Merged 8.8 quake in Sendai, Japan

[Kestrel]

It is my understanding that routine soil testing is done to reveal nutrient profiles, not exotic and unprecedented contaminations.

Considering how often the Mississippi river floods, carrying all sorts of industrial and agricultural chemicals into farm fields, it's certainly not unprecedented.

I suspect any good soil test lab keeps an eye out for unexpected problems.

 

[shuize]

I just read that they've abandoned attempts to use a police water cannon at the Fukushima location as too dangerous. Apparently additional helicopter water drops have been called off for similar reasons. Reports are that they are rushing to complete a power line to restore electricity.

My questions now are, what if that does not work? How does this play out if they are apparently too worried about worker safety to approach the reactors but cannot restore the electric pumps?

 

[Hindmost]

I just read that they've abandoned attempts to use a police water cannon at the Fukushima location as too dangerous. Apparently additional helicopter water drops have been called off for similar reasons. Reports are that they are rushing to complete a power line to restore electricity.

My questions now are, what if that does not work? How does this play out if they are apparently too worried about worker safety to approach the reactors but cannot restore the electric pumps?

It may depend on the layout of the plant...approached from one side the plant itself could provide the needed shielding. Approach from the other side and it might be too much radiation. If they can get electricity to the plant and have tanks of water available, then they can pump water straight to where it is needed. (hopefully)

glenn

 

[Hindmost]

I have a quick question. Where are the damaged diesel generators in relation to the pumps? Was it a design decision to afford them less protection?

I really don't know the layout of this plant as I haven't been in it or one completely equivalent. However, in general, plants are split into two trains. Each diesel will supply power to emergency equipment to a single train. The trains are isolated to help prevent a fault in one from affected the other. Now, the diesels will be in separate rooms...the rooms have to be separated enough for a fire in one not to propagate to the other for a minimum of three hours. The rooms are also typically protected from the highest possible water level. Emergency pumps are similarly split to separate rooms, but are typically in the lower levels in the plant. Pumps work better with water sources above them.

The diesels and pumps survived the earthquake....the tsunami was the problem as it took down both diesels.

glenn

 

[Rolfe]

Is there any hope that discussion of the reactor situation can carry on in the two threads dedicated to that issue?

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Efforts are being made to rescue the animals caught up in the situation as well as the people.

Welfare groups race to rescue Japan's abandoned animals

But there's a twist to it which I suppose was inevitable.

"But one of the really big issues is that there are a lot of people -- especially foreigners -- fleeing the country and leaving their animals behind.

"Shelters are getting calls from people saying 'I'm on my way to the airport, I'm leaving, I have four dogs left in my apartment and my neighbor has the key.'

Rolfe.

 

[Travis]

While we're building armies of strawmen, why not replace "children" with "the whole Earth ecosystem", while you're at it ?

Late ETA: Travis, I don't want to get into too much of this derail anyway. To summarize: initially I was simply baffled by people who _went back_ for their pets and died. I wouldn't go back for that damn memory card. I'd grab it as I left, and I'd also grab the pets while I was at it, anyway. But I do understand and admire people who go back to save _other_ people, even when it costs them their own lives.

I'd rather save pets than people. People will backstab you. People will conspire against you. People will tie you to poles and torture you for their own pleasure.

People generally suck. There are a select few people that I know are good enough to warrant going back and saving. Otherwise I'd prefer to save a dog.

But if there are no pets to save then I would expend energy to save people on the slim chance they are not monstrous sociopathic sadists.




Yes watching the scaremongering on the news has made me lose almost all faith in humanity. Why do you ask?

 

[Belz...]

I'd rather save pets than people. People will backstab you. People will conspire against you. People will tie you to poles and torture you for their own pleasure.

People generally suck. There are a select few people that I know are good enough to warrant going back and saving. Otherwise I'd prefer to save a dog.

But if there are no pets to save then I would expend energy to save people on the slim chance they are not monstrous sociopathic sadists.




Yes watching the scaremongering on the news has made me lose almost all faith in humanity. Why do you ask?

It's unfortunate that you think so little of the people you interact with every day. To me, cynicism makes me more wary of the cynic than the people the cynic is talking about. No offense.

 

[dudalb]

I wonder if the scaremongering will go down a little now that Libya is going to dominate the news as soon as the Airstrikes start.....

 

[Pulvinar]

Are you meaning that the statement i made is wrong?

If so: Yes, i know that solar cells can be made from silicon. And yes, i also know that there is a practically unlimited supply of it. But they have a lower efficiency than cells made of other materials. It simply is not feasible to use them to produce huge amounts of electricity, due to the amount of area that such big systems will need.
[ETA: And of course due to amount of cells that have to be produced, considering that the production process itself involves nasty stuff as well.]

So what is this "nasty stuff" required for production that can't be recycled?

There are other options for solar besides the two you mention, a big omission being concentrated solar power. Using mirrors to boil water is never going to run into a supply problem. That option will be here even after all the uranium's gone.

For photovoltaics, the efficiency of basic silicon cells, even ignoring recent discoveries (not using REE) that are expected to greatly improve it, isn't a limitation in feasibility. The area of land required for solar to single-handedly supply all of the world's energy is still a small fraction of the unused desert area. Combine that with HVDC transmission lines and offshore wind distributed on a continental scale, and most of the down-time disappears.

