13 foot tsunami after an 8.9 quake.  WOW.  The footage is incredible.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/11/massive-7-magnitude-earthquake-strikes-j...

Hope the casualties are minimal, those waves looked huge.

I think the post title is a little understated.

Looking at the footage I think we're going to see hundreds of fatalities and thousands of casualties.

Not to mention what may happen around the Pacifc rim.

was huge 



Quote:


I don't agree either Japanese people are very peacefull today, all the good things comes from there
but by reading some of the comments Japan is the one who has awake hates this latest years, I mean with the killing humpback  whales, dolphins and stuff.(I think is the only country who allow this these days) 


   

Huge mess

They lost a big passenger ferry that might have ended up in a whirlpool, one Nuclear power plant is on the edge of meltdown and a train is still missing

According to Hillary Clinton, the USAF brought in some coolant to try to avoid a nuclear catastrophe. I'm sure the US and other countries will do more to help as time passes. And I hope Christchurch NZ did not/doesn't have any problems from the tsunami. They have had enough already.

A shot of some of the carnage..



Suddenly I feel very fortunate..

Justin, I hope you are not near the beach. Just heard a news report on TV saying someone had been swept away by waves in California. Hope you, Greg (Pepe), family and friends are all ok.

patchz wrote on Mar 11^th, 2011 at 3:49pm:


The San Diego only got hit by waves up to something like 2.8 feet, or maybe even less, thankfully.

Japanese news agency closed the info tap on the powerplant status...
the thing blew all covering of the reactor housing, so now only the skeleton and the core are still standing

And now they even got a vulcanic eruption! Guess Japan needs some lucky charms.. 

patchz wrote on Mar 11^th, 2011 at 3:49pm:



We have the Pacifica Cliffs protecting us where I am at, but thanks for thinking of me   

Santa Cruz and Crecent City were the hardest hit here in California.  1 fatality, a photographer decided to stand on the edge of the surf to film the tsunami, and you can guess what happened next.   And several boats and piers were swamped.  Puddles compared to Japan though.

One thing that really impresses me about Japan, no looting!     It's not in there nature, I read a really good article about it on CNN.

They stopped pumping in sea water to cool them because it was causing hydrogen gas and they are afraid of more explosions. Sounds like a catch 22 situation. They just can't catch a break, other than the assistance that is flowing in.

I never new that Japan has 54 reactors in total. 51 still operational.

Steve M wrote on Mar 14^th, 2011 at 5:03pm:



Japan has little in the way of natural resources for stuff like electric generation.  Fuels like narutal gas, oil, and coal are in short supply there.

They have numerous wind farms for electric generation and a lot of solar collectors are used on homes for domestic hot water.

best,

..................john

No offense to you personally Patchz, but that site looks like it's nothing but anti-nuclear propaganda.

As far as Japan goes, they may never get those reactors under control again, but it will not turn into another Chernobyl. From what I've read, they have better containment than that.

Remember that Chernobyl did not have a protective containment layer like Japan/US facilities.  It was a partial meltdown that went straight from reactor to atmosphere after the meltdown/explosion. 

There are so many news articles flooding the net and the newspapers I can't sort reality from rumour. Here is my take on the actual cause. Yes a tsunomi hit the reactors and the end result was that nine backup generators were flooded and rendered useless. The backup generators are there to provide cooling during an emergency shutdown. If these generators had been built uphill or on towers we would not be having these discussions. I really feel bad for the people within the area, but I feel the reactor failures were human error in the planning and budgeting stages. A lesson can be learned here, I suppose.

Becasue of my intimate involvement with Japan, I have been spending a lot of time talking to friends and checking into what the JAPANESE are discussing and feeling and what is really happening over there. 

I'm listening/reading in Japanese too.  It is very interesting when you speak the language a bit to listen to the English news voice overs ... and hear what is ACTUALLY being said in the background.  And what is NOT being translated.  Or accurately translated.

Don't believe everything that you are seeing in the western press; they are LOVING this disaster. 

Remember........



best,

..............john

A couple of points:

1) One thing to keep in mind is that the earthquake and resulting tsunami was an unprecedented event; the 4th strongest earthquake ever recorded. I think the Japanese took every precaution about earthquake proof construction that they could when they built Fukushima; it was just the intensity of the earthquake and the tsunami was above expectations. How to handle and contain something this severe, and not having any historical reference to work from, makes this a learning process for everyone handling this crisis.

2) JBaymore makes a good point; when the translator's voice seems to hesitate for a second, or the inflection of the words being translated sounds unsure, it may look as if what's being translated isn't really what's being said. People watching the NHK World feed and listening to all of the sound bytes from the "Talking Heads" can get the feeling that the Japanese Gov't. and TEPCO are not being forthcoming about what's really happening.
Of course, this story is a gold mine to the Media!

I just hope they can get supplies, mainly kerosene, gasoline, food and medical supplies to the smaller, rural areas SOON; those elderly folks really need the assistance! 

Alan 

JBaymore wrote on Mar 18^th, 2011 at 5:57am:


Well said John, I have an uncle in Japan and don't know what happened to him. The news people are truely loving this disaster. They just keep broadcasting even when there is nothing new or factual to report.

JBaymore wrote on Mar 18^th, 2011 at 5:57am:


LOL that is SO classic! I had to go find the song and add your "lyric"...

Alan 

Steve M wrote on Mar 18^th, 2011 at 4:49pm:



Steve,

There was an experience I had when I went to Japan that cemented my faith in the Japanese people....


I was walking along a street in Downtown Tokyo right in the middle of the Ginza, the huge shopping district. I had walked past a bicycle parked on the sidewalk (not locked) with a basket on the handlebars. Inside the basket were two very large bottles of Chanel # 5 Women's perfume, a box marked "Mikimoto" which had to contain pearl jewelry of some sort, and a Women's handbag. Now judging by the size of the bottles and the box, this was a basket that had to contain at least $3,000.00 in merchandise. Three hours later, I walked down that same street and past that same bicycle... everything was left just as it was when I had passed by earlier. If it were anywhere else in the World other than Japan, that bike and its contents would have been stolen and never recovered. 

It all comes down to the basic respect, kindness and ethics the Japanese people exhibit... I would hope that people around the world follow that same ideal when faced with a similar catastrophe.

Alan

The plant was designed for a specific amount of actual acceleration. According to world-nuclear it was 0.6g (or 600gal). The amount of shaking that actually occurs depends on how far the epicenter was away from the plant, and the depth etc. From what I've heard, the plant survived the earthquake and the reactor was shut down.

All sources of power (except battery) were lost after the tsunami that was apparently >10 meters high whereas the plant was designed for a 5.7 meter tsunami. The batteries ran out. All systems that were designed to take away decay heat were without power. Then the fuel rods got hot, evolved hydrogen gas that later exploded. Apparently the inner containment is intact or partially intact, whereas the secondary containment is destroyed as shown in the photos. They're still pumping sea-water into the reactors.

Chernobyl was somewhat different, as the reactor design allowed the reaction to go out of control during certain situations, which lead to a steam explosion and then a criticality incident, and had no containment during all of this. A large portion of the core was then scattered around the landscape, and the graphite moderator burned for days.






Steve M wrote on Mar 18^th, 2011 at 4:12pm:


AP1000 is very similar to existing PWR plants. It uses lightly enriched (approx 5%, but it varies) uranium dioxide pellets cladded with zircalloy.