7.9 and 8.8 Earthquakes in Japan

So this will be the THIRD partial meltdown in the last three days. TEPCO and NISA are confirming btw, they aren't being coy anymore.

There are plenty of places that are sealed from aquifers and accessible which will last that long.

I just don't know how you can say that with any confidence. The pyramids in Giza are approx. 4000 years old.

Did not know this (assuming it's true, given that it is wikipedia) -

"Bananas are radioactive enough to regularly cause false alarms on radiation sensors used to detect possible illegal smuggling of nuclear material at US ports"

My mother worked for years -- and I worked one summer in the mailroom -- at the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Perry, OH. Neither of us ever had access to the active reactor/power generation area in Perry Unit 1, but those who did had to wear dosimeter badges and get regular checks. They were advised not to eat bananas on the days they had to get checked.

Coworkers are telling me that there is an abundance of helicopters above Tokyo right now.

Granted they're 40 years old designs, but venting the hydrogen laden steam into a sealed outer structure just seems stupid. Either open the windows, make windows, and design them to vent underground if possible.

Tokyo has been having power problems linked to the reactors, no? Could they be news copters?

I just don't know how you can say that with any confidence.

It's just the geology. Salt beds move like a highly viscous liquid on geologic timescales, enough so that broad evaporite plains in the former Gulf of Mexico desert, when overlaid by a couple miles of sediment from the continent, have pushed their way up into these bulbous columnar structures (mostly deep underground). One can measure the speed of their passage by the age of the overlaying sediment. They're not going anywhere on timescales of 100,000 years. They're more or less impervious to fractures or the saturated brine around them. Vitrefy the waste, toss it in an old deep SPR dome, and cement up the bore. If they do, they'll leak out into rocks sealed from the surface and any usable groundwater aquifers by multiple layers of nearly impervious shale (which trap oil in usable reservoirs, as well). The main danger would be if knowledge of the location was lost and some future civilization started drilling deep salt-domes. Presumably any civilization with the ability to do that would also have geiger counters, and the sense not to drill into salt domes (which aren't themselves prospective for oil, gas, or anything other than, well, salt).

The problem with Yucca is that its a highly fractured hard-rock mountain elevated above aquifers.

Just speculating, but there may be concern that the slip plane that's relieving stress at the Japan trench is migrating southwards.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/10/140_35.gif

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/Legends/legend.gif

To clarify but hopefully not alarm, I've been watching this map for days, and the southern extent of that mass of tremors keeps advancing towards Tokyo, more so than on the north. The progression is barely visible on the whole world animation, but alas there's no animation for this zoom.

I remember an old semiotics problem about how you would warn people thousands of years in the future that an area contained radioactive waste. The most interesting part was that and signs used would be problematic as they would assume you were keeping them out because there was something good hidden there. Certainly head on spikes, carvings of destruction and threats of curses never kept us out of anywhere.

This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location… it increases toward a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

http://www.memonic.com/user/aengus/set/archived/id/1fYBS

"How will we keep future generations out of our underground oil plays? If that oil comes to the surface, it will contaminate their water and arable lands!"

This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location… it increases toward a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=79

^ Still clicked on that, see?

D:

that really made me want to go read a science fiction novel, actually

That's all very well, but if an archeologist found that message today, he'd be digging before you can say "Carbon-14".

And we can't assume any continuity of knowledge or civilisation - people won't necessarily be able to read such warnings. Anyway, kind of OT at the moment.

xp thomp

Some of the concepts are straight out of a Ballard short story. eg:

http://downlode.org/Etext/WIPP/spikes01.gif

http://downlode.org/Etext/WIPP/forbid01.gif

http://ingridsnotes.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/scared-grover.jpg

I totally had that book as a kid!

Live Tokyo geiger counter

Legend:
1 to 2: natural background level (good reading - shows Geiger counter is working properly)
3 or 4: slightly above background level
5 to 10: even at these low levels an item (e.g. watch) should not be kept next to skin for prolonged periods
10 to 100: do not carry the item next to the skin at all
100 to 200: do not to carry item close to your body, just handle it very occasionally
200 to 500: best not to handle the item at all
- 700: Geiger counter overloads and gives continuous alarm - extreme caution!

13.16 omg

False alarm. This geiger counter reads 10-20 CPM as normal background, so any atmospheric Cs-137/Sr-90 hasn't reached Kota Ward, Tokyo (yet).

