Massive 8.9 earthquake & tsunami hit Japan

[Zag]

Check out the.. er.. interesting way they are explaining the situation to children..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sakN2hSVxA

[Shampoo]

This whole situation has large implications. As far as the cel community goes - Be very careful where you buy your cels from Japan now as they may be contaminated with radiation. Some elements released have a short half life, others much longer. They were just reporting how people from Japan flights were setting off the radiation detectors at the US airports. Their government has not been entirely forthcoming regarding the seriousness of the situation. UPS isn't delivering to Japan right now.

My prayers are with the Japanese people.

Wow...
I almost hoped this was just a fail troll but
apparently she/he is an actual registered member.
I dont even...

Where to start? First off the dire needs of those
evacuated due to the earthquake/tsunami PLUS
those out in shelters from the Fukushima area are the
ones that really need our attention and help.
The nuclear reactor situation, while serious,
does not affect your precious mainstream anime toys or cels
as most are located in Tokyo or southern Japan.
Northern coastal Japan is rural, I've visited that area
before on vacation, its mostly small villages and towns.
Sendai city, which is a large city like Nagoya, though
received damage did not wash away or vanish
like some of those coastal rural towns did.
Second, shipping has not ceased for ALL of Japan.
In fact I mailed something JUST TODAY and it was
business as usual.
I have 2 packages that were dispatched between yesterday
and today as well (from Tokyo.)
The only parts UPS is not delivering mail to is the
areas in Fukushima prefecture and parts of Sendai
that were destroyed-- obviously the roads are
either nonexistent a.tm. or only open to emergency vehicles.
And third, if everyone stopped buying Japanese
products for that kind of irrational fear of radiation (which
at this point, is centralized to Fukushima area and 40 miles
around it), I can only imagine the serious implications financially
the country will be in (pfft! Actually that are already coursing
as we speak.) Be prepared to hear alot of stores, inns,
hotels, restaurants, and retailers going out of business
and/or laying-off by the thousands, if not, hundreds of
thousands over this disaster-- especially being their
biggest tourist season. Donations are well and good, but places
that are not affected like Tokyo or Osaka or Fukuoka
*will be* thru business which hurts the whole
of recovery anyways. Its a vicious domino effect.

STOP with the panic and fear mongering. It hurts them
more than you think.
This kind of chicken little sensationalization is the
reason why I don't use US media as the sole source
of info. Do you realize how much money is being made here
by exacerbating events ? Have you looked at the yen
exchange? How about political groups/candidates coming up for
election in the fall? Have you seen their public ratings
and fundraising venues increase/decrease?
Profiteers and opportunists seep (and ooze) when shit like
this happens especially when its hot button issues like energy.
(Much like ambulance chasers after a bad car pile up.)
Even more so that it occurred in a 1st world country
like Japan. Notice how quickly Libya and Egypt came
off the western headlines?
Chill the fuck out and donate if your truly concerned
out of compassion for the human lives lost and
displaced. Support japanese businesses by going about
your normal routine when you see that cel or sketch or toy
you like and order it. They need the money, they need
the confidence and most of all the SUPPORT both
emotionally and financially (and I mean NOT financially FROM it.)

[Court]

You may disagree with me but don't take what I typed and try to turn it into a completely different message than was intended. I said "be careful" not "omg stay away" and other panic nonsense. I am not a fear monger, my eyes are wide open. You think the media is spreading fear when in fact they and the governments have been UNDER reporting from the start. But this isn't the place to discuss nuclear engineering.

I stand by what I said with my prayers. What I wrote was in no way meant to diminish the Japanese peoples' hardship. I don't watch or collect anything related to anime anymore but I thought of the rest of you. So you can rest easy that I am not concerned with "toys". Caution and investigation is not fear, knowledge is good. I don't need to "chill the fuck out" but apparently you could benefit from your own advice. Your attitude was unappreciated.

One final thing, carrying on like normal is not an viable alternative. The entire world just got a big wake up call regarding their use of nuclear power. There are plants all over (including the US) that are built on fault lines and only designed to withstand lower grade quakes. I hope countries take the time to review their engineering and policies and the average person to begin to care where their energy comes from through personal choices or legislation. The use of oil and nuclear plants seem to be a bad bet for the human race. The environmentalists have been screaming for decades and now humanity has a poisoned Gulf of Mexico and Japan is experiencing a nightmare. They take no pleasure in being right about something like this.

