Japan hit by powerful earthquake

[Jak]

I don't know if this is 'breaking news' or whatever.. but it just got posted on lolcnn..

"We are assuming that a meltdown has occured" at a nuclear power reactor, Japan's chief Cabinet Secretary says.

Edit: and link if it is new.. http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/12...d-destruction/

[jmc]

I don't know if this is 'breaking news' or whatever.. but it just got posted on lolcnn..






Edit: and link if it is new.. http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/12...d-destruction/

Yea, its breaking news....... 2nd meltdown possibly underway.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42044156...fic/?GT1=43001

[Yeyoking]

What does this meltdown mean? The area is now Chernobyl status?? Radiation is coming to the west coast??

[Osede]

It just mean the control rod that stop the fission process is melted due to high temperature. But right now, they only suspect that there is some partially meltdown on the control rod. Just hopefully the sea water cooling process able to decrease the temperature fast enough

[jmc]

From reading various articles about it........ they rank nuclear incidents from 0-7, Chernobly was a 7 and so far japan is a 4.

Three mile isle of whatever it was called (Meltdown in PA) was a rank 5, and it had no "immediate" deaths.

[*Shinzon*]

If a Meltdown of the #3 reactor has occurred, it stop them from preventing the meltdown of the #1 reactor, wont it?. Oh man

[jmc]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interna...ar_Event_Scale is the rankings I was talking about

[Osede]

You can treat each reactor situation as independently. As long as the radioactivity is not too serious, both process can go at the same time. Since there still the real last resort, which seal the reactor at all cost.

[Yeyoking]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interna...ar_Event_Scale is the rankings I was talking about

Interesting but it's still early and they still haven't been able to contain it so it could go higher than 4 in the end. Hopefully it doesn't get to 7.

[Salodin]

How big of a deal is the current meltdown in terms of environmental damage? Is it limited to a very short radius, or can things like wind bring it to other countries?

[*Shinzon*]

It depends on the amount of material released into the atmosphere I believe. If material makes it high enough into the atmosphere it can be spread to a very wide area.

[Tymon]

I don't see many situations where it could end up being a 7, other than a full meltdown with the core material leaking out into the atmosphere.

They can just seal it off completely, but that would take time.

I could see a 5 or a 6 before it's all over, but not a 7.

If it by some freak situation did end up being a 7, you can probably say goodbye to a rather large chunk of Japan, though.

[*Shinzon*]

Wow so according to Reuter's report today, several executives of TEPCO, the company running the plant, had to resign a while back because they were accused of falsifying documents regarding plant safety measures. Now you really wonder how safe that plant was to begin with despite them saying they retrofitted the plant to meet safety requirements.

[Mistress Stowastiq]

For Google Earth Geeks:
Google Earth, Geo Eye, USGS have provided high rez new pics and overlays for Google Earth so you can download them from the google map online view. There is also Shake Maps with way too much information for laymen about fault lines and quake. The before and after with the high rez images is really crazy. They have overlays that show the EQ data as well.

GE Satellite Imagery From Japan Quake You can click the blue "view in google earth" button on the top right of map interface and it will download the highrez section to your puter.

GE Picassa imagery gallery of quake [media tools]

http://twitter.com/#!/CrisisMappers Lots of crisis maps from Japan with various important info like nuclear plant evacuation radius, shelter locations. In general, just scroll down their tweet list and its full of links to useful updates.

http://twitter.com/#!/iaeaorg International Atomic Energy Agency Twitter

IAEA Facebook page Latest IAEA update on JP quake

CrisisMappers ShakeMap Archive

http://twitter.com/#!/earthoutreach Google Earth Outreach Twitter links also to the .KML files for the quake

Google Maps Page listing

CNN International pirate channel justintv http://www.justin.tv/hoctoggle#/w/960180000/2

[Plow]

How big of a deal is the current meltdown in terms of environmental damage? Is it limited to a very short radius, or can things like wind bring it to other countries?

it basically comes down to if what they're doing to cool it works

right now, if their plan works, there won't be all that much damage

should it fail... well, chernobyl wiped out everything within like a 15 mile radius, and the radiation ended up affecting huge chunks of europe and asia

basically the way the rest of the world figured out there was a problem was when someone in um... finland or sweden or something working at a nuclear plant found radioactive particles on their clothes and went looking for the source

[Yeyoking]

it basically comes down to if what they're doing to cool it works

right now, if their plan works, there won't be all that much damage

should it fail... well, chernobyl wiped out everything within like a 15 mile radius, and the radiation ended up affecting huge chunks of europe and asia

basically the way the rest of the world figured out there was a problem was when someone in um... finland or sweden or something working at a nuclear plant found radioactive particles on their clothes and went looking for the source

You know the decay on the radioactive fallouts? If it goes Chernobyl, how long would the radioactive fallout be lethal to people's health??

[Maaglin]

it basically comes down to if what they're doing to cool it works

right now, if their plan works, there won't be all that much damage

should it fail... well, chernobyl wiped out everything within like a 15 mile radius, and the radiation ended up affecting huge chunks of europe and asia

basically the way the rest of the world figured out there was a problem was when someone in um... finland or sweden or something working at a nuclear plant found radioactive particles on their clothes and went looking for the source

You guys do realize that this plant has shielding in place, unlike chernobyl? It's designed to contain the radiation in the event of a core meltdown. It's you know, doing it's job quite well consideration the devasting events that have taken place up to now.

The constant comparison to chernobyl is nothing more than media sensationalism.

It's the same crap when they were reporting 'radiation is 20x more than normal outside the plant omg!!!!'....yeah, normal radiation outside the plant is like 0. So any increase will be exponential. You get more radiation having a CT scan then standing outside the plant for a few hours. People lap that shit up though, they don't care that the reported data isn't compared to anything to get some sense of relativity. All they hear is "nuclear reactor" "20x radiation" then the freak out is on.

I'm also tired of the "hail mary" comparasion of flooding the plant with sea water, like it's some last ditch un-though of method. Hazard a guess why they build these plants next to an abudant soure of water. The reason they took so long to do it is because that plant can never be recovered for use again. It says something to the gravity of the situation that they've made the decision to scrape the plant to avoid any possible catatastraphe, but it's hardly a "hail mary".

[Kaylia]

You know the decay on the radioactive fallouts? If it goes Chernobyl, how long would the radioactive fallout be lethal to people's health??

I'm pretty sure the area around Chernobyl will be locked out for several hundred years (5-10 miles radius?). You don't die if you go near it, but the radiation is still many times higher than the average and would be very unhealthy if you stayed more than a few days.

Chance of seeing something like this is slim according to most experts in the media though. The nuclear material should be contained on the site, unlike what happened in chernobyl where it got blasted all around the place.

[Olo401]

You know the decay on the radioactive fallouts? If it goes Chernobyl, how long would the radioactive fallout be lethal to people's health??

Radioactivite material, particularly uranium and plutonium, remains extremely lethal essentially forever (Pu-239 has a half-life of something like 6 million years). The immediate 20-50km area around Chernobyl has been a dead zone for years, even with the old reactors now completely sealed in lead & concrete, and since the accident the ground has been treated with a kind of polymer spray to keep radioactive dust from being kicked back up into the atmosphere.

[Meresgi]

Great, even more media fodder to try to prevent any US reactors being built to help us with energy efficiency.

Also lol @ comparing any reactor with even some semblance of protection to Chernobyl