7.9 and 8.8 Earthquakes in Japan

anyway i hope youre right mh, ty for the reassurance, i actually feel better abt this now even tho i have no idea whats going on

xxp: I'm no ZS, but I bet I could whip that 'shop up in about 30 minutes once I found a logo. Oh, look:

http://www.australian-radiation-services.com.au/images/ars_logo.gif

chris shaw seems like a pretty chill bro

http://www.facebook.com/lowell76?v=wall

I'm no ZS

If you were, that logo would be spinning and emitting omega radiation beams

He likes Obama so he can't be all bad I guess. Like McDonald's too, natch.

chris shaw u r a huge disappointment

http://grab.by/9r46

chernobyl has kind of colored the entire planet's idea of the safety/fragility of nuclear reactors, which is i mean admirably cautious but chernobyl was basically some rods in a shed overseen by a government and scientific community that almost literally didn't believe the environment was a thing

fingers crossed by all means but i'm reasonably confident the japanese have got this.

meanwhile, casualty figures this morning are really really upsetting.

That's a really really good point. I did a huge research project on Chernobyl in grad school and that's p otm as far as my understanding.

Also, I can't even wrap my head around the enormity of this all. It just doesn't seem real. That said, I'm just gonna go ahead and leave you with this for now: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=171050926258146&set=a.150362934993612.29090.100000597188200&theater

so are we sending him an invite or what

I assumed someone was already on that tbh.

http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/69300_159745777388661_100000597188200_384995_2568133_n.jpg

I'm sold.

can rly do without the amazing new crop of experts on nuclear safety who have bloomed overnight everywhere...

BTW they're not spinning *anything*, the radiation leakage of the type they have isn't anywhere near worst case scenario and people who don't know shit about how modern nuclear plants operate are commenting.

Worst case scenario is that the reactor *isn't* rendered unusable but is highly damaged and spurts a little more radioactive steam than it should.

good thing we're nowhere near that huh

He likes Obama so he can't be all bad

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_6iDBoOvb0

video from inside the airport, heartstopping

holy fuck

:( this sucks

Tell me how it's gonna blow up, history mayne. I'm relying on a pretty good background post on modern plants I read a week or so back, and a nice Reuters report this morning where actual scientists around the world were interviewed that seemed to jive. My inability to post about that clearly is my issue, but... hell, I can't even find the original article anymore. It's all getting drowned out in mixed reports.

In any case, the tsunami is still a bigger deal, and I'm more worried about people stuck out there.

dude im not saying its going to blow up -- im saying very few people have the facts either way, and actual scientists are among those saying a very bad outcome is a possibility

i mean 'not going to blow up again' i guess

fair enough

It's already a lot worse than I'd expected, but... I think the lack of power production capacity is going to be a huge problem.

“Had the violent 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake that has just savaged Japan hit off the California coast, it could have ripped apart at least four coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation across the entire United States.

“The two huge reactors each at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon are not designed to withstand such powerful shocks. All four are extremely close to major faults.”

http://counterpunch.org/wasserman03112011.html

the japanese reactors aren't either, the spec is to withstand 6.5> tremors

Phil Plait (@BadAstronomer) 3/12/11 9:26 AM My friend Evelyn, a geology PhD candidate, interviews her dad, a nuclear engineer, about the Japan reactor situation: http://is.gd/zXpkWq

Good information here that should be helpful to most everyone here, about the nuclear reactor situation. Im in the same boat as most of you, i dont understand how it works to know how bad it is and only reference points are The Day After Tomorrow and Chernobyl ffs.

From the interview, the outlook is definitely grimmer than I wanted to hear, but I think as long as we all keel trying to understand what is actually happening, and what can plausibly potentially happen, we might be less scared than most of the media wants us to be, which is a good thing.

Let's all keep trying to understand we have to dismantle the nuclear power industry. Because these guys will never accede to a necessary level of regulation as long as they can buy pols (in the US, forever).

like w/our hands, or should we rely on those pols to do it

nuclear power would be fine and dandy if we knew what to do with the waste.

Nuclear power rules

surely better to push for them to... accede to a necessary level of regulation, assuming they don't

or stop using aircon

coz it's not like the other energy providers are any more morally upstanding

not that I necessarily think nuke power is the way to go, but what would you suggest as an viable alternative? Yes, the waste is a long-term problem, but the effects of fossil fuel use stretch just as long.

