The Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

[Fury]

Saw this on Tumblr:

USA lost many lives on 9-11-01 and now Japan has lost more lives on 3-10-11. add the 2 dates together and you get 12-21-12.

For those that don't know, 12-21-12, is when the Mayans predicted the end of the world.

you could say it was 3-11 for Japan when it happened, though....

[Alastor]

Here is a bit more about meltdown and other related things. Huge blast at Japan nuclear power plant

Seems it's still not known how serious the situation is.

[Wab]

Except as far as the Japanese are concerned (and they have bigger issues) the earthquake was on 10/03/2011. The US is the only country which uses the mm/dd/yyyy notation.

[gertiekeddle]

Originally Posted by Alastor

Seems it's still not known how serious the situation is.

Yep, atom energy supporters and enemies alike agree that nobody in this world knows to this point how big the damage will be. Japanese officials claim the steal casing of the reactor (which currently has this fission) is still intact though, despite the explosion of the building walls around it. I very much hope this is true.
There are no updates about the other damaged reactors- hopefully that also is good news.

[flimseycauldron]

I imagine that even if the situation can be handled now another aftershock could totally collapse the plant(s).

[Siriusandme]

Originally Posted by gertiekeddle

Yep, atom energy supporters and enemies alike agree that nobody in this world knows to this point how big the damage will be. Japanese officials claim the steal casing of the reactor (which currently has this fission) is still intact though, despite the explosion of the building walls around it. I very much hope this is true.
There are no updates about the other damaged reactors- hopefully that also is good news.

Apparently it was the pumping system that caused the explosion...

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/as...ex.html?hpt=T1

[Lord Godric]

Originally Posted by Alastor

I'm not sure that I'll take it too seriously when Forbes cites a specialist working for a propaganda institution (Beyond Nuclear ). He may have an axe to grind.

That some nuclear plants seem to have some troubles is however a fact. Japan declares nuclear emergency

The same information I heard on multiple news programs, but that was the only link that stressed the importance of returning electricity to the area, not just getting coolant there.

Originally Posted by gertiekeddle

Officials claim that the explosion didn't add to the dangers already happening due to the (likely) nuclear fusion, but the latter alone of course already is the biggest damage which can happen at a nuclear plant.

An nuclear expert which name I didn't understood (maybe it was Sailer) claimed at the radio an half hour ago that Japanese officials must be very worried since they be now raised the restricted zone up to 20 miles. His view on the explosion is that it in fact is supporting the spread of radiation highly (Japanese officials confirmed that there have been leaks already, they just claim this new big leak doesn't make a difference in this). The expert said he's already sure that officials must know that the fusion is happening, but not speculate about it only and calls the catastrophe already as bad as Chernobyl. It might, in his view, get even worse, depending on weather issues and whether it's still possible to work in the contamined area to rescue the other reactors.

It seems people are also asked to take potassium iodide meds now. Both, the meds and the evacuation I actually judge positively. We're (hopefully) over a time where a State can't take according measures because otherwise people instantly believe things are worse than it is told.

However, even if this guy is partly wrong, the situations is shockingly enough. There seems to be not much what humans still can do to prevent an other damages on the two destroyed nuclear plants - for particular is the area is already restricted. The best news by now are that the wind blows towards the coast, but not towards further cities. That's a short-time relief, though.


ETA: The German expert was right. Japanese officials have confirmed that they by now know that there is a nuclear fusion. There seems to be still hope that the explosion in Daiishi didn't hit the reactor itself, though. What's up in Daini (the second no more cooled reactor) seems to be unknown at this point. Anyhoo: the nuclear catastrophe is there, people get evacuated, get meds and a nuclear rescue medicine team has instaled their department 5 miles from Daiishi.

That's terribly frightening news. And it seems like it's only going to get worse.

[gertiekeddle]

By now news crawl a wee bit back: seems I'm not the only one with translation issues from German to English, also from Japanese to English it doesn't seem to be fully clear what a fission consists of. Either that's a tactics by the officials to avoid a panic. That imo isn't necessary: people seem to stay as calm as possible and evacuation measures run anyway. Or it really is still that unclear since nobody can check that closely. However, official statements say the nuclear accounts didn't raise after the explosion what seems to confirm that it indeed didn't damage the steal casing of the actual reactor. Still, three people seem to be under medical observation yet because they were diagnosed as contaminated with radiation.

[Alastor]

According to the latest news, the cooling process is under control and the situation stabilized.

I'm afraid that, as usually, it will take days before we know everything about it.

[gertiekeddle]

I didn't yet hear that (just that they wanted to try something with sea water) - that what be better news than expected a few hours ago, however horrible the already existing damage is.

Agreeing that there will be many things unclear for some time still. My best hope is that the officials were honest and got the humans out of the area in time.

[Alastor]

I recall my TV news saying something about bringing in seawater with trucks. Maybe it helped.

[wandrider]

Here is an excellent "quick explanation" about what "a meltdown" means & the temperatures involved to melt things.

The key to limiting damage will be to cool the rods or core with enough water to prevent melting of various materials. Melting metal casings is bad, but melting the ceramic fissionable pellets in the casing is disastrous.

Key to everything is getting the cooling water in circulation, so the temperatures can not get too hot & start melting the core materials.

(Reuters) - The Japanese nuclear safety agency rated the damage at a nuclear power plant at Fukushima at a four on a scale of one to seven, which is not quite as bad as the Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979, which registered a five. But what does that mean?

The International Atomic Energy Agency -- an inter-governmental organization for scientific co-operation in the nuclear field -- said it uses the scale to communicate to the public in a consistent way the safety significance of nuclear and radiological events.