Again, you are free to disagree. Just please do it without the swearing and rudeness. I only stuck my head in here because I knew some old collectors still frequented here. We're all in this together.

[graymouser]

Check out the.. er.. interesting way they are explaining the situation to children..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sakN2hSVxA

That was strange. Especially the part about describing Chernobyl as

a nuclear boy that had diarrhea in the classroom.

As other people here have said, the bigger problem involves finding and helping all of the homeless people in the north.

[Animechaos]

One final thing, carrying on like normal is not an viable alternative. The entire world just got a big wake up call regarding their use of nuclear power. There are plants all over (including the US) that are built on fault lines and only designed to withstand lower grade quakes.

Normally I don't like commenting on threads like this, but I'm very compelled.

Carrying on like normal is the perfect alternative. Fearmongers wanting to shut down nuclear power just don't get it. The CLEANEST and most efficient engery source we have right now is nuclear. I very much support alternative engergy, but I don't think most people know just how many wind turbines or solar panels it would take to match a nuclear plant.

Think about it this way. The Fukushima plant was built roughly 40+ years ago using far out-dated technology than we have today.

1) It withstood a 9.0 earthquake.
2) It got slammed by a massive tsunami.
3) It's been rattled almost non-stop by aftershocks.
4) It's had multiple fires break out.
5) The roofs have blown off!

.......and it has not yet melted down. It has not yet claimed one life. That could change and given what the heroic workers are doing inside that plant likely will, but given the facts above that is quite a testament to human engineering.

We should worry, but more so for the men, women, and children affected by the Tsunami. Japan is going through a lot and everyone should act responsibly, help, and donate. The way the Japanese citizens have handled this disaster.....I just want to stand and applaud. Japan is second to nobody in terms of civility and honor.

[JWR]

One final thing, carrying on like normal is not an viable alternative. The entire world just got a big wake up call regarding their use of nuclear power. There are plants all over (including the US) that are built on fault lines and only designed to withstand lower grade quakes.

Normally I don't like commenting on threads like this, but I'm very compelled.

Carrying on like normal is the perfect alternative. Fearmongers wanting to shut down nuclear power just don't get it. The CLEANEST and most efficient engery source we have right now is nuclear. I very much support alternative engergy, but I don't think most people know just how many wind turbines or solar panels it would take to match a nuclear plant.

Think about it this way. The Fukushima plant was built roughly 40+ years ago using far out-dated technology than we have today.

1) It withstood a 9.0 earthquake.
2) It got slammed by a massive tsunami.
3) It's been rattled almost non-stop by aftershocks.
4) It's had multiple fires break out.
5) The roofs have blown off!

.......and it has not yet melted down. It has not yet claimed one life. That could change and given what the heroic workers are doing inside that plant likely will, but given the facts above that is quite a testament to human engineering.

We should worry, but more so for the men, women, and children affected by the Tsunami. Japan is going through a lot and everyone should act responsibly, help, and donate. The way the Japanese citizens have handled this disaster.....I just want to stand and applaud. Japan is second to nobody in terms of civility and honor.

Here is a report of what is actually happening from Dr. Jerry Pournell:

We are now down to an absolute worst case of two Tsar Bomba fallout equivalent from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. Note that we are talking about fallout only: there is no danger whatever of an actual nuclear explosion. The media are breathlessly telling of a nuclear cloud approaching the United States. NPR proclaims that no nukes is good nukes. The Union of Concerned Scientists will cheerfully furnish you with as gloomy a forecast as you'd like whether you ask for their view or not.

In fact the situation is slowly coming under control. Fukushima Daiichi sits on the coast amidst a scene of almost unimaginable destruction, in freezing weather, with high winds. Every road, water pipe, and power line is gone. Debris litters the passageways to the plant. Fukushima Daiichi was protected by a 20 foot sea wall. Most of the surrounding countryside wasn't protected by a sea wall at all.

At reactor four the fuel rods were in a spent fuel pond: the reactor was shut down in December. The pond was on the roof of the reactor building, which seemed like a good idea at the time, and could withstand an 8.0 quake, and being on the roof had a really short path from the reactor to the storage pond. All was well, until the quake cracked the pool wall. Well, that's all right, we pump in water. Only there's no power because the reactors scrammed at the first large tremor. That's all right, the diesels kick in and the water pumps start up. Only now there's a tsunami. Well, that's all right, there's a twenty foot sea wall. Only the tsunami is 23 feet, and maybe there has been some subsidence of the land level due to the quake. Water rushes into the complex. Back at reactor 4: the water is flowing out of the spent fuel rod pool. The rods stand on end, 14 feet tall, with about 40 feet of water in the pool. The water is flowing out. Everyone is worrying more about the three reactors which are scrammed but which still contain the fuel rods. Those rods are really hot: they are full of just created fission products, some with half lives in minutes to hours so producing a lot of heat. Over in four all the really hot stuff -- fission products -- has decayed out. But the water is leaking. Temperatures are going up.

At some point the water in the four tank boils furiously near the zirconium rod containers. Superhot steam plus zirconium metal produces very fast rusting. This is also known as oxidation. Rapid oxidation is often called burning. The oxygen in the water is stripped off to become zirconium oxide. That leaves hydrogen (contaminated with some tritium since we still have neutrons and beta products coming from the radioactive decay of the fission byproducts). Hydrogen gets out into the room enclosing the spent fuel pool. It mixes with oxygen from the outside. It ignites. There is an explosion that blows off the roof of the rooftop spent fuel enclosure building. Water continues to leak from the pool.

The remedy is to get water into that pool, but we still don't have much power for pumps, nor water supply, because we are still surrounded by devastation, and we still have the problem of the reactors that have just been scrammed and are really really hot because they have recently created fission products in them.

But we can call in helicopters to drop water into the now-exposed pool. That ought to work only there is a 20 knot wind, so not all the water dropped can get into the pool, and much goes downwind in a televisible display plume.

And there we are. The good news is that the wind is blowing the results out to sea. The bad news is that a plume hundreds of miles long develops and in that plume are detectable -- not dangerous but detectable -- levels of radiation, and out there away from the destruction, not hampered by the devastation of the earthquake and tsunami, are a lot of news people desperate for a story, and -- I leave the rest as an exercise for the reader. Detectible soon becomes potentially dangerous levels, and it's hundreds and hundreds of miles, and a Union of Concerned Scientists expert will now tell you about it all.

I can't say that this won't be worse than Chernobyl, but so far we have no stories whatever of anyone off the plant site injured, which makes this a TMI story, not a Chernobyl story. And that's the way things are at Noon on Thursday as best I can tell. Here's the headline:

Japan nuclear crisis deepens as radiation keeps crews at bay
Race is on to restart cooling systems with emergency power after dropping water on damaged reactors has little effect

To the best of my knowledge the Japanese crews are winning the race. This will end up worse than TMI because many of those in the plant will be injured, and some may be killed: I understand that some workers have voluntarily exceeded their annual badge limits and by a lot because they thought their work was critical. At TMI there were no off site injuries, and the worst to the workers was that they exceeded their badge limits and were sent away. At Daiichi there have so far been no off site injuries, but some to many of the plant workers have exceeded their badge limits. In addition six or more have mechanical injuries, some from the hydrogen explosions, one from a heart attack. Pray for them.

[cutiebunny]

Found this on the NY times today. It's the first before/after shots of large portions of Northeastern Japan that I've seen.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011 ... unami.html

[JWR]

For any worried about radiation from Japan here is an in depth examination.
http://www.xkcd.com/radiation/

[iwakuralain16]

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20 ... h-in-japan

Just in case anyone else has been watching the news wondering if they ever found this teacher who worked through JET. I am glad they at least found her. I hope the students she helped made it to higher ground.

[benten]

The link below is to an article from IEEE Spectrum (the general interest magazine of the Institute of Electronic & Electrical Engineers) on the events at the Fukushima nuclear complex after the recent tsunami. Although the magazine itself is intended for an engineering audience, this article is not restricted to such an audience. Because of the discussions in this thread, I believe that many here might find this article quite interesting.

As is often the case in a major accident, the information provided in the first few hours or days is unreliable. In other contexts, this would be referred to as the "fog of war". Only later, after things have settled, are resources available to reconstruct a timeline as to what happened. This is the first article I have come upon by a reputable technical authority that provides coordinated information on the event. Please keep in mind that this article is written with a design safety slant (i.e., what could have been done differently to prevent the failure), since design safety is one of the general interests common to all of engineering.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear ... ukushima/0

[BeautifulAlone]

http://news.yahoo.com/japan-tsunami-ann ... -help.html