 

[Travis]

It's unfortunate that you think so little of the people you interact with every day. To me, cynicism makes me more wary of the cynic than the people the cynic is talking about. No offense.

Keep in mind that I spent most of my free time in college reading about human rights abuses. That was how I killed time. I thought it was important that someone try to ingest all the examples of how terrible people generally are to other people.


And I'm not a cynic. I'm more of a misanthrope. It's even in my title.


And today I'm venting a little. So take all this with a certain grain of salt.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

People dying of cold and starvation ....

While this could happen, do we have evidence it has happened? I sure hope not. The majority of the city of Sendai was not hit by the tsunami. Surely they have opened their doors or have public buildings that are housing the refugees from the destroyed areas of the country.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

There are few if any faults in or near California that can generate the sort of earthquake that caused the Japan tsunami. The big faults in Southern California aren't even in the ocean. ....

Could you be more poorly informed about how tsunamis work?

California's tsunami threat

Cascadia subduction zone
Great earthquakes in Chile and Alaska
A large Hawaiian Island landslide

In Southern California, there is geologic evidence of rare tsunamis created by earthquake-triggered undersea landslides. Communities to the north are threatened by the Cascadia subduction zone, an offshore seismic region that stretches from Northern California's Cape Mendocino to southern British Columbia. A Cascadia earthquake and tsunami might well cause the kind of destruction in the Pacific Northwest that we've witnessed in Japan this week. The Cascadia subduction zone is capable of generating a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and a "local" tsunami that would begin to inundate coastal communities in a matter of minutes.

Cascadia tsunami-hazard zones in the Pacific Northwest are home to tens of thousands of residents and are visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists.

USGS information page

Tsunamis generated by landslides and volcanic events—Landslides and volcano flank failures in coastal and island settings have also initiated large tsunamis. The accumulated knowledge of USGS scientists about submarine and coastal landslides and active volcanic processes should be focused on improving understanding of how and where these catastrophic mass failures may occur.

Landslides on the HI Is volcano flanks

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...
But there's a twist to it which I suppose was inevitable.

Rolfe.

That's criminal. It's not the same at all as someone fleeing an oncoming flood or tsunami.

 

[Emet]

New footage shows dramatic tsunami rescues
A local TV reporter captures his escape from the raging water as others are hauled from the path of the tsunami in Sendai, Japan.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...w-footage-shows-dramatic-tsunami-rescues.html

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...w-footage-shows-dramatic-tsunami-rescues.html

That's a heartwarming clip. There was another incredible new clip of people in a car when a HUGE wave comes over the levee wall and swamps their car and the car in front of them. The size of the wave is truly frightening. They must have escaped somehow unless they sent the video to someone before dying. I hope they escaped.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Dog's best friend.

I'm sorry Belz, but all these survivor stories warm my heart.

 

[Lucian]

I don't know if anyone's posted it yet, but there is some good news about both human and feline residents of "Cat Island."

 

[Kestrel]

While this could happen, do we have evidence it has happened? I sure hope not. The majority of the city of Sendai was not hit by the tsunami. Surely they have opened their doors or have public buildings that are housing the refugees from the destroyed areas of the country.

Refugees are in hundreds of public buildings or other shelters. But with the power grid down, portable kerosene heaters are the only source of heat. Supplies of kerosene in the disaster area are very limited. As are food, medical supplies and clean water. Those working to truck supplies into the affected area or move people out are running into shortages of fuel.

 

[Christian Klippel]

So what is this "nasty stuff" required for production that can't be recycled?

There are other options for solar besides the two you mention, a big omission being concentrated solar power. Using mirrors to boil water is never going to run into a supply problem. That option will be here even after all the uranium's gone.

For photovoltaics, the efficiency of basic silicon cells, even ignoring recent discoveries (not using REE) that are expected to greatly improve it, isn't a limitation in feasibility. The area of land required for solar to single-handedly supply all of the world's energy is still a small fraction of the unused desert area. Combine that with HVDC transmission lines and offshore wind distributed on a continental scale, and most of the down-time disappears.

Well, some of the chemicals surely can be recycled. But then, take a look over to China and the big scale semiconductor production, combined with the virtually non-existent care for the environment, and i guess you can see where that can lead.

Concentrated solar power is not feasible in many areas. Plus, it takes up a lot of space as well for the reflectors. Uranium, as currently used, is not the only option, and used fuel can be reprocessed. Used fuel could also be used in traveling wave reactors extremely efficiently. You know, nuclear tech has made a lot of advancements.

Yes, you can distribute power quite well over HVDC lines. But try to scale that up to your scenario: Everything in the desert. That will be a damn many HVDC lines, and damn thick ones at that.

Finally, who is going to build all that stuff quickly enough? I'm not seeing it happen even remotely fast enough to be feasible for many decades, if not even a some centuries. We can all happily live in our "what if" fantasy lands, but that doesn't solve the problems we have now, here in the real world. So we have to see what makes the most sense during the time.

Sorry Rolfe. Maybe someone should report this post, for example, and with that ask a mod to move quake/tsunami unrelated stuff into one of the other threads?

Greetings,

Chris