Shaken but not stirred! (JP Earthquake)

[pdwyer]

- okay, maybe a little stirred and the ground is still shaking

Although the 3 hr walk home took a few Sake's and beef jerky packets to help me get through and the roads were as packed as the morning trains for the walk.

But if things are falling of shelves and fish tanks and baths are spilling here (350km from the epicenter) then my thoughts are with those up north that copped the full brunt of this.

Still, there probably isn't are more prepared place on the planet to be if you have to be in an earthquake, there's no shortage of information - infact my mobile sometimes beeps to tell me a few seconds before the shaking starts but I'm not really close enough to be in real danger.

We were at Shindo 5+ in tokyo (strongest I've ever felt) and they were a full 7 there. I think in NZ recently they learned how meaningless the magnitude system is for people at different distances for earthquakes of different depths as far as what you really feel.

(Shindo system)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Mete ... sity_scale
(Shindo Quake stats, available with a few mins of the quake)
http://weather.asahi.com/quake/top110311145349.html

I fear the toll up north will be high, I hope most got the warnings before the waves hit

[Rook Zimbabwe]

Was worried a bit! Looks like further to the north had a terrible time!

Any news on that Nuclear Reactor? Californicating Politicians are going to use any misstep to ban nukes in CA... so they can suck more power off the national grid!

[jack]

Paul when I heard about the earthquake wondered wether you were OK, glad to know that you are.

[skywalk]

I was just reading about this last night
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2 ... unar_.html

[mskuma]

My thoughts are with the residents in Japan particularly the Sendai area - which pretty much had its coastal area wiped out with the tsunami.

[pdwyer]

Was worried a bit! Looks like further to the north had a terrible time!

Any news on that Nuclear Reactor? Californicating Politicians are going to use any misstep to ban nukes in CA... so they can suck more power off the national grid!

Well, perhaps putting them in an earthquake zone isn't the best idea so from a California perspective I can understand their concerns. That said, depending on power needs you have to put them somewhere and in JP that's a difficult call to make with three plates colliding here. A few years back the Niigata earthquake caused problems at a reactor too. Takes more than a few windmills and LEDs to replace that kind of power output though

There is now a 10km evacuation zone around the reactor. (not that I would ever live 10kms from a reactor anyway)

[thefool]

There are some serious problems at the power plant. I just watched the news this morning and as always, wikipedia are fast to update (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_ ... ower_Plant)

To sum it up: They HAVE released potentionally radioactive steam from the reactor into a secondary containment. The radiation at a monitoring station outside the plant measures 8 times greater than normal and still increasing. In control rooms inside the plant, radiation is a 1000 times greater than normal. Cesium has been detected near the reactor, which might mean that the fuel rods have been exposed to open air. The release was done to prevent a Chernobyl like situation, where a steam explosion threw out radioactive materials in abundance. Please also remember, that in the Chernobyl area, even 25 years after the disaster, there is radiation a million times greater than the normal.

Now to the worse: at 6:30 GMT this morning there was an explosion at the plant. Apparently the explosion hit Unit 1 where the loose reactor is. There is an increase of radiation after the explosion, and the plant now emits the same amount of radiation which it normally emits in a whole year pr hour. I cannot find any details to what type of explosion it was, but i surely hope it was not a steam explosion due to pressure building in the reactor.

My (and all others) worst fear is a meltdown. Luckily, it comes as less surprise as with Chernobyl (they have had a lot of time to evacuate people nearby. And there is no city like Prypiat with 50 000 inhabitans who could actually see the Chernobyl plant as a part of the scenery..). After the explosion, the evacuation perimeter is 20km.

I really hope they get this stuff under control. Lets see what happens.

The other plant nearby are getting ready to release steam as well, btw.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_ ... ower_Plant

Here is a picture of the plant after the explosion:

[pdwyer]

BANG



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12720219

[Zach]

I always wanted to visit Japan... I hope I get to go one day

I was very sad to hear about this, especially the problems with the Nuclear Power Plant

[pdwyer]

most of it is still here

[utopiomania]

Shaken but not stirred? Too many are shaken and dead. This is terrible, and shows us just
how small we all are compared to mother nature.

Nuclear power plants seems to be a bad idea in an a place like that though.

If only one of them fails, it could easily kill more people than the earthquake itself
did.

