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Japan: Earthquake, Tsunami + Nuclear Disasters


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Posted
  • Location: Aldborough, North Norfolk
  • Location: Aldborough, North Norfolk

This is just going backwards and forwards now:

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/east-pacific/Japan-Expands-Nuclear-Evacuation-Zone-119585654.html

Are they just being extra cautious or is there another phase of problems coming?

Emergency Level raised to 7, there's something seriously wrong in there, not good by the sound of it.

The level has been raised due to the amount of radiation, I can only assume that the levels have carried on climbing, so there are other leaks beside the one they plugged

Edited by NorthNorfolkWeather
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Posted
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)

The level has been raised due to the amount of radiation, I can only assume that the levels have carried on climbing, so there are other leaks beside the one they plugged

I understand that they have finally started to assess how bad things really are.

The decision to raise the alert level to 7 from 5 on the scale amounts to an admission that the accident at the nuclear facility, brought on by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, is likely to have substantial and long-lasting consequences for health and for the environment. Some in the nuclear industry have been saying for weeks that the accident released large amounts of radiation, but Japanese officials had played down this possibility. The new estimates by Japanese authorities suggest that the total amount of radioactive materials released so far is equal to about 10 percent of that released in the Chernobyl accident, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of Japan’s nuclear regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Mr. Nishiyama stressed that unlike at Chernobyl, where the reactor itself exploded and fire fanned the release of radioactive material, the containments at the four troubled reactors at Fukushima remained intact over all. But at a separate news conference, an official from the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said, “The radiation leak has not stopped completely and our concern is that it could eventually exceed Chernobyl.†On the International Nuclear Event Scale, a Level 7 nuclear accident involves “widespread health and environmental effects†and the “external release of a significant fraction of the reactor core inventory.†The scale, which was developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and countries that use nuclear energy, leaves it to the nuclear agency of the country where the accident occurs to calculate a rating based on complicated criteria.

Japan’s previous rating of 5 placed the Fukushima accident at the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. Level 7 has been applied only to the disaster at Chernobyl, in the former Soviet Union. “This is an admission by the Japanese government that the amount of radiation released into the environment has reached a new order of magnitude,†said Tetsuo Iguchi, a professor in the department of quantum engineering at Nagoya University. “The fact that we have now confirmed the world’s second-ever level 7 accident will have huge consequences for the global nuclear industry. It shows that current safety standards are woefully inadequate.â€

Mr. Nishiyama said “tens of thousands of terabecquerels†of radiation per hour have been released from the plant. (The measurement refers to how much radioactive material was emitted, not the dose absorbed by living organisms.) The scale of the radiation leak has since dropped to under one terabecquerel per hour, the Kyodo news agency said, citing government officials. The announcement came as Japan was preparing to urge more residents around the crippled nuclear plant to evacuate, because of concerns over long-term exposure to radiation. The authorities have already ordered people living within a 12-mile radius of the plant to evacuate, and recommended that people remain indoors or avoid an area within a radius of about 19 miles. The government’s decision to expand the zone came in response to radiation readings that would be worrisome over months in certain communities beyond those areas, underscoring how difficult it has been to predict the ways radiation spreads from the damaged plant. Unlike the previous definitions of the areas to be evacuated, this time the government designated specific communities that should be evacuated, instead of a radius expressed in miles.

The radiation has not spread evenly from the reactors, but instead has been directed to some areas and not others by weather patterns and the terrain. Iitate, one of the communities told on Monday to prepare for evacuation, lies well beyond the 19-mile radius, but the winds over the last month have tended to blow northwest from the Fukushima plant toward Iitate, which may explain why high readings were detected there.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/asia/13japan.html#h

