[akg_67]

NHK TV is showing extensive damage including fallen smokestacks at Nippon Paper Factory facility, bridge road separation, fallen bridge lane, road cracks, fire, water coming out of drainage etc. It was a huge earthquake and will take some time to assess the damage.

[Gravityloss]

I at least can see English translated version of NHK here https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/live_tv/

[ktallett]

There is a collapsed roof of a shopping centre as well in Kumamoto. The Aeon Mall.

[kalleboo]

The mall had a (most likely gas) explosion, and there are many dead being found inside https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/-/2833412?display=1

[traceroute66]

> The mall had a (most likely gas) explosion

If the internet searches are to be believed, that is indeed sadly likely to be the cause.

The internet suggests the explosion happened on the second floor of the mall where a large food court is located.

[bombcar]

A hundred years from now people are going to be absolutely flabbergasted how we just piped gas everywhere all the time.

Electricity allows for so many more automatic safeguards.

[traceroute66]

> Electricity allows for so many more automatic safeguards.

Since the mid-2000s there has actually been a push by Japanese utility companies for adoption of what they call "all-electric" オール電化.

Adoption has been reasonably good with new-builds because they can also have solar panels. But adoption in older properties has been slower.

First in general, electricity in Japan has tended to be more expensive than gas.

Second, a large Part of the slow adoption comes from cooking related inertia.

A lot of traditional (and therefore very common) Japanese cookware just will not work on electric, full stop. For example, traditional donabe (clay pots).

Beyond that, for example, aluminium pans being non-ferromagnetic will not work on induction. Yes you find aluminium pans in the West with extra ferromagnetic bases attached, but that is not common in Japan.

Finally, the Japan Society of Cookery Science did commission a study[1] where they had two groups of people cook four dishes on both gas and induction. The conclusion was gas was preferred across all four.

[1]https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/cookeryscience/47/6/47_...

[ctime]

“People used to cooking with gas, cook better with gas”

Induction offers the benefits of not emitting noxious fumes, the dangers of transporting gas over long distances in bulk, the fire hazards inside the home, and dependency on single source energy.

Electricity, via induction cooktops, is often faster, more energy efficient, safer for everyone, and doesn’t depend on whatever regime or state wants to play games with the supply. Where I live, electricity is often sold at negative rates for most of the day and that electricity is now going into batteries at a massive scale. It seems unlikely gas has any future, outside of niche cooking or industrial/commercial uses.

[perpetuallunch]

I’ve worked in appliance repair and have worked on induction cook tops.

I wouldn’t recommend buying one. The fancier models have a stupendous number of circuit boards in them, and obviously a lot of power electronics, as well as cooling fans. Probably buy the cheapest model with the least number of features that you can bear the sight of, style matters in a kitchen, if you have to buy one at all.

I’ve simplified by cooking to an electric pressure cooker, which also functions as a slow cooker and pot for frying, an air fried, and a microwave. No kettle, no pots or pans, no cooktop, no oven. An oven would be useful I suppose if I were cooking for more people. The pressure cooker plus air frier is a faster and more convenient substitute for roasting meat.

As they become more common and age, I predict induction cooktops will have a much higher failure rate than dumb rheostat controlled resistive element cooktops. Everything has a much higher failure rate than dumb resistive element cooktops. And they are much easier to repair with very few parts: a resistive element and a rheostat.

I’ve don’t quite a good many replacements of fully functional dumb resistive cooktops and ovens with the new version of the same model, simply because the 70 to 80 year old residence wanted something newer and shinier, even though the new model is almost identical to the 20 to 30 year old model they’re replacing.

Improper installation of induction cooktops in older kitchens with out the necessary cabinet work to correctly ventilate them is a big problem too.

Anyways, gas is a great source of energy especially for commercial and industrial cooking and heating, where electric is simply impractical due to the immense amount of power required.

At home, sure. The typical setup requires less than 10kW. Trivial.

In a food court or restaurant strip currently serviced by gas, the electricity requirement could easily exceed 1 megawatt, which means major infrastructure upgrades, and you’ll never get the rapid heat control like gas provides, which is essential in reasonable service times, along with the fact that gas cookers are infinitely simpler and have very low failure rates compared to anything electric that is put through repeated thermo cycling 16 or 24hrs a day.

[rawgabbit]

I see some places in the Japanese countryside where homeowners get propane tanks delivered to them for cooking? I believe in an earthquake prone country, this is safer than having natural gas piped to their homes?

The problem I think is that Japanese culture values hot baths daily. Heating water for the bath using electricity is still too costly.

