Japan Earthquake/Tsunami

Actually upon further reading it looks like he had a brain hemorrhage but isn't dead.

It's not really the time for joking though :/

But if you feel the need to make light of the situation then...

That's what I thought.

They're taking him to a Pokémon center?

I was about to say this to Godzilla for his crimes if he'd really have died

I'm not biting. If you feel the need to make stupid jokes about a huge tragedy like this then clearly anything I say won't make you look worse than you're making yourself look.

K, I think I follow you now.

This really is a complex situation, I can only imagine how the engineers in those plants are handling the stress.

One potentially good thing: I thought I read somewhere that the reactors had built-in "switch-off" mechanisms and had shut down immediately after the earthquake hit -- not just that the power went out.* Is it possible that they're just dealing with decay heat right now, or is this likely a different kind of shut-down? If it is just decay heat, and there are no active reactions still going on, that would certainly make their work easier, ya?

In any case, it sounds like they're already on top of everything. Getting those batteries in place and new diesels running until they can get the normal grid back up sounds like the naturally biggest priority, and they jumped straight on that. Awesome.

*Edit: Yeah, here's something saying that.

***. I *just heard* a report on TV that Cesium was detected in the vicinity of Fukushima 1. Fukushima said that the fuel rods may have melted.

BRB seeing if I can find sources for this.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/nhk110311.html


:| There's the last ditch effort. ***. *** *** ***.

All I found is some twitter feeds mentioning it.. (personal twitters nothing official) which is far from reliable.

An emergency medical team has been dispatched to Fukushima.

This is serious, people.

:/ that could be big trouble

Yah, the configuration of the reactor chamber itself seems to be the main safeguard left. Apparently Chernobyl was designed much differently such that the heat/overpressure exerted by the melting core caused the easy explosive release of the radioactive materials into the atmosphere. Supposedly this reactor is designed differently, but we'll see. :/

I'm concerned that I'm having trouble finding other sources for this stuff. BBC should be all over this, but it's not. Not sure what's going on.

not all medias are fast as lightning JP media is actually a lot slower than whats ours is last i watched it they werent even talking about the reactor troubles but were talking about the concerns about them

Just checking in. Family and friends over there are fine.

Japan is very used to earthquakes. Every building is built under really brutal government regulations to withstand enormous quakes, and the people deal with hundreds (if not thousands in some places) of quakes per year. Earthquake drills are mandatory everywhere, usually in September.

Because of the preparation, even a 8.9 earthquake -- which is approximately 100 times stronger than the last two biggest California quakes -- caused relatively little structural damage, and the number of deaths from the initial quake were very low. Tokyo is almost entirely unscathed.

The trouble is the tsunami. Tokyo has pretty good tsunami defenses, but the city of Sendai to the north has been completely devastated. It makes up almost all of the estimated 200-1000 dead, mostly due to drowning.

The reactor situation is worrisome, but it was detected very early and is in a (for Japan) relatively low-population area. The Japanese and US air forces have been flying in coolant to help the situation, and everywhere within 10km (I'm hearing more now) were evacuated early.

There (so far) isn't any danger of a massive explosion or Chernobyl type event, but they're assessing whether or not the environmental risks are worth relieving the pressure in the reactor by venting some radioactive steam, as long as everyone's out of the area. They may lose one or more cores, but Japan is a highly nuclear-powered country and there are contingencies for this.

So far, the most remarkable thing is how calm and collected everyone over there is being. There has been very little panic, no reports of people being trampled, no looting, etc. It's a bad situation, but if folks over there aren't panicking, let's not panic unnecessarily yet either. =)

... =/ There we go, just took a few minutes.

Ugggghhhhhhhh.

why do i feel that if this happened in somewhere in america

lets say New Orleans

there would be looting and trampling everywhere

i really can't believe something like this happened though

sucks and i hope that there aren't too many deaths or injuries

what type of seawater do they need?

because I don't think they have a shortage of that right now

i would think clean seawater since the stuff they were "given" has debris an such but i'm not all that knowing on every cooling procedure for reactors

Yah the design of it is that it's proximal to a water source...



From...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42025882/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

Thanks for the reassurances. It's comforting. My thoughts go out to everyone affected.

I'm glad everyone you know over there is okay Jaerik, really am.

200-1000 people dead is a tragedy. Let's not downplay it, and Japan is hardly out of the woods yet. But at the same time, this quake and tsunami were roughly the same strength as the one that struck off Sumatra a few years ago, which killed hundreds of thousands.

This is the difference between good preparation, in a highly developed country, and no preparation in one that is poor.

Honestly, panicked hyperventilation by the US media stands in pretty stark contrast to what I've seen from Japan. The biggest worry in Tokyo at the moment is that a quake of this magnitude causes an automatic shutdown of all subway, rail, and bullet train service until the lines are inspected. For a country utterly dependent on mass transit, that's a big deal, because it means many people have been sleeping in their offices for two days now.

My favorite exchange that I've seen went something like this:

US Reporter: Oh my god, Tokyo must be devastated. Do people have water?

Random Japanese citizen: *munching on instant ramen* Um... yes?

US Reporter: What about communication? Was it difficult for you to make this connection? How are people getting news and evacuation notifications?

Random Japanese citizen: You do know we've all had live TV on our cell phones for like, 15 years now, right? *shows the reporter*

US Reporter: Oh.

At that point the breathless reporter spend another 15-20 minutes trying to find someone panicking, and then evidently gave up and cut to stock footage of the Chernobyl disaster.

wonder how embarassed they're about that

That's why I don't watch news sourced by the United States of Dramamerica