Japan hit by 8.9 quake and following tsunami

[MadImmortalMan]

Me too.  I've felt two in my lifetime.

I felt thousands in 2008 alone.

[Caliga]

Given that I've only ever lived in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Kentucky, you should be pretty impressed that I've even felt a single one.  I'm not impressed that a guy in Nevada has felt a lot of earthquakes.

[DGuller]

Given that I've only ever lived in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Kentucky, you should be pretty impressed that I've even felt a single one.  I'm not impressed that a guy in Nevada has felt a lot of earthquakes.

Actually, the corner of Kentucky/Tennessee/Illinois/Missouri is a high earthquake hazard area.

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone

[Caliga]

Yes, I'm aware of that, but I live 305 miles from New Madrid.  Still, one out of the two tremors I felt was triggered by the Wabash Fault, which is a more northern fault somehow connected to New Madrid (that earthquake was centered in Illinois).  People that live closer to New Madrid (e.g. Fireblade) feel tremors fairly often.  In fact, I was talking to FB on Facebook chat the other week and he actually felt an earthquake during the conversation.

The other tremor I've felt was when I lived in Massahusetts and there was an unusually strong (5.1 IIRC) quake in the Adirondacks.

[lustindarkness]

I've felt some back at PR, none in AL that I can remember.

[The Minsky Moment]

Number 2.
The thread I linked to explains it well. They could have stopped the disaster anytime they wanted by flooding the reactors; doing so though would ruin the reactors, they wanted to try and recover them if they could.

I read that the Fukushima reactors have in fact been flooded by seawater, and that the hesitancy to do this from the very beginning was indeed due to the fact that doing so renders them unrecoverable.

That is a very serious issue in itself because nuclear construction costs are so high and time to construct is so long.  The replacement cost of the Fukushima complex is likely somewhere between 9 and 15 billion dollars.  Putting aside safety issues, it might make more sense to build a number of  less complex, smaller, non-nuclear plants in areas that are at high risk of earthquake or severe flooding.  (a consideration that does not seem to impacted regime thinking in Iran).

[Razgovory]

Given that I've only ever lived in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Kentucky, you should be pretty impressed that I've even felt a single one.  I'm not impressed that a guy in Nevada has felt a lot of earthquakes.

Actually, the corner of Kentucky/Tennessee/Illinois/Missouri is a high earthquake hazard area.

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone

I've never felt an Earth Quake.  The New Madrid fault either produces very few earth quakes are very mild ones.  Tornadoes are bigger threat to people in the area.

[Caliga]

Raz, it produces almost nonstop tremors, but most are a 2 or less on the Richter scale.  I have a plugin for Google Earth that overlays it with earthquake activity and any time I log in there and look at the New Madrid zone, there have been dozens of earthquakes within the past 72 hours, but most are in the 1-2 range.

[Berkut]

Was the damage done to the plants a result of the quake or the tsunami? I am assuming it was the quake - they can't all have been close enough to the shore to be effected by the water, I would assume.

[Malthus]

Was the damage done to the plants a result of the quake or the tsunami? I am assuming it was the quake - they can't all have been close enough to the shore to be effected by the water, I would assume.

From what I read, it was the tsunami - it flooded the back-up generators needed to circulate the coolant.

[Barrister]

Was the damage done to the plants a result of the quake or the tsunami? I am assuming it was the quake - they can't all have been close enough to the shore to be effected by the water, I would assume.

Reactors need access to a large body of water for cooling.  So yes they probably are all close to the shore.

[Caliga]

Hmmm... that raises some questions with me then, as the Sendai plain has been hit with very large tsunamis in the past (there was one in the middle ages that IIRC was so destructive that it helped the Japanese win a war against the Ainu that still inhabited the area) and there had been predictions for some time that the area was overdue for another massive quake.

[DGuller]

Hmmm... that raises some questions with me then, as the Sendai plain has been hit with very large tsunamis in the past (there was one in the middle ages that IIRC was so destructive that it helped the Japanese win a war against the Ainu that still inhabited the area) and there had been predictions for some time that the area was overdue for another massive quake.

What does it mean to be "overdue for an earthquake"?  Do earthquakes happen in cycles?

[Josquius]

 

I read that the Fukushima reactors have in fact been flooded by seawater, and that the hesitancy to do this from the very beginning was indeed due to the fact that doing so renders them unrecoverable.

That is a very serious issue in itself because nuclear construction costs are so high and time to construct is so long.  The replacement cost of the Fukushima complex is likely somewhere between 9 and 15 billion dollars.  Putting aside safety issues, it might make more sense to build a number of  less complex, smaller, non-nuclear plants in areas that are at high risk of earthquake or severe flooding.  (a consideration that does not seem to impacted regime thinking in Iran).

On the bright side however I remember reading these reactors are the oldest ones at the site and were due to be replaced in a year or two anyway.

[Maximus]

What does it mean to be "overdue for an earthquake"?  Do earthquakes happen in cycles?

As I understand it, earthquakes are typically a sudden release of tension that has built up between plates. So essentially yes. You can have continuous small tremors or you can have more intermittent larger quakes.