Earthquake in Japan

[Dr Mordrid]

I belive that reference to "fusion" is a translation error, either by the Japanese official or a media translator choosing the wrong word for "meltdown."

Fission-induced fusion usually makes this big glowing cloud

[Evildead666]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698

0355: The BBC's Chris Hogg in Tokyo says that Japan's nuclear safety agency says it suspects the explosion may have damaged the vessel that holds the number two reactor. That would make it a more serious incident than the two previous explosions at Fukushima that were thought just to have damaged the buildings that housed the reactors.

0402: Higher than normal radiation levels are detected in Tokyo, the AFP is quoting the city government as saying.

[UtwigMU]

Japanese army with help of US forces put out the fire at 4th block as per German reports.

[UtwigMU]

This catastrophe is really serious and while I know Japan has a strong and disciplined culture and they are coping better than perhaps anyone in the World would have, it's still just shocking. I see they are taking things calmly, but I know that they are not that open about showing emotion.

I have nothing but respect for Japan, Japanese culture and people and this is just striking. Luckilly my Japanese friend and originator of my sig lives on totally other side of Honshu and he said he's OK when I contacted him immediately after earth quake.

[Brian Ellis]

What should be of equal concern is that there are still over 530,000 people accommodated in temporary shelters, 24,000 who still can't be reached, 1.2 million homes without power, 1.4 million homes without water, over 10,000 people unaccounted for and possibly dead in addition to the over 2,000 confirmed deaths and a further 2,000 injuries with the authenticated figures rising by the hour. 32 bridges destroyed, 582 roads destroyed, damaged or inaccessible and hundreds of thousands of tons of debris to shift and deal with.

Quite frankly, the radiation problem is zero, compared to this.

[VJ]

The scale is unimaginable... How do you start? On the photos you just see rubble everywhere, cars on top of buildings, buildings in the middle of the road, ships dropped in fields... For hundreds and hundreds of kilometers.
Not only is there no power, but is a shortage of usable powerplants... So this will take years to reconstruct...

The radiation problem does add to this, as you might need to get supplies (jodium tablets, ...) to the people.

[Sasq]

I spoke with one of my old students yesterday. The one I encouraged to become a nurse.
She recently finished her final exams, and took a job placement for 3 years, which she started on the 9th.
In Sendai.

She is a girl of few words to begin with, but when we talked yesterday her inability to even vocalize what she is dealing with summed the situation up better then I ever could.

[Jessterw]

The parents and other family of a girl I work with are in Yamagata (not sure if that's in the town or just the prefecture). She's been rather upset about it all, even with her family being ok. She was saying that she wanted to fly out there but it's been hard to find a decently priced flight that will get here there.

So yeah, I can only imagine how someone who's actually there is feeling.

[Dr Mordrid]

The INES ranking is now a 6, half-way between Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

[Elie]

This sucks

I heard TEPCO's poor maintenance and lack of strong policies and process to avoid these very issues, are at fault.

[Dr Mordrid]

They have a long history of telling regulators and the IAEA one thing about incidents and maintenance when reality was quite different. Not just now and then, but for a long time and consistently. Putting it bluntly, they're ass-wipes.

Satellite shots

[Brian Ellis]

This sucks

I heard TEPCO's poor maintenance and lack of strong policies and process to avoid these very issues, are at fault.

Yes, but... In this case, Fate took a hand as well, combined with poor design by GE and implementation by a probable combination of GE and TEPCO. The important thing to note is that all the emergency systems started up and operated normally after the quake for almost an hour. This proves that the systems, designed to withstand 8.0, were correctly installed and maintained, even with a 9.0 magnitude (at least at the epicentre, certainly less at Fukushima). The problem started when the tsunami arrived; no diesel engine likes to work with its cylinders full of sea water. Whose idea was it to put them in a basement?

Then there is the question of the sea wall. This is intact as you can see from the photos but it was not 10 m high. It was put there just to stop a once-in-a-century tsunami, but this one was once-in-a-millennium (or longer). Was this an error or a reasonable precaution that unfortunately proved to be inadequate? If it was an error, how high should it have been built? You have to stop somewhere: 10 m? 20 m? Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

In brief, the design was earthquake-proof and this proved adequate. It was also tsunami-proof up to the height of the sea wall. Can we attach blame for this?

The important thing is what lessons can we draw from this accident for new power stations and to post-fit existing ones? The Swiss Muehleberg reactor, shortly to be decommissioned, is quasi-identical to Fukushima #1. It has been closed down for "stress-testing". It is not in a known severe earthquake zone (perhaps up to 3 or 4) but it is in a steep-sided valley. Have they considered a landslide damming the river downstream, causing flooding? If so, what measures have been taken? If not, why not? These are open-ended questions.

[VJ]

In brief, the design was earthquake-proof and this proved adequate. It was also tsunami-proof up to the height of the sea wall. Can we attach blame for this?

The things worked as planned, so the blame IMO is not poor maintenance but poor design (e.g. the engines in the basement) and also the location of the plant...

I just don't like the whole "it is designed for a 1 in a century or 1 in a millenium event". It seems like something that you know is bound to give problems, and that 1 time event might be quite soon.
I can understand there a benefits to having it closer to the sea, but just putting it further inland would make it more tsunami safe...

[UtwigMU]

New satellite picture:

[degrub]

It is called risk. Frequency x consequence. We all know that an airplane is fundamentally unsound, but we get on them because of the time advantage and the design has lowered the frequency of fatal crashes enough that it is "reasonable" to our perceptions. For those that think it is not reasonable, they get into a car and drive where the likelihood of a fatality is at least an order of magnitude higher - just not as spectacular and newsworthy, so not high in our perception of risk.