7.9 and 8.8 Earthquakes in Japan

ppl say a lot of shit on tv, esp if their bread is buttered on a particular side

Could someone remind me re: Chernobyl, was that one reactor or, like this one, a few reactors? In other words, is what's going on in Japan right now potentially the equivalent of two or three Chernobyls?

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, March 16, 2011 1:11 PM

"[...]at least 120 times the amount of radioactive material[of Chernobyl]."
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fumweltinstitut.org%2Fpressemitteilungen%2F2011%2F2011_03_16-848.html&act=url

i have two friends in japan who teach ESL, one who was in koriyama with his wife and they have evacuated to niigata, which is on the west coast opposite sendai. apparently their house was utterly wrecked and it took them until today to get to niigata.

a bit irrelevant, but can anyone explain why there's a statue of liberty replica in a town likely just 3hrs away from 2 places we happened to nuke?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366898/Japanese-earthquake-Death-toll-expected-reach-25-000.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

er, sorry - it wasn't something i thought i could just google search, but turns out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicas_of_the_Statue_of_Liberty

that there's also another one in tokyo

/carryon

feel like I've been saying this on repeat since fri about each new bit of footage to come out, but... the footage on c4news of kamaishi (?) is just

CNN (Andy Cooper) showed some footage last night which they cut off conveniently before what I am almost sure was footage of a family getting washed away. It was recorded from a distance, but depicted them apparently trying to carry either a body or an elderly person before the wave crept up literally inches from them. The editors cut to Cooper before you actually get to see what happened.

Anyways, like somebody said upthread... it's pure voyeurism this, but makes me wonder how different history could've been if we had handheld cameras any sooner. I don't think there's any medium that captures tragedy more definitely.

Bit of light relief...Glenn Beck explains it all (with sweets)
http://www.businessinsider.com/glenn-beck-japan-nuclear-meltdown-video-2011-3

Must say I am now completely reassured.

Can we buy some of his gold coins to protect ourselves against radiation?

kinda makes ya think how smart it is for California to have a nuke plant on the beach in SoCal dunnit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xylDxj6-9dY

8.9 @ 1:20

then all hell breaks loose

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_2011_Sendai_earthquake_and_tsunami_on_the_video_game_industry

kinda makes ya think how smart it is for California to have a nuke plant on the beach in SoCal dunnit

― in my world of suggest bans (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, March 16, 2011 1:03 PM (25 minutes ago)

The San Andreas Fault is pretty far inland, as opposed to the faultlines related to the Sendai disaster as noted above are off-shore.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,917988,00.html

Diablo Valley plant is designed to withstand 7.5 tremor. I feel safe, yep.

San Andreas fault is a whopping 45 miles from the plant. two other active faults are closer.

"The chief of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that all the water is gone from one of the spent fuel pools at Japan's most troubled nuclear plant, but Japanese officials denied it.

If NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko is correct, this would mean there's nothing to stop the fuel rods from getting hotter and ultimately melting down. The outer shell of the rods could also ignite with enough force to propel the radioactive fuel inside over a wide area.

Jaczko did not say Wednesday how the information was obtained, but the NRC and U.S. Department of Energy both have experts on site at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex of six reactors. He said the spent fuel pool of the complex's Unit 4 reactor has lost water."

"Jaczko said officials believe radiation levels are extremely high, and that could affect workers' ability to stop temperatures from escalating.

Japan's nuclear safety agency and Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the complex, deny water is gone from the pool. Utility spokesman Hajime Motojuku said the "condition is stable" at Unit 4."

"Jaczko did not say Wednesday how the information was obtained" = most likeley the surveilance from the RQ-4

no idea about the authenticity of this but

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

Do you think they planted all that new foliage along the center divider?

New power line may ease crisis at Japan nuke plant

By ERIC TALMADGE and MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
More...
(03-16) 13:20 PDT FUKUSHIMA, Japan (AP) --

A nearly completed new power line could restore cooling systems in Japan's tsunami-crippled nuclear power plant, its operator said Thursday, raising some hope of easing the crisis that has threatened a meltdown and already spawned dangerous radiation surges.

The conditions at the plant appeared to worsen, with white smoke pouring from the complex and a surge in radiation levels forcing workers to retreat for hours Wednesday from their struggle to cool the overheating reactors.

