giant earthquake off coast of Japan

A 7.4 magnitude earthquake has just struck off of the coast of Japan with a meter high tsunami expected.

 

Crimminey.

I'd invest in concrete futures over there right now. (is there such a thing?)

 

TEPCO admits nuclear meltdown occurred at Fukushima reactor 16 hours after quake

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/...na028000c.html

Japan: meltdown feared at two more Fukushima reactors

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8517861/Japan-meltdown-feared-at-two-more-Fukushima-reactors.html

 

<iframe width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/k6rDWqjnW7w" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Yeah, I don't really know that much about the engineering inside a nuclear reactor, but I remember sitting there and seeing the images of this shredded building and hearing the reports "but Tepco officials say they have the situation under control and that the fire hoses are working. There is no meltdown at this point." ... and it just didn't hold water, so to speak.

 

B-Bob confirmed correct.

 

I haven't really had a chance to check out a lot about these recent reports.

But are they basically confirming that the fuel melted (either partially or fully in some cases)? I thought that was assumed pretty much since the beginning, given the problems they had with cooling the reactors (if you can't cool it, it's going to melt). Thought TEPCO even said as much in one of those reports. Or maybe it was some other agency (I'm thinking of one of those charts that showed the estimated damage to each core).

Though I think I read something about possible leaks in the updated reports. That's not good. I really need to read up more on that to get an idea on how bad the contamination is. Don't really care whether the cores melted as long as they were contained.

 

In case anyone has forgotten about Fukushima, the reports keep getting worse.

 

Is it time?

 

Sadly not surprising. The initial reports that were downplaying this disaster just seemed a bit to rosy when it was clear that they didn't really know what was going on in there.

I wonder if as we get the true sense of this disaster if this will cause those people who said this showed that Nuclear power is safe to reconsider.

 

Mostly goes to show how safe (or unsafe) these designs are. I can't remember what my opinion on this was initially, but I think we probably should ditch all these older designs (these events have definitely shown some flaws in these designs...although I guess they were all mostly known). Of course, we'll probably just scrap all plans for new, safer reactors, but since we want the power, we'll keep running the existing reactors, long past their planned retirement dates. And open up some more coal plants and oil refineries. Sounds like a great idea.

It is still a little unclear to me what the ramifications that all this "but it gets worse" news is detailing. No doubt that having a reading of 4000 millisieverts an hour near one of the reactors is not good, but I'm not sure what kind of "damage" that will do if compared to say 2000 mSv/hr or 4 msv/hr. If it is all contained to that area, does it matter how high the reading is? There is a large gap between a Chernobyl disaster and a "things got bad briefly, but everything's OK" event (maybe Three Mile Island I guess), so I'm not sure where this would fit. I think you could downlplay the disaster in comparison to Chernobyl (as many were doing AFAIK as most people were concerned about that), but obviously this is a bigger deal than the latter example.

As it is, I'm a bit bothered by some of the news reports that seem to be repeating old info as if it was new (e.g., wasn't this classified as a incident level 7 long ago, maybe a few weeks after the incident? Plus what I mentioned earlier about the meltdowns). Unless I'm just not understanding the point they're trying to make.

Definitely not pleased with the news that TEPCO and the Japanese government weren't releasing completely accurate information though. That's pretty much the dumbest thing they could have done.

 

damn!

 

Another one? Hopefully it didn't set back recovery efforts...

 

http://www.huliq.com/12079/japan-tsunami-debris-field-headed-towards-us-may-offer-grisly-finds-shore

The huge mass of an ocean debris field from the tsunami in Japan is headed towards the West Coast and Hawaii. The ruins of houses, cars, trees along with human remains are just some of the things contained in this floating island. When the debris field hits the U.S. shores, some very disturbing and grisly findings could be among the garbage that floats in, according to NPR.

The debris field is so large, that there is no way to clean it up before hitting the US shores. This debris field is going to hit the Hawaiian Islands first and then make its way to the West Coast of the U.S. and British Columbia.

The University of Hawaii’s International Pacific Research Center has calculated that debris will wash up for years on the West Coast and Hawaii. Wind and Ocean currents will bring the debris field in this direction.

Vancouver News reports that a floating island, of bodies and debris is causing chaos in Pacific shipping lanes. This island is approximately 70 miles long and just one of the many islands of floating debris in the Pacific right now headed toward the US coast.

The debris mass, which appears as an island from the air, contains cars, trucks, tractors, boats and entire houses floating in the current heading toward the U.S. and Canada, according to ABC News. Over 200,000 buildings were washed away by the tsunami with their debris included in this field of garbage floating towards the U.S. and Canada.

The largest island of debris is 69 miles long and covers more than 2.2 million sq. ft., according to the US Navy’s 7th fleet, which is monitoring the floating garbage. Lieutenant Anthony Falvo, the deputy public affairs officer, whose interview appears in the Vancouver Sun, says that if a ship encounters this floating mass it “can do anything from piercing the hull of a ship to leaving dents or getting wrapped up in the propulsion systems.”

Once the debris field reaches the West Coast it will cycle into the Pacific Garbage Patch which is a floating island of garbage that has been growing in the Pacific Ocean.

The timeline for this mass of debris to hit the US is estimated to start in about a year with the first pieces of debris showing up on the shore. Items that easily float like boats, wood from houses and plastic children’s toys will appear, according to oceanographer Curt Ebbesmeyer on ABC News. Two years out, fishing supplies and nets will come ashore and after three years the debris field will dump shoes, plastic furniture and even entire dinning sets, along with many other items.

 

Everyone knows that's just the next Katamari Damacy game

 

Tepco is still not being terribly forthcoming with data from Fukushima, but IEEE has released a very interesting report on what happened and why. Interesting read.

 

I found this video while online today and thought it as worth sharing. I hope it's not a repost, sorry if it is. Scary stuff.

http://fragg.me/video/japan-tsunami-inside-car

 

Ten year anniversary just passed and I've been seeing a lot of rare/ new videos on Youtube that perhaps weren't uploaded initially. This one is wild notice the water height under the big suspension bridge at the start then at the end as the second wave hits.

 

I saw this story about a man who lost his wife during the tsunami. He learned to dive just to search for her. He's been looking for any signs of her remains for 10 years. Another guy has apparently been searching for clues of his daughter since then with him.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33294275