Japan Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear-Accident Disaster

Remove all ads!

I saw the pictures and some of the reporting on the disaster in Japan, and this looks really bad.

First this 8.9 Richter quake, then the Tsunami. Last thing I read was that there are at least a thousand casualties, and that were first reports. In a less well organised and constructed country the numbers would have been by far higher.

As if that wasn't bad enough already, the core of nuclear power plant Fukushima 1 is apparently 'burning through', with an explosion having been observed and increased of radiation levels measured. Apparently, the quake had damaged the cooling system. I am old enough to remember Chernobyl, not so fond memories.

Earthquake Catastrophe - Hundreds Believed Dead in Japanese Natural Disaster
Japan Orders Evacuation Near 2nd Nuclear Plant

​

Vid in German.

 

My brother lives in Tokyo, and it took him a while but he was finally able to contact my dad and say he's safe. He didn't say much but apparently it's a total cluster boink over there. At least I can sleep now knowing his family is OK.

 

Fortunately, most of my friends are in Osaka, and while the ones in Togane and Tokyo are okay, I worry about that nuclear plant and the effect it will have. Also, 6 metre tall tsunami waves are always bad news.

 

The German new paint a bad picture!

As if this cataclysmic event wasn't bad enough, now its a possible reactor meltdown.
But what pisses me off, is the lack of solid news. It's all vague and repetitive.

I really hope they can rally enough people and material and specialists, to get the NPP under control.

 

​

 

The latest news that the Finnish nuclear regulator STUK got from the Japanese a while ago was that the reactor cooling is under control again and radiation levels are decreasing. So the chance of a nuclear catastrophe is apparently very low. Comparing this to Chernobyl is a bit silly too, since they are way different.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12723092
This is a well written piece about the nuclear situation. It's not completely up-to-date as they have since announced that the core container still holds, but it explains how it all works and what the possible risks are.

Leaks from their nuclear agency are currently pointing to the partial melt-down (if that's what it is) ranking at stage 4 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, although this may change. The Three Mile Island was a 5, and Chernobyl a 7.

 

US Geological Survey: Quake moved Japan by 8 feet

Scary. At least as far as sea level rise is concerned Japan has just gotten some time.

What I also didn't know, as a result of the tsunami, soil of arable land in the coastal region washed over by the flood will probably be contaminated with fuels and similar substances, rendering it useless for agriculture. To the extent to which it relies on food grown in the coastal regions, Japan will as a result probably also see rising food prices.

 

What a nightmare

 

The regions that were hardest hit also have had almost all of their infrastructure - including roads - destroyed. There simply isn't a means to get news crews into a lot of those areas.

 

I think a boat may have been one of the safer places to be if one couldn't get to higher ground-provided they aren't bashed into anything hard enough to puncture the hull.


Still a disturbing scene. I hope they find more people alive.

 

I recommend contacting the Japanese embassy in one's respective country and asking how to help. In Norway, the Red Cross are already mobilising to go to Japan and help out.

 

Well, at least they don't build (or use) reactors built the way Chernobyl was any more. Whoever thought it would be a great idea to contain self-combusting fuel rods (in case of a cooling failure) into something that is - out of all things - combustible itself ( = graphite ) was just asking for disaster to happen. Not to mention the way the "experiments" there were carried out.

So yes, while the possibility of serious radiation incidents in Japan still remains, it requires a truly horrendous chain of events to happen for it to turn into anything that even remotely resembles the scale of Chernobyl. Although the ~30 km radius around the plant runs a considerable risk into turning into a ghostly wasteland making the areas around Chernobyl look like a vacation resort in comparison.

Edit: In plaintext, the structure of the reactors in Japan is such that they're physically not able to just light up and vomit most of their innards directly into atmosphere like the way Chernobyl did. On the other hand, radiation levels can become much more severe locally just around the plant.

 

IIRC Chernobyl was an obvious dual-use reactor, part of why it was built was to help enrich plutonium. The USSR had water-cooled reactors long before then. But yes, a lot of people involved in the whole thing were obvious idiots - naturally they weren't the ones sent to clean up with little or no protective gear.

 

Didn't see anything mentioned it in other sources yet, but Finnish Ilta-Sanomat ("Evening News") newspaper just reported that reactor #4 is completely out of water at the moment and radiation levels are extreme.

Paraphrasing: "It's only a matter of hours before something life-threatening happens."

Earlier this morning I read that there suddenly was an 8 meter hole on the side of the #4 reactor's side. Based on the pictures posted, it seemed like they meaned the outer containment building, not reactor core itself, but I wouldn't be surprised if these two reports are connected.

 

Wow - this is getting bad. This earthquake-tsunami-nuclear problem is going to immediately move up to #3 on the list of all time disasters in Japan.

Japan hasn't taken one up the butt this bad since Godzilla and the Enola Gay.

 

Friends of mine and I were freezing our nuts (or boobs) off today collecting money for the Red Cross. Oslo for Japan, yay! It was damn cold, but that's Norway for ya. It feels good to participate. ^^

 

Ilta-Sanomat is a tabloid (tabloid journalism) so I would not pay too much attention to what they say. But even as serious as the Fukushima incident is I think it has received far too much attention in this disaster and no one seems to remember that thousands were killed in the tsunami and thousands more are still missing.