As international concern mounted, the chief of the U.N. nuclear agency said he would go to Japan to assess what he called a "serious" situation and urged Tokyo to provide better information to his organization.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Naoki Tsunoda said the new power line to the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is almost finished and that officials plan to try it "as soon as possible," but he could not say exactly when.

The new line would revive electric-powered pumps, allowing the company to maintain a steady water supply to troubled reactors and spent fuel storage ponds, keeping them cool. The company is also trying to repair its existing disabled power line.

Wednesday's pullback by workers who have been pumping seawater into the reactors cost valuable time in the fight to prevent a nuclear meltdown, a nightmare scenario following Friday's horrific earthquake and tsunami. The disasters pulverized Japan's northeastern coast and are feared to have killed more than 10,000 people.

The tsunami destroyed the complex's backup power system and left operators unable to properly cool nuclear fuel. The 180 emergency workers have been working in shifts to manually pump seawater into the reactors.

Japan's emperor, in an unprecedented made-for-TV speech, called on the country to work together.

"It is important that each of us shares the difficult days that lie ahead," said Akihito, 77. "I pray that we will all take care of each other and overcome this tragedy."

He also expressed his worries over the nuclear crisis, saying: "With the help of those involved I hope things will not get worse."

But officials are also taking increasing criticism for poor communication about efforts at the complex. There has been growing unease at the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency's 35 board member nations, who have complained that information coming from Japan on the rapidly evolving nuclear disaster is too slow and vague.

IAEA head Yukiya Amano spoke of a "very serious" situation and said he would leave for Tokyo within a day.

He said it was "difficult to say" if events were out of control, but added, "I will certainly have contact with those people who are working there who tackled the accident, and I will be able to have firsthand information."

The nuclear crisis has partly overshadowed the human tragedy caused by Friday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake, one of the strongest recorded in history.

Millions of Japanese have been with little food and water in heavy snow and rain since Friday. In some towns, long lines of cars waited outside the few open gas stations, with others lined up at rice-vending machines.

National broadcaster NHK showed mammoth military helicopters lifting off Friday afternoon to survey radiation levels above the nuclear complex, preparing to dump water onto the most troubled reactors in an effort to cool them down.

The defense ministry later said those flights were a drill — then later said it had decided against making an airborne drop because of the high radiation levels.

"The anxiety and anger being felt by people in Fukushima have reached a boiling point," the governor of Fukushima prefecture, Yuhei Sato, fumed in an interview with NHK. He criticized preparations for an evacuation if conditions worsen, and said centers do not have enough hot meals and basic necessities.

More than 4,300 people are officially listed as dead, but officials believe the toll will climb to well over 10,000. Police say more than 452,000 people are staying in temporary shelters such as school gymnasiums.

Wednesday's radiation spike was believed to have come from the complex's Unit 3. But officials also admitted that they were far from sure what was going on at the four most troubled reactors, including Unit 3, in part because high radiation levels made it difficult to get very close.

While white smoke was seen rising Wednesday above Unit 3, officials could not ascertain the source. They said it could be spewing from the reactor's spent fuel pool — cooling tanks for used nuclear rods — or may have been from damage to the reactor's containment vessel, the protective shell of thick concrete.

Masahisa Otsuki, an official with Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the complex, said officials are most concerned about the spent fuel pools, which are not encased in protective shells.

"We haven't been able to get any of the latest data at any spent fuel pools. We don't have the latest water levels, temperatures, none of the latest information for any of the four reactors," he said.

Late Wednesday, government officials said they'd asked special police units to bring in water cannons — normally used to quell rioters — to spray water onto the spent fuel storage pool for the complex's Unit 4.

The cannons are thought to be strong enough to allow emergency workers to remain a safe distance from the complex while still able to get water into the pool, said Minoru Ogoda of the Japanese nuclear safety agency.

In the city of Fukushima, meanwhile, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) inland from the nuclear complex, hundreds of harried government workers, police officers and others struggled to stay on top of the situation in a makeshift command center.

An entire floor of one of the prefecture's office buildings had been taken over by people tracking evacuations, power needs, death tolls and food supplies.

Elevated levels of radiation were detected well outside the 20-mile (30-kilometer) emergency area around the plants. In Ibaraki prefecture, just south of Fukushima, officials said radiation levels were about 300 times normal levels by late morning. It would take three years of constant exposure to these higher levels to raise a person's risk of cancer.

