Merged 8.8 quake in Sendai, Japan

alfaniner said:
Yes, Anderson Cooper saying "I don't know about that... I flunked Science." A guy I used to trust almost as much as Walter Cronkite.

And now idiot Wolf Blitzer -- not able to comprehend what the nuclear engineer at San Onofre (CA) was saying and spouting "Well, we'll see if it's just spin or not."

CNN is really in the toilet now.
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They now seem to be playing the "Keeping Them Honest" game with Cooper practically accusing the Japanese government of lying and covering up.
I would be very reluctant to do that, particularly if I did not speak the language and are relying on quick translations.
Yeah, my respect of CNN has gone down a lot over the past 3 Days. Too bad Fox is just as bad, and MSNBC is a joke with it;s blacking out on weekends.
 
Dan O. said:
Fidelity and latency are different factors.
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USGS has a seismograph in Japan at Hokkaido which is about 400 km from Sendai.

And claiming it takes 20 minutes for a seismic wave to travel? I think you are confusing the seismic waves with something else. While it depends on what kind of rock a wave is traveling through, they are still very fast.

A seismograph in Hokkaido would be detecting aftershocks from this quake within 2-3 minutes, not 20 minutes as you guessed.

... For the distance range 50 to 500 km, the S-waves travel about 3.45 km/s and the P-waves around 8 km/s....
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William Parcher said:
This is an extended hi-def video from a single chopper flight. You've probably already seen short clips from it.

* Occupied vehicles blown off roadway at 2:00. Many more seen in the vicinity will not make it.
* Two people running for a black vehicle at 4:10. They won't make it.
* Lots of vehicles (and at least one pedestrian) trying to outrun the flood at 6:00. I think they will all lose.
* More occupied cars at 8:30 won't make it.
* Traffic-jammed occupied cars and numerous pedestrians at 12:30.
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The problem I think people had is you can't see it coming. It's too close to the ground and is hidden by terrain. By the time you see it coming, it's nearly too late.
 
Oh, crap:
Radiation fears after Japan blast

A fresh explosion rocked reactor 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant - 250km (155 miles) north-east of Tokyo - in the early hours of Tuesday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said, "Now we are talking about levels that can impact human health."
. . .
In his televised address, Prime Minister Kan said: "There is still a very high risk of more radiation coming out."

He added that the last remaining people within a 20km (12 mile) exclusion zone around the plant had to leave, and that those living between 20km and 30km from the site should remain indoors.

Radiation levels around Fukushima for one hour's exposure rose to eight times the legal limit for exposure in one year, said the plant's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco).

The radiation reading at 0831 local time (2331 GMT) climbed to 8,217 microsieverts an hour from 1,941 about 40 minutes earlier, Tepco said. The annual legal limit is 1,000 microsieverts.

Higher radiation levels were recorded on Tuesday south of Fukushima, Kyodo news agency reported.

The French embassy said low-level radioactive wind could reach Tokyo within hours.
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Radioactive wind coming to Tokyo. Happy days.
 
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It's hard to follow the blasts since the news media keeps reporting old ones as new blasts but here's a reference to a blast in #4. They could have the number wrong, but the previous blasts were in 1,2 & 3.

Bloomberg ~1 hr ago
A hydrogen blast hit the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant’s No. 4 reactor, where Tokyo Electric earlier reported a blaze, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said at a briefing. Four of the complex’s six reactors have been damaged by explosions.
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And I don't know which reactor lost pressure in the containment dome, but one did suggesting a breach.
 
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Skeptic Ginger said:
It's hard to follow the blasts since the news media keeps reporting old ones as new blasts but here's a reference to a blast in #4. They could have the number wrong, but the previous blasts were in 1,2 & 3.

Bloomberg ~1 hr ago

And I don't know which reactor lost pressure in the containment dome, but one did suggesting a breech.
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Our local PBS station has a feed from NHK World. They are saying the problem at #4 involved the spent fuel pool outside the reactor.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
It's hard to follow the blasts since the news media keeps reporting old ones as new blasts but here's a reference to a blast in #4. They could have the number wrong, but the previous blasts were in 1,2 & 3.

Bloomberg ~1 hr ago

And I don't know which reactor lost pressure in the containment dome, but one did suggesting a breach.
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#1 was the first one to blow (day before yesterday IIRC), then #3 (yesterday IIRC) and #2 this morning. I had heard that a fire broke out at #4, but they said it had been put out.

It's a slow-motion disaster.
 
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Wildcat posted this in another thread:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15nuclear.html?_r=3&partner=rss&emc=rss

That fourth reactor had been turned off and was under refurbishment for months before the earthquake and tsunami hit the plant on Friday. But the plant contains spent fuel rods that were removed from the reactor, and experts guessed that the pool containing those rods had run dry, allowing the rods to overheat and catch fire. That is almost as dangerous as the fuel in working reactors melting down, because the spent fuel can also spew radioactivity into the atmosphere.
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¶ Another executive said the chain of events at Daiichi suggested that it would be difficult to maintain emergency seawater cooling operations for an extended period if the containment vessel at one reactor had been compromised because radiation levels could threaten the health of workers nearby.

¶ If all workers do in fact leave the plant, the nuclear fuel in all three reactors is likely to melt down, which would lead to wholesale releases of radioactive material — by far the largest accident of its kind since the Chernobyl.

¶ Even if a full meltdown is averted, Japanese officials have been facing unpalatable options. One was to continue flooding the reactors and venting the resulting steam, while hoping that the prevailing winds did not turn south toward Tokyo or west, across northern Japan to the Korean Peninsula. The other was to hope that the worst of the overheating was over, and that with the passage of a few more days the nuclear cores would cool enough to essentially entomb the radioactivity inside the plants, which clearly will never be used again. Both approaches carried huge risks.
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Skeptic Ginger said:
USGS has a seismograph in Japan at Hokkaido which is about 400 km from Sendai.

And claiming it takes 20 minutes for a seismic wave to travel? I think you are confusing the seismic waves with something else. While it depends on what kind of rock a wave is traveling through, they are still very fast.

A seismograph in Hokkaido would be detecting aftershocks from this quake within 2-3 minutes, not 20 minutes as you guessed.
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The P waves travel at about 9km/s. It will reach the first sensor in 2-3 minutes but that gives you no information about the quake (except if you have a 3 axis seismometer you can get a vector to the quake by looking at the first arrival). The S wave is typically used to compute magnitude. S waves travel at only half the speed of the P waves. If you calculate the magnitude from a single station you could get a misleading result. It is necessary to get measurements from multiple azimuths around the epicenter to properly determine the orientation of the event and therefore the actual magnitude. Depth information comes from the more distant stations out to about 30 degrees.

The 20 minute delay is what I was told is typical for the earthquakes for this event in Japan. Generally, the delay will be up to 30 minutes for world wide events.

ETA: Within the US where there is a higher density network, the delay should be closer to 5 minutes. If you need a faster response, you need a local network like they have in Japan and other high seismicity regions and probably need to accept a lower accuracy of data (ie: you know the event is close and big but don't have an exact location or magnitude).
 
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I wonder if Fox's action was more to disassociate themselves from Beck's rant. You know the big Japanese advertisers were not pleased by Beck's antics.
 
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