Quake/Tsunami
 

OMG Hawaii's about to get hit, parts of Japan just got covered, footage of cars trying to drive away from the wave. this is horrible.

The images are incredible and scary, BBC just showed a whirlpool in the ocean near Japan and a small boat trapped on the rim -very Pirates of the Carribeanish and very very scary

...and a nuclear power plant on fire


eta I'm hearing about the plant on fire, but no images. I see footage of one they're worried about because there's no power to cool the reactors

The video footage is amazing.

I wonder about Hawaii, everyone there is fast asleep. I wonder what sort of warning systems they have to wake everyone up and get them away from the water?

They says they've been evacuating for hours, but Honolulu is so low and so packed.....

Nothing stands a chance against that force

from the BBC

1332: Between 200 and 300 bodies have been found on a beach near Sendai, the semi-official Jiji Press news agency is reporting.

OMG.

This is another freak thing....

Sendai area got really hard hit.

We got one email from our office on the 33rd floor of a building in Tokyo. Phones are out, but email works. The building shook a lot, but everyone in the office is fine.

They are about 250 miles from the epicenter.

That whirlpool is crazy. Guess we'll know very soon how badly Hawaii was hit. And the Nuclear power plant situation..... The whirlpool needs to be IOTD.

Horrible devastation. I can't even imagine it, even seeing footage. :(

You would think the tsunami would put out the fires.

The cars and buildings being swept away like kids' toys at the beach.

Water won't do much for petroleum or natural gas based fires.

There are problems with pressure in the core of that nuclear reactor ... I thought there were supposed to be manual back-ups to shut down those things?

Hey, tw, this headline is for you.

My birth-father, half-sister, cousin and his family, and several musicians I've worked with are in Japan right now. Still waiting to hear from them all.

I wonder what will happen next week
 

I just saw this in Popular Science:

Great minds think alike; that was my first thought, too.

wow, the video from CNN (et al.) is just incredible and horrific.

I feel betrayed by Bill O'Reilly's repeated assertions that the "tide goes in, tide goes out" and that there is "never a miscommunication."

The reactors are designed so that in the event of earthquake or similar, boron control rods automatically drop in to the core and absorb excess neutrons, ending the nuclear reaction. The problem now is remaining heat, which the cooling system is *supposed* to deal with.
It isn't going to go Chernobyl, but it might be a bit of a Three Mile Island. Still not pretty.

I have several friends in Japan, mostly in Nagoya and one in Tokyo, but they have all touched base.

Due to insufficient information, one of the five reactors is starting to sound more and more like Three Mile Island. Apparently at least one meter of the boron rods are above water. And some melting has already occured inside that reactor core.

Viewing some numbers. The first quakes was 7.1. About 47 more quakes followed in those three days. Then an 8.9 quake happened. Since the big one, I counted another 190 earthquakes in the Sendai region.

Some great pic, video, and NOAA graphics>

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...eath-toll.html

Big explosion at the powerplant
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12720219

I cannot get my head around the scale of this thing... heart-breaking.

I agree. The scale of it was huge and as it came into the west coast, I was worried for my brother in Anchorage, but it lost oomph after went past southern Alaska, islands and BC. phew

This seems a bit ghoulish to me:



http://i.imgur.com/hOsmm.jpg

HA!

If you want to get economical about it ... ohh crap.

Japan's debt situation is worse than anywhere in Europe. Annual government spending is almost TWICE revenue. Budget deficit is around 10% of GDP. Government debt is twice GDP.

Ever since their bubble burst in 1990, they have been pumping stimulus into their economy - debt-funded infrastructure in rural areas that will never justify its own expense. Rebuilding from this will just be more of the same.

Somehow, everyone has been to polite to mention this, but a shock like this might be what breaks the dam wall, so to speak. An iron-faced repudiation of a gazillion yen worth of debt is not out of the question.

Wait... are you suggesting stimulus plans aren't an economic panacea?

You are confusing cash flow with growth. Consider how economics measures. Rebuilding will mean an increase in Japan's economic growth numbers.

Learn why money games have less correlation with reality. What happened to insurance company values after both Andrew and Katrina? Both eventually caused an increase in insurance company stock prices. And had little negative effect on their value.

Where is some of America's strongest growth? In the New Orleans region.

How to increase this nation's GDP? Simply require everyone to replace their front lawns annually. When profits do not appear four or ten years later, then economics takes revenge.

When rebuilding something that actually has an ROI years later, then little if any economic punishment.

In a year or so, every Cellar dweller with interest in earning from their investment will consider exchange traded funds for the Japanese economy.

Meanwhile, you should have seen something far more serious. One nuclear plant was in a Three Mile Island event over 24 hours ago. And like Three Mile Island, the 'powers that be' are only saying what they know. During Three Mile Island, that was MBAs lying because they had no idea how a power plant works. Lied so much that reporters openly ignore Met Ed management and openly said so in their reports. We now know Three Mile Island technical people were openly crying for help from the very beginning. And Met Ed MBAs ignore those requests due to complete technical ignorance. Question remains what Tokyo Electric management is. From what they have said, it was obvious before my previous post that the core had melted.