A little radiation was also detected in Tokyo, triggering panic buying of food and water.

Given the reported radiation levels, John Price, an Australian-based nuclear safety expert, said he saw few health risks for the general public so far. But he said he was surprised by how little information the Japanese were sharing.

"We don't know even the fundamentals of what's happening, what's wrong, what isn't working. We're all guessing," he said. "I would have thought they would put on a panel of experts every two hours."

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the government expects to ask the U.S. military for help, though he did not elaborate. He said the government is still considering whether to accept offers of help from other countries.

There are six reactors at the plant. Units 1, 2 and 3, which were operating last week, shut down automatically when the quake hit. Since then, all three have been rocked by explosions. Compounding the problems, on Tuesday a fire broke out in Unit 4's fuel storage pond, an area where used nuclear fuel is kept cool, causing radioactivity to be released into the atmosphere.

Units 4, 5 and 6 were shut at the time of the quake, but even offline reactors have nuclear fuel — either inside the reactors or in storage ponds — that need to be kept cool.

Meanwhile, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency estimated that 70 percent of the rods have been damaged at the No. 1 reactor.

Japan's national news agency, Kyodo, said that 33 percent of the fuel rods at the No. 2 reactor were damaged and that the cores of both reactors were believed to have partially melted.

___

Associated Press writers Elaine Kurtenbach and Shino Yuasa in Tokyo, David Stringer in Ofunato and Jocelyn Gecker in Bangkok contributed to this report.

US breaks with Japan over power plant warnings

(03-16) 11:36 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

The White House is recommending that U.S. citizens stay 50 miles away from a stricken nuclear plant, not the 20-mile radius recommended by the Japanese.

The order comes after President Barack Obama met Wednesday with top advisers and the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. As late as Tuesday, the U.S. had not issued its own recommendations, advising citizens instead to follow the recommendations of the Japanese.

White House spokesman Jay Carney says the move does not signal a lack of confidence in Japan. He says the NRC is using its own data and making its recommendation on how it would handle the incident if it happened in the U.S.

Carney says the White House consulted with the Japanese government before making the recommendation.

kinda makes ya think how smart it is for California to have a nuke plant on the beach in SoCal dunnit

And San Onofre supposedly can handle a 7.0: http://articles.ocregister.com/2011-03-12/news/28686252_1_nuclear-reactors-nuclear-plant-san-onofre

Of course there's Palo Verde in Arizona which is "the only nuclear generating facility in the world that is not situated adjacent to a large body of above-ground water"

http://www.wimp.com/problemexplained/

This was helpful for me^

"What we believe at this time is that there has been a hydrogen explosion in this unit due to an uncovering of the fuel in the fuel pool," Gregory Jaczko told a House energy and commerce subcommittee hearing. "We believe that secondary containment has been destroyed and there is no water in the spent fuel pool, and we believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures."

*** FYI: This is quite contrary to what NISA and TEPCo are saying.^^^

U.S. officials are alarmed at how the Japanese are handling the escalating nuclear reactor crisis and fear that if they do not get control of the plants within the next 24 to 48 hours they could have a situation that will be "deadly for decades."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-send-special-nuclear-team-japan-nuclear-regulatory/story?id=13148044

NYT: U.S. Calls Radiation ‘Extremely High’ and Urges Deeper Caution in Japan

By DAVID E. SANGER and MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave a significantly bleaker appraisal of the threat posed by Japan’s nuclear crisis than the Japanese government, saying on Wednesday that the damage at one crippled reactor was much more serious than Japanese officials had acknowledged and advising to Americans to evacuate a wider area around the plant than the perimeter established by Japan.

The announcement marked a new and ominous chapter in the five-day long effort by Japanese engineers to bring four side-by-side reactors under control after their cooling systems were knocked out by an earthquake and tsunami last Friday. It also suggested a serious split between Washington and Tokyo, after American officials concluded that the Japanese warnings were insufficient, and that, deliberately or not, they had understated the potential threat of what is taking place inside the nuclear facility.

Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the commission, said in Congressional testimony that the commission believed that all the water in the spent fuel pool at the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station had boiled dry, leaving fuel rods stored there exposed and bleeding radiation. As a result, he said, “We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures.”

