8.9 Earthquake has struck Japan

Those are two awesome graphics! Thanks for getting them! This is a sad event. What is crazy is it could happen in many places, at any time. Makes you value life and think about how lucky we really are to be here.

Chip
 
How bad is the Sunami supposed to be on the west coast? I think it hit Alaska already with little damage.
 
Ruh-ro:

Headline minutes ago in Japan: The reported increase in pressure vessels Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant

(Imperfect) Google translation of text:
According to TEPCO, in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit 1 in Fukushima Prefecture, and the meter shows the increase in pressure in the containment vessel containing the reactor containment can be broken if this is correct As there may, at midnight 12 days 49 minutes, made a report to inform the national emergency. TEPCO is to lower the pressure in the containment, is considering whether to release to the outside air in the container containing radioactive material. TEPCO "small amount of air emission" to this. The Unit 1 nuclear power plant Fukushima Daiichi, after the earthquake, you need to cool safe "reactor power generator emergency" became unusable, all the judges do not have enough capacity to continue cooling, the government Shortly after 7:00 pm on the 11th, "Nuclear Emergency" was declared. However, such leakage of radioactive material outside the facility at that moment had not been confirmed, TEPCO's recovery efforts in a hurry.
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Entire city of Kesennuma (pop. 74,000) on fire:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8376945/Entire-Japanese-city-on-fire-after-earthquake.html
 
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Lanny Dean said:
This may have been posted already as I didn't really take time to look and go over all posts but there was not just 2 quakes leading up to the big one....there were a number of them before the big one (8.9) and have been a total 63 total. YES THAT NUMBER IS CORRECT! Of course some of these were after shocks as well but the majority of them 5.5 to a magnitude of 7.9.
Per the Quake Feed it looks like the first one was 7.9, the second one a 7.9 and then the 8.9 followed by 60 "after shocks" ranging from 5.4 to 7.9 starting near 11:46CDT going through 8:10amCDT this morning.
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My original title was as it happened and it took them a while to realize that it was not two 7.9's 24 seconds apart but in fact the actual 8.9. There had been a few days of shaking but they appeared to me to be pre-shocks.

The 7.2 and then the 5's followed 16-18 hours later by the 6.1, 6.0, 6.1, were suspicious. We are at 128 quakes from the start point now which includes the 35 from the first to the last before the 8.9.

Make that 130 total since two more just popped up in the last minute......
 
Before I went to bed last night I read about the nuclear issue. They all had automatic shut downs and they worked, the problem was in the fact that they were still hot and somehow they lost a lot of their diesel backup generators to run the cooling pumps and they were not getting near enough water to cool down the rods..... That can be a critical issue if things never resolved.
 
They are saying that an Indonesian volcano was triggered by the event and I am still trying to get some English news on a supposed Russian volcano that was also triggered.
 
Some interesting reading on the safety systems of boiling water reactors such as the one that they are currently having an emergency with in Fukushima:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_water_reactor_safety_systems

While it's gotten pretty bad if there is a pressure rise in the reactor (there is), the safety systems are designed to make it nearly impossible for the pressure level to exceed the reactor's tolerance. In essence, these are really, really safe reactors designed with a ridiculous number of redundant failsafe features. Of course, actual massive emergencies at nuclear plants like this are extremely rare -- but engineering wise, they're designed to handle these kinds of things.
 
Jim Saueressig said:
They are saying that an Indonesian volcano was triggered by the event and I am still trying to get some English news on a supposed Russian volcano that was also triggered.
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Who are "they"? I don't think you'll find many/any reputable scientists or news organizations that will make the claim that the two events are linked.
 
There have been lots of aftershocks on this quake, but that last 6.6 quake may not be an aftershock; if you look at the epicenter, it's quite far from the epicenter of the other quakes.

140_35.gif


Depth is only 1km, too. That may just be another earthquake.
 
Ryan McGinnis said:
In essence, these are really, really safe reactors designed with a ridiculous number of redundant failsafe features. Of course, actual massive emergencies at nuclear plants like this are extremely rare -- but engineering wise, they're designed to handle these kinds of things.
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But this can't be a good sign...
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday on its website that its officials are "in full response mode," as they worked with Japanese authorities and monitor the situation.
Using Air Force planes, the U.S. government has sent over coolant for the Fukushima plant, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday.
"We're really deeply involved in trying to do as much as we can on behalf of the Japanese and on behalf of U.S. citizens," she said.
James Acton, a physicist who examined Japan's Kashiwazaki nuclear plant after a 2007 earthquake, told CNN that Japanese authorities are in race to cool down the Fukushima reactor.
"If they can't restore power to the plant (and cool the reactor), then there's the possibility of some sort of core meltdown," he said.
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full story
 
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