Japan hit by powerful earthquake

[Kryssan]

Link to Status of Daiichi/Daini as of 1230 Mar 16 provided by JAIF.

New estimates from JAIF regarding situation in graphical/picture form. Still nothing new from NISA, and IAEA and TEPCO's sites are difficult to access.

TEPCO is reporting that they're seeing steam/white smoke rising from around Unit 3, potentially indicating some damage to the containment. Higher radiation levels have been noted at the site but these could be from Unit 2's damage or from the Unit 4 fuel deposit.

There is potential for use of helicopters to drop boric acid onto the pool at Unit 4 to prevent a recriticality casualty from occurring as the radiation levels are too high for humans to approach to investigate or conduct lengthy operation. (That is where the 400 mSv/hr is.)

Preparations are underway to inject water into the refueling pool as they fear that the rods are cooking off the water due to their disarray from the explosions moving them close enough together to restart fission reactions.

The threat of a recriticality casualty from Unit 4's spent fuel is a major concern, as the intense protective barriers that exist for the reactor core do not exist for other areas in the plant. If the spent fuel achieves criticality there will be a much higher release to the environment. It should be noted however that by it's very nature of being spent fuel it will be more difficult for it to achieve and sustain a critical reaction.

Unit 4 itself is okay, and that reactor has been shutdown since November of last year.

Approximately 70 workers of the Daiichi site's 800 remain on site to continue efforts for control.

The second fire seen by workers at the Unit 4 building extinguished itself in a timeframe of about 30 minutes. The fire is believed to be from the same location that a hydrogen explosion occurred earlier in the week, but the radiation levels from the fuel pool have made it difficult/impossible to safely investigate areas around Units 3 and 4.

It is now believed that ~70% of the fuel rods in Unit 1 have sustained damage, and ~33% of the fuel rods in Unit 2 have sustained damage. No reports on Unit 3 or the Unit 4 storage pool.

[Mojo]

It seems quizzical to me that the fuel rods in plant two have sustained less damage than plant one, mainly because the water level report says recovering after dried up. Any ideas, other than perhaps plant beginning to overheat first, that you might have?

[Asai]

Is there an uploaded version of w/e this video is you're talking about with the people running up the hill? None of the streams are showing it.

^
Still can't find this.

[aduidarnenye]

Didn't one of them got washed away? They were kinda freaking out.

Were they with kids or something, or they were just moving really slow? I know I would burst a 9.2sec 100 meters if that wall of water was after me.

It looked to me like they were trying to drag people in wheelchairs and patients on gurneys up the hill. I think that one person got swept away, one of the men who ran down to try to help. I don't know why people stand around taking pictures while people are in desperate need of assistance. Could they have not noticed because they were too busy snapping pictures?

The dog video was terrible. I wonder what they were saying. I wonder if anyone helped the dogs.

EDIT: Saw these comments on the Youtube page:

They couldn't approach the dogs, the one you see moving around was trying to protect the other one, and wouldn't let people get close enough to rescue them. Initially they thought the other dog was dead, cause it wasn't moving, but he then moved and figured the first dog was looking for help.

At the end of the video they said they're going to get them some food. Do not get your assumptions so quickly, they actually helped those dogs.

Search for Kenn Sakurai on Facebook, he has the full story. It took them two hours to get the one dog to calm down enough to allow them to rescue the weaker one. One is now in shelther, the weaker one now in a vet clinic.

Found it:

http://www.facebook.com/cnn/posts/10...kurai1?sk=wall

Those two dogs are rescued. The one which came close to the camera is in the better condition. The other White, Gray and Black was weak. So it is in the vet clinic in Ibaraki Prefectre. The other dog is in the shelter of the same area.
But please know that those two are just the tip of the iceberg. There are more and we need help.

[Tellahh]

The dog video was terrible. I wonder what they were saying. I wonder if anyone helped the dogs.

EDIT: Saw these comments on the Youtube page:

Yeah the dog even barked at them in the beginning of the vid if you notice... was obviously very scared for his friend. That was so saddening;;

[Kryssan]

It seems quizzical to me that the fuel rods in plant two have sustained less damage than plant one, mainly because the water level report says recovering after dried up. Any ideas, other than perhaps plant beginning to overheat first, that you might have?

Unit 2 had water covering the core for a good period of time before they started losing coolant, and from everything we can see as soon as it started TEPCO employees jumped to save it. Unit 1 was without DHR for a long period of time and by the time they had the power to commence coolant flow again to it, it was already too late. They went straight to borated fill on Unit 1. Keep getting conflicting reports about how long each Unit was without coolant flow but the consensus is that Unit 1 was the longest. Given that Unit 2 was filled and cooled for a good period prior to the loss of coolant situation, it had time to dissipate heat which meant that when it was uncovered later the damage to the fuel was less.

[Gulkeeva]

Here's a close up pic of all 4 reactors

http://www.neko-sentai.com/images9ruf/up101357.jpg

[Kryssan]

Hmm. Able to get a look at IAEA's site (must be crazy traffic), they were saying on the 15th of March that Unit 5's water level was lowering and plans were in place to use an operational diesel generator at Unit 6 to supply water to Unit 5. 40 cm drop in water level in a about a 5 hour period, with another 200cm to the top of the fuel.

[Flarega]

OH MY GOD POOR DOGS ITS EVEN SADDER CAUSE THEY'RE BOTH ALIVE.