If his analysis is accurate and Japanese workers have been unable to keep the spent fuel at that inoperative reactor properly cooled — it needs to remain covered with water at all times — radiation levels could make it difficult not only to fix the problem at reactor No. 4, but to keep workers at the Daiichi complex from servicing any of the other problem reactors at the plant.

Mr. Jaczko (the name is pronounced YAZZ-koe) said radiation levels may make it impossible to continue what he called the “backup backup” cooling functions that have so far helped check the fuel melting at the other reactors. Those efforts consist of using fire hoses to dump water on overheated fuel and then letting the radioactive steam vent into the atmosphere.

Those emergency measures, implemented by a small squad of workers and firemen, are the main steps Japan is taking at Daiichi to forestall a full blown fuel meltdown that would lead to much higher releases of radioactive material.

Mr. Jaczko’s testimony came as the American Embassy in Tokyo, on advice from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told Americans to evacuate a radius of “approximately 50 miles” from the Fukushima plant.

The advice represents a graver assessment of the risk in the immediate vicinity of Daiichi than the warnings made by the Japanese themselves, who have told everyone within 20 kilometers, about 12 miles, to evacuate, and those between 20 and 30 kilometers to take shelter.

Mr. Jaczko’s testimony, the most extended comments by a senior American official on Japan’s nuclear disaster, described what amounts to an agonizing choice for Japanese authorities: Send a small number of workers into an increasingly radioactive area in a last-ditch effort to cover the spent fuel, and the fuel in other reactors, — with water, or do more to protect the workers but risk letting the pools of water protecting the fuel boil away — and thus risk a broader meltdown.

The Japanese authorities have never been as specific as Mr. Jascko was in his testimony about the situation at reactor No. 4, where they have been battling fires for more than 24 hours. It is possible the authorities there disagree with Mr. Jascko’s conclusion about the exposure of the spent fuel, or that they have chosen not to discuss the matter for fear of panicking people.

Experts say workers at the plant probably could not approach a fuel pool that was dry, because radiation levels would be so high. In a normally operating pool, the water provides not only cooling but also shields workers from gamma radiation. A plan to dump water into the pool, and others like it, from helicopters was suspended because the crews would be flying right into a radioactive plume.

Mr. Jaczko’s analysis suggests that a potentially dangerous chain of events could unfold, as workers trying to cool the adjacent reactors at the facility could also be exposed to intolerable levels of radiation. If they, too, had to withdraw, the problem could worsen, as reactor cores were go uncooled and spent fuel pools run dry.

Earlier in the day, Japanese authorities announced a different escalation of the crisis at Daiichi when they said that a second reactor unit at the plant may have suffered damage to its primary containment structure and appeared to be releasing radioactive steam.

The break, at the No. 3 reactor unit, worsened the already perilous conditions at the plant, a day after officials said the containment vessel in the No. 2 reactor had also cracked.

The possibility of high radiation levels above the plant prompted the Japanese military to put off a highly unusual plan to dump water from helicopters — a tactic normally used to combat forest fires — to lower temperatures in a pool containing spent fuel rods that was dangerously overheating at the No. 4 reactor. The operation would have meant flying a helicopter into the steam rising from the plant.

But in one of a series of rapid and at times confusing pronouncements on the crisis, the authorities insisted that damage to the containment vessel at the No. 3 reactor — the main focus of concern earlier on Wednesday — was unlikely to be severe.

Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said the possibility that the No. 3 reactor had “suffered severe damage to its containment vessel is low.” Earlier he said only that the vessel might have been damaged; columns of steam were seen rising from it in live television coverage.

The reactor’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said it had been able to double the number of people battling the crisis at the plant to 100 from 50, but that was before the clouds of radioactive steam began billowing from the plant. On Tuesday, 750 workers were evacuated, leaving a skeleton crew of 50 struggling to reduce temperatures in the damaged facility. An increasing proportion of the people at the plant are soldiers, but the exact number is not known.

The Pentagon said Wednesday that American military forces in Japan were not allowed within 50 miles of the plant and that some flight crews who might take part in relief missions were being given potassium iodide to protect against the effects of radiation. Tokyo Electric said Wednesday that some of those at the plant had taken cover for 45 minutes on site, and left water pumps running at reactors Nos. 1, 2 and 3. There was no suspension of cooling operations, said Kazuo Yamanaka, an official at Tokyo Electric. The vessel that possibly ruptured on Wednesday had been seen as the last fully intact line of defense against large-scale releases of radioactive material from the stricken reactor, but it was not clear how serious the possible breach might be.

