TSUNAMI IN JAPAN>>>> turn on the TV NOW>.

wayne petty · March 11, 2011, 02:27:37 AM

turn on the TV a huge earthquake hit japan...

the tsumami is live on tv right now....

wayne petty · March 11, 2011, 02:54:32 AM

some video...

Harry · March 11, 2011, 10:48:56 AM

We have a tsunami "advisory" up here on the west coast of Vancouver Island. An advisory isn't as serious as a "warning"
6' waves have already hit Hawaii.

wayne petty · March 11, 2011, 08:24:07 PM

seems one of the nuclear reactors is also giving them problems....

something about when the earthquake hit.. the back up coolant system did also lost power................

and reports are the radiation levels are increasing..

i wonder if the shaking was so violent that it ripped the wires out of the back up coolant system... or if the fuel rods broke do to the shaking before they could be reinserted..

there are some times errors that go undiscovered for decades in designs..

one friend of my brothers worked for a contractor in the early 70s. was at a midwest plant .. was examining the manual control valves that route the flow of turnings around the building... he stopped the plant manager and ask him to add additional locks to these often operated valves... until they could be redesigned... the manager ask why... as if you open this one and that one at the same time.. it will all flow out in that area and go critical.. as the manager described these valves had been used for years and thats impossible.. then the manager stopped talking as the blood seemed to run out of his face... as he realized just how close they had come..

Carps · March 12, 2011, 07:42:00 PM

Reports are that the plant has been stabilised, it was pretty much right on top of the quake which is the worst on record at 8.6 on the richter scale, something like a thousand times worse than the one that destroyed Christchurch in NZ a few weeks ago.

The Japanese have some pretty strict building codes a s a result of the proximity of their Islands to some major faults and reports are that building damage is not such a problem as the damage done by flooding water which is what caused the problems at the nuclear plant.

The Japanese are also pretty ressilient when it comes to these things and will have it all fixed in pretty short order compared to how the rest of the world might attend to a similar challenge.

Harry · March 12, 2011, 08:48:37 PM

Richter scale...
A logarithmic scale used to express the total amount of energy released by an earthquake. Its values typically fall between 0 and 9, with each increase of 1 representing a 10-fold increase in energy.
A 8.0 earthquake is 10 times as strong as a 7.0 earthquake.
There are some amazing videos coming out of Japan. Not good for the people there.

wayne petty · March 12, 2011, 09:48:25 PM

somebody was discussing it yesterday on the TV... i came in the middle... he said they had been built to withstand a 7.0 to 7.5 MM.. not the worst case possible... they mentioned that the fuel rods had broken.. and were scattered about... they are going to try to pump coolant into the reactor through the sides of the case... something that has never been done before...

with the 100s millions or Billions spent building them.. there is NO reason to not build them to withstand the worst case scenario ..

there was talk from other friends about the downplaying of the problem..

if the rods melt at 5,000C... they become molten.. flow down to the steel floor and burn thru it.. melting everything until they reach ground water... at that point. there is a steam explosion.. where the molten material is usually blown apart so it will stop the chain reaction that is making it hot and it will cool off..

i guess i should put new batteries in my geiger counter..

Carnut · March 13, 2011, 12:31:42 AM

Yes there are two sides to the stories on the nuke plants, hyping whichever point of view they want.

The stories I've read have stated the nuke plants containment buildings survived the quake as they should have and they shut down like they were designed to when the power was cut.

The Aux Generators went online to provide the cooling needed for the plants even after the shutdowns and that one of the Aux Generators went down for some reason after running a few hours.

It was explained that rising reactor temps was normal in shutdown and that the one with the aux generator out is rising in temp beyond specs and thus the speculation that if the temps get above the 2000F then the fuel rods would begin to melt over several hours and that could then result in a meltdown.

But the operators are working their buns off trying to flood that reactor now with sea/saltwater mixed with boron in attempts to cool it down.

The process of radiation and heat in the cooling water causes the water to breakdown into the explosive hydrogen gas that has to be contained or vented off to keep the explosive potential down.

