Genpatsu-shinsai: the language of disaster that is stalking Japan

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2112763.ece

July 21, 2007
Genpatsu-shinsai: the language of disaster that is stalking Japan
Leo Lewis in Tokyo

Japan’s turbulent history of war and natural catastrophe has already given the world a terrifying vocabulary of death: tsunami, kamikaze, Hiroshima.

But the country now stands on the brink of unleashing its most chilling phrase yet: genpatsu-shinsai – the combination of an earthquake and nuclear meltdown capable of destroying millions of lives and bringing a nation to its knees.

The phrase, derived from the Japanese words for “nuclear power” and “quake disaster”, is the creation of Katsuhiko Ishibashi, Japan’s leading seismologist and one of the Government’s top advisers on nuclear-quake safety. He said that the world may never know how close it came to its first genpatsu-shinsai this week. Luck, as much an anything else, helped to avert it.

A 6.8 magnitude quake, which shook Niigata on Monday and left thousands of homes uninhabitable, was three times more powerful than the designers of the nearest nuclear power plant – Kashiwazaki-Kariwa – had prepared for, or even imagined.

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