The possible rupture, five days after a devastating earthquake and tsunami crippled the plant, followed a series of explosions and other problems there that have resulted in the world’s worst nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

The head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, who is Japanese, said he would leave for Japan as soon as possible to assess the situation.

The revised official assessment of the severity of the damage at the No. 3 reactor may have been intended to reduce some concerns about the containment vessel, which encloses the core, but the implications of overheating in the fuel rod pool at No. 4 seemed potentially dire.

There are six reactors at the plant, all of which have pools holding spent fuel rods at the top level of the reactor building. Reactors 4, 5 and 6 were out of service when the earthquake and tsunami struck, and there were concerns about the pools at 5 and 6 as well, and possibly those at the other reactors.

At a hearing in Washington on Wednesday held by two subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, “We think there is a partial meltdown” at the plant.

“We are trying to monitor it very closely,” he said. “We hear conflicting reports about exactly what is happening in the several reactors now at risk. I would not want to speculate about what is happening.”

He said that his agency had sent 39 people to the American Embassy and to United States consulates in Japan “with the skills, expertise and equipment to help assess, survey and monitor areas.” The department has also shipped survey equipment that can measure radiation levels from the air, he said.

The developments were the latest in Japan’s swirling tragedy since the quake and tsunami struck the country with unbridled ferocity last Friday. Emperor Akihito made his first ever televised appearance on Wednesday to tell the nation he was “deeply worried” about the nuclear crisis.

International alarm about the nuclear crisis appeared to be growing, as several nations urged their citizens in Japan to head to safer areas in the south or leave the country. Prior advisories had largely been limited to simply avoiding nonessential travel. Germany urged its citizens to move to areas farther away from the stricken nuclear plant.

Earlier Wednesday morning, Tokyo Electric reported that a fire was burning at the No. 4 reactor building, just hours after officials said flames that erupted Tuesday had been doused.

A government official at Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency soon after said that flames and smoke were no longer visible, but he cautioned that it was unclear if the fire had died out. He also was not clear if it was a new fire or if the fire Tuesday had never gone out.

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong.

"We are all-out urging the Japanese to get more people back in there to do emergency operation there, that the next 24 to 48 hours are critical," the official said. "Urgent efforts are needed on the part of the Japanese to restore emergency operations to cool" down the reactors' rods before they trigger a meltdown.

"They need to stop pulling out people—and step up with getting them back in the reactor to cool it. There is a recognition this is a suicide mission," the official said.

dear god

Chu's assessment is in line with views expressed by many experts, some of whom even believe the Japan crisis could be worse than the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine that left hundreds sick and killed several from radiation.

what is worst case scenario here...? Chernobyl sickened a bunch of people, boosted cancer rates, and made a small area of Russia completely uninhabitable. Are we looking at something that would have an exponentially wider impact in terms of the number of people and geographical area affected?

well, tokyo is the most densely populated area of the world iirc

well yeah I guess what I'm asking is what's worst case scenario in terms of amount of radiation released and how big an area would be affected. Chernobyl was bad, but it really only seriously harmed a few thousand people.

right, because chernobyl wasn't 365km from the most densely populated area of the world

guys I understand that Tokyo is densely populated

god what the hell aren't you getting here

joeks :-/

don't know if this was posted earlier
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=25e_1300213328

Never a good sign when the US steps in and says it's worse than you think. I was surprised, tbh, that the power company kept pulling people out, too. Like it would be better if the thing goes totally bad? Imagine a fire chief ordering his men back because it's too hot. I mean, I realize it's dangerous and possibly a suicide mission. But so is firefighting and police work and war. It is what it is. This is a handful of nuclear reactors in Japan going sour fast. I think the time to be cautious has passed, unfortunately.

I imagine all the personnel currently trying to shut that plant down know that this is going to kill them

at least with firefighting there's a chance of heroic survival in the face of immediate danger. going into a reactor is like welp maybe i'll get cancer. less of a 'suicide mission' and more of a deal with the devil

gbx pic debunked -> http://i.imgur.com/qxCwb.jpg

But the principle is the same. Who knows how many people will have to deal with radiation effects as it is, let alone if this get totally out of control. Which it may be already.

also you can get radiation poisoning really quickly right? i mean its possible that it could be so bad theyd show up & be entirely unable to perform whatever job