(MW) for Thursday, but power demand this morning reached a peak of 32,920 MW, Kaieda said, compared with a peak of 32,500 MW on Wednesday.

In a sign that Tokyo residents were heeding the call, the central Akasaka area, its narrow streets lined up with sushi restaurants and noodle shops normally packed with office workers and lit up by neon signs and glowing office towers, was submerged in near darkness.

Some ATMs are down in Japan and people in the northern part of the country continue to struggle without power, water, and food.  The situation is far more likely to produce casualties from the cold and lack of food and running water than the radiation right now.  The official death toll is nearing 6,000 but expected to go much higher.

The odds of a major recession in Japan are near absolute at this point.  The effects of the Sendai earthquake will be felt around the world in 2011 and beyond.