7.9 and 8.8 Earthquakes in Japan

What I can't tell from that story is why that's a worse outcome that what was known before. How catastrophic is this catastrophe? It doesn't sound even in this worst-ish case, that anyone is much endangered by what's happened.

Good timing... convenient too:

"Japan has more than doubled its initial estimate of radiation released from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in the week after the March 11 tsunami, ahead of the launch of an official probe Tuesday."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110607/ts_afp/japandisasteraccidentnuclear_20110607091539

I mean, it's not that the American government is particularly honest about many things, but the Japanese government seems particularly shady with their dealings in this disaster.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html

A very informative, if not alarming, article on the current situation, with former nuclear industry senior vice president Arnold Gundersen deeming Fukushima "the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind" and estimating it will take around 10-15 years for the reactors to be dismantled. Jesus, I really hope Japan gets through all of this somehow.

Not sure how much of this is already covered upthread, but the last section is definitely news to me.

they need cites on some of the stuff they mention in that article. where are they getting some of the studies and statistics -- have they been published elsewhere? corroborated?

not saying it's not true but it left me w/ more questions than answers.

Don't have much experience with using that website and not sure what the writer's sources are, but it doesn't strike me as something that isn't legitimate or factual.

btw kinda late on this but arnold gundersen, nuclear expert he may be, is also a known for-profit anti nuke campaigner so i'd def take most of what he says w/ at least a little bit of salt

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-12/radioactive-material-found-250km-from-fukushima/3554608

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/251011/full/478435a.html

http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2011/10/25/japanese-tsunami-debris-headed-to-the-west-coast/

http://iprc.soest.hawaii.edu/users/hafner/PUBLIC/TSUNAMI_DEBRIS/GIF_NO_VECTOR_large/movie_tracer.gif

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/world/asia/a-year-later-undertakers-story-offers-japan-hope.html

this made me tear up - what a hero this guy is, amazing how small acts of kindness can mean so much to so many people

hero 4real

Kevin: you might be interested in the film Departures (おくりびと Okuribito) from 2008.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/59280000/jpg/_59280655_014341269-1.jpg

A Japanese fishing vessel swept away by the March 2011 tsunami has been spotted adrift off the west coast of Canada.

An aircraft patrolling the seas off British Columbia saw the vessel, which is about 50-metre (164ft) long, floating 275km (170 miles) from the Haida Gwaii islands on Friday.

It is believed to be the first large item from the millions of tonnes of tsunami debris to cross the Pacific.

No-one is believed to be on board the ship, registered in Hokkaido, Japan.

Japan earthquake visualization map 2011. Almost 700 M5+ quakes in/round Japan last year... insane!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKp5cA2sM28

my mom just told me there was a 10.0 right now in japan?

can't find anything at all, she probably caught something weird on the internet

Nothing here:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.html

yeah, false alarm it looks like. sorry everybody

weird.

(there totes wasn't, i mean i was asleep but i would have felt that)

(also considering that i am on the tohoku coast i would be very very very afraid right now)

yeah pretty sure you'd feel a ten in frikkin Kansas

I could just look this up, but has there ever even been a ten? I thought we had topped out at 9.8 in chile or AK or something

Jesus, scared me there! I don't ask my mom about earthquakes anymore. I mean, why worry about the little ones?

yeah scared me too and I'm nowhere near there! apparently she saw it on a scrolling ticker on a chinese news program. those chinese, always wanting bad things to happen to japan.

I could just look this up, but has there ever even been a ten? I thought we had topped out at 9.8 in chile or AK or something

Chile 1960 topped off at 9.5 and that's about as powerful as you can get. I seem to recall that once you get above 10.0, the crust of the earth can fail so you need something like an asteroid strike to get that intense.

From http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Has_there_ever_been_a_magnitude_10_earthquake

It is thought that the impact that occurred 65.5 million years ago creating the Chixulub crater beneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico (and thought to have contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs) yielded energy equivalent to an earthquake of magnitude 12.5.

yikes

i remember it, it was awful

all my best china

yeah it's not really "an earthquake" any more at that point, it's more like being above an underground nuclear test

Total destruction – Everything is destroyed. Lines of sight and level distorted. Objects thrown into the air. The ground moves in waves or ripples. Large amounts of rock move position. Landscape altered, or levelled by several meters. In some cases, even the routes of rivers are changed.

except it'd be like distributing 300 of the biggest bombs ever made and setting that off

that's a 10 i'm talking about, not a 12.5!

12.5 would be two million of the biggest nukes

getting into lensman territory

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/261550/earthquake-felt-in-visayas

japan on tsunami watch

http://www.jma.go.jp/jp/tsunami/

gah

it's like 10:30pm in japan right now and all

(i am not there but i know where my evacuation point would be if i was)

tsunami warning cancelled everywhere except indonesia, philippines, belau

one of my v good friends is meant to be leaving for java tomorrow - super glad he hasn't left yet tbh.

i feel like i have turned into one of those medieval buddhist texts, all "never make attachments to other humans as your life will never be free from worry"

in suburban ishinomaki by the beach there were these signposts, whose tops were bent at a 45 degree angle, that said "tsunami evacuation point [blah blah high school] 300m ahead" and it was ironic because the signposts are now bent at a 45 degree angle and also because [blah blah high school] is now heavily damaged and mostly gutted and its schoolyard used as a tip for debris.

by 'ironic' i mostly mean 'upsetting'.

Masao Yoshida, Nuclear Engineer and Chief at Fukushima Plant, Dies at 58

TOKYO — Masao Yoshida, a nuclear engineer who took charge of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant two years ago as multiple reactors spiraled out of control after a tsunami, but who ultimately failed to prevent the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, died here on Tuesday. He was 58.

The cause was cancer, said the Fukushima plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power.

ugh, grim.

The irony has not escaped netizens, some of whom wonder whether his diagnosis was connected to radiation exposure. The plant’s operator, Tepco, insists it was not. Yoshida left his post in December 2011 after fighting a nine-month battle to stop Fukushima’s reactors from overheating, and a week later Tepco disclosed his diagnosis.

Meanwhile: Fukushima nuclear leaks alarm Japan regulator - Power station continuing to contaminate water and soil two years after disaster, watchdog says.

Japanese Government intervenes in TEPCO cleanup, proposes $400 Million Dollar Fukushima Underground "Ice Wall":

http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2021561491_japannukexml.html

25 minute video of the tsunami from early dread/alarms to devastation. Hadn't seen this one yet...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gh3JrdL-Zg

That one's insane.

A glitch from an underwater earthquake gauge near Mie Prefecture in Japan apparently resulted in nearly every single Japanese cellphone to sound it's built in Earthquake alarm just over a week ago, freaking the whole nation out for a few mins.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/08/08/national/agency-quake-alert-was-false-alarm/#.Ug425mT70Xp

Yack. 7.3 in the Fukushima region half an hour ago.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usc000kn4n#summary