Earthquake/Tsunami in Japan

tongue_of_colicab said:
Now a 6.6 quake hit Tokyo. Also a 290km long a 80km wide gap opend up because of the quake. Don't know if its on the surface but if it is that's gotta be one of the most scary looking things ever. You could fit half my country in that!
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Huh? What are you talking about? :-/ I tried Google-Fu but nothing came up.
 
Squilliam said:
o_O

Lol, seriously thats a clothing store right?
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ya Gap is a clothing store.

I'm not sure what he's talking about regarding Japan tho, I've seen some large cracks in the ground from footage there, but I've seen nothing anywhere near that wide, perhaps instead of 80km, its 80cm or something. There's one shot of a road that's split down the middle for about as far as you could see, but it looks no more than a meter separated in most places, and just sitting askew (one side of the road higher than the other) in others with lots of places where the road is heaved. I have no idea how long it is.


Some footage of the road I saw in that vid.
 
80km wide is wrong on orders of magnitude. Maybe the length as well.

Does anyone have links to longer sequences of footage, all I've seen on the national news are shorter snippets that don't really tell the larger story.

I'm wondering about that nuclear power plant that is having/had cooling issues, don't they scram the reactors in situations like this? I think that would be highly prudent... :p So surely, cooling it shouldn't be much of an issue, if it's shut down.

Tragic that there's been such loss of life, but we can thank modern technology and civilization that there wasn't even more deaths.
 
The reactors SCRAMed almost immediately in response to loss of grid-based AC. The diesel generators are only there to maintain cooling, however they ended up getting owned by the tsunami. The concern now is keeping the pile cool even though all the rods are fully inserted; all that heat takes a while to dissipate.

A secondary concern is the fuel storage tanks; the fuel rods must also be submerged in water and that water must circulate to keep them cool. Since no water is circulating at all, that storage tank is starting to warm up a bit. If you did absolutely nothing with it, there are speculations that it could overheat and boil in or around three days, which would eventually lead to exposing of the rods which would then get Stupid Hot (TM) and cause some serious shit.

I very much doubt it gets to that level, but just giving you the big picture. I'm pretty confident they'll have it buttoned up soon, although it appears they'll do a bit of steam venting for the reactor pile to get it to calm down a bit more.
 
AlphaWolf said:
ya Gap is a clothing store.

I'm not sure what he's talking about regarding Japan tho, I've seen some large cracks in the ground from footage there, but I've seen nothing anywhere near that wide, perhaps instead of 80km, its 80cm or something. There's one shot of a road that's split down the middle for about as far as you could see, but it looks no more than a meter separated in most places, and just sitting askew (one side of the road higher than the other) in others with lots of places where the road is heaved. I have no idea how long it is.


Some footage of the road I saw in that vid.
Click to expand...

Seems I was wrong. Stupid dutch news can't even translate measurement properly. Their whole reporting is worthless anyway. Idiots are going to interview Japanese in Holland and skype with Dutch people in Japan. How about giving some actual news instead of just trying to dramatise the whole situation. Fortunalty there is also bbc, cnn and the internet.

What is just came to mind is that my classmate is going to a university in Sendai 2 weeks from now. Wonder if that is still going to happen now... Don't know how messed up the city is but I wouldn't be surprised if they rather not have foreigners coming in now. I'll be going to kyoto so no problems there but still it's a rather shitty moment to go there.

edit: btw, has anybody got a clue what they do with the gaps in the road? Poor them full with something or leave them and build the road elsewhere?
 
Most likely do again what they did when building the road in the first place, raise up the sunken parts using filler material, and then put down new asphalt on top...
 
I'm fine in Tokyo but yesterday it was a terrible shakeup at my workplace in the Roppongi Hills tower. Twitter was the best tool to communicate since the voice call side of the 3G network was almost down. It took 2.5 hours walking to my home back due to the subway halt. It was a surreal sight to see people marching in all Tokyo streets at night. Things started working again but electricity shortage is the main concern at this point (I can't do anything without electricity and internet!) I'm working for a social networking/gaming provider and another worry is the hit on the revenue generated by social games.
 
