International Law

Shutdown proceeding well

Posted on March 20, 2011
The latest update from Kyodonews: Units 5 and 6 are in cold shutdown. The upper side of the containment of Unit 3 was at 128 degrees Celsius yesterday. Power is back at Units 2 and 5, work is in progress to restart systems still working. Unit 4 has taken 160 tons of water spraying yesterday...

Hydrogen explosions helped

Posted on March 20, 2011
Those hydrogen explosions last week were rather spectacular and contributed to fears about the shutdown process. However, it turns out that with the roofs blown off from some of the Units it is easier to cool the spent fuel pools, since it would be impossible to spray water from the ground on those pools with [...

No risk from rain

Posted on March 20, 2011
says the latest news release from the Japanese Government (no fixed link, so this will move down shortly). I for one will feel better with rain, since rain washes away pollen now at the yearly peak.

93 nanosievert

Posted on March 20, 2011
this morning in Tokio. That is somewhat more than yesterday, might be caused by the fact that it is raining right now, the first time since the earthquake. If this doubles again we might hit the levels of Austria for a short period. All levels given are maximum numbers, the average is lower.

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Solar Panels for Disaster Area

Posted on March 19, 2011
From todays Al Jazeira’s Live Blog: “3:39am Japanese electronic companies including Sharp, Panasonic and Shin Kobe Electric Machinery have said they plan to deliver solar panels and lanterns to the disaster area next week.” This is an interesting development when thinking about providing personal solar panels and lanterns to Mongolia...

Ganbare Nippon

Posted on March 19, 2011
(bumped) I would like to get a balloon with the message ?Ganbare Nippon? floating right at the Fukushima site. That balloon should be well visible, via all those television reports. It should also transport a small camera to look closely at the plants from above, giving the operators valuable information...

Energy from the Desert

Posted on March 19, 2011
(First posted June 4th 2006, at my “Hydrogen Mongolia” Blog, republished.) This post starts a new category with the title “Energy from the Desert”. There I will discuss the 2004 book with that title edited by Kosuke Kurokawa. It is the result of research in the framework of the International Energy Agency, more specifically in [...

Full Meltdown Highly Unlikely

Posted on March 19, 2011
at this point, says this Dailykos dairy. The author seems to know what he’s talking about.

Japanese Wind Energy

Posted on March 19, 2011
not damaged by earthquake, including a facility located at the Ibaraki coast 300 km from the earthquake epicenter.

MIT Blog

Posted on March 19, 2011
The MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering has a blog with good updates and informed comment about the accident. This post a couple of days ago by Josef Oehmen is especially noteworthy.

John Beddington Worst Case Scenario

Posted on March 19, 2011
John Beddington is the English Government’s Chief Scientific Officer. A couple of days ago he spoke to the British Embassy in Tokyo. I found his comments on a possible worst case scenario interesting. If some of the fuel melts and hits the concrete below, there will be an explosion...

Units 5 and 6 Spent Fuel Pools

Posted on March 19, 2011
Cooling systems now working again, reports NHK a couple of moments ago.

Moore?s Law for Solar?

Posted on March 19, 2011
Ramez Naam at the American Scientist runs the numbers for 30 years of solar prices and finds a consistent reduction by 7 percent per year. He says that solar will be on parity with coal soon and cost half of coal in 2030, if these trends hold on. Oil will get much more expensive until [...

Reduced Radiation Level at Nuclear Plant Site

Posted on March 19, 2011
NHK just reported that the level at 500 meters from the plant has decreased by about one quarter or about 800 microsievert following cooling by fire engines. Even stabilizing the increase would be enough at this point, so reducing levels is very good news.

Ganbare Nippon

Posted on March 19, 2011
(bumped) I would like to get a balloon with the message ?Ganbare Nippon? floating right at the Fukushima site. That balloon should be well visible, via all those television reports. It should also transport a small camera to look closely at the plants from above, giving the operators valuable information...

