Japan hit by powerful earthquake

[Kurokikaze]

CALLS TO JAPAN FREE FOR TIME WARNER CABLE CUSTOMERS

Many of the communities Time Warner Cable serves have customers worried about family, friends and colleagues in Japan. As a result of the events that took place on March 11, 2011, we have seen an increase in the number of calls made by our customers to Japan. All direct dial calls placed using our Digital Home Phone service to Japan will be free through April 15, 2011. This program includes both residential Digital Home Phone and Business Class Phone customers and will be retroactive for all calls starting on March 11, 2011.

Digital Home Phone Customers who are making calls to Japan during the eligible period do not need to make any changes to their accounts in order to take advantage of this program. This program will cover any Time Warner Cable Digital Home Phone and Time Warner Cable Business Class Phone subscriber making a direct call to Japan. Calls to operators or directory assistance will continue to be charged at the usual rate.

We're here for you, so you can be there for them. For more information, click here.

Time Warner Cable

TWC jumping in on the free calls to Japan as well. For those that don't know or missed it: AT&T is doing this as well for calls placed between 3/11 and 3/31.

[*Shinzon*]

I think they know what they are talking about, but it's a fine line between releasing information and causing public and international panic. You already see idiots for days trying to dramatize the siutation with obsurd comparaions to Chernobyl, which just shows how little these people understand anything to do with this situation and what happened at Chernobyl. So as if it wasn't dire enough, they have to deal with these "professionals" trying to inflame the entire situation.

Behind the scenes I belive they are doing everything they can to correct the situation, but at this point it is very difficult and there just really isn't much aid anyone else can provide to them.

Well at least that's good to know I suppose. Hopefully they stop trying to dance around hard questions. At this point there isn't much more panic that they could really induce considering all that those people have been through. I imagine they're still trying to get themselves together from the quake.

[aduidarnenye]

I can't find a live feed of NHK anymore. Does anyone have a link?

[Dimmauk]

TWC jumping in on the free calls to Japan as well. For those that don't know or missed it: AT&T is doing this as well for calls placed between 3/11 and 3/31.

WOW, for once I dont hate TWC.

[Kurokikaze]

I can't find a live feed of NHK anymore. Does anyone have a link?

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv

[aduidarnenye]

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv

Thanks.

[Edelweiss]

I can't find a live feed of NHK anymore. Does anyone have a link?

NHK (Japanese). Online at this time. Live broadcasts until midnight JST.
NHK World (English). Online at this time. Live broadcasts until 10 PM JST.
Tokyo Broadcasting System (Japanese). Online at this time. Live broadcasts until midnight JST.
TV Asahi (Japanese). Offline at this time.

Streams might drop out temporarily due to blackouts and other shit.

[aduidarnenye]

Why do I find CNN's subtitle "Breaking News - Calm Across Japan" to be really weird?

I just don't connect breaking news with calm often.

[Mojo]

Chernobyl can't possibly happen, as far as I'm aware, because in Chernobyl the method they used to cool off the reactors was a substance that could explode/catch fire. In Japan they're using water, so that's not possible. Therefore no explosion of such a magnitude and that scenario can't possibly happen.

The coolant used in the Chernobyl reactor was also water, the first explosion in that reactor occurred for a number of reasons and was caused by the water being vaporized into steam. For those curious, I'll give a brief run down from what I've read in the past. The plant operators were running a test on their emergency cooling system. Like the Fukashima reactors, they had back up diesel generators to power their cooling system in the event that the grid went down. There is some time before starting up the diesel engine before it can supply power, around or minute or so, and they didn't have anything in place to handle this and that amount of time was considered to be too long. So their plan was to use the inertia of the turbines winding down (if the grid goes off the plant begins to shut down) to supply the energy needed to power the cooling system while the diesel generators powered up (which would then take over.)

It's important to note that reactor design, the actual water cooling the fuel plays a roll in inhibiting the power output (by acting as a neutron absorber, basically like a liquid control rod.) So if voids form (i.e. the cooling water begins to vaporize), then the fuel rods will begin to reactor even faster. Hiccups, delays, and circumstance ended up putting the plant into an unsafe state. The control rods were completely withdrawn and the cooling water was near its boiling point. For some reason or another (perhaps because they knew of this unsafe state or perhaps for some other reason, the people responsible died so it's impossible to know) the "oh shit" button was pushed which causes the plant to lower the control rods all the way and try to shut down the reactor.

The design of those cooling rods happened to be flawed in that there is an initial increase in reaction rate as they are lowering, thus doing this produced a temporary spike in power output. This output was enough to push the water over its boiling point and flash, further increasing the reaction rate and thus creating positive feedback. The pressure rose high enough to essentially blow the reactor up from the inside out. A second explosion occurred after this, perhaps due to pressure, hydrogen, or criticality. Nobody can say with certainty as the exact conditions inside of there were not known and it's mostly mathematical speculation.

[Yugl]

Why do I find CNN's subtitle "Breaking News - Calm Across Japan" to be really weird?

I just don't connect breaking news with calm often.

Because you think it's normal for people to act calmly in the face of an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear facility problem.

[toqabowl]

j/w but how hot are the rods anyways?

[*Shinzon*]

Several thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

[Kurokikaze]

"a few thousand degrees fahrenheit" don't think any news outlets have given exact readings or a decent estimate rather. :X

[*Shinzon*]

Last I read it was close to 3000

[Trigun]

Karma just woke up...

Disability insurer Aflac Inc. fired comedian Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of its iconic duck on Monday after a series of Twitter jokes about the earthquake in Japan, Aflac’s most important market.
Since 2000, Gottfried has voiced the duck in the insurer’s TV ad campaign in the United States, quacking “Af-LAC!” in the comedian’s famously abrasive voice.

[Boyiee]

Maaglin from Kujata, demo at one point right? <- Baishin, you said you worked for the DoD didn't you? Is the consensus among your peers that the Japanese government even knows what it's talking about at this point? What's the level of faith we have in them to solve this?

I'd venture to guess a lot more faith then we would have if this was happening in the US. You don't trust the Japanese government or what their saying, but you may trust what the US government and our media is saying? How can you not have faith in them solving this... how many plants do they have? How long have they been working with nuclear power? When I heard the US was sending people to help, my initial thought was they would be fucked if the US people get anywhere near the issues.

[Priran]

Why do I find CNN's subtitle "Breaking News - Calm Across Japan" to be really weird?

I just don't connect breaking news with calm often.

all current events on CNN get labeled breaking news

[Minions]

Man..... mother nature is pissed. Now Japan is entering sub freezing weather and snow is expected for the next couple days. It will stay freezing (at least at night) for the next week. The people surviving are still at risk of dieing just due to exposure to the weather with lack of blankets/heating/power, add food to that and they seriously are living in a real life apocalypse scenario.

I also wonder if some of these fires that are occurring are due to people using fire to keep warm and it getting out of control/spreading due to oil/contaminants spread by the tsunami.

[Yugl]

So if I understand this correct. They have five nuclear units (Or w/e you call them). Two have exploded. One is in critical condition. Is that correct?

[Tymon]

No. There are explosions in two of the units, and that's resulted in one of the units being exposed. There are levels of containment to keep the core unit from being exposed, and one of them has been breached completely.

The others have not been breached. Yet, anyway.