The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) ranges from one to seven with the most serious being a seven referred to as a "major accident", while a one is an "anomaly". The scale is designed so the severity of an event is about ten times greater for each increase in level.

The Chernobyl explosion in the Ukraine in 1986, the worst nuclear power accident ever, was rated a seven. That was the only event classified as a major accident in nuclear power history, exploded due to an uncontrolled power surge that damaged the reactor core, releasing a radioactive cloud that blanketed Europe.

The Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania was a partial core meltdown in which the metal cladding surrounding the fuel rods started to melt. That metal surrounds the ceramic uranium fuel pellets, which hold most of the radiation and power the reactor.

Nuclear reactors operate at between 550 and 600 degrees F (between 288 and 316 degrees C). The metal on the fuel rods will not melt until temperatures are well above 1000 degrees F. The ceramic uranium pellets themselves won't melt until about 2000 degrees.

About half the reactor core at Three Mile Island melted before operators restored enough cooling water to stop the meltdown. The core holds the uranium fuel rods, which must be cooled by water to prevent overheating.

So what happened at Fukushima? (Article continues...)
=================================
My response:

No one knows exactly. It takes time to get the cooling working properly & time to access & assess the damage. For now, a "4" rating is good compared to "7". Hopefully, it is already unable to go higher in number, which is dependent on the design prevention "fail-safe" & earthquake damage.

I know there is at least one nuclear power plant in California that is not far from fault-lines, so that specific plant has been controversial since the 1970's.

Did you see the explosion on the video? If not, then find the link I posted and watch that! Wow, that was taken from very far away, so the size of that explosion was truly massive. That looked to be a giant building or area that was "blown to kingdom come" in an instant. Just huge.

Has anyone seen any helicopter overhead video above that explosion area to assess the damage??? There should be some video soon, by Sunday, otherwise I think there must be "a news blackout" to cover-up what damage the explosion caused.

Hey, use Google satellite images to see any damage. If anyone knows how to get the coordinates or can zoom down to the nuclear plant, then there should be some recent satellite images. I'm sure someone is paying for a satellite to image that area now. We need Google satellite to do that now too...

[Moriath]

Here is a really informative article about the nuclear plants by a person who works in the field. Basically they say that they do indeed have everything under control, even if things explode, melt and overheat. It's not the only valid opinion on this, of course, but it is a very valid counter-piece to the current fearmongering articles and reports in the media.

[wandrider]

Originally Posted by Moriath

Here is a really informative article about the nuclear plants by a person who works in the field. Basically they say that they do indeed have everything under control, even if things explode, melt and overheat. It's not the only valid opinion on this, of course, but it is a very valid counter-piece to the current fearmongering articles and reports in the media.

Thanks for that article. Here is an excerpt:

The plant's containment dome will be contaminated as a result of being the reception location for the steam that boils away while the operators are trying to restore cooling flow. That water will have contacted the core and will contain some of the core material as the cladding gets overheated and damaged.

Radiation levels inside the containment will be many times higher than usual, but that is okay because no one needs routine access inside containment buildings and no humans will be over exposed. The containment walls, reactor coolant piping, and other equipment inside the containment building will condense and capture much of the radioactive materials that are entrained in the water. Other than those vented noble gases mentioned above, essentially nothing will be released to the environment.
===============================

What I saw on the news today has me very concerned, because "the top" of an entire containment building was exploded away! Poof!!! The new photograph shows the giant building's whole top part gone!!!

That was a truly massive explosion to cause that. This means there was EXTREME pressure build-up taking place, until the entire building top blew off, so it must be gotten under control ASAP. Maybe 'that' explosion was caused by explosive gases too?

But, an MIT nuclear expert said, if the new report is true, that they are using Sea Water to cool the core, then this means that nuclear plant is sacrificed forever. The MIT expert said there will be no recovery for any core that used emergency Sea Water to cool it. This is because the Sea Water used with Boric Acid added will destroy its ability to be repaired for future power generation according to the MIT nuclear expert.

So, apparently, at least one nuclear facility is destroyed forever. It will never come online again.

Just wait till you see that picture of the giant containment building's entire top blown away -totally gone!!! It really is scary that could happen, and, imo, there should be some 'gravity fed' or stored static water pressure ways of cooling that don't require electric pumps to cool the fission rods. I think that is a fail-safe that should be incorporated into the design... provide 'gravity fed' or stored static water pressure cooling in case of emergencies.

[Pox Voldius]

Looks like that quake moved the entire island of Honshu (the main island of Japan) eastward by about 8 feet, and shifted the Earth on its axis by about 4 inches.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/as....earth/?hpt=T2
http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktl...0,562572.story
http://www.livescience.com/13175-jap...e-tsunami.html
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-b...0110313a4.html
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_17597627

[Fury]

Originally Posted by Pox Voldius

Looks like that quake moved the entire island of Honshu (the main island of Japan) eastward by about 8 feet, and shifted the Earth on its axis by about 4 inches.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/as....earth/?hpt=T2
http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktl...0,562572.story
http://www.livescience.com/13175-jap...e-tsunami.html
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-b...0110313a4.html
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_17597627

I have no words.... seriously. Isn't that well.... a really bad thing?

[Wab]

All major quakes shift land masses and give the Earth a wobble.

[Fury]

But I thought when the earth's axis moved a little, it slightly changed our weather patterns and length of day or something like that.

[dobbydear15]

They do tend to change our weather patterns and time of day. One of the past (but recent) earthquakes in Haiti shifted our axis and we lost a mili-second.

[ccollinsmith]

I never venture into the "real world" sections of this site, but I just saw this horrifying breaking header on CNN online:

"We are assuming that a meltdown has occurred" at a nuclear power reactor, Japan's chief Cabinet secretary says.

I am speechless.