A quick post about the situation in Japan.
I did not feel anything of the earthquake (I was in Hyogo prefecture at the time), although one of my colleagues did feel something close to Osaka. SPring-8 is equally unaffected. The tsunami did not come anywhere near. Overall, the Japanese colleagues seem to be taking it coolly, with most of the complaints about the troubles with the public transport system.
J-PARC was apparently damaged by the earthquake, but was not affected (fortunately) by the tsunami. More updates on that can be found on the J-PARC twitter page: http://twitter.com/J_PARC
The (foreign) media is causing needless panic on the nuclear situation. A layman writeup of the lack of danger can be found here:
OP-ed
And a more technical description and updates on that situation can be found here:
MIT
While also affected by the media hubbub on the reactors, information on the actual disaster area and its deaths is most well reported (in my opinion) by NHK:
NHK international news
–update– A colleague sent me a link to the IAEA page which also contains continuous reactor status updates: here
Finally, if you are willing to help, consider donating to a reputed organization (i.e. red cross, UN organisations or doctors without borders) rather than one of those one-time relief funds (as some of the “save katrina” and “Aceh”-funds turned out to be fake).
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