[jakzurr]

At the plastics plant I worked at in the 2010's, they had seismic emergency valves for the natural gas. At the time, I thought they were such a pain, as the vibration caused by a semi-trailer bumping a warehouse dock could cause them to shut off. (But it only took a screwdriver and 2 minutes to reset the valve.)

Now I'm thinking such valves are a good measure. I have no idea if they could work in such a major quake, though - for example, if the gas line fractured farther back from the seismic cutoff valve?

[dfxm12]

The study doesn't appear to be blind (not sure how you can do a blind cooking test). Also, The panellists were satisfied with cooking when they could control the heat as desired suggests inexperience with electric is a part of preference (as a personal anecdote, it took me a few months to get used to an electric stove in a new house after a lifetime of cooking on gas). This is also over a decade old. There have been some advancements in electric cookery since.

[mishellaneous]

odd not to mention resistance heating in what otherwise seems like a thorough review of the question

[Danox]

It’s just the price of living on the Pacific ring of fire. What are you going do give up modern living in a modern country and live in tents, it is the price to pay living on or near tectonic plates, as a resident who has lived several 6.0-7.0 magnitude quakes (California) they are much easier to live through than living in hurricane or tornado alley or living in places where there is a deep freeze every other year, although in Japan, you can get the trifecta, a earthquake, Cyclone (in the south) and a deep freeze in the north Hokkaido.

Japan is a beautiful modern country and they have gotten through worse and they will get through this too.

I will admit in recent times the area between the Philippines north to the Kamchatka Peninsula is one most active areas on the planet at some point a 9.0 earthquake will happen in a major populated area on land but something that large usually happens once every 15 to 326 years.

The largest earthquake in California was 7.9, second largest 7.8 in San Francisco, the largest earthquake on west coast of North America 9.0 was Vancouver island in 1700.

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/official17...

Coincidentally the Japanese recorded a mild tsunami at the time on their side of the Pacific.

Hurricanes and tornadoes are more immediate threats along with a heat wave or a cold snap.

[kalleboo]

Yeah it's crazy to me, especially in earthquake-prone places like Japan or California.

I bought a house here in Japan last year and replaced the gas with all-electric due to concerns of not only leaks and disasters but also just in day-to-day use gas isn't good for indoor air quality.

[UltraSane]

The one place gas makes sense is heating in cold climates because furnaces are externally vented.

[qurren]

And compressed flammable gas canisters, which are sadly common all over Asia. If they leak due to structural compromise, e.g. being squashed by falling concrete, there isn't really a shutoff valve you can use.

[sandworm101]

Replicating the power density of a gas pipe requires far more than 110v ac. The future might wonder why we accepted the danger of 5,000v power lines running through food courts just to avoid using gas burners.

[kalleboo]

You wouldn't multiply the volts, you'd multiply the amps, by using a separate sub-breaker for each shop, which you're doing anyway since you want to meter them separately.

This is already the norm in lots of Europe. It's not some weird new thing. In Sweden, no mall food courts have natural gas hookups, it's all three-phase electrical appliances. It's been like this forever (since Sweden has craploads of hydro and nuclear and zero gas).

[lynguist]

We use 400V in Europe (in the most modern infrastructure, probably since the early 2000s) and have roughly 1.7x the power of gas for cooking. Gas measures at around 4.5kW and the modern induction stoves are at 7.5kW (old "ceran" electric cooking fields are 3.5kW)

[vel0city]

I agree there's a huge amount of energy that would need to go into a commercial kitchen to replace gas, and I also agree its probably a bit unfeasible at a lot of locations with current technology to do it at any reasonable scale and have it be economically efficient.

However, you're not really being honest by suggesting things have to either be 110VAC or 5,000V. Even residentially, an electric range isn't often going to be operating at 110VAC aide from some portable single burner things, you'll likely see them operate at 208V or 240V. And when it comes to commerical equipment it'll likely be three-phase, so its not like you need a single massive conductor running thousands of volts to power it. For something like a shopping mall, you're already likely to have some pretty massive electrical infrastructure feeding the facility running at something like 13.8kV. At that step down point, do a few big 480Y three-phase runs over towards the food court, then do 208Y three-phase to the ranges.

To be fair though, I'm mostly speaking from a US-grid mindset here. I don't really know the specifics about what would be done in Japan, but I imagine it would be somewhat similar. I'm also not necessarily arguing they should do it, but its not as impossible or ridiculous as you're making it seem.

[idiotsecant]

haha who is cooking on 5kv?

[doublerabbit]

Ehh, without gas we wouldn't have electricity.

Gas was the most efficient way to produce electricity for its time. I agree money should of been piped in to infrastructure upgrades when the ability came yet still.

