Tsunami/earthquake in Japan...

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Claremonster said:
Hello Kitty.

:coffee:
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hello_kitty_streetracer.jpg
:coffee:
 
Claremonster said:
Hello Kitty.

:coffee:
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Much worse than that is these little Japanese erasers my kids collected, finally they changed the name to something politically correct but simple me can't remember the new name.... Anyway these little buggers at 1" multiple part erasers kids collect.... What a pain in the ass these are

as ima said god gets credit for the good I assume he has a reason to try these people.... I know I learned a lot about the culture and how civil they are at a time like this - I only imagine the behavior of the citizens of these United States and their feeling of entitlement, how people use a sporting event as a reason to riot and loot or the fall out from Katrina in the superdome and the looting there....maybe God is reminding us how to behave

Then again I could have my head up my ass and it all means nothing
 
mikiemo83 said:
Then again I could have my head up my ass and it all means nothing
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Oh, it means something. It means "Living on major fault lines in volcanically active parts of the world is sometimes dangerous and really bad things will happen every so often and there ain't a damn thing you can do about it."
 
Claremonster said:
Oh, it means something. It means "Living on major fault lines in volcanically active parts of the world is sometimes dangerous and really bad things will happen every so often and there ain't a damn thing you can do about it."
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So you are saying my head is up my ass????


That Explains my shitty thoughts lately
 
mikiemo83 said:
Much worse than that is these little Japanese erasers my kids collected, finally they changed the name to something politically correct but simple me can't remember the new name.... Anyway these little buggers at 1" multiple part erasers kids collect.... What a pain in the ass these are

as ima said god gets credit for the good I assume he has a reason to try these people.... I know I learned a lot about the culture and how civil they are at a time like this - I only imagine the behavior of the citizens of these United States and their feeling of entitlement, how people use a sporting event as a reason to riot and loot or the fall out from Katrina in the superdome and the looting there....maybe God is reminding us how to behave

Then again I could have my head up my ass and it all means nothing
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Put up a pole:insane:. I would never put one up that suggested that one of our mods has his head so far up his ass.:insane::insane:
 
king of kings said:
What did japan do to deserve a 8.9 earthquake, a 30 foot Tsunami and Now one of there Nuclear power plants core could blow because the cooling system was damaged.
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That's a loaded question- first of all, Japan sits on a triple plate junction, the meeting of the Pacific, Phillipine and Eurasian plates. That makes for a very unpredictable earthquake zone. Now the major fault line that lies off the coast of Japan is a subduction zone, which means one plate is slipping under another, and in this case it's the Pacific plate that's pushing underneath and the friction is what is causing the many earthquakes they get. Plates don't move at a smooth rate; they sometimes lock up, but the ensuing stress just builds up and up, sometimes for years and years until it's strong enough to break the lock and release the stress.

In other words, Japan sits on an very unstable part of the Earth's crust- it's this same phenomenon that made Japan an island in the first place.

So that 8.9 did not really come as a surprise to Japan- in fact, they've been preparing for it for a long time; but there is really no way you prepare for an earthquake of that magnitude, or the inevitable tsunami that occurs as a result. Also it is cost-prohibitive. For example, many of the buildings are now useless even though you visibly see no damage. They must be torn down. It's the same thing you would get if you got in a bad car accident, your car is designed to crumple and shed the massive force sideways so you get out unharmed, but the car is no longer drivable.

But how do you blame a civilization for consistently building in a place that it discovers at some point, is very unstable? That would be a philosophical question, I'd say. The same could be said of the San Andreas fault. How is it philosophically justifiable for one to keep building in a place that one knows is unstable and has a high probability for a massive earthquake?
 
bob said:
That's a loaded question- first of all, Japan sits on a triple plate junction, the meeting of the Pacific, Phillipine and Eurasian plates. That makes for a very unpredictable earthquake zone. Now the major fault line that lies off the coast of Japan is a subduction zone, which means one plate is slipping under another, and in this case it's the Pacific plate that's pushing underneath and the friction is what is causing the many earthquakes they get. Plates don't move at a smooth rate; they sometimes lock up, but the ensuing stress just builds up and up, sometimes for years and years until it's strong enough to break the lock and release the stress.

In other words, Japan sits on an very unstable part of the Earth's crust- it's this same phenomenon that made Japan an island in the first place.

So that 8.9 did not really come as a surprise to Japan- in fact, they've been preparing for it for a long time; but there is really no way you prepare for an earthquake of that magnitude, or the inevitable tsunami that occurs as a result. Also it is cost-prohibitive. For example, many of the buildings are now useless even though you visibly see no damage. They must be torn down. It's the same thing you would get if you got in a bad car accident, your car is designed to crumple and shed the massive force sideways so you get out unharmed, but the car is no longer drivable.