AlphaWolf said:
ya Gap is a clothing store.

I'm not sure what he's talking about regarding Japan tho, I've seen some large cracks in the ground from footage there, but I've seen nothing anywhere near that wide, perhaps instead of 80km, its 80cm or something. There's one shot of a road that's split down the middle for about as far as you could see, but it looks no more than a meter separated in most places, and just sitting askew (one side of the road higher than the other) in others with lots of places where the road is heaved. I have no idea how long it is.
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It could be related to the fact that quite some bit of Japan has subsided, or sunk in other words. Large tracts of what was formerly land remain submerged. We may need new updated maps of the Japanese coastline in the upcoming months.

But at least I finally got a hold of my mother and she's fine. Was a bit scary but no damage to her house or the company there. And relatives in Taiwan are all fine as are the ones in Hawai'i, so I can finally relax...

Of course, now there's the spectre of a possible nuclear power plant meltdown. If it's not one thing it's something else.

And then Hawai'i also had a small earthquake and a 6.x one hit Tongo.

Regards,
SB
 
Japan is a rather strange place to see nuclear reactors without a containment dome, wouldn't have expected that.
 
MfA said:
Japan is a rather strange place to see nuclear reactors without a containment dome, wouldn't have expected that.
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In the past they have been fined for carryine waste around in buckets so it doesn't surprise me.

I'm surprised nuclear v wind has not come up on the global warming thread. Nuclear is not all roses, each way has it's own issues.

Andy
 
Meltdown wouldn't have been a problem ... pressure valve failure ... ugh, lets hope the stuff wasn't too hot when it blew.
 
I'm staggered about the lack of a containment dome, too. If you are building a reactor in pretty much the most active earthquake zone in the world, you'd think that containment would be a 'no-brainer'.

Hopefully things won't get too bad in this case, but in the long term, it is only going to help the anti-nuke cause.
 
Crazy stuff. I just saw a video of that explosion and it must have been pretty major; there was a visible shockwave in the air as the reactor building blew up.

I'm hoping it was just steam that caused the structure to fail, but the smoke coming out was grey in color, so whatever the smoke is, it's loaded down with some kind of aerosol, and the source being a nuclear reactor chances are high it won't be anything healthy.
 
Some geologists said the whole faultline is becoming rather unstable. Worst case scenario huge landmasses could sink or raise significantly causing tsunamis bigger than pretty much anything seen in past centuries. Though it's rather unlikely that the whole thing changes that fast, it's more likely that it's spread over longer time as smaller changes and thus not quite as devastating.
 
At times like these, people like to make bold statements to try and hitch a ride on current events to celebrity. I would take any radical ideas with a couple pinches of salt.
 
Grall said:
Crazy stuff. I just saw a video of that explosion and it must have been pretty major; there was a visible shockwave in the air as the reactor building blew up.

I'm hoping it was just steam that caused the structure to fail, but the smoke coming out was grey in color, so whatever the smoke is, it's loaded down with some kind of aerosol, and the source being a nuclear reactor chances are high it won't be anything healthy.
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It's been all confirmed now.

1) Reactor core apparently didn't melt down (or if it did, it was still contained within the container)
2) Outer reactor building exploded due high pressure, caused by letting pressure out from the core container.
3) The core container is intact
4) The radiation levels at the site have dropped to less than 1/100th of what it was before the explosion

So there's nothing to worry about on the big scale.

edit, update:
The containment unit around reactor is intact.
However there's now 2 contradicting talks about what caused the explosion:
1) They let the pressure out from containment to the outer building, which caused too much pressure for the outer building which then exploded
or
2) The core melt down at least partly, and the hydrogen generated due core exposure leaked/was let out of the containment unit and then caused the explosion

Regardless of which one is true, according to all sources the containment unit is still intact
 
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