[vel0city]

About 40% of the electricity coming to my house from the grid is from renewable sources, and I live in a state where if it was ranked against countries around the world would be the 3rd biggest natural gas producer.

[lstodd]

Electrical is inadequate power delivery-wise and requires completely different cookware to the point that it's a different cuisine.

For example to replicate a gas burner you have to have above 15KW continious power. Good luck wiring that into your apartment, or feeding this with local solar. Or even finding an induction stovetop that won't melt its insides in a year or two at a measly 5KW.

[qurren]

https://www.impulselabs.com/ achieves this by storing energy in a battery. 120V15A in to charge, 10kW out for short durations. I don't have one, but it's an interesting concept.

That said, I don't know what's better, a massive lithium battery in the kitchen that can be set into thermal runaway, or a gas line.

But also, most Japanese styles of cooking doesn't need those levels of power anyway. 4-5kW induction hobs running on a proper 240V outlet or whatever the Japanese industrial equivalent is are usually plenty for most professional cooking.

[kalleboo]

Gas has more raw power but it's extremely inefficient because most of it just escapes into the room, whereas with induction it all goes into the cookware. Our induction stove boils water way faster than our gas one did, and the gas one on full blast melted and ruined the handle on the pot since so much of the heat escapes around the sides.

Technology Connections on YouTube has done videos on the topic, comparing electric to gas, showing that even old-school resistive electric is faster than gas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yMMTVVJI4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUywI8YGy0Y

[ses1984]

Something doesn’t make sense here because an electric kettle operating at 120v at less than 10 amps will boil water much faster than the large burner on my stove.

[com2kid]

50% of a gas burner's power goes into the air.

Every test done comparing residential gas vs induction burners has shown induction burners heat up pots and pans faster than gas.

Induction puts ~98% of the energy right into your pan. (Based on how losses are measured, some say 90%, whatever, it is way more than 50%!)

> Electrical is inadequate power delivery-wise and requires completely different cookware to the point that it's a different cuisine.

There are Chinese induction wok cooktops that have a curved bottom so a wok fits in and can be heated up all around. Sadly the ones sold here in the states are just 120v, really wish I could get my kitchen stove equipped with one of those running at full power. Though honestly even 240v is limiting.

[klausa]

I can personally guarantee you that the average Japanese コンロ does not have a heat output that would require 15kW of power to match using IH.

And that’s before we get into the safety features of modern ones that bring that limit even lower.

[numpad0]

Most Japanese household stoves top out at 5kW per burner. IH stoves are limited to 3kW per burner for 5.8kW combined by radio regulations. 15kW is a figure for combined output or for restaurant burners.

It's apparently not great but not substantially worse either, and it's not like 5kW output of gas stoves are plenty for serious cooking in the first place so it's okay.

[UltraSane]

Most heat from gas burners is wasted heating the room. Induction is vastly more efficient.

[perching_aix]

> For example to replicate a gas burner you have to have above 15KW continious power.

Where are you getting this from? 15K BTU sure, but 15K watts? Do you mean the entire stove?

[kalleboo]

This article has confirmation that there was a report of a gas leak, and if you scroll down there is a dashcam video of the explosion https://news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/na-k10015188721000

[m4rtink]

For the record, Aeon Mall is basically a brand - there are many Aeon malls in Japan in various cities.

[ktallett]

Yes but there is just one in Kumamoto.

[timr]

The second floor of the mall exploded for some reason, and the roof collapse is secondary to that. It seems to have happened after the earthquake and subsequent evacuation. There are videos of people leaving the mall:

https://x.com/yuto4388/status/2082060992377475247/video/1?s=...

[ktallett]

It is due to a gas leak that caused an explosion.

[timr]

It definitely wasn't known at the time I wrote my comment, and as far as I know right now, they haven't announced the cause.

Few things would create an explosion of this size, so it's a logical inference, but you never know.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20260728_30/

Local (i.e. Japanese language) news is speculating an LP leak.

[vondur]

That mall was also damaged in a similar earthquake that happened in 2016.

[kalleboo]

And ironically in their press release for the re-open they said they re-built it with more disaster-proofing with the knowledge from the previous disaster...

[bobthepanda]

The emerging thing is that the earthquake caused a gas leak which later caused an explosion. Pipes will just go out of alignment during an earthquake, there isn’t a ton you can do to prevent that wholly.

My question is why upon calling in a gas leak, the mall was not immediately evacuated and cordoned off.

[kalleboo]

I've always wondered why automatic earthquake shutoff valves weren't a requirement. Apparently they're required in some areas of the US by surprisingly recent code (2013 in Los Angeles is what I'm seeing?) but I've never heard of it in Japan. Maybe this incident will be a regulatory turning point.