But how do you blame a civilization for consistently building in a place that it discovers at some point, is very unstable? That would be a philosophical question, I'd say. The same could be said of the San Andreas fault. How is it philosophically justifiable for one to keep building in a place that one knows is unstable and has a high probability for a massive earthquake?
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Or in a Tornado ally, or in a High Hurricane area, or a place that gets major snow storms, etc etc. There are very few places that do not have natural disasters, if we start moving everything to those area's we might run into some issues. Plus Pat Robertson already told me that God was punishing the Japaneses because they do not look down on homosexuals as much as they need to.:coffee:
 
And the meltdown has begun. Welcome to this generations Chernobyl. No way they can stop this...none.

Question, will the radiation come across the Pacific and affect the US? How much? How soon?

Japan is F'd.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/14/second-explosion-stricken-japan-nuke-plant/

AP
URGENT: Nuke Meltdown in 3 Reactors
Japanese officials say nuclear fuel rods appear to be melting inside all three of the most troubled reactors
 
sonsofkraftybob said:
And the meltdown has begun. Welcome to this generations Chernobyl. No way they can stop this...none.

Question, will the radiation come across the Pacific and affect the US? How much? How soon?

Japan is F'd.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/14/second-explosion-stricken-japan-nuke-plant/

AP
URGENT: Nuke Meltdown in 3 Reactors
Japanese officials say nuclear fuel rods appear to be melting inside all three of the most troubled reactors
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Not just Japan.

This is going to have a HUGE effect on the environment and the world economy.

An industrial heavyweight with a severely compromised electrical grid will have a devastating long-term effect.
 
Japan Does Not Face Another Chernobyl

The containment structures appear to be working, and the latest reactor designs aren't vulnerable to the coolant problem at issue here.

By WILLIAM TUCKER

Even while thousands of people are reported dead or missing, whole neighborhoods lie in ruins, and gas and oil fires rage out of control, press coverage of the Japanese earthquake has quickly settled on the troubles at two nuclear reactors as the center of the catastrophe.

Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), a longtime opponent of nuclear power, has warned of "another Chernobyl" and predicted "the same thing could happen here." In response, he has called for an immediate suspension of licensing procedures for the Westinghouse AP1000, a "Generation III" reactor that has been laboring through design review at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for seven years.

Before we respond with such panic, though, it would be useful to review exactly what is happening in Japan and what we have to fear from it.

The core of a nuclear reactor operates at about 550 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the temperature of a coal furnace and only slightly hotter than a kitchen oven. If anything unusual occurs, the control rods immediately drop, shutting off the nuclear reaction. You can't have a "runaway reactor," nor can a reactor explode like a nuclear bomb. A commercial reactor is to a bomb what Vaseline is to napalm. Although both are made from petroleum jelly, only one of them has potentially explosive material.

Once the reactor has shut down, there remains "decay heat" from traces of other radioactive isotopes. This can take more than a week to cool down, and the rods must be continually bathed in cooling waters to keep them from overheating.

On all Generation II reactors—the ones currently in operation—the cooling water is circulated by electric pumps. The new Generation III reactors such as the AP1000 have a simplified "passive" cooling system where the water circulates by natural convection with no pumping required.

If the pumps are knocked out in a Generation II reactor—as they were at Fukushima Daiichi by the tsunami—the water in the cooling system can overheat and evaporate. The resulting steam increases internal pressure that must be vented. There was a small release of radioactive steam at Three Mile Island in 1979, and there have also been a few releases at Fukushima Daiichi. These produce radiation at about the level of one dental X-ray in the immediate vicinity and quickly dissipate.

If the coolant continues to evaporate, the water level can fall below the level of the fuel rods, exposing them. This will cause a meltdown, meaning the fuel rods melt to the bottom of the steel pressure vessel.

Early speculation was that in a case like this the fuel might continue melting right through the steel and perhaps even through the concrete containment structure—the so-called China syndrome, where the fuel would melt all the way to China. But Three Mile Island proved this doesn't happen. The melted fuel rods simply aren't hot enough to melt steel or concrete.

The decay heat must still be absorbed, however, and as a last-ditch effort the emergency core cooling system can be activated to flood the entire containment structure with water. This will do considerable damage to the reactor but will prevent any further steam releases. The Japanese have now reportedly done this using seawater in at least two of the troubled reactors. These reactors will never be restarted.

None of this amounts to "another Chernobyl." The Chernobyl reactor had two crucial design flaws. First, it used graphite (carbon) instead of water to "moderate" the neutrons, which makes possible the nuclear reaction. The graphite caught fire in April 1986 and burned for four days. Water does not catch fire.

Second, Chernobyl had no containment structure. When the graphite caught fire, it spouted a plume of radioactive smoke that spread across the globe. A containment structure would have both smothered the fire and contained the radioactivity.

If a meltdown does occur in Japan, it will be a disaster for the Tokyo Electric Power Company but not for the general public. Whatever steam releases occur will have a negligible impact. Researchers have spent 30 years trying to find health effects from the steam releases at Three Mile Island and have come up with nothing. With all the death, devastation and disease now threatening tens of thousands in Japan, it is trivializing and almost obscene to spend so much time worrying about damage to a nuclear reactor.

What the Japanese earthquake has proved is that even the oldest containment structures can withstand the impact of one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history. The problem has been with the electrical pumps required to operate the cooling system. It would be tragic if the result of the Japanese accident were to prevent development of Generation III reactors, which eliminate this design flaw.