[fussel]

I'm getting really tired of turning on CNN and seeing Piers Morgan and Wolf Blitzer on this kind of ... witch hunt to find reasons that U.S. reactors are unsafe. Experts and other scientists keep telling them uhh.. no, we're okay, and they seem not to be able to take no for an answer.

Without even discussing reactor safety,

would you store a ton of TNT in your basement, in a storage container that's supposed to be totally safe in cases of fire, earthquakes, lightning, floods?

[Telamond]

Friend in Japan says that the government isn't releasing a lot of information to the citizens about radioactivity and what is happening in Fukushima... disturbing how they're so tight lipped about such a vital information..

[Maaglin]

Friend in Japan says that the government isn't releasing a lot of information to the citizens about radioactivity and what is happening in Fukushima... disturbing how they're so tight lipped about such a vital information..

This is standard procedure for pretty much every government in the world.

Fact is, the public doesn't need to know every detail of every development.

[Edelweiss]

JSDF Aborting aerial water dumps on reactor 3 citing safety concerns (I guess).

[Kryssan]

Friend in Japan says that the government isn't releasing a lot of information to the citizens about radioactivity and what is happening in Fukushima... disturbing how they're so tight lipped about such a vital information..

Yeah... except not. They've released over three dozen reports between NISA and TEPCO alone (not counting IAEA, JAIF, and the scores of independents as well as the SDF) detailing specifics on radiation levels at the plant and contamination levels found on people as well as some exposure reports for personnel at the site (since they would be wearing monitoring devices whereas normal people do not and thus have to receive dose investigations which take great heaps of time to complete).

Given the state of communications and power in Japan right now I'm willing to believe your friend might not be up-to-date on that kind of information, but there is no reason you shouldn't be and if you are in contact with your friend then be a bud and tell them yourself.

#Edit#

Also, since this is a recurring theme let me try to put it into a perspective that is easier to associate with.

You are driving in your car behind a friend in their own car ahead of you. They're decently ahead of you on the highway but still well within sight. Right in front of your very eyes a car from the opposing traffic swerves into your lane, experiencing a head-on-corner-side collision on the driver side of your friend's vehicle. The speeds at which both vehicles are travelling causes a dramatic wreck that potentially involves more cars near them. Their vehicles come to rest at the side of the road, and you stop your car as fast and as safely as you can to investigate.

What is your first action?

A) Immediately call your friend's family and tell them they need to prepare funeral rites.
B) Approach your friend's car, seeing the carnage from up close and then call your friend's family and tell them they need to prepare funeral rites.
C) Approach your friend's car, seeing the carnage up close and using the camera on your phone to take a picture of the wreck and post it on Facebook for everyone your permission's are set to to see with some quip about needing help and how this is a terrible tragedy.
D) Call 911 so that people who are trained to assist seriously injured people might arrive on the scene to get the people involved out and take them to a hospital.

Ok, so those might seem a little extreme, but I bet you can make a correlation to where they come from. In case you're having difficulty, the correct answer is D.

So now that you have chosen the correct answer, help has arrived and gotten your friend and the other involved parties out of their vehicle and taken them to the hospital. You of course followed and informed your family and your friend's family of the hospital... but how did you do so?

A) You leave out some of the details other than that there has been a wreck so as not to overly traumatize them before they even have a clear idea of what has happened or the damage incurred.
B) You tell them what you think you know of the situation and how bad their child looks in your eyes and how they were screaming in agony or worse making no noise at all and appearing quite dead.

Need I explain this one?

Ok, so now you're at the hospital. Your friend is taken to the ER for surgery to try and stabilize his condition. What do you expect the doctors to tell you?

A) Minute by minute status updates on the amount of skin they've cut open, the injuries sustained, how bad it looks, what they think each individual injury means without encompassing the situation of the entire body, and providing you with pictures and video feed of exactly what they're doing.
B) No reports are given to you at all until nearly a day later when they come to inform you they've done all that they can and unfortunately your friend has died.
C) They inform you of your friend's initial outlook upon entry, attempt to console and provide as much encouragement as their conscience will allow, and provide reports after major events with the surgery to let you know how things are going.

Does this make things clearer of the situation? How would you handle/want this to be handled? Can you understand now why the agencies are acting and reporting as they are, and how that makes the 'it's better to be first than right' sensationalism reporting style of some newsteams rather nasty?

[Olo401]

Here's a close up pic of all 4 reactors

http://www.neko-sentai.com/images9ruf/up101357.jpg

When the heck did the outer containment on #4 get blown off?

[Kryssan]

When the heck did the outer containment on #4 get blown off?

14th or 15th. Whenever they had the other hydrogen explosions. (First one at Unit 1, then the second, larger and more dramatic one at Unit 3, followed by two more smaller ones at Units 2 and 4.)

[MaachaQ]

Is there an uploaded version of w/e this video is you're talking about with the people running up the hill? None of the streams are showing it.

Think I found it, scary as hell:

[Bilopdop]

That is fucking insane...

It looks like that guy gets swept away but somehow manages to climb back up at the very end.

[Dylon]

^ your right, he got back up at the last second. he was prolly like FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU and got a rush of tiger blood to help him up.

seriously though watching that wall of water is crazy.. just how fast it was moving was insane

[Edelweiss]

NHK and NHK World is showing an accounting/overview of the events at Fukushima No.1, with comparitive photos and stuff now.

Edit: TBS is as well.