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Merged 8.8 quake in Sendai, Japan

Puppycow said:
There's a town I'm seeing on my TV called Rikuzentakata that was just wiped off the face of the Earth by the tsunami.

Except for a couple large concrete buildings it's just wet rubble.
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Oh good grief, that Wiki article says it had a population of over 23,000. How many of them are likely to have escaped? Or was it a dormitory town that might have been half-empty during the day? Even half-empty is bad.

Rolfe.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
That's reassuring.

So with Chernobyl they were unable to lower the fuel rods. Why is that not enough here?

I thought when the rods were lowered, the reaction stopped.

Clearly I don't have the proper picture of this in my mind.
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Actually the problem at Chernobyl was that they couldn't lower the control rods fast enough.

The reason for needing cooling is that there is a lot of residual heat in the system and if you don't circulate the coolant it could flash to steam and steam is a much worse neutron moderator than liquid water.
 
The local news shows our typical Californians going -down to the beaches- to watch the tsunami come in!
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
...

I thought when the rods were lowered, the reaction stopped.

Clearly I don't have the proper picture of this in my mind.
Click to expand...

That much partially-burned fuel emits a lot of heat all by itself as the shorter half-life products decay away. There is not a chain reaction happening, however neutrons are still causing some fission, but the average neutron does not manage to replicate itself because the rods and borated water absorb so many of them.

If you will recall the Pioneer and Voyager outer planet missions, they had radioisotope thermal generators which were simply a lump of the right sort of Plutonium isotope and a thermopile to make electricity from the flow of heat from the isotope fuel to space.
 
Travis said:
Actually the problem at Chernobyl was that they couldn't lower the control rods fast enough.

The reason for needing cooling is that there is a lot of residual heat in the system and if you don't circulate the coolant it could flash to steam and steam is a much worse neutron moderator than liquid water.
Click to expand...
So if the containment dome blows, (like the TMI threatened to do), would you just get bad radiation release or would you get the core meltdown that happened in Chernobyl?
 
dudalb said:
Is that the town that was shown going under on CNN this morning?
That was batcrap scary.Something you expect to see in a Hollywood Disaster epic, but never in real life............
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Maybe. I'm seeing the aftermath and just looks like a wet Hiroshima or something. People are stranded on the roof of the hospital, one of the few buildings that seems to be intact. They are lifting them off with helicopters.

The TV news says over 1100 dead or missing now.
 
I Ratant said:
The local news shows our typical Californians going -down to the beaches- to watch the tsunami come in!
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I have to admit, if I was close to the coast or if they said Puget Sound would see a significant swell, I'd go. I wouldn't be at sea level, but I'd definitely go. We have a number of nice cliffs one could watch from.

You have to wonder about the people going to watch at sea level. How could that be that foolish?
 
BenBurch said:
Many people who have boats in your typical small craft harbor live quite a way inland.
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Yeah, and even with all the warnings most people on the west coast wouldn't have known about it until they woke up, at which point they only had an our or 2 to get the boat out of the harbor. So unless you lived nearby you had no chance.
 
I saw some footage on TV of an area that apparently had subsided. The wave rolled in (and tossed cars around like toys, swept wooden houses away), but isn't rolling back out as you would expect.

Somewhere near the coast a huge whirlpool formed, and several boats were struggling to get out of it.

Sorry, I don't know what part of Japan that was. It looked horrible.

I've heard now there are some 500 missing people.
 
Puppycow said:
There's a town I'm seeing on my TV called Rikuzentakata that was just wiped off the face of the Earth by the tsunami.

Except for a couple large concrete buildings it's just wet rubble.
Click to expand...

It appears to have vulnerable geography.

So do the towns to the north and south of it.

Sendai City has a vulnerable coastline but a big part of the city center is on a higher elevation.

If you pan out on the Sendai City map you can see the plate boundary and trench.
 
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Puppycow said:
Maybe. I'm seeing the aftermath and just looks like a wet Hiroshima or something. People are stranded on the roof of the hospital, one of the few buildings that seems to be intact. They are lifting them off with helicopters.

The TV news says over 1100 dead or missing now.
Click to expand...

The CNN footage actually showed the wave moving in, and covering buildings.Scary stuff.
 
Rolfe said:
Oh good grief, that Wiki article says it had a population of over 23,000. How many of them are likely to have escaped? Or was it a dormitory town that might have been half-empty during the day? Even half-empty is bad.

Rolfe.
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I don't know how many escaped to higher ground. Here's the channel I was watching. There's a bird's eye view of it at 40 seconds into this clip:

http://news.tbs.co.jp/newseye/tbs_newseye4671552.html
 
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