[Vera]

Live updates of developments in Japan by Reuters: http://live.reuters.com/Event/Japan_earthquake2
Real Time Seismicity: http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/index.php
Realtime radiation map: http://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=4870
Life-translation of YokosoNews by Katz (10am JST = UTC/GMT +9 hours): http://www.ustwrap.info/show/yokosonews
Japan Broadcasting Corporation - en: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/
TEPCO - Press Releases: http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-co ... dex-e.html

[pdwyer]

RANT ALERT!!!

A good description of the media around the whole radiation issue

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion-old ... 6022037307

There are a lot of panicked people here, especially foreigners whose families back home read the scare mongering and pressure people to flee. They will get more radiation on the plane than they will in Tokyo but the fear is everywhere. There have been hoax texting too about leakages that said HK and Philippines are going to get fallout and all sorts of crap. I know about wives that have left taking kids and husbands not knowing if they should leave or continue working. The French are even asking their countrymen to leave the Kanto region!!! (but then, 70% of french power is nuclear so I'm sure the political pressure on the french govt is high to seen to be very cautious lest their power decisions back home get questioned.)

Even if this turns into a Chernoble (which if you read what happened there, probably can't happen that bad as it's hugely different), but if it does, it will kill less than 1% of the people that died in the tsunami. And what is the current death count for three mile Island? No drama for the media to reference facts, thats for sure.

Radiation, all we think is:
- I can't see it, smell it or taste it
- lay people can't even detect it
- We have to rely on govt and official sources to tell the truth to know it's there
- It is sometimes 1000x normal levels "in places"
- I could be dosed by it and not even know
- comes with the whether, wind or water
- It will kill you in a long lingering way

But like all fear, it's killed by real information and preparedness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert

Eating a banana is about the same level of radiation dose as Tokyo recieved today from fukushima.
I didn't even get an Xray worth, not even a 10th.

It might get more worrying, but no one is dying yet.

Like in the Gulf wars, The media weren't pushed into properganda by the government! It's all about ratings and Advertising dollars. A patriotic view worked better then than bad news so they all went that way once Fox news proved it with ratings, now it's back to the traditional scare tactics. "OMG!!! Crisis! , need to keep track of it as I have loved ones in location X !!! " but why so many more ads suddenly

Japan doesn't need their stock marked trashed by media scares when they are trying to rebuild. Even the BBC stooped to that level this time, they interviewed a 22 year old english teacher as some kind of authority on a govt coverup for information. It's a bloody earthquake of 9.0! information and infrastructure is trashed and so hard to know all the facts (took three days for me to get water back in tokyo) and this young clown doesn't even speak the language so why print his comments??????? "They didn't tell us [in english] right away what was happening!! and my boss asked me to come to work on monday" boo hoo hoo, go home, there are bigger problems here and we don't need tourists spouting conspiracy theories!

If there is a silver lining here, then it's that JP will embark on a better energy policy! Many countries started thinking about nuclear power again when voters started screaming about carbon levels and green power was too expensive and didn't give enough grunt. This could be just the mandate they need to go in a better direction

Whenever I think about "clean energy" I think about a 1956 short story from Isaac Asimov, This is probably my favourite short story and can be read online for free
http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Ahhh, that feels much better, thanks for bearing with me

END RANT

[the.weavster]

On 26 April 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant blew up. Forty-eight hours later the entire area was evacuated. Over the following months there were stories of mass graves and dire warnings of thousands of deaths from radiation exposure.

Yet in a BBC Horizon report screened on Thursday, a number of scientists argue that 20 years after the accident there is no credible scientific evidence that any of these predictions are coming true.

The anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident in April saw the publication of a number of reports that examined the potential death toll resulting from exposure to radiation from Chernobyl.

Environmental group Greenpeace said the figure would be near 100,000. Another, Torch (The Other Report on Chernobyl), predicted an extra 30,000-60,000 cancer deaths across Europe.

But according to figures from the Chernobyl Forum, an international organisation of scientific bodies including a number of UN agencies, deaths directly attributable to radiation from Chernobyl currently stand at 56 - less than the weekly death toll on Britain's roads.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5173310.stm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1HF_TnCkhg

[blueznl]

In spite of all the pro's and con's I hope I'm still allowed my worries and reservations.