In a major setback to world-renowned Japanese research, the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake seriously damaged many leading institutes of science and technology and is forcing delays in important projects.
In a major setback to world-renowned Japanese research, the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake seriously damaged many leading institutes of science and technology and is forcing delays in important projects.
The entire damage to all the research institutes and the effect on future studies is still unknown. However, the initial toll showed a wide impact on the scientific community from northeastern Japan to Tokyo.
In a research institute in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, which suffered tremors of lower 6 on the Japanese intensity scale of seven, samples from life science, which had been accumulated over many years, were lost. In an institute in Tokai, also in Ibaraki, a massive particle accelerator, one of the top of its kind in the world, was damaged.
About 300 research institutes, including those run by private companies, are located in Tsukuba. One of them, the state-run University of Tsukuba's Gene Research Center, one of the core facilities in Japan to study genetically modified plants, suffered power blackouts for two days.
Because of the outages, temperature in freezers, which had been kept at minus 80 degrees Celsius, rose to nearly zero degrees. As a result, gene samples, which the center had kept at the request of researchers, were damaged.
"We even lost samples which we had gathered over nearly 20 years. There is a possibility that we cannot recover them even if we try to do so. We cannot calculate the damages either," said the center's director, Hiroshi Kamada.
In the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), ventilation devices that purify harmful gases from electronic microscopes and chemical experiments suffered serious damage, which is expected to total several billions of yen.
At the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, the particle accelerator that had contributed to the winning of the Nobel Prize in Physics by Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa in 2008, also was damaged.
Devices that accelerate electrons and others were broken. An electric magnet, which weighed more than 400 kilograms, fell and control devices were also damaged.
As the organization currently is getting less than one-thirtieth of its electricity from Tokyo Electric Power Co. than usual, it cannot inspect all its equipment and cannot grasp the entire scope of the damage.
It will thus be difficult for the organization to analyze minute particles that were returned to Earth by the asteroid probe Hayabusa. The analysis was scheduled to be conducted next month.
In the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC), located in Tokai village, also in Ibaraki Prefecture, compound roads caved in and many devices were damaged.
As J-PARC requires large amounts of electricity to operate its equipment, it cannot restart operations in the summer when demand for electricity increases. Therefore, the operation will be resumed six months later at the earliest, J-PARC officials said.
In the life science field, it is crucial for researchers to maintain living objects for experiments.
Junken Aoki, a Tohoku University professor, transferred tropical fish for experiments to an acquaintance's research room in Tokyo as he couldn't maintain a high enough water temperature for them due to power blackouts. However, he was able to transfer only 50 of his 3,000 fish.
"Though I was able to keep some of the fish, my studies will be delayed for six to 12 months," Aoki said.
The impact on research is spreading even outside the areas affected by the earthquake.
The University of Tokyo is refraining from implementing experiments that require large amounts of electricity. The National Institute of Genetics (NIG) in Mishima, Shizuoka Prefecture, is suspending part of a database on gene information of animals and plants because of rolling blackouts.
As for the serious situation surrounding researchers, Nobel Prize winner Kobayashi said, "If studies in affected areas obtain support from research institutes in other parts of the country and cooperation from foreign countries, the delay of the studies will be minimalized. We must not stop the progress of science studies in Japan."
(This article was written by Hirohiko Nakamura and Shigeko Segawa.)