News Japan Earthquake, Tsunami, & Nuclear Disaster

[halcyon]

I cannot BELIEVE the comments people are making on the CNN story feedback sections.
Anyone else here read the crap going on over there?

Lots and lots and lots of posters are complaining that the U.S. is sending aid to Japan, citing money woes and debt and blah blah blah.
To quote one poster at CNN feedback:

"Hopefully this knocks Japanese industry back 30 years and we can have another 20 year run of competition-free manufacturing to convince ourselves we're #1 like we did after WWII."

Who the hell says that kind of crap after Japan is in ruins following an earthquake, tsunami, natural gas fires, and now the danger of a power plant meltdown?
Do people really have no heart? I mean jesus.

 

[Dambuster]

Who the hell says that kind of crap after Japan is in ruins following an earthquake, tsunami, natural gas fires, and now the danger of a power plant meltdown?
Do people really have no heart? I mean jesus.

Just as a tip: stay off the comments! AFAIK they're only good for two things: raising your blood pressure and/or having useless but entertaining arguments.

 

[Urwumpe]

Who the hell says that kind of crap after Japan is in ruins following an earthquake, tsunami, natural gas fires, and now the danger of a power plant meltdown?
Do people really have no heart? I mean jesus.

I think these people have at least no brain. Japan was never an economic problem for the USA, it was an economic advantage. China is a bigger problem there.

if Japan is not recovering anything quickly, this will also hurt the USA. And with it the rest of the world.

 

[astrosammy]

And as always, some are blaming HAARP... :facepalm:

 

[Artlav]

I cannot BELIEVE the comments people are making on the CNN story feedback sections.

Strange, i just skimmed through a few hundred of comments there, and found only a couple doomsday jokers, not a single "got what they deserved" kind of comment.
Different CNN?

 

[halcyon]

Strange, i just skimmed through a few hundred of comments there, and found only a couple doomsday jokers, not a single "got what they deserved" kind of comment.
Different CNN?

Well if you really want to wade through piles and piles of useless posts, here you go - http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/03/11/us.quake.response/index.html?hpt=T1

Plenty of ignorance there.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

How much power is recquired for those cooling pumps? Powerful diesel generators are also used in other places like construction sites. It just seems weird that no suitable generator can be found in nearby area and transported to site even by heavy lift helicopter if roads are not usable

I don't know about their diesels, there's a guy here who did a "baseline" trip to Japan last year, and I'll see if I can catch him to find out. Our diesels are the same size as the ones you'd see pulling train cars across the country. I don't know what model, but they look like the same motors that were in th old GP-9 locomotive. Japans diesels should be similar, so it's not something that you could bring in on a helicoptor, you could power a small village with these things (for a short period of time anyway).

 

[Dambuster]

"URGENT: Radiation Levels Surge
At Japanese Nuclear Plant
LATEST UPDATE: Thousands of people have been evacuated from the area near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as radiation levels surge to 1,000 tim"
Typical overdone sensationalist BS from Fox :facepalm:

 

[Urwumpe]

Typical overdone sensationalist BS from Fox :facepalm:

Why? It is correct. The evacuation zone was extended to 10 km radius after the first indications of highly increased radiation, after the zone was already extended to 5 km for venting the building.

 

[Artlav]

here you go

Hm, i keep javascript off and the comments there won't appear without it. That's how i missed 99% of the crap.
I wonder what these people think, how they look like at home, what they tell their children.

 

[N_Molson]

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egocentrism"]Egocentrism[/ame] is a dangerously common pathology nowadays. It fits quite well to the authors of those comments, the syndroms are typical :

In psychology, egocentrism is

* the incomplete differentiation of the self and the world, including other people and
* the tendency to perceive, understand and interpret the world in terms of the self.

The term derives from the Greek and Latin ἑγώ / ego, meaning "I", "me", and "self". An egocentric person cannot fully empathize, i.e. "put himself in other peoples' shoes", and believes everyone sees what she/he sees (or that what he/she sees, in some way, exceeds what others see).

But don't mistake, it is a real disease like any other and can often be cured by therapy (as long the subject want to heal, of course...)