Nuclear power rules

― ℳℴℯ　❤＼(◕‿◕✿ (Princess TamTam), Saturday, 12 March 2011 18:37 (1 minute ago)

Please don't quote me, nak

the japanese plant may well not "survive"; that doesn't mean there'll be a catastrophic meltdown. note again that that article spends half its time talking about chernobyl, a reactor that did not even have a containment vessel.

Harvey Wasserman has been writing about atomic energy and the green alternatives since 1973. His 1982 assertion to Bryant Gumbel on NBC's TODAY Show that people were killed at TMI sparked a national mailing from the reactor industry demanding a retraction. NBC was later bought by Westinghouse, still a major force pushing atomic power. He is the author of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He can be reached at: Win✧✧✧@a✧✧.c✧✧

dont u see they came from the future, to silence him

not that I necessarily think nuke power is the way to go, but what would you suggest as an viable alternative? Yes, the waste is a long-term problem, but the effects of fossil fuel use stretch just as long.

― kate78, Saturday, March 12, 2011 12:38 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is not actually true. nuclear waste lasts much longer

Please don't quote me, nak

― ℳℴℯ　❤＼(◕‿◕✿ (Princess TamTam), Saturday, 12 March 2011 18:40 (1 minute ago)

??

not that I necessarily think nuke power is the way to go, but what would you suggest as an viable alternative? Yes, the waste is a long-term problem, but the effects of fossil fuel use stretch just as long.

― kate78, Saturday, March 12, 2011 6:38 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

IIRC, morbs thinks we could have switched to renewables by now. Which betrays an overestimation of renewable technology, unfortunately.

not that I necessarily think nuke power is the way to go, but what would you suggest as an viable alternative? Yes, the waste is a long-term problem, but the effects of fossil fuel use stretch just as long.

― kate78, Saturday, March 12, 2011 12:38 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is not actually true. nuclear waste lasts much longer

― deej, Saturday, March 12, 2011 1:42 PM (29 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well that sort of depends on how you look at it visavis the effects of global warming

this is not actually true. nuclear waste lasts much longer

― deej, Saturday, March 12, 2011 3:12 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

So you think global climate change is a short-term problem?

nuclear waste is a serious problem but with money and dedication can be worked at and minimized and maybe even (hail mary) eliminated, whereas nobody is ever going to build a coal plant that doesn't spew a gajillion tons of co2 into the atmosphere

like i would like everything to run on windmills and the sun too but since we are in a crisis maybe in the meantime we should hang out some more with Our Friend The Atom

it's not like anyone lives in north dakota anyway.

Also what if windmills come loose from their moorings, giant ninja stars beheading everyone

(i mean i know there is a thing called "clean coal" but i am not all that excited about it)

this is really a bit of a sidetrack via morbs' oppurtunist rote pessimism

the last 48 hrs don't really bring anything new to the nuclear ~issue~, tho they may have something to say for the design of one 40 yr old reactor in japan

this is not actually true. nuclear waste lasts much longer

― deej, Saturday, March 12, 2011 3:12 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

So you think global climate change is a short-term problem?

― kate78, Saturday, March 12, 2011 6:45 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

well some nuclear waste has a half life of a million years, so...

i dont understand the dismissal "oh its just a 40 year old reactor, NEWER ones..." arent we using older ones? what sense does it make to talk about newer ones that are supposedly foolproof if we're still using the older ones?

a 40 year old reactor is pretty new

i mean, who knows how this will turn out, and of course i hope its a minor issue, but this "well, this is such an unsual situation" stuff ppl bring up when a nuclear reactor is having trouble....unusual things happen all the time? do they keep saying this every time there a problem w/ a nuclear reactor?

also i know someone who's prof is doing research on the long term effects of ppl who live in communities w/ nuclear reactors (sorry, dont know how old those reactors happen to be) & they have in fact been causing mutations

no im not arguing in favor of coal power just saying we should be honest about this stuff

i mean recognize theres a lot of money invested in making things appear safer than they are & its not alarmist to recognize that nuclear energy is hardly a perfect solutino