7.9 and 8.8 Earthquakes in Japan

This thread is o_O followed by O_O

Technicians at the Fukushima Daiichi plant are set to release vapour from the unit in question to lower the pressure and prevent a meltdown.

This carries a risk that a small amount of radioactive material could leak, officials say.

When they release comments like this, it probably already happening but a lot worse.

Reports also said that cooling systems had also failed in three reactors at a second nuclear power plant, Fukushima Daini, 11km (7 miles) south of Daiichi.

not good!

i experienced an earthquake once. it was freaky. and it was smaller than every single one of those aftershocks jesus

William Gibson retweeted this link...unpacks the nuclear reactor stuff in a fairly technical manner, which I don't entirely follow...but leaves me at least with a *slightly* better feeling that there's a lot that has to go wrong before the worst can happen

http://theenergycollective.com/nathantemple/53384/how-shutdown-and-core-cooling-japanese-reactors-likely-functions

xpost been in a few, was okay. one time i thought my husband was rocking the couch to annoy me. i returned to my afternoon nap. lol

xp yeah but I feel like we're just reassuring ourselves about the official version of events while there is a much worse reality.

btw quakes scare the shit out of me. but the ones i been in were pretty minor.

VG; thanks for posting. now i can get some sleep.

Mr Veg was in the '89 Loma Prieta, and a few others I think.
I've only been in a couple of smallish ones, both in '99. One in Narita, Japan which feels weird now...woke up in my hotel on the 25th floor in the middle of the night and noticed the building was swaying, half-asleep I told myself 'must be the wind' and went back to sleep...turned on the news in the morning and was O_O!!!; then one in Vegas a few weeks later - Mr Veg woke me up almost excited-like, I srsly shat myself when he told me it was an earthquake. Saw the canopy over the old Vegas strip get a real big sway on.

Mr Veg kinda has a badge of honor thing about quakes, whereas I just am shit-terrified of them, the idea of them, pretty much everything about them.

with good reason, i reckon

Some interesting updates on Japan Security Watch: http://newpacificinstitute.org/jsw/ - the "Matsushima Air Base completed submerged" part is kinda o_O

At least four nuclear power plants were located in the worst affected areas. Three were apparently shut down without incident. The coolant system of the fourth reactor, Fukushima Daiichi, was crippled during the earthquake and there are reports that pressure on the plant’s safety systems is twice the rated requirement. There are reports of elevated levels of radioactivity inside the plant control room, and a community evacuation is in progress. Of particular note is the movement of a special nuclear, chemical, and biological-trained GSDF company-sized unit to Fukushima Daiichi. This unit, which may be the Central or 101st NBC Protection Unit, is part of Japan’s rapid-response Central Readiness Force and is equipped with NBC protection vehicles and advanced personal protection gear.

This part of Japan is considered the farthest from any conceivable military action, and as a result there are few Self Defense Force facilities and resources in the area. Matsushima Air Base, located just north of Sendai on Ishinomaki Bay, was “completely submerged” by tidal waves. According to the Asahi, 18 F-2 fighters were submerged by the wall of water, as well as T-4 jet trainers and U-125 search and rescue aircraft. 8,000 troops, likely the GSDF 6th Infantry Division, based at Otakineyama, are reportedly headed into the hardest-hit zones.

Good information being posted here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Sendai_earthquake

also there's still reports of 70,000 people stranded overnight at Tokyo Disneyland

Ok that is kinda lol

it is kind of insane that a country so at risk of quakes would rely so heavily on nuclear power of all things.

http://lafinjack.net/images/iconz/snoop_shake.gif

kinda wild 3 of the biggest 6 earthquakes EVER are in the last ~7 yrs

apparently the whole parking lot at Tokyo Disney has been affected by "soil liquefaction"

O_O

apparently if the ground shakes intensely enough, the soil can just completely liquefy.

I really should have paid more attention in Science.

Be interesting to see a pic of that.

This pic off the wiki is eerie and beautiful in its morbid way

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/2011_tsunami_wave_height.jpg

Alert sounded a minute before the tremor struck
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Alert sounded minute before tremor struck/4425621/story.html

No country on Earth is better prepared to deal with earthquakes than Japan.