Mr. Tucker is author of "Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey" (Bartleby Press, 2010).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576198421680697248.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
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Here's a second op-ed. Both reference Generation III reactors.
 
Claremonster said:
I was being sarcastic.
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I know.

I was following the dictates of my avatar :harumph:

Oh and if you want to get some slightly technical news updates regarding the status of the reactors in Japan, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) has a web page here.

Here are today's reports.

UPDATE AS OF 1:30 P.M. EDT, MONDAY, MARCH 14:
Unit 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant lost a significant amount of reactor coolant for a second time on Monday. Some of the uranium fuel rods were uncovered for a period of time. A malfunctioning safety relief valve at the plant caused an increase in reactor pressure and hindered injection of coolant back into the reactor. The cause of the relief valve failure is under investigation.

The Japanese government has distributed 230,000 units of potassium iodine to evacuation centers in the area surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini stations, according to officials. Ingestion of potassium iodine can help prevent the accumulation of radioactive iodine in the thyroid.

At the Fukushima Daini site all units have off-site power,and water levels in all units are stable. Plant operators at Daini Unit 1 were able to restore a residual heat remover system, which is now being used to cool the reactor. Work is in progress to achieve a cold shutdown. Workers at Daini Units 2 and 4 are working to restore residual heat removal systems. Unit 3 is in a safe, cold shutdown.

Radiation dose rate measurements observed at four locations around the Daini plant´s perimeter over a 16-hour period on Sunday were all normal.


UPDATE AS OF 11:00 A.M. EDT, MONDAY, MARCH 14:
Fuel rods in the reactor vessel of Unit 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant were temporarily uncovered from cooling water today, but seawater injection has raised the water level to the halfway point, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said. Seawater is now being used to cool all three Daiichi reactors that were shut down after the March 11 earthquake. Unit 2 had lost its emergency cooling capacity. Workers were preparing to remove hydrogen from the reactor building, and TEPCO has opened the steam relief valve of the reactor.

The primary containment vessels and reactor cores of reactors 1 and 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi facility are intact, following earlier hydrogen explosions in the secondary containment buildings of both reactors.

At Unit 1, seawater injection continues to cool the reactor. Safety regulators consider the reactor’s pressure an indication of a stable condition. The hydrogen explosion on March 11, which occurred between the primary containment vessel and the containment building, did not damage the primary containment vessel or the reactor core. To control the pressure of the reactor core, TEPCO has been injecting seawater and boric acid into the primary containment vessel of Unit 1 since March 12.

A hydrogen explosion Monday at Unit 3, similar to the Unit 1 explosion, did not damage the primary containment, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said. The control room remains operational, and a government official said that pressure in the reactor vessel is stable. After the explosion, the few hundred people remaining in the 12.5-mile evacuation zone were asked to stay indoors.

At the Fukushima Daini site, cooling capability has been reestablished for Unit 4 at the reactor. Units 2 and 4 are in cold shutdown.
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There are actually two separate sites. Fukushima Daini and Fukushima Daiichi. The latter is where the hydrogen explosions occurred. The former site seems to be in stable condition.

Here's a map showing their locations.

japan_map1.jpg


Here's a graphic showing the layout of the plant.

The reactor vessel is the brown item at the center.

BoilingWaterReactorDesign_3.jpg


Edit: BTW, has anyone heard about any problems at the Onagawa site in the news? Those three reactors look like their closer to the epicenter than the damaged units. Tsunami effects can be very localized due to sea floor and coastal geometry, so I don't know if they got hit or not, but since they seemed to have shut down safely, it would appear that an 8.9 earthquake isn't certain to cause havoc at a nuke plant.
 
sonsofkraftybob said:
And the meltdown has begun. Welcome to this generations Chernobyl. No way they can stop this...none.

Question, will the radiation come across the Pacific and affect the US? How much? How soon?

Japan is F'd.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/14/second-explosion-stricken-japan-nuke-plant/

AP
URGENT: Nuke Meltdown in 3 Reactors
Japanese officials say nuclear fuel rods appear to be melting inside all three of the most troubled reactors
Click to expand...


:shake:

See my post above.

I'll bet anything you care to mention that they will have a hard time even measuring any radiation from those plants across the Pacific, let alone it having any environmental impact.
 
O_P_T said:
:shake:

See my post above.

I'll bet anything you care to mention that they will have a hard time even measuring any radiation from those plants across the Pacific, let alone it having any environmental impact.
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I'm no nuclear engineer, but I just heard the Japanese Govt. made a statement that there have been readings taken near one of the troubled sites that were 10,000 times the normal background radiation level.

Plus, Fukushima 2 just exploded again. Again, according to them.

Actually, the on-air interpreter called it a "loud noise", so we got that going for us.

EDIT: I'm now hearing that while there is elevated radiation in some of the affected areas in the North, now they are reporting that the amount of that radiation is still less than an X-ray. I don't want to pass that 10,000 times figure on because it doesn't sound like that is accurate.
 
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