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYSvEXXttsA

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Posted
  • Location: Evanton ,highlands ,scotland
  • Location: Evanton ,highlands ,scotland

i'm not sure how to embed a link but found this ,how it's effecting some livestock in the area ,i do know people come first,it's in the 10 km zone ,what's left when they had to evacate , but it's pretty heartbreaking to watch although at the end it does seem as if somebody has put some feed in ,

please be warned it does show dead animals ,

it is grafic

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Posted
  • Location: Near Beverley, East Yorks. (5 metres a.s.l.)
  • Weather Preferences: Something good in all four seasons
  • Location: Near Beverley, East Yorks. (5 metres a.s.l.)

i'm not sure how to embed a link but found this ,how it's effecting some livestock in the area ,i do know people come first,it's in the 10 km zone ,what's left when they had to evacate , but it's pretty heartbreaking to watch although at the end it does seem as if somebody has put some feed in ,

please be warned it does show dead animals ,

it is grafic

I must be wrong minded, but that made me cry for the first time

during this ongoing disaster. I always feel for the poor animals.

B.

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Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

I must be wrong minded, but that made me cry for the first time

during this ongoing disaster. I always feel for the poor animals.

B.

Nothing to do with Japan I know but it reminds me of the awful sights during the foot and mouth outbreak. I knew a farm vet who gave it up after that.

Posted Image

Edited by weather ship
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Posted
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK
  • Weather Preferences: anything extreme or intense !
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK

Not at all BL. There's nothing wrong with caring about animals. :)

It's not just the livestock that's the problem all the domestic pets that were left behind in the exclusion zone are suffering as well....(be warned video is not easy viewing if you love animals)

http-~~-//www.youtube.com/watch?v=512ScNV8mwc&feature=related

Something needs to be done if they can't be saved then someone has to mercifully put them all down so they don't starve to death. If they have been exposed to too much radiation then the authorities should end their suffering and dispose of them, they should not be left to die slowly of radiation poisoning. Posted Image

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Posted
  • Location: Evanton ,highlands ,scotland
  • Location: Evanton ,highlands ,scotland

it looks as if some people are starting to help ,as i said humans have to take piroity but if shooting the cattle ,so sad

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Posted
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)

and then a little bit forward:

TOKYO, April 13 (Reuters) - Workers on Wednesday were a step closer to emptying highly radioactive water from a crippled reactor, which would allow them to start repairing the cooling system crucial to bringing one of the world's worst nuclear crises under control. U.S. Nuclear safety regulator Gregory Jaczko described the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant as "static" rather than stable, because of the continuing struggle to cool the reactors badly damaged by a 15-metre tsunami on March 11, which was triggered by the biggest quake in Japan's recorded history. New data shows much more radiation leaked from the plant in the early days of the crisis than first thought, prompting officials to rate it on a par with the world's worst nuclear accident, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, though experts were quick to point out the two crises were not comparable in terms of radiation contamination.

There have been fears of contamination in the region, but neighbouring China said the impact there had been small, noting the amount of radiation was just one percent of what it had experienced from Chernobyl. The toll of the triple disaster is starting to rise, with the government cutting its outlook for the economy, in recession for almost 15 years, for the first time in six months and prices rising due to power disruptions. "It will take several months to (resolve) the supply of parts, and several years for stricken areas to recover. And we really have no idea about (future developments of the) nuclear problems," Economics Minister Kaoru Yosano told a press briefing. It is expected to take months before the damaged reactors at Fukushima are cooled down. Until the coolers are repaired, the plant's operator has been forced to pump water over them which just creates more radioactive water.

"We are continuing to transfer water in the tunnels outside the No.2 reactor turbine building into the condenser ... We will be doing this round the clock," said an official with Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO). Samples collected on Monday from around 15 km (9 miles) off the coast of Minamisoma city, which was devastated by last month's quake and tsunami, showed radiation in the water rose to 23 times the legal limit from 9.3 times on April 7, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a deputy director-general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA). "At one point, we had detected high levels of radiation on the coast so I think it is drifting somewhat as one chunk of water. While we think it's not harmful to human health, we will continue to monitor closely," he said. On Tuesday, the science ministry said small amounts of strontium, one of the most harmful radioactive elements, had been found in soil near Fukushima Daiichi.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/13/japan-idUSL3E7FC29P20110413
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Posted
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)

Is it time for the Japanese government to admit they can't really predict earthquakes like this?

