Earthquake hits Japan

[kostmayer]

http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gnm/op/s-v ... =most-read

Can't paste from the webpage right now, following it on Twitter. Looks like Tokyo's come off pretty well but the coast has been hit pretty bad by tsunamis. There's also tsunami warnings being issued to the rest of the Pacific area, including Australia and Hawaii. Tsunami is currently higher then many Pacific islands.

[Vic]

The wave is supposed to hit Hawaii at about 0745ish local time this morning. I feel sorry for anyone living on a small Pacific island.

[colmquinn]

I watched a video taken from a chopper of the tsunami as it moved inland, it should be on this page (you might have to select the videos tab near the topof the story). Its amazing tbh, then you realise that those are fields, buildings and cars that are getting swamped.

[Teaos]

Tsunami is gonna cost the lower pacific islands, Hawaii ect whould lose to many lives as they can get high quickly, but the attols ect like Figi, Vanuattu and New calidonia will be washed away. Basically if your volcanic you have a mountain to climb, if your an attol, your fucked. Lucky there is so much warning.

[Deepcrush]

My family in Hawaii said they were moving people minutes after the report came from Japan.

[Teaos]

Seems to have lost most of its power, not doing much damage.

[Nutso]

Good.

[kostmayer]

Via Reuters

Japan nuclear agency; TEPCO mulls lowering pressure in reactor

Japan's Tokyo Electric Power Co is considering taking measures to lower the pressure in a container in the No.1 reactor of its quake-hit Fukushima Daiichi plant, a spokesman at the country's nuclear safety watchdog said on Saturday.

A spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said, however, that it was unknown whether radiation levels were high in the container, which is inside a turbine building. He declined to comment on how the pressure would be lowered and whether it would involve the release of radiation.

Source

They're still experiencing pretty bad aftershocks in Japan. A bullet train and Cruise ship were still missing last I read.

Its still very strange to me reading accounts of events like this from people whilst its still going on. As in Egypt, the internet has been the only form of communication available. Companies have been opening up their Wifi hotspots for free usage, and people have been making good use on the internet directing people to safe locations and getting word out to loved ones.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

I hope Mark's all right.

[Mikey]

Well, I can't wait to see the knee-jerk no-nuke reaction after today. For those who missed it, a Japanese reactor had a second hydrogen explosion this morning, followed by the exposure of bare fuel rods. While that could lead to Very Bad Things^TM it hasn't so far, and rad readings were well within tolerances following the explosion. However, I foresee Jackson Browne headlining a protest concert very shortly.

[Tyyr]

The appropriate reaction would be to ensure that backup diesel generators can take a 99th percentile disaster. If the tsunami hadn't taken their generators out they'd have been able to keep the cooling pumps going.

[Graham Kennedy]

I'm a nuclear power supporter, but I gotta say I don't get why this seems to be dragging out as it is. I was given to understand that the cooling systems were okay, they just had no power after the generators were taken out in the tsunami. Can it really be that hard to ship portable generators in and hook them up to the cooling systems?

[Reliant121]

Don't help that this plants one of the oldest in Japan, IIRC. It's not a bad type, I think its a pressure water cooled reactor but there are considerably safer varieties. As Tyyr said, a back up diesel generator would be handy. Still, most of the really dangerous nuclear fuel is still safely contained where it cannot so damage.

[Mikey]

As of last night (EST,) at least one tower had exposed fuel rods. IDK why there was such an issue with cooling pumps - lack of backup etc. - but 20 miles around the plant were evacuated after the third H₂ explosion.

[Tyyr]

I can only speculate, so I will, but the kind of generators we're talking about are multi-megawatt ones. They're the kind that take up an entire semi-trailer and need similarly large fuel tanks to keep them going. Given the local conditions they might not be able to move something that size to the site even if they can find it nearby.

The reason their backup's failed is they got hit by an earthquake followed immediately by a sizable tsunami. They lost both their connections to the local grid and their back up generators in one fell swoop. This is really a freak accident in progress. You can argue that they should have done better with their backups but being Japan I have to believe that when they designed the things they took all the reasonable precautions they could have so it's just a really unfortunate set of circumstances.

Also, this wouldn't be an issue in the gen 5 reactors that are being proposed for new US projects. The new reactors have gravity fed cooling tanks as part of the structure. The cooling pumps fail and can't keep the reactor area at a certain minimum pressure and the tanks naturally release their entire contents into the containment vessel, cooling it and shutting it down. No motorized equipment to fail, nothing to break or need activation. Just a check valve and gravity.