Japan hit by powerful earthquake

[miokomioko]

I feel like it might be ye olde by now, but I haven't been keeping complete track of all the links here.

Japan's earthquake shifted balance of the planet

"The quake caused a rift 15 miles below the sea floor that stretched 186 miles long and 93 miles wide..."

"... the Pacific tectonic plate dove under the North American plate, which shifted Eastern Japan towards North America by about 13 feet..."

"The quake also shifted the earth's axis by 6.5 inches, shortened the day by 1.6 microseconds, and sank Japan downward by about two feet."

"Fisherman off the coast of Mexico reported a banner fishing day Friday, and speculated that the tsunami knocked sealife in their direction."

[Tellahh]

(Haven't followed this extremely intently last couple of days.... got some reading to do D: ... but..)

The paranoia around here is reaching retarded levels already. People freaking out thinking we're going to be radiated sick mutants in a couple days. One of my friend's dad even took his grandchildren (preserving his lineage I guess?..) and is driving towards Florida since he has family there.... I am dead fucking serious lol. I really cannot believe how stupid people are acting><. I just think at worst, a lot of damage is going to be done to the Pacific Ocean and fuck up some wildlife.

[Tomiko]

Legit trolling or saving face? Either way, I think its bad taste since there are idiots out there that think like that.

[Miroku_Asura]

You know when she grins she actually looks like troll face >_>

[Aevis]

One of my friend's dad even took his grandchildren (preserving his lineage I guess?..) and is driving towards Florida since he has family there

so he just exposed them to a way higher risk of dying in a car accident than getting in touch with even the smallest amount of radiation. people...

[Kryssan]

Neither TEPCO nor NISA have released information concerning the damages since their previous assessments I spoke of. Without some knowledge of what's happening coming from them, I'd recommend just listening to what other people are saying but not forming any strong opinions on it. Some news media organizations have already proven a few times through their redactions that they'd rather be first than right.

What we know for certain at the moment is that Unit 4 has a radioactive fire in progress at their spent fuel storage area that is releasing contamination directly into the atmosphere. How the fire started or the amount of contamination release or other details have not been released. Possibly was caused by one of the hydrogen explosions. This does not mean that Unit 4 is actually on fire. RAM fires are nasty beasts though, fire-fighting comes first then you worry about cleanup and decon. All the water you use to fight the fire is potentially contaminated and even if the release is small you're looking at a very expensive and extended cleanup.

Radiation levels finally spiking into the millisievert range (so far only at the site itself) combined with the massive pressure drops and other facilities registering is a good indication something voided somewhere, but we have no details on what, where, or how much. More than likely it was radioactive steam with entrained contaminants, but that would depend on the violence of the release and how much water was left in the core. Until we get that spread and fallout is just 'well, how much do you think got out'.

Depending on what the operators were/are doing and the amount of temporary shielding they've been able to erect we'll probably see at least some operators getting radiation sickness out of this. Further than that is hard to determine.

I'd recommend personally keeping eyes peeled on TEPCO/NISA/IAEA's pages for a new release with substantive information.

I would point out to those skeptical of the radiation rise in other areas that it is not necessarily from the plants. The earthquakes jostled a lot of terrain, freeing naturally occurring radioactive gas deposits and contributing to the higher than normal radiation levels across the area. Japan's got a perfect setup for temperature inversions. How much is spread from Daiichi's problems and how much is from the environment is pretty much outright speculation. Until we know release data from Units 1/2/3 and the fire from the spent fuel at Unit 4, at least.

The Daini plant has managed to get three of their units into a cold iron state with the final reactor in progress. Reports on Daini are clear and concise and so far are the only reports that TEPCO has released since the situation became unstable again with the second explosion and damage to Unit 2.

#Edit#

Kyodo News has this article out about the damage/release. More information, but still don't know the status of the casualty. At least it seems the RAM fire is out at Unit 4 according to Kyodo. Also, IAEA confirms the RAM fire is out.

[Kaylia]

Why are the reactor so close to each other? It feels like what was a relatively minor accident snowballed into something potentially bad just because they had 4 reactor in the same area.

