Japan hit by 8.9 quake and following tsunami

[Barrister]

Instead of nuclear they should have bought clean Wyoming Kentucky Alberta coal.

I like money.

I, too, like money.

[Liep]

Instead of nuclear they should have bought clean Wyoming Kentucky Alberta coal windpower.

I like money.

I, too, like money.

www.vestas.com

[The Brain]

It's not strange that nuke plants get in some trouble when a huge earthquake hits. I think that we'll have to wait for the analysis of exactly what happened and why to say much about the implications for nuclear power. The purpose of the layers and layers of safety is to be able to handle loss of many systems. The question is did things happen that shouldn't have happened? Did the systems meet specs or not? How does what happened compare to the plant specific earthquake safety analysis that exists for all plants?

I won't be at all surprised if some, ahem, irregularities do surface. TEPCO (who operates some of the plants if I understood an article right) got in a huge scandal some years ago when they falsified safety inspection reports.

If they do get a meltdown now it will be interesting to see if the containment is intact. It should be, and if it is no harm will come to the public. Just like TMI.

[DGuller]

A thousand feared dead.

A vast, vast underestimate, I'm afraid. 

[Tamas]

A "gas explosion" in one of the nuclear plants. 

[chipwich]

Obviously the Japs should have thought about that before living in Japan. It's their fault.

[The Brain]

I just had a gas explosion in my nuclear pants.

[jimmy olsen]

 
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-12/explosion-destroys-walls-of-japan-reactor-building-nhk-reports.html

Explosion Destroys Walls of Japanese Nuclear Reactor Building, NHK Reports
By Yuji Okada - Mar 12, 2011 6:15 PM GMT+0900

An explosion occurred at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi power station north of Tokyo, destroying the walls of the No. 1 reactor building, NHK Television said. The report came after the government said a reactor may be melting.

Smoke was rising around the nuclear reactor after an aftershock from yesterday's quake struck, Ryohei Shiomi, a spokesman at the country's nuclear safety agency said by phone.

The spokesman said several people were injured during an aftershock that struck around 3:30 p.m. Japan time, adding he had no further information. Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the plant, said it had no information, when contacted by Bloomberg News.

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said earlier that a nuclear reactor in the Fukushima Dai-Ichi power station, about 220 kilometers (140 miles) north of Tokyo, may be starting to melt down after Japan's biggest earthquake on record hit the area yesterday.

Fuel rods at the No. 1 reactor at the plant run by Tokyo Electric Power Co. may be melting after radioactive Cesium material left by atomic fission was detected near the site, Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, spokesman Yuji Kakizaki said by phone today.

"If the fuel rods are melting and this continues, a reactor meltdown is possible," Kakizaki said. A meltdown refers to a heat buildup in the core of such an intensity it melts the floor of the reactor containment housing.

Tokyo Electric, Asia's biggest power company, started releasing radioactive gas and steam into the atmosphere to reduce pressure in the containment housing after yesterday's magnitude 8.9 earthquake, Akitsuka Kobayashi, a company spokesman, said by phone earlier today. Pressure has started to fall in the containment housing, said Yoshihiro Sugiyama, a spokesman at the country's nuclear safety agency.

Winds in the area of the Fukushima plant are blowing at less than 18 kilometers per hour mostly in an offshore direction, according to a 4 p.m. update from the Japan Meteorological Association.

The government earlier today widened the evacuation zone around the reactor to 10 kilometers from 3 kilometers, affecting thousands of people. The quake and the tsunami that followed is estimated to have killed at least 500 people with hundreds more missing, the National Police Agency said.

Low Radiation

"When the pressure starts building up, the emergency procedure is to start venting," Dave Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety project at the Union for Concerned Scientists, said in a telephone interview. "They've essentially entered a beat the clock game. As long as there is no fuel damage, there will be radioactivity, but it will be very low."

Radiation spread by the venting won't be at a level dangerous to health, said Ryohei Shiomi, a spokesman at the government's nuclear agency said earlier.

Tokyo Electric started venting gas from a containment section of the No. 1 reactor at Fukushima Dai-ichi at about 9 a.m. local time. The company is preparing to do the same at the Dai-Ni nuclear plant nearby, a spokesman said.

