Japan hit by 8.9 quake and following tsunami

[Ed Anger]

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/%E3%82%AC%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AC%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AB%E3%82%A6%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BF

Live Geiger counter, Tokyo

[Caliga]

 

It's been a while since I went over Geiger counters with the Red Cross, but that's like a fraction of a millirem IIRC... so in other words normal background radiation.

Crazed hippies are cute.

[Neil]

It's been a while since I went over Geiger counters with the Red Cross, but that's like a fraction of a millirem IIRC... so in other words normal background radiation.

Crazed hippies are cute.

No they aren't.  They're dangerous.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

It's been a while since I went over Geiger counters with the Red Cross, but that's like a fraction of a millirem IIRC... so in other words normal background radiation.

Crazed hippies are cute.

According to the conversion here the current readings are about 1.3 μSv/h, which is 3 - 4 times the background radiation in Colorado.

[Caliga]

No they aren't.  They're dangerous.

The radiation levels are dangerous, or crazed hippies are?

[Caliga]

According to the conversion here the current readings are about 1.3 μSv/h, which is 3 - 4 times the background radiation in Colorado.

Isn't that still way, way below dangerous levels of exposure? 1,000 millirems = 1 rem; 100 rems = radiation sickness?

[Neil]

No they aren't.  They're dangerous.

The radiation levels are dangerous, or crazed hippies are?

Crazed hippies.  They attack the world of the mind, something that radiation can't touch.

[jimmy olsen]

Damn, if this speculation is right, the Japanese are absolutely fucked!

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-sci-japan-quake-aftershock-20110316,0,361029.story

Aftershocks prompt fear of a major quake near Tokyo
The pattern of aftershocks appears to be shifting south toward the capital. Scientists say the temblors could transfer stress to nearby faults.

By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times

March 16, 2011

As dozens of aftershocks continued to rattle Japan on Tuesday, scientists said they were worried that Friday's magnitude 9 earthquake might trigger a dangerous temblor close to Tokyo, the largest urban center in the world.

The fear is that the initial quake and the series of large aftershocks will transfer geophysical stress into nearby faults, causing some near Tokyo to shift violently, said Michael Wysession, a seismologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

Already, the pattern of aftershocks in Japan appears to be shifting southward toward Tokyo from off the coast of Sendai, 231 miles away. On Tuesday night local time, a magnitude 6.2 quake struck near Shizuoka, 72 miles southwest of the capital.

That quake "upped the ante" for Tokyo, said Thomas Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center at USC.

Concern about the quake risk in the Tokyo metropolitan area, home to 32.5 million people, seems to arise from multiple sources.

First, large earthquakes spawn hundreds of aftershocks along nearby faults and plate boundaries. Some of these aftershocks can be very powerful. In Japan, aftershocks have been as big as 7.1.

Second, Tokyo is situated at what's known as a triple junction, where three tectonic plates — in this case, the Pacific, the Philippine and the Eurasian plates — come together. Such intersections are often seismically active and "tend to produce a lot of fracturing and breaking off of stuff," said Ross Stein, a U.S. Geological Service geophysicist in Menlo Park, Calif.

"Tokyo is in the center of everything, and it's pathologically located in harm's way," he said.

And then there's the fact that this week's aftershocks "seem to be migrating from Sendai toward Tokyo," said John Rundle, a seismologist at UC Davis.

A 2008 study that assessed the seismic risk in Tokyo concluded that the city faced a 30% chance of a quake with shaking as intense as that felt in Sendai in the next 30 years.

Friday's quake appears to have "slightly increased the stresses on faults around Tokyo," said Stein, who led the study. Still, he emphasized that exactly what it might herald is unclear.

Since the 1970s, seismologists have been anticipating a Big One of at least a magnitude 8 that could have devastating consequences for Tokyo. They already have a name for it: the Tokai quake.

But the Japan Meteorological Agency said Tuesday that the Shizuoka aftershock was not directly related to Tokai, said Shinji Toda, a geologist at Kyoto University, who has worked closely with Stein.

The Shizuoka aftershock was a strike-slip quake, which occurs when two sides along a fault move sideways relative to each other. The Tokai quake would be a megathrust quake, when one tectonic plate is pushed beneath another, Toda said.

Scientists noted that predicting earthquake activity was always a tricky business.

"We have an incredible habit of being wrong," Stein said.

[Caliga]

No worries, Tim.  The Lord doesn't hate Japan enough to do that.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Isn't that still way, way below dangerous levels of exposure? 1,000 millirems = 1 rem; 100 rems = radiation sickness?

Yeah, it is still really low.  According to Wiki, radiation sickness can kick in at as little as 250mSv (25rem) in a day, though.

[The Brain]

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/%E3%82%AC%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AC%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AB%E3%82%A6%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BF

Live Geiger counter, Tokyo

Insane rates.

[Barrister]

This all reminds me of the days when I worked for AECL, had to carry a radiation badge on me at work, got a total body count test.  Ah, memories...

[DGuller]

This all reminds me of the days when I worked for AECL, had to carry a radiation badge on me at work, got a total body count test.  Ah, memories...

Let me guess, your body count was 1?

[Josquius]

It seems to be business as usual in many respects for Japan. Yesterday I had an interview with a company  which teaches English in Japan (its just a back up job, not sure I actually want to take it, pay is lame) and the woman doing it told me that they've sent out a bunch of new teachers on schedule this week. They are however having their orientation in Osaka rather than the usual place in Tokyo.

Just wish NHK would stop the constant rolling news.

[Jacob]

Just wish NHK would stop the constant rolling news.

Well there are 10 000+ dead, about half a million people displaced, thousands of people still unaccounted for, a significant dip in the electricity production for the country, a massive amount of infrastructure to be rebuilt, potential long term health risk for the population of a major metropolis; it's the biggest disaster in the country since it was bombed into rubble by the Americans at the end of World War II.

Seems reasonable to me that they have constant rolling news, to be honest.