The explosion and white smoke was apparently due to some of the efforts on the aux generator outside the reactor and not due to anything in the containment bldg itself.

And yes it seems kinda odd that apparently not enough redundancy was built into these plants in such a volatile quake zone.

But I'm sure it'll be awhile before we got an unbiased unhyped story on what has really gone down there.

Taking the evacuation precautions just seem to be the prudent thing to do until the situation is resolved one way or the other.

tom36 · March 13, 2011, 07:56:11 PM

move the vertical bar left/right

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/13/world/asia/satellite-photos-japan-before-and-after-tsunami.html

enjenjo · March 13, 2011, 10:29:59 PM

Misawa Air Base, where a lot of the foreign relief effort is coming in, is where I was stationed in Japan. Fatcat was born there. There was a big earthquake there in 1968 while I was there.

Carps · March 14, 2011, 10:55:23 PM

Quote from: "Carnut"And yes it seems kinda odd that apparently not enough redundancy was built into these plants in such a volatile quake zone.

Think that's a side effect of it being one of the oldest plants on the Island

According to reports from our office nearby, the back-up generators were swamped and then the batteries that back up the back-up systems also copped it.

The big problem apparently came when somebody in a little bit of a panic (understandable in the circumstances) turned a coolant stop cock the wrong way and stopped the flow for some time. Probably had them scratching thier heads as to exactly what was causing it to overheat.

QuoteBut I'm sure it'll be awhile before we got an unbiased unhyped story on what has really gone down there.

Don't feel bad, the reports in our media are also completely different to those we're getting from our local folks on the ground.

Carps · March 14, 2011, 10:59:44 PM

Quote from: "Carps"
Quote from: "Carnut"And yes it seems kinda odd that apparently not enough redundancy was built into these plants in such a volatile quake zone.
Think that's a side effect of it being one of the oldest plants on the Island

According to reports from our office nearby, the back-up generators were swamped and then the batteries that back up the back-up systems also copped it.

The big problem apparently came when somebody in a little bit of a panic (understandable in the circumstances) turned a coolant stop cock the wrong way and stopped the flow for some time. Probably had them scratching thier heads as to exactly what was causing it to overheat.

QuoteBut I'm sure it'll be awhile before we got an unbiased unhyped story on what has really gone down there.
Don't feel bad, the reports in our media are also completely different to those we're getting from our local folks on the ground.

Just listening to a report from some European boffins who say the earth has moved some 4 inches off it's axis and Japan almost 2 metres closer to russia as a reult of the quake.

wayne petty · March 15, 2011, 12:06:54 AM

more of the info...

plants have to have continuous flows of cooling water.. or the core will be uncovered... this cool down cycle can last 30 days...

when the plant goes off line... it it dependent on Grid power to run the pumps..

when the grid goes down.. there are stand by generator sets to power the pumps...

when the stand by generators go down.. there are big battery banks that can run the pumps for up to 8 hours till the grid comes back on...

since the tsunami breached the anti tsunami wall it wiped out everything but the batteries... and those did not last long...

i cannot imagine having a plant next to the ocean with out building the back up generators and wiring into tsunami proof buildings.. like the containment buildings..

the talking heads here said.. the units in california are built to withstand a 6.5 to 7.0.. but the batteries the japanese used are better.. as ours will probably only last 4 hours.. sure makes me feel secure...

as for the earth shifting and moving around...
about 40 minutes into this video is a description of a gravity sensor they have built to help them calculate the various gravitational forces..

http://uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=20010

moon mission /apollo mission fans might find it interesting also...

Carnut · March 15, 2011, 01:34:55 AM

Heh, heh, yeah, I also saw reporter talking about the redundancy of a cali Nuke Plant with a 20ft sea wall and the exact same redundancy of the Japenese Nuke plants.

I was stunned that a 20ft sea wall was apparently all they were dependant on for protection of the backup systems.

Sure hope we don't get any 30ft tsunamis around there.