Magnitude 8.8 Earthquake, Tsunami Rocks Northeastern Japan

[commadore]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/0 ... 1&iref=BN1

Watching the coverage on CNN now, they had showed video of a tsunami sweep across some farmland. Right now, 8 people have been confirmed killed, but that will rise, I'm afraid.

Japan has been hit in just the past two days before this major quake by smaller ones, 6.3 and 7.2.

There are tsunami warnings for about 53 countries and islands:
JAPAN / RUSSIA / MARCUS IS. / N. MARIANAS / GUAM / WAKE IS. /
TAIWAN / YAP / PHILIPPINES / MARSHALL IS. / BELAU / MIDWAY IS. /
POHNPEI / CHUUK / KOSRAE / INDONESIA / PAPUA NEW GUINEA /
NAURU / JOHNSTON IS. / SOLOMON IS. / KIRIBATI / HOWLAND-BAKER /
HAWAII / TUVALU / PALMYRA IS. / VANUATU / TOKELAU / JARVIS IS. /
WALLIS-FUTUNA / SAMOA / AMERICAN SAMOA / COOK ISLANDS / NIUE /
AUSTRALIA / FIJI / NEW CALEDONIA / TONGA / MEXICO /
KERMADEC IS / FR. POLYNESIA / NEW ZEALAND / PITCAIRN /
GUATEMALA / EL SALVADOR / COSTA RICA / NICARAGUA / ANTARCTICA /
PANAMA / HONDURAS / CHILE / ECUADOR / COLOMBIA / PERU

http://www.weather.gov/ptwc/text.php?id ... .11.083004

Thoughts and prayers to those that are or will be affected by this massive catastrophe.

[kham]

Not a pretty sight , to be sure.
BBC News has some good coverage of things, and updates reports from around the region as they come in. Likely one of the more troubling aspects of things is the problems with one nuclear reactor at a powerplant, which is registering rad levels '1000 times' above normal. Its not quite a run in circles hair on fire meltdown, but its one possibility. Hope not, it would make a disaster go from terrible to somewhat to the right of biblical

[kham]

Little naval-related news, Joel Kennedy on his sub blog clears up the '2 vessels snapped their lines' thing in Guam

Uh Yeah USS Houston and USS City of Corpus Cristi (pair of 688-class boats) are the ones that busted their lines. Apparently they got tugs on them and are either already back alongside or in process of

[Mynock]

Not a pretty sight , to be sure.
BBC News has some good coverage of things, and updates reports from around the region as they come in. Likely one of the more troubling aspects of things is the problems with one nuclear reactor at a powerplant, which is registering rad levels '1000 times' above normal. Its not quite a run in circles hair on fire meltdown, but its one possibility. Hope not, it would make a disaster go from terrible to somewhat to the right of biblical

Coolent pressure on No.1 and No.2 reactors at Fukushima Daini nuclear power station are out of control. They were venting coolant (slightly radioactive) to try to relieve pressure but from what I'm seeing on the news it doesn't look like it's working. Hope to God those containment vessels hold.....

[Duncan Edwards]

Not a pretty sight , to be sure.
BBC News has some good coverage of things, and updates reports from around the region as they come in. Likely one of the more troubling aspects of things is the problems with one nuclear reactor at a powerplant, which is registering rad levels '1000 times' above normal. Its not quite a run in circles hair on fire meltdown, but its one possibility. Hope not, it would make a disaster go from terrible to somewhat to the right of biblical

Coolent pressure on No.1 and No.2 reactors at Fukushima Daini nuclear power station are out of control. They were venting coolant (slightly radioactive) to try to relieve pressure but from what I'm seeing on the news it doesn't look like it's working. Hope to God those containment vessels hold.....

They will avoid a literal meltdown but the metaphorical one will be much harder. In an energy poor country with as much nuclear related baggage as Japan the real trouble will be dealing with the loss of confidence as well as the electricity. That may ultimately be the biggest unforseen consequence of the entire disaster.

[kham]

Its going to be a mess, but the Japanese have their heads screwed on pretty well there -- something like over 30% of the grid is from nuclear.

Little screwball bit of trivia, while looking at map of Japan -- if this display of their grid is correct, the w/s part of the nation is 60Hz , while east of the Kyoto line it is 50Hz

That weird

[Mynock]

Looks like the cooling tower on No. 1 just blew.....that one's a slag pit for sure now. Hope to God the containment vessel holds.....

[kham]

If its the real deal meltdown, it wont

Maybe time to hit the drugstore kids, for some KI pills, just in case

[Magic Engineer]

-

[commadore]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.nuclear/index.html?hpt=T1

(CNN) -- People across Japan and the world watched nervously Saturday as crews at a nuclear plant struck by an earthquake, a tsunami and then an explosion in the span of 36 hours resorted to drowning a feverish nuclear reactor in sea water in hopes of preventing a meltdown with potentially catastrophic implications.

An explosion that sent white smoke rising above the Fukushima Daiichi plant Saturday afternoon buckled the walls of a concrete building that surrounded one of the plant's nuclear reactors, but did not damage the reactor itself, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters.

The explosion was caused, he said, by a failure in a pumping system as workers tried to prevent the reactor's temperature from racing out of control.

While Edano said radiation levels appeared to be falling after the explosion, the government nevertheless ordered an expanded evacuation of the area around the Daiichi plant, as well as a second facility where the cooling system had failed -- the Fukushima Daini plant.

It seems like, from what I've heard on CNN, is that the explosion was the result of hydrogen building up between the reactor containment vessel and the building. When the hydrogen came in contact with oxygen, that's what set off the explosion. Officials say that the containment vessel wasn't damaged in the explosion, but I doubt that will calm many people's fears.

They're going to flood the reactor core with sea water to try to bring the temperatures down. The government is planning on handing out iodine tablets to the citizens that were near the plant when the explosion occurred.

The problem at Fukushima Daini (aka Fukushima II) is that three of the four reactor cooling units have been damaged by the quake and tsunami, but that the reactors are stable.

Wikipedia has more information on the Fukushima Daiichi (I) plant, including available information about the explosion and damage.