Is there any estimation of the potential damage on the surrounding area once it get under control? Small no man land around the reactor or they can still hope to clean the mess completely.

[Kryssan]

Why are the reactor so close to each other? It feels like what was a relatively minor accident snowballed into something potentially bad just because they had 4 reactor in the same area.

Land is a premium, especially in Japan. All sites however tend to have as small a footprint as possible because it means the systems and equipment from one plant can be used by another plant in the event of failures. Chernobyl is a good example of what happens when you have a lot of piping sprawled over a large area - more areas for failure to occur.

Is there any estimation of the potential damage on the surrounding area once they control this? Small no man land around the reactor or they can still hope to clean the mess completely.

None at this time for estimates on damage. Don't know the extent of release yet, impossible to determine.

[Kaylia]

Land is a premium, especially in Japan. All sites however tend to have as small a footprint as possible because it means the systems and equipment from one plant can be used by another plant in the event of failures. Chernobyl is a good example of what happens when you have a lot of piping sprawled over a large area - more areas for failure to occur.

None at this time for estimates on damage. Don't know the extent of release yet, impossible to determine.

About the damages, I was asking about a best case/worst case scenario more than an estimate on what it will be.


I don't think space is the biggest issue here, but I understand that from a logistic perspective, it must be considerably easier to have everything gathered at one place (even in the case of an accident). But idk, it still feel like a weird choice given the last series of event.

[Kryssan]

About the damage, I was asking about a best case/worst case scenario more than an estimate on what it will be.


I don't think space is the biggest issue here (not enough reactor), and I understand that from a logistic perspective, it must be considerably easier to have everything gathered at one place (even in the case of an accident, i guess its better to have it centralized in one area) but idk, it still feel like a weird choice given the last series of event. 4 independant reactor would have seemed safer.

There are 6 reactors at Daiichi - we've only been talking about four of them, and only three of them for the first few days. It's not feasible to build that many independent nuclear power generation sites - the amount of area you're required to have around it, the location that ensures the lowest possible permeability rates if material enters the soil, near to large sources of water that can be used to completely flood compartments of the plant to ensure protection, et cetera. Thousands of design considerations and years of planning for each site - you'd never get anywhere if you only built one reactor per platform.

As for damage, what kind of estimate do you want? After the initial 9.0 quake but before the tsunami estimates would have been no problem. Two days ago estimates were no significant/uncontrolled release has occurred. Two days from now? The longer this goes on without stability the more chance of equipment and personnel fatigue failures.

Best case right now is that the release was only contaminated entrained steam released from the potentially buckled containment and low airborne from the RAM fire with partial meltdowns on Units 1/2/3.

Worst case is all three aforementioned units experience pressure vessel ruptures and systematic cascading containment failures across all breaches with subsequent complete release of all fission products and poisons to the atmosphere accompanied with multiple hydrogen explosions and large scale fires with complete airborne ascendant of all contamination sources in the RAM fire with multiple future RAM fires additionally releasing complete scale ratio 1:1 airborne with high speed winds and rain spreading it all over Japan and potentially to places as far away as Eastern Europe and the Central US.

Like I said, wet dreams. You can paint any picture you want right now because we quite frankly just don't know.

[Maaglin]

Why are the reactor so close to each other? It feels like what was a relatively minor accident snowballed into something potentially bad just because they had 4 reactor in the same area.

Is there any estimation of the potential damage on the surrounding area once it get under control? Small no man land around the reactor or they can still hope to clean the mess completely.

Wow really? A 9.0 earthquake, followed by 25-30 ft tsunami's is "minor"? wtf.

[Kaylia]

Context...I'm talking about the event that happened at the 3rd plant, the one that blew up but didn't cause much damage. Then a second blew up without causing dmg, then a 3rd one blew up and might have caused dmg, then it caused a fire in the 4th one. If they only had one plant to deal with, it wouldnt have been as bad.