Jerome on Gas after Fukushima

Posted on March 19, 2011
I have been reading “Jerome a Paris” at the Dailykos site for a long time. He does financing for wind energy for a living and knows a thing or two about the industry. His latest diary talks about the idea that natural gas should take up the slack left by moving away from nuclear energy...

48.9 Nanosievert

Posted on March 19, 2011
this morning in Tokio. I fail to see why the German Embassy needed to relocate to Osaka with these numbers.

Ganbare Nippon

Posted on March 18, 2011
I would like to get a balloon with the message ?Ganbare Nippon? floating right at the Fukushima site. That balloon should be well visible, via all those television reports. It should also transport a small camera to look closely at the plants from above, giving the operators valuable information...

Tokio 49.6 Nanosievert

Posted on March 18, 2011
at 8 AM on March 19. That compares to avarages of 70 to 200 in Austria. (Thanks to a mail by eurotechnology.com for the latter link).

Introducing New Categories

Posted on March 18, 2011
I have just added two new categories. The category “Fukushima” will discuss the nuclear accident. The category “Energy” will discuss large-scale and personal renewable energy.

Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement

Posted on October 07, 2010
The text of an “Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement” has been published, see the EU press release here and in-depth commentary by Sean Flynn at the “Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property” of American University Washington College of Law...

Constitutional Court Copyright Decision

Posted on September 24, 2010
A decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court on a copyright question was published a couple of days ago. That decision is about the question whether the compensation system for private copies extends to computer printers. In Germany, there is an exception from copyright for private use...

Horns on Scalability of the Patent System

Posted on July 27, 2010
Axel Horns is discussing the relation between software patents and copyright here. He says that there is a “myth” of software patents being used as a tool of dispossession against the copyright programmers earned by writing something. This is a “myth”, in his view, since programmers need to check for patents, just as someone who [...

IRENA Ratification

Posted on July 20, 2010
Council Decision 2010/385/EU of 24th June 2010 published in Official Journal L 178/17 has ratified the accession of the EU to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). That Decision is accompanied by a declaration of competences laying out the respective competences of the Member States and of the Union with respect to this international organization, [...

1 926 876 368

Posted on July 20, 2010
That is the number allocated by Commission Decision 2010/384 /EU of July 9th 2010, published in the Official Journal L 175 on July 10th. This is the first time the sum of allowances under the European Union Emission Trading System is set by the Commission for the whole block...

Technical Problems

Posted on July 17, 2010
I am experiencing technical problems with this blog, probably caused by the fact that I have neglected to update the Wordpress installation for a couple of years. I have succeeded in importing my posts to a new installation at a different webhost. Therefore I am redirecting from k...

European Copyright Legislation Proposal

Posted on April 29, 2010
A group of copyright scholars has developed a proposal for European copyright legislation, online here. Their proposals seem to be reasonable and worthy of support. On first impression, the best feature is how they group various limitations with similar functions, and how they clearly include guidelines on compensation for their limitations...

Germany Violating Berne Convention

Posted on April 29, 2010
Germany joins Japan in violating the prohibition of formality requirements in Article 5 of the Berne Convention. In contrast to Japan the German treaty violation is done by case law, by a decision of the Federal Court of Justice from April 29. The decision as such is not yet online, only a press release (in German)...

German Constitutional Court Surveillance Decision

Posted on April 13, 2010
I have just finished translating the decision of the German Constitutional Court on the law implementing the 2006 Surveillance Directive into Japanese (all of it), and posted it here. I am looking forward to discuss it on May 7 in a meeting of the Japanese Academic Study Society for German Constitutional Law...

Google Criminal Conviction

Posted on February 24, 2010
An Italian court has convicted several employees of Google for criminal violation of Italian privacy laws, as reported on the Google Public Policy Blog. I have been highly critical of Google’s privacy policy on this blog. However, that court decision is clearly wrong...

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