 

[Dambuster]

Why? It is correct. The evacuation zone was extended to 10 km radius after the first indications of highly increased radiation, after the zone was already extended to 5 km for venting the building.

Well I should have included their highlights and removed the 'BS' bit. My problem with it is that it implied that they were evacuating because of the 1000x background level. Whilst that's correct, I would also take it as a given that most Fox news readers won't realise that the 1000x isn't anything too deadly, and will easily misinterpret that. Hence, I stand by my label of 'typical overdone sensationalist.

 

[Urwumpe]

Well I should have included their highlights and removed the 'BS' bit. My problem with it is that it implied that they were evacuating because of the 1000x background level. Whilst that's correct, I would also take it as a given that most Fox news readers won't realise that the 1000x isn't anything too deadly, and will easily misinterpret that. Hence, I stand by my label of 'typical overdone sensationalist.

If you get your annual radiation done in just 24 hours, it is significant. Not sure about how many Sv you are permitted to get as nuclear radiation worker during your work.

The only number I have is 20 mSv / year, which means after 133 hours in that radiation, you have exceeded your annual safe dose as nuclear radiation worker.

 

[Cairan]

This is going from bad to worse... Can't someone hook up car batteries in series or something to open this valve?!

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/12_24.html

Tokyo Electric Power Company says it does not know when it will be able to vent air from a nuclear power plant in quake-stricken Fukushima Prefecture to avoid its breakdown.

The venting operation requires electricity, but the area around the Fukushima Number One plant is still under a blackout.

The company says the pressure value for the container of one of the reactors has risen, because it has not been able to cool the reactor.

The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says the pressure had risen to up to twice the normal figure by 5 AM on Saturday.

But the company now says that the lack of electricity means it does not know when it will be able to release the air.

To even worse... http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/12_27.html

The Tokyo Electric Company has warned the Japanese government of an emergency situation at a second nuclear plant in quake-stricken Fukushima Prefecture.

Tokyo Electric issued the warning about its Fukushima Number Two Plant on Saturday. The warning follows one earlier in the day for the Number One Plant.

The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said equipment failures have made it impossible to cool 3 of the plant's 4 reactors. It said the situation poses no immediate threat of a leakage of radioactive materials.

The agency is considering whether it needs to issue an evacuation advisory to people living near the plant.

 

[Urwumpe]

TWICE?!

That is no long just flashing bright red with claxons, this is the time for "if you see me running, run too."

This likely also means that nobody can enter the containment building for manually actuating valves.

Does somebody already have an idea, which kind of BWR generation this could be?

http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/techspecs/current-approved-sts.html

The safety limitation maximum of contemporary US reactors is 1325 psig.

 

[Dambuster]

If you get your annual radiation done in just 24 hours, it is significant. Not sure about how many Sv you are permitted to get as nuclear radiation worker during your work.

The only number I have is 20 mSv / year, which means after 133 hours in that radiation, you have exceeded your annual safe dose as nuclear radiation worker.

Ok, fair enough. But to pick a few nits, their headline said 'surge' - to me, that implies something uncontrolled, which this was not (as far as I know).

Anyway, to get back on topic:
TEPCO: loses control of pressure at 2nd nuclear plant

 

[Urwumpe]

Ok, fair enough. But to pick a few nits, their headline said 'surge' - to me, that implies something uncontrolled, which this was not (as far as I know).

Not? This situation is out of control, what they currently do is trying their best to get it back under control before the reactor core decides to come out and watch the scattered landscape itself.

 

[IgnoreThisBarrel]

At least one school in western Washington (state) had to start late today because of its position on a bay. If I recall correctly the bay is funnel shaped, so they were waiting it out to see what would happen.

 

[Dambuster]

Not? This situation is out of control, what they currently do is trying their best to get it back under control before the reactor core decides to come out and watch the scattered landscape itself.

Not uncontrolled only in the sense that they decided when to release the gas, versus the reactor suddenly springing a leak. But I concede defeat...you win:tiphat:

 

[Suzy]

NASA Japan quake page (not much there yet). I wonder if the ISS crew were able to get photos of the tsunami waves spreading out across the Pacific? Also: Tsunami reaches California and The Big Picture