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Lacy33
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8.9 earthquake in Japan: tsunami warnings
Proton Soup said:i think i saw more than that get washed away in a liveleak video.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=016_1299829101
Borg said:CNN has video of a house (or something large) being swept along while it's burning. Really incredible.
http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2011/03/11/sot.tsunami.hit.japan.cnn
Main story:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/11/japan.quake/index.html?eref=rss_mostpopular"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ap_on_re_us/us_japan_earthquake_pacificWaves are predicted to hit the western coast of the United States between 11 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. EST Friday. People near the beach and in low-lying coastal areas of Point Conception in Santa Barbara County were told to move immediately inland to higher ground.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110311/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_earthquakePolice said 200 to 300 bodies were found in the northeastern coastal city of Sendai. Another 88 were confirmed killed and at least 349 were missing. The death toll was likely to continue climbing given the scale of the disaster.
. . . .
dlgoff said:Terrible news. More and more deaths are being discovered.
Nuclear plants are being shut down also.
Japan ordered thousands of residents near a northeastern nuclear power plant to evacuate on Friday following a massive earthquake that caused a problem in the plant's cooling system.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the Fukushima No. 1 power plant was not leaking radiation.
Astronuc said:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110311/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_earthquake
They certainly weren't prepared!
Along the western Pacifici, people should anticipate a mag 9+ earthquake, which might be rare, but is really inevitable. When events don't happen for one or two generations, people become complacent, and then are surprised when a catastrophic event does occur.
The swarm off Sendai was preceded by a mag 7.2 on March 9. Following the mag 8.9, there was a mag 7.1 and many between mag 6 and 7. There have been three mag 6.5 along the northern edge of the Australia plate. Alot of energy is being released at the moment, but other areas are loading up.
7.2 2011/03/09 02:45:20 38.424 142.836 32.0
8.9 2011/03/11 05:46:23 38.322 142.369 24.4
Any populated area along the Pacific coast is susceptible to such an event based on the proximity to the Pacific Ring of Fire (techtonic plate intersections).
The tsunami off the coast of Sendai will move toward Japan's coast and out across the Pacific Ocean. Australia is more or less protected by New Guinea and the Phillipines, and New Zealand partly by the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu and Tonga.
As far as I know, the units were scrammed as the systems are designed to do so.nismaratwork said:@dlgoff: They seem to be concerned about one plant in particular, but... and I think Astronuc is best suited to answer this... would even a serious flood prevent a SCRAM?
Cabinet official: Efforts to cool a reactor at a nuclear power plant "are not going as planned"
Astronuc said:As far as I know, the units were scrammed as the systems are designed to do so.
One of the units has some problems with its cooling system, which would be the Residual Heat Removal system. The RHR removes decay heat from the core after the plant is shutdown, particularly when the units are depressurized. Even if there is a minor deviation from the expected or anticipated operation, staff will take the precautionary step of alerting the local government of a problem.
They would be concerned about maintaining coolability of the cores according to their mandatory requirements. They should have a plan for "what if".nismaratwork said:That certainly makes sense... so the reaction is already dead, but they're concerned about the remote possibility of... what exactly? A rupture in the reactor vessels being contaminated with seawater, and visa versa?
I assumed that pumping a load of neutron toxins, control rods, etc... into a reactor was pretty useful at keeping anything worse than radiological contamination from occurring... maybe a bad assumption.
Astronuc said:They would be concerned about maintaining coolability of the cores according to their mandatory requirements. They should have a plan for "what if".
It appears from this article that Units 1, 2 and 3 were operating, but shutdown because of the quake.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/11/uk-japan-quake-reactor-idUSLNE72A06L20110311
The emergency power system for Units 1 and 2 failed. Hopefully they can restore the system, or use contingency plans.
Without power, the would be concerned about the coolant getting too hot, which means higher than normally allowed, but which still could be within design parameters for emergency situations. However, we prefer not to allow the core to get outside of normal or anticipated conditions.
Basically, they don't want the primary cooling systems to over-pressurize.
CNN said:Fire broke out at a second facility, the Onagawa plant, but crews were able to put that fire out, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.