Let's be clear. Three Mile Island was dependent for one year on pumps that were damaged and could have failed at any time. Then the event would have restarted. Yes, Three Mile Island was a crisis for a year. Fukushima One had no way to pump coolant into it. Whether any cooling system can be restored is unknown. We know the building containing the reactor core exploded. And nobody is saying why. That is troubling.

There will be dangerous radiation leaks. Only question is how much.

Two other plants are also suffering less coolant failures.

How poor is information? Four whole trains completely disappeared. None of those carriages have yet been found. It implies how much remains unknown. Suggests how much higher a death counts will rise. How many tens of thousands? A reasonable number.

Amazing during this event, the local gossip 'top story' was about local flooding due to a few trivial inches of rain.

second explosion a Fuck-u-shima nuclear power station -reactor #3 this time.....

No mention of GodZilla ????

WTF Folks !!!! yer slippen !!!

I kid , I kid

this SUUUCCCKKKSS !!!
I hope Our Japanese Brother and Sister the Best !!

As mentioned above an awful lot of Japanese infrastructure does not provide a return on Investment.

Also, while only a few of Japan's factories have been damaged, their power generation capacity has taken a big knock and they are now scheduling blackouts around the country. Car production is almost completely halted.

Several sources are saying why. Water being turned into free hydrogen and free oxygen, which then meets a spark. At least, that's what they're saying.

Indeed. Minamisanriku had a population of 17,000, before the tsunami. Around 7,000 have been accounted for in shelters and refuges. That is just one town.

I turned on the TV. The local gossip (that calls itself news) were reporting on Charlies Sheen.

Meanwhile Fukushima #2 has a serious leak somewhere. Is losing coolant inside its reactor containment vessel.

These are General Electric nuclear reactors being tested by god. Then maybe we will forget his agents are pedophiles. I wonder who 'wags his dog'?

I lost count of the number of earthquakes when it exceeded 300. A map from the USGS shows the major quake (leftmost yellow squares) has been followed by numerous quakes even on fault lines not related to this one. The original earthquake was on a fault shown by north to south red line. Numerous other faults are also now moving.

When you thought things could not be bad enough ....

Fukushima Reactor 2 now has no coolant. This is a potential China Syndrome!

Except that China is not the target.

A working coolant system is not their last line of defense

http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/20...lear-reactors/

Just another reason why China need not worry.

Yesterday they were putting seawater in it.

That's the coolant equivalent of duct-tape.

Boing Boing led me to this video of a tsunami that is just amazing. Taken by a dude at the base of a set of stairs going up a steep hill. He starts filming as the waters are licking his feet on the bottom step, and he keeps retreating up the stairs as the water gets higher and higher and higher and houses start floating away. This is what the tsunami looked like to all the people it killed, except they didn't get the happy ending of backing up the steep hill.

just WOW

This is the location on Google Street view, so you can check it out. This is actually fairly far from the open water of the coast. It's alongside an inlet. I've heard tsunamis get magnified or focused in places like this.

NYTimes has an amazing set of before/after satellite photos. They're imposed on top of each other with a slider in the middle so you can compare directly.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...R_AP_LO_MST_FB

Remember, most of the tsunami energy was directed out into the Pacific. Japan only got a backdoor backlash.

Meanwhile, I was not kidding about the dire consequences of those multiple reactor meltdowns. Two went dry. That means the containment vessel was breeched and draining. Days later, Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) would not admit that.

Apparently the diesel generators were working. And were supposed to be monitored by a technician who, instead, went elsewhere to do other work. The generators stopped maybe due to no fuel. Then, as diesels can do when let run dry, it could not be restarted. Did a tsunami kill the generators? Apparently not. Therefore management was lying. Trying to be politically correct – which is akin to a felony.

Rather than be honest, TEPCO refused to admit the seriousness of radiation leakages. Government had to step in and call for evacuations and 'do not go outside' warnings. TEPCO was more worried about their reputation when at least two reactors already had breeched. TEPCO is sounding more like the incompetent management that created and then repeatedly lied about Three Mile Island 2.

Those posts in large letters were because I already knew from details what TEPCO would not announce for over twenty four hours later. Containment vessels had been breached. And at least two reactors were permanently destroyed.

What I did not know was that maybe 100 workers had already been contaminated to the point of radiation sickness. Some have already died. A few are still unaccounted for. AND control rooms have been without power. These reactors were being controlled by sending people to a valve and manually changing that valve. Like in Three Mile Island, the control room had almost no working controls. People had to run into radiation filled rooms, find a valve, change it, and run out.

So that they do not look bad, TEPCO management has been downplaying all this.

Reactor 4 did not even have fuel in it. That explosion was a complete surprise. Fuel was sitting in a pool outside of the containment vessel. No one bothered to notice that fuel was not being cooled. So that fuel also went dry. Melted. Resulting in maybe two explosions.

How incompetent was TEPCO? Two other reactors still could produce electricity. But only if TEPCO management understood technology, got off their asses, and requisitioned what was needed to connect those power generators to the others. They did not even keep pumps working in an adjacent building to keep that fuel cool. So even Reactor 4 that had been off since last November – it too exploded.