The crippled nuclear power plant at Fukushima in Japan might have survived last month's natural disaster had the government not put faith in a flawed earthquake prediction system, a leading scientist has claimed. The Japanese authorities publish annual "hazard maps" to highlight parts of the country deemed at risk from major earthquakes, but there is no reliable scientific basis for the technique, the researcher said. Had the government considered global tremor activity and historical tsunami records instead, they would have appreciated the risk of a magnitude nine earthquake in the area and designed the Fukushima power plant to withstand such an event, said Robert Geller at the University of Tokyo. His comments were made as residents and business owners who were forced to leave their homes amid radiation fears on Wednesday demanded immediate damages from the company at the centre of the nuclear crisis.

About 20 people who have been evacuated from areas near the Fukushima Daiichi plant protested outside the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) headquarters, calling for a quick decision on possible compensation. The company's president, Masataka Shimizu, apologised during a rare public appearance and said he would compensate the tens of thousands of people whose lives have been disrupted by the nuclear emergency. In an article in the journal Nature, Geller calls on Japan to scrap its system for predicting major earthquakes and make it clear to the public that the whole of the country is at risk from major tremors. "They might have been forced into using a more expensive design than they could have afforded, but a lot of people might have appreciated that, especially the people in Fukushima who have been evacuated," Geller told the Guardian. "If the cost was too much to design for, they would have had to go without the nuclear reactor."

The government's faith in the system means some areas take precautions in anticipation of an emergency, while others are left woefully under-prepared, he said. "It is a waste of time and money, but worse than that, if the public think you can predict earthquakes, it tends to lull them into a false sense of security. Because of the limitations of our knowledge and data, we really cannot do more than say the whole place is dangerous," Geller said. In 1978, the Japanese government enacted a law that effectively requires the national meteorological agency to run an earthquake detection system capable of providing an early warning of a long-feared but hypothetical earthquake in Tokai, 75 miles north of Tokyo.

The programme led the government to publish maps annually that give a probability of major earthquakes across the country. But since 1979, every earthquake that caused 10 or more deaths has struck in regions claimed to be at low risk. Meanwhile, global records show there have been five subduction zone earthquakes of the kind possible near Japan that measured a magnitude nine or more in the past 100 years, and that large tsunamis have frequently battered the Tohoku region of the country where the Fukushima plant is situated. "If global seismicity and the historical record in Tohoku had been used as the basis for estimating seismic hazards, the 11th March Tohoku earthquake could easily have been 'foreseen' in a general way, although not of course its particular time, epicentre or magnitude," Geller wrote. "Countermeasures for dealing with such events could and should have been incorporated in the intial design of the Fukushima power plants," he added.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/apr/13/flawed-earthquake-predictions-fukushima

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10105.html

http://www.seisvol.kishou.go.jp/eq/eng/fig/earthinfo.html

http://www.seisvol.kishou.go.jp/eq/eng/fig/info.html

http://www.nextearthquake.com/earthquake_predictions_japan_region.htm

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Posted
  • Location: 4 miles north of Durham City
  • Location: 4 miles north of Durham City

The risks associated with iodine-131 contamination in Europe are no longer "negligible," according to CRIIRAD, a French research body on radioactivity. The NGO is advising pregnant women and infants against "risky behaviour," such as consuming fresh milk or vegetables with large leaves.

http://www.euractiv.com/en/health/radiation-risks-fukushima-longer-negligible-news-503947

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Posted
  • Location: West Malvern, West Midlands, 280m ASL
  • Weather Preferences: Snow! Severe storms.
  • Location: West Malvern, West Midlands, 280m ASL

Oh dear. Well I guess having 5 vegetables a day might not be such a good idea after all. http://nwstatic.co.uk/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif Should I be thinking twice before picking and eating that nice green broccoli I have outside? :cc_confused:

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Posted
  • Location: Aldborough, North Norfolk
  • Location: Aldborough, North Norfolk

And now they are looking to the end of the year before we have a cold shutdown,

and the BBC are reporting the robots sent in have found harmful levels of radiation

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13112444

Edited by NorthNorfolkWeather
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Posted
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)

Japan has announced its first legal measures to prevent anyone from entering the 20-kilometer evacuation zone around the crippled and leaking Fukushima nuclear plant. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Thursday the measures, which include fines up to $1,200, were necessary to protect the health and safety of the area's roughly 70,000 residents. Some of them have been returning to their homes in spite of official warnings. Edano said arrangements will be made for one member of each household in the no-entry zone to make a short visit home to collect valuables and prized possessions. The order does not apply to workers at the Fukushima plant, who reported little progress Thursday in their efforts to remove highly radioactive water from the basement and utility tunnel at one of the plant's six damaged reactors.

It was not clear how long the order will remain in force, but the operators of the plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said this week they are aiming for a cold shutdown of all reactors within six to nine months. The no-entry announcement was made as Prime Minister Naoto Kan was visiting local officials and evacuees in Fukushima prefecture, where elevated levels of radioactivity have been detected in crops and in some towns outside the evacuation zone. The Kyodo news agency quoted Kan appealing for understanding about the order during a meeting with the Fukushima governor. Kan was also scheduled to meet Thursday with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, the first foreign head of government to visit Japan since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that damaged the plant and left more than 27,000 people dead or missing.

Gillard was expected to assure Kan of the availability of Australian energy sources, particularly natural gas. Japan is hard-pressed to meet its energy needs following the loss of the Fukushima plant and other earthquake damage. At the nuclear plant, engineers have been working since Tuesday to pump 10,000 tons of highly radioactive water from a basement and tunnel at the number two reactor. But TEPCO said late Wednesday that the water level in the basement was still unchanged, suggesting that new water is still leaking into the area. The company said water levels are also rising gradually in a trench next to the number three reactor. In a sign of the company's deep financial problems, Japan's Jiji Press news agency quoted unidentified sources saying TEPCO will raise power rates in June for the fourth consecutive month. Kyodo quoted company sources saying TEPCO is considering a 20 percent cut in the salaries of its employees to help finance compensation payments for those who have suffered financial losses because of the nuclear accident.

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/east-pacific/Japan-Imposes-Legal-Penalties-for-Entering-Nuclear-Zone-120343439.html
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Posted
  • Location: South Shields Tyne & Wear half mile from the coast.
  • Location: South Shields Tyne & Wear half mile from the coast.
BreakingNews Magnitude 6.3 earthquake hits off Japan coast, shaking buildings in Tokyo; damage unknown - Reuters
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Posted
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)

Posted Image

Earthquake Information (Information on seismic intensity at each site)

Issued at 23:14 JST 21 Apr 2011

Occurred at (JST) Lat (degree) Long (degree) Depth Magnitude Region Name

23:10 JST 21 Apr 2011 35.7N 140.7E 40 km 3.2 Chiba-ken Hokutobu

Seismic Intensity at each station

(* mark: Local Governments' or NIED's station)

Prefecture JMA Seismic Intensity Station Name

Chiba 1 Tako-machi Tako

This earthquake poses no tsunami risk.

http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/
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  • 2 weeks later...
Posted
  • Location: Orleton, 6 miles south of Ludlow
  • Location: Orleton, 6 miles south of Ludlow

Does anyone have any update on the status of the reactors at Fukushima — it's all gone very quiet in the media, so maybe there has not been any more drama?

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Posted
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK
  • Weather Preferences: anything extreme or intense !
  • Location: Milton Keynes MK

Does anyone have any update on the status of the reactors at Fukushima — it's all gone very quiet in the media, so maybe there has not been any more drama?

The media have had bigger fish to fry recently - here is the latest from the International Atomic Energy Agency ....

Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log

Updates of 3 May 2011

Staff Report

http-~~-//www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

and today this:-

Engineers enter Fukushima reactor for first time

Engineers entered one of the damaged reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant yesterday for the first time since it was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami two months ago.

Tokyo Electric Power Co said workers are connecting ventilation equipment in Unit 1 in an attempt to absorb radiation from the air inside the building. The utility must lower radiation levels inside the reactor before it can proceed with the key step of installing a cooling system that was knocked out by the disaster that struck north-eastern Japan on 11 March.

here: http://www.independe...me-2279649.html

Edited by MKsnowangel
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Posted
  • Location: Orleton, 6 miles south of Ludlow
  • Location: Orleton, 6 miles south of Ludlow

Thanks for the links MKsnowangel — a slowly improving picture, but still very serious.

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There were vary bad days for Japan. Japan often faces Earthquake and Tsunami. But this time it was with higher scale. Many people died in that accident. Many home, cars and other things swept away with water. It gave extensive damage to Japan. People of Japan scared from that Earthquake and Tsunami. Army of Japan ran to the affected area and give many helps to people. It was very big damage happened in Japan.

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Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

It perhaps should be remembered that it was the tsunami, not the earthquake, that caused the most destruction and deaths. In general the buildings stood up pretty well.

It was the subsequent tsunami that did the damage, and the bathymetry -the 'shape' of the seabed in the vicinity of the quake's epicentre -played a key role in its catastrophic impact. When the fault slipped, the seabed was thrust upwards. This, in turn, pushed a mass of water upwards, which manifested itself in a wave one metre high and stretching for 100 kilometres.

In deeper water, the wave travelled quickly up to 800km/h -but its impact depended on the topography and geography of the coastline where it hit: in low-lying areas, the water reached six kilometres inland; in more built-up places, located beside inlets and bays, the water was funnelled upwards, creating walls of water 25 metres high.

The earthquake also caused the height of the coastline to drop, enhancing the tsunami's ability to overwhelm sea walls, such as those at Miyako, which were built ten metres high, and at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, where the 5.6-metre defence walls dropped by 0.5 metres. Preparation was based on a tsunami of 8.5 magnitude -that's higher than anything that happened there in the past, so on that basis, sea walls that were ten metres high would have been conservative

Source: Geographical Magazine, May 2011.

Edited by weather ship
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Posted
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey

not sure if anyone was watching Discovery yesterday, but they were showing Japan's Disaster Caught on camera, it is showing again this afternoon at 2pm.

It was genuinly heart wrenching, but give's you an idea what they went through, very much worth a watch.

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Posted
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)
  • Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex (work in Mid Sussex)

Japan's nervous nuclear industry seem keen to be open and up-front about any little thing these days:

Electricity wholesaler Japan Atomic Power said on Monday that gas containing a minute amount of radiation had leaked from its Tsuruga nuclear plant in western Japan the previous day, but that the amount was well below the legal limit and there was no impact on the environment. The amount of radiation was estimated at about one-four hundred thousandth of the annual legal limit, and there were no changes in readings from radiation monitoring devices set up around the plant, the company said.

"The amount that came out was such an extremely small amount, so this is not a problem and it will not have an impact on the environment," said Shinichi Morooka, professor of nuclear energy at Waseda University. Japan Atomic Power said it now has a policy of disclosing even tiny anomalies at the plant after the crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co's crippled nuclear power station in northern Japan heightened concerns about nuclear safety. "Whether or not this incident deserves an official announcement is not an issue. If we don't disclose it and the information comes from somewhere else, in this climate it could look like it's being covered up," company spokesman Koji Otake said.

However, the spokesman added that it was the first ever accidental radiation leakage from the Tsuruga plant's No. 2 reactor, which started operations in 1987. The 1,160-megawatt No. 2 reactor, located 350 km (220 miles) west of Tokyo, was shut on Saturday for an unplanned inspection after the company found a technical problem last week. Japan Atomic said it has stopped the leak and is investigating the cause.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/09/us-japanatomic-idUSTRE74819R20110509
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