[Hyan]

Wouldn't it be safer to have the plants on the west coast instead? >_>

[Olo401]

3rd explosion in no.2 reactor, they suspect container is broke, because pressure is going down.
There is some minor fire some where in no. 4 reactor, but not due to the radioactive fuel.
400 mili Sv measured around no. 3.
They are more fucked.

Small update: the fire in Reactor 4 is now believed to be a result of the explosion in Reactor 3 - the shock moved some of the spent fuel too close together, chain reactions slowly started and eventually the fuel rod casings caught fire. This explains why the radiation readings are higher between 3&4 and why they've detected some beta particle leakage.

[Kaylia]

Wouldn't it be safer to have the plants on the west coast instead? >_>

I'm not sure west coast is immune to tsunami, might not be as bad but the way wave spread around, it doesnt need to be a direct it from the epicenter.

The real reason is most likely chinese though. Leaving nuclear reactor on the coast is just an easy target in case of a war.

[drwaffles]

Legit trolling or saving face? Either way, I think its bad taste since there are idiots out there that think like that.

I thought she might be for real when I saw the Japan one without any prior knowledge of her just because it seemed too extreme to be a joke, but as soon as I checked out a couple of other ones (especially the WoW one) it became painfully clear she wasn't serious.

[wop]

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/858083-c...nami-donations

Families waiting for news of missing loved ones have also reported ‘sick’ messages being posted online wrongly claiming they are dead.
Fraudsters have sent emails marked ‘urgent’ and have asked recipients for ‘monitory help’ (sic), computer security firm Symantec warned on Monday.
One message from ‘Joseph Bridgero’ offered a 50 per cent share of $12million (£7.5million) held in a deposit box by a victim of the quake.
Samir Patel, from Symantec, said: ‘In addition to spam, within the first few hours of the earthquake and tsunami, Symantec researchers observed more than 50 domains with the names of either “Japan tsunami” or “Japan earthquake”.
‘These domains may be used in phishing and spam attacks.’
The company said more scams may emerge and warned previous natural disasters had been followed by malicious attacks such as ‘nasty’ attachments and .zip files embedded in spam in addition to fraudulent links on social networking sites.
Meanwhile, families of missing people have received false death notices about their loved ones.
Emma Hickebottom said her family assumed the worst when a message posted on a people-finder web page about her brother Brian Hickebottom said: ‘I have received information that this person is dead.’
It was accompanied by a sad-face ‘emoticon’.
But the information, posted by someone called Lucas A. on the Google person-finder facility, was malicious.
Ms Hickebottom, 28, from Cardiff, said: ‘We’d had a spam email saying he was dead and we were very distressed. I came home to be with my parents but luckily Brian and his family are safe and it was just some sick person who said he was dead.’
The 34-year-old English teacher from Birmingham had in fact survived by taking refuge in a school with his wife Sanae, 37, and baby daughter Erin, aged five months.

Fucking lowlife trying to profit from this disaster. ugh

They will probably get away with it too as Japanese are very vulnerable to scams.

http://www.japanfortheuninvited.com/...-ore-sagi.html

[Hyan]

NEWS ADVISORY: Radiation too high for TEPCO personnel to stay in Fukushima nuke plant control rooms (20:49)

from Kyodo

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A roundup of that Kyodo news on the no.4 reactor:

Radiation levels at the reactor have become too high for normal work in the control room. Workers cannot stay in the room long and so are going in and out alongside monitoring from a different room

from Reuters

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BREAKING NEWS: TEPCO unable to pour water into No. 4 reactor's storage pool for spent fuel

Doesn't sound too good.

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Also a finnish news site reports that JP radio channels haven't given much new info at all regarding the reactor today, only listing safety measures in case of a meltdown as well as playing considerably more pop music than the day before >_>. Trying to avoid mass-panicing? That kind of shit would only make me more worried tbh.

[Pikarya]

People working in or near those facilities are pretty much top-tier. You wouldn't see me 300 miles from ground zero near that shit.

[popsiclestix]

6+ just hit west of Tokyo. Shook me here a bit in North west of Tokyo area.