As soon as sea water was dumped into it, that reactor is gone. Toast. Scrap iron. Will never be functional. That is how desperate TEPCO has been to stop a complete meltdown while saying they were getting things under control. TEPCO engineers have been panicked for at least three days. Deja vue Three Mile Island.

A complete meltdown of three (or more) reactors is inevitable. Its not idle chatter that helicopters may have to bury the reactors in sand. All workers (the last 50) were removed because radiation levels are that excessive. The reactors, without power, must save themselves. TEPCO's incompetent management was more worried about saving face than saving an entire Japanese Prefecture. Those posted capital letters were a warning that extreme. Apparently I was wrong. It was even worse.

Well, it took about 5 days for America to finally learn that Metropolitan Edison was lying constantly about Three Miles Island. As any business school graduate would do so as deflect blame. It has taken about 5 days to realized how often TEPCO was lying. The difference. Each one of four Fukushima reactors are worse than what happened in Three Mile Island. None will be a Chernobyl. But the situation has been far more severe than anyone here realized. I thought it was much worse than what they were saying. We now know it was even worse than I had speculated.

America has never had a disaster (not even close) to what has just happened in Japan. Both the flood and a nuclear disaster (even though First Energy worked so hard to create one).

If you would like to see some graphic video of what it would be like to be in a tsunami at the ground level watch this. Absolutely incredible.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vid...n_tsunami.html

The tw speculation is off the charts here; reaction containment has been breeched, and plumes of misinformation, nonsense and confusion can be seen for miles.

At the point you wrote that, TEPCO was announcing it on national Japanese TV.

Source: tw's ass

Good information is available from the Nuclear Energy Institute, World Nuclear News, and MIT.

No I'm wrong, there have been several deaths. OK.

My world has been turned upside-down.

Nope, the NY Times story is wrong. There have been no deaths at the plant. Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has PDFs of news releases since the quake. They detail the injuries that have happened and why. There are no deaths listed.

0254: Updated casualty figures for the quake just in: 5,178 people dead and 8,606 missing, AFP quote police as saying.

from the BBC

OMFFSM

The first breech may have been known on Saturday. But TEPCO continued to deny any breech occurred even days later. Cesium on Saturday said things were far worse than TEPCO reported.

UT's cited article had much misinformation. Once TEPCO was pouring seawater inside each reactor, then that reactor was being trashed. They were using their last and most destructive option; contrary to misinformation in UT's source. Because events were worse than a rosy picture they were painting. The first of major problems were known on Saturday – less than 24 hours after the earthquake.

Meanwhile, US government officials believe at least one pool containing spent nuclear material is completely dry. That means melting and outgassing radioactivity. The only reason that explains multiple explosions and fires. No reason for this other than mistakes (ignorance) at the highest levels of management. Danger from fuel stored outside the containment vessel is also contrary to what TEPCO wanted everyone to believe. An otherwise completely safe reactor had two explosions with fire because problems were ignored. Incompetence. Officials are calling for the Japanese military to (futility) pour water in via helicopters because the threat is much greater than they (or UT) will admit.

Bottom line reality. Three nuclear reactors are trashed. A fourth is now so radioactive as to be dangerous to human life. Unknown is how operators in two adjacent reactors are dealing with periodic high (but not deadly) levels of radioactivity that must be inside their control rooms. Bottom line - TEPCO has been outputting so much contrary and misleading information that even Japan's Prime Minister had enough - privately scolded TEPCO management for intentional misinformation or complete technical ignorance. Even the Emperor had to do something he rarely does. A speech to calm the nation.

Details say this is much worse than others easily manipulated by propaganda (ie UT) would have us believe.

How many days does it take to connect a power line? In emergencies, done in hours or a day. TEPCO still has not strung wires that should have been started 24 hours after the earthquake. Again, management was that ignorant or complacent.

In an early response to power loss, TEPCO management sent generators (some flown in by the US military). Generators that were found incompatible only after those generators arrived. Another example of why TEPCO management may be that incompetent. And why reactor operators are suffering from insufficient support.


Current tsunami death counts are irrelevant. Relevant is what exists (uncounted) now and whether that final count will exceed 20,000. We know those current numbers are too small. But numbers below 20,000 explain how well prepared for and drilled the Japanese were in disaster response. Hundreds of thousands were given only ten minutes to get to high ground. Amazing how many reacted so quickly.

Predictions for radioactive plume. Interesting graphic. Click upper left button.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...ml?ref=science

It's worth noting:
"Health and nuclear experts emphasize that any plume will be diluted as it travels and, at worst, would have extremely minor health consequences in the United States."

Things suck bad right now for Japan, but we're OK.

I keep forgetting I'm much nearer to Japan than I used to be. And that it's really west of us.

http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/geography/...dPacific60.gif

Actually, just a little closer.

Wolfram says 5896 miles from London to Japan. 6436 miles Ann Arbor to Japan.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i...gland+to+japan

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i...higan+to+japan

Useful site, by the way.

Because all Brits come from London, right? :p: