8.9 Earthquake has struck Japan

It is now getting light in Fukushima. Here is a live web cam (still shot). You have to manually reload the page to see a new image.
http://cs2.town.yanaizu.fukushima.jp/-wvhttp-01-/GetOneShot?REQUEST_ID=

Not sure which Unit is really steaming/smoking at the moment, but it appears that it just got going. Two consecutive images showed a lot more smoke/steam on the 2nd one. Third reload even more. I think they've got another fire going. If so, it should be reported soon.
 
Darren Addy said:
It is now getting light in Fukushima. Here is a live web cam (still shot). You have to manually reload the page to see a new image.
http://cs2.town.yanaizu.fukushima.jp/-wvhttp-01-/GetOneShot?REQUEST_ID=

Not sure which Unit is really steaming/smoking at the moment, but it appears that it just got going. Two consecutive images showed a lot more smoke/steam on the 2nd one. Third reload even more. I think they've got another fire going. If so, it should be reported soon.
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If that really is the plant, it seems like a ton of steam! Which would be considerably different than smoke however. Although, the surrounding terrain don't seem to quite match up to the scenery I have seen around the plant from other images/video...



Chip
 
Chip Redmond said:
If that really is the plant, it seems like a ton of steam! Which would be considerably different than smoke however. Although, the surrounding terrain don't seem to quite match up to the scenery I have seen around the plant from other images/video...



Chip
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Yeah I just saw some snow covered mountain scenery. No plant to speak of.


EDIT:

It is now showing the plant. Obviously the cam can pan around somehow.
 
Power line apparently reconnected to Unit 2: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12779512
Have heard no specs on how much power it carries (or needs to).

I'm wondering about that webcam, as well. The domain name would appear to come from Fukushima and I have no idea why anyone would have a webcam pointed at anything else, but it just doesn't appear that wooded around the Di-ichi facility.
 
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It's nice that the the power company rebuilt the line to the plant, but I'm skeptical that it will do anything. There has been plenty of time and resources to get a boatload of mobile generating capacity to the site, which they didn't do. After all the whole thing started when around a dozen emergency diesel generators on-site were flooded out. The pumping control systems were likely trashed by some combination of electrical shorts, salt water, explosion, and collapse. And last I heard the control rooms were inaccessable. I don't think you can just plug the water circulation systems into a wall socket and throw a switch. That's why they were using fire pumpers for a week. But I sure hope I'm wrong!....
 
Here's a heck of a video. From the Google translation, apparently the driver made it out alive:

Asahi City, Chiba Prefecture, east of, the camera had captured all the details at the moment the tsunami hit the car.
Cars on the road along the coast.
The next moment, survived the tsunami surged levees Nomi込Nda car in an instant.
The car tossed in the water (mercy) is, we know the situation to the surface over time.
Driver of the tsunami victims, "曲Gattara 差Shikakatta corner near the fishing port at Iioka, I saw the wall of the wave is the situation now. Moments of the wave wall is crooked, but I saw at that time, I had to run it again. in the middle, the situation is that the car was involved in the wave. more waves, I floated the car anymore. floating, Narimashi to panic in that state anymore. The water level I think it grew close to a maximum of 2 meters. in the state (out), it comes out, I'll swept thought, I just have to wait a little, "he said.
Male driver escaped from the car where the waves closed, it took refuge on a hill.
The driver "yet, so the state has continued aftershocks, fear comes up every time the aftershocks followed," he said.
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It is now getting light in Fukushima. Here is a live web cam (still shot). You have to manually reload the page to see a new image.
http://cs2.town.yanaizu.fukushima.jp...ot?REQUEST_ID=

Not sure which Unit is really steaming/smoking at the moment, but it appears that it just got going. Two consecutive images showed a lot more smoke/steam on the 2nd one. Third reload even more. I think they've got another fire going. If so, it should be reported soon.
Click to expand...

The URL for that would indicate it is a shot from Yanaizu which is in the west of Fukushima province and not on the coast, unless I'm mistaken... Yanaizu is a town situated in a wooded valley so it may not be the reactor in question.
 
Nathan Edwards said:
The URL for that would indicate it is a shot from Yanaizu which is in the west of Fukushima province and not on the coast, unless I'm mistaken... Yanaizu is a town situated in a wooded valley so it may not be the reactor in question.
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Ah. That makes sense. I forgot that Fukushima is not just a city name but also the name of the prefecture. Thanks.
 
Watching the NHK live feed.... They've been spraying water from fire trucks one after another (limited parking) into the #3 reactor building, "but the water level in the storage pool is believed to still be low." Nof a peep about #4 -- the one with the storage pool loaded with the hot core that had a temperature last measured of 84C on March 14th before there was a fire and ???. I have a bad feeling about #4. :(

FYI, the link is http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv
 
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http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/18/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html?hpt=T1&iref=BN1#

cnn reporting the alert level is at level 5 same as 3 mile island was in 1979.

partial quote from cnn tokyo:

"Tokyo (CNN) -- Japan's nuclear and industrial safety agency on Friday raised the level for the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant from a 4 to 5 -- putting it on par with the 1979 incident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island.