The legend was offered by an acquaintance at another forum who was looking for a legend. This gaigakaunta is running indoors in Koto Ward, Tokyo, and according to the stream's creator, normally reads 10-20 CPM.

Man, give me a geiger counter to watch and I won't be getting anything done today.

I started an album based on the concept of markers to deter inadvertent human intrusion, I keep meaning to get back to that...

http://downlode.org/Etext/WIPP/

This seems as could be done.
http://downlode.org/Etext/WIPP/sickening.gif

as good as could be done

i have now spent the past hour reading about the WIPP, jeez

There's another thread about the WIPP markers, might be more fitting to take it there?

This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.

Hi everyone,

Its Shinji from DMBQ/Boredoms here. I am writing to my friends who is
living in US and other countries.

As you know, Japan's most powerful earthquake since records began has
struck the north-east coast, triggering a massive tsunami. Fortunately
I am OK because I am living in Osaka, but now the damage situation is
gradually clarified.

So many our friends, friend's of friend, friend's family, musicians,
people who work in music venue, etc... a lot of people who we know
were struck. And communications are almost 100% down in northeast
japan still. Friends who were staying in northern Japan to have a
show etc,, can not come back to their home and now they are in the
refuge where the acquaintance doesn't exist.

Plus, Tokyo's electricity will be cut off gradually from tomorrow.
Even railway will be 50% running and now gasoline is almost empty in
Tokyo, means Tokyo's economy will be down. The food scarcity has
already started because the factory cannot operate.

Please help them. Volunteer's acceptance has not been begun yet. We
want to send relief and condolence donation directly to people and
north-east Japan's music scene in future.

Please Cc-ing this email to your artist friends too.

Please send donations via paypal:
d✧✧✧@d✧✧✧.n✧✧

Shinji Masuko DMBQ/Boredoms

the paypal address is

dmbq @ dmbq . net

Japanese news says that NISA officials are still insisting that radiation is still within "legal limits" amid broadening evacuations (over 500k people combined from quake/tsunami/radiation).

Does anybody know what the "legal limits" of radiation are?

I badly want to think of a pun in response, based on the word "rad".

worrying details in news reports

The US said it had moved one of its aircraft carriers from the area after detecting low-level radiation 160km (100 miles) offshore.

Uhh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh4jIvDF8qw&feature=rec-LGOUT-farside_rev-rn-3r-9-HM

Keep sound low, there is a random loud swooshing added to the video during slower portion.

you guys saw this right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX80vWJhtMk

sorry if posted already...

oh god

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

It's really hard to read that charitably, even if he is trying to say that we're lucky it's not an economic catastrophe, he's still juxtaposing "human" and "economic" as two values, which is crass, even for a financial adviser.

x-post

Yeah, its kind of hard to recover from saying you are grateful for the human toll being worse.

He allegedly apologized:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/03/cnbc-kudlow-japan-earthquake-human-toll-worse-than-economic-toll-apologize.html

The ground level video I just posted is so insane... the height of the wave even from that far back is just so intense.

We tend to lose perspective with these big disasters because of movies, aerial far-away pictures, abstract numbers (10.000 victims? 100.000 victims? 7th largest earthquake ever? Richter scale 7 8 9 ?), all have a dehumanising effect - it's easy to be all "wow! look at how amazing (volcanic eruption/tsunami/mudslide/etc) looks!" but pictures like the one gbx just posted are - while I can understand the Japanese government wanting to keep them from its people during this period - very, very necessary.

The ground level video I just posted is so insane... the height of the wave even from that far back is just so intense.

― Wacky Way Lounge (Evan), Monday, March 14, 2011 2:53 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well its the wave hitting a seawall, my understanding is with tsunamis theres no break it just kind of rushes in, like w/out the seawall itd look like a wave on the beach after breaking except the water just keeps coming getting deeper and deeper, so theres a height as far as how deep the water gets but no wave face particularly

^^^right.

i think the popular conception of a tsunami (and basically mine up until recently) was that they're fast-approaching walls of water with like 30ft waves that topple buildings and shit. but the reality is scarier imo, in that it's just water that keeps coming and coming

then again, this happened, so

The severity of this cataclysmic event is incredible. This is like Katrina + BP + radiation.

OK, just to compound the freak-out, what does one or more uncontrolled releases of radiation and/or meltdowns in Japan portend for the rest of the world?