Tokyo Electric earlier said it had lost control of pressure building up in three reactors at the Dai-Ichi power plant. Temperatures in the control room rose to higher than 100 Celsius (212 Fahrenheit), said Naoki Tsunoda, a company spokesman.
Main Barrier

The plant's operators need to connect to the electricity grid, fix emergency diesel generators or bring in more batteries to power a backup system that pumps the water needed to cool the reactor, said Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who has worked at nuclear power plants for 17 years.

The air cooling system in the containment building probably failed due to the power loss, allowing pressure to increase inside, Lochbaum said.

The main barrier between a reactor and outside areas is the containment building, Lochbaum said. Without an air cooling system the air heats, causing pressure to rise inside the building, with the risk that radioactive air will escape.

Tokyo Electric has also started preparing to vent gas from the containment areas of four reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ni nuclear plant, Kobayashi said.

[Caliga]

Quake moved Japan coast 8 feet; shifted Earth's axis
By Kevin Voigt, CNN
March 12, 2011 1:58 a.m. EST

(CNN) -- The powerful earthquake that unleashed a devastating tsunami Friday appears to have moved the main island of Japan by 8 feet (2.4 meters) and shifted the Earth on its axis.

"At this point, we know that one GPS station moved (8 feet), and we have seen a map from GSI (Geospatial Information Authority) in Japan showing the pattern of shift over a large area is consistent with about that much shift of the land mass," said Kenneth Hudnut, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Reports from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy estimated the 8.9-magnitude quake shifted the planet on its axis by nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters).

The temblor, which struck Friday afternoon near the east coast of Japan, killed hundreds of people, caused the formation of 30-foot walls of water that swept across rice fields, engulfed entire towns, dragged houses onto highways, and tossed cars and boats like toys. Some waves reached six miles (10 kilometers) inland in Miyagi Prefecture on Japan's east coast.

The quake was the most powerful to hit the island nation in recorded history and the tsunami it unleashed traveled across the Pacific Ocean, triggering tsunami warnings and alerts for 50 countries and territories as far away as the western coasts of Canada, the U.S. and Chile. The quake triggered more than 160 aftershocks in the first 24 hours -- 141 measuring 5.0-magnitude or more.

The quake occurred as the Earth's crust ruptured along an area about 250 miles (400 kilometers) long by 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide, as tectonic plates slipped more than 18 meters, said Shengzao Chen, a USGS geophysicist.

Japan is located along the Pacific "ring of fire," an area of high seismic and volcanic activity stretching from New Zealand in the South Pacific up through Japan, across to Alaska and down the west coasts of North and South America. The quake was "hundreds of times larger" than the 2010 quake that ravaged Haiti, said Jim Gaherty of the LaMont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

The Japanese quake was of similar strength to the 2004 earthquake in Indonesia that triggered a tsunami that killed over 200,000 people in more than a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean. "The tsunami that it sent out was roughly comparable in terms of size," Gaherty said. "[The 2004 tsunami] happened to hit some regions that were not very prepared for tsunamis ... we didn't really have a very sophisticated tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean basin at the time so the damage was significantly worse."

The Japanese quake comes just weeks after a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch on February 22, toppling historic buildings and killing more than 150 people. The timeframe of the two quakes have raised questions whether the two incidents are related, but experts say the distance between the two incidents makes that unlikely.

"I would think the connection is very slim," said Prof. Stephan Grilli, ocean engineering professor at the University of Rhode Island.

[jimmy olsen]

Damn, that's just crazy. Mother nature sure is a powerful bitch.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Precession is real?

[CountDeMoney]

Man, the guys at Google Earth are gonna be busy.

[Caliga]

World ending, film at 11.

83 rescued after floating Jeff Ruby restaurant breaks loose near Cincinnati

22 minutes ago

Firefighters rigged a precarious gangplank of ladders and ropes and safely rescued 83 people, including former Cincinnati Bengals star Cris Collinsworth, from a floating restaurant that broke free from a pier on the flooded Ohio River, authorities say.

[Neil]

They saved Collinsworth?  Mistake.

The only good thing about a lost season is that I wouldn't have to hear his voice.

[jimmy olsen]

They saved Collinsworth?  Mistake.

The only good thing about a lost season is that I wouldn't have to hear his voice.

Harsh