According to the International Nuclear Events Scale, a level 5 equates to the likelihood of a release of radioactive material, several deaths from radiation and severe damage to a reactor core.

Chernobyl, for example, rated a 7 on the scale, while Japan's other nuclear crisis -- a 1999 accident at Tokaimura in which workers died after being exposed to radiation -- was a 4.

In Pennsylvania, a partial meltdown of a reactor core was deemed the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history."
CNN's Brian Walker, Stan Grant and Steven Jiang contributed to this report.
 
Watching this video on CNN makes me think this wasn't a 500 or 1,000 year event...but more like a 25 or 50 year event. The town's 10 meter tsunami wall was overtopped by 4 meters. Also, take a look at the map. This town is a good distance from the hardest hit areas around Sendai, but the rugged bays and inlets may have enhanced the tsunami in this region.

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2011/03/18/dnt.model.town.gone.nhk
 
It takes a king-sized earthquake to make a tsunami of this size. They don't happen every day. There is an average of ONE 8.0 earthquake in the world per year. The 9.0 was the largest earthquake in "Japan's recorded history". Something tells me that Japan has been recording history for a bit longer than 25-50 years.

Gotta love the update to the previous news-that-sounded-too-good-to-be-true:
Japanese authorities have informed the IAEA that engineers [strike]were able[/strike] have begun to lay an external grid power line cable to Unit 2. [strike]The operation was completed at 08:30 UTC.[/strike] The operation was continuing as of 20:30 UTC, Tokyo Electric Power Company officials told the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

They plan to reconnect power to Unit 2 once the spraying of water on the Unit 3 reactor building is completed.
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The parts in red were crossed out.
This Google Earth video shows 5 days of quakes, before and after the 9.0:
 
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I think the "Japan recorded history" everyone has been talking about goes back to the 1850's, maybe a little earlier. Japan's earthquake history would suggest an 8.5+ every 25-50 years and a 30 foot tsunami every 25 years. The main difference is that they probably don't see a 30+ foot tsunami effecting such a large portion of the coastline during the period. Maybe a few villages. And that's the difference between and 8.5 and a 9.0 in terms of tsunami generation.
 
If the faults are converging at 1 inch per year, the displacement of this quake was 8 feet, and most fault energy is released in a few large earthquakes, then you would expect a similar quake from this particular fault every ~100 years. Now these assumptions are decent, but obviously not perfect, however I think they should at least get us in the right ballpark. Keep in mind there are other faults in japan.
 
The Sanriku coast has some of the most studied seismological histories in the world. There's two different event scales taking place. One is a more common release that takes place every 30-40 years, with magnitudes between 7.0-8.0. This release is relatively regular (1896, 1933, and 1978), and is the type of release the Japanese authorities were planning for. The most recent quake is actually larger than theoretically the trench off the Tohoku coast could produce. Previous theory thought that particular subduction area "capped out" at 8.5 or so. Obviously that was wrong by several orders of magnitude, but the regularity of smaller quakes seemed to back up the theory--until March 11th.

Maybe there's some "1000-year" long term quake cycle running co-currently with the smaller, more regular 30-40 year cycle? Who knows. Bottom line: This earthquake showed simply how little we still know about the mechanics of how the earth moves beneath our feet.
 
Robert Rohloff said:
With the fuel rods exposed to the outside it is doubtful they can stop the release that is occurring.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/exposed...ve-plume-will-reach-britain-in-two-weeks.html
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You don't have to read very far into that article to see why that site is not a reliable source of information:
These pictures show overheating fuel rods exposed to the elements through a huge hole in the wall of a reactor building at the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant.
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. If you you were reading the more reliable sources of information (linked up-thread) you would have seen that same picture (around 24 hours ago) showing that the item in question is the crane that moves spent fuel rods to the pool, and that the pool itself is just out of sight. However, that explanation is not quite as sensational as saying that you are looking at exposed fuel rods and then drawing a conclusion based upon that. You are, of course, certainly free to enjoy inaccurate news sources, but please keep them out of a thread that has tried to be largely accurate and informative to Stormtrack members.
 
Good post explaining that hooking up the electricity and turning cooling back on is not all that straightforward, especially since they've been doing nothing but dumping water on things:
http://atomicpowerreview.blogspot.com/2011/03/recovery-of-water-damaged-electrical.html

At units 1 and 2, external power has been restored. Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said it would restore functions in the central control room shared by the units so that accurate readings could again be taken from the reactor system. Next, workers will check the condition of the water supply systems to the reactor and the used fuel pond. With luck these will be able to go back into operation as they had been immediately after the earthquake on 11 March.
External power for units 3 and 4 should be in place ‘in a few days’ time’, said Tepco.
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- source

So, other than restoring cooling (the ultimate goal) it will be nice to not rely on guesstimates regarding what is happening with the reactor cores of Unit 1 and 2.
 
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Up until reading Darren's post, I didn't fully appreciate that the control room and instrumentation was also down due to loss of power. Yea, restoring those functions just might help!
 
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