Millions of Japanese were alerted to Friday's tremor a minute before it struck, thanks to the world's best early-warning system.

The sophisticated technology, connected to a network of about 1,000 seismometers around the country, gave people vital seconds to take cover and was thought to have saved countless lives.

Read an eyewitness account of a US businessman experiencing the earthquake as he stepped off a bus in Tokyo, said he stood in the middle of the city watching building sway like trees in the wind, the only thing falling over were bicycles. He said it was remarkable to see, and was sure that no other city could withstand such an earthquake.

it is kind of insane that a country so at risk of quakes would rely so heavily on nuclear power of all things.

Japan has no real natural resources and has to import everything, so it's not unexpected. Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Japan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan

Aye I figured as much. Still scary.

so my question is how the fuck do you even begin to clean up

I'm still thinking that about New Zealand and the Brisbane floods, so this is doing my head in.

Like, the bushfires here thay destroyed Marysville completly? Its been over 2 years now, and the town is still not remotely rebuilt.

Yeah, exactly. I mean the other day I was watching recent aerial footage of Haiti and its like, god even when you start it's on such a small scale

there's a really profound sense of mastery in the foresight & careful preparation that led to all those delicately swaying Tokyo buildings. I don't know if you can quantify the results of the work that went into all the planning & engineering, but it blows my mind at what ppl are capable of.

xp: Well, exactly 66 years ago to the day, Tokyo was levelled to the ground by allied fire bombers.

And now it's the biggest and most technically advanced city in the world. I'd say that the rural agricultural/port towns on the Miyagi coast will be back before too long.

I can't get over that Haiti was "just" a 7.0 compared to this 8.8. Of course, sadly, Haitian buildings didn't sway like palm trees.

I was reading an article today about the gangs and overwhelming rapes occurring in the tent cities in Haiti. The writer was talking to an exasperated Haitian, who couldn't fathom how this horrible situation was supposed to get better. She pipes up, "Well, you know, there are places in New Orleans today that still look like they did two weeks after Katrina." The man can't come up with words and she ends the paragraph by saying something like "I'm not sure why I brought that up."

Can you link it PP?

It's on my instapaper thingy. Hang on.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/haiti-rape-earthquake-mac-mcclelland

helluva url, that is.

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i experienced an earthquake once. it was freaky. and it was smaller than every single one of those aftershocks jesus

― mookieproof, Friday, March 11, 2011 7:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

I've been in two, one in suburban Chicago, the other in upstate New York. Both were minor but very fucking weird. Can't even imagine what people in Japan are going through. Thoughts and prayers are with all ILXors and their loved ones.

Wow PP, got half way through :(

6.8 aftershock in Sendai.

i missing presumed dead in Crescent City CA, docks also got hit hard.

the docks of Brookings Oregon were destroyed, around 300 boats destroyed or damaged.

4 people almost died in Gold beach but were rescued

tales of crowd stupidity in Santa Cruz here:

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_17595398?nclick_check=1

http://grab.by/9qJy

this little girls is all so you just left me huh

lol at the Santa Cruz 'surge' surfers. Actually when I heard Hawaii was in the line of fire I said to Mr Veg, if I hear the words "Laird" and "Hamilton" in any news stories about the Hawaii tsunami I will throw the radio out the window. Luckily 12 ft is puny by his standards.

I mean, I love watching the docos on big wave surfers and part of me thinks it's kinda cool but I'm such a safety sam, it just goes against everything I was ever taught about safety at the beach

Japan media proclaiming meltdown imminent.

14k people in a 10km radius ordered evacuated.

fucking hell

From ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp website)

UPDATE: Kyodo and NHK are reporting that radioactive cesium has been detected near Fukushima nuclear plant 1.

@tokyoreporter: NTV says that Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Reactor is possibly melting down (that's literal translation).

@TimeOutTokyo: Reports: cesium detected around nuclear reactor1(Fukushima), which is one of the elements that gets released in a meltdown

so, is this stuff just seeping out into the air? there was no huge explosion or anything right?

as a Civilization player I appreciate how aggravating this must be

I think so, but a "normal" meltdown isn't exactly an explosion--the nuclear core just starts literally melting into the ground underneath it, and tunnelling into the earth, leaking out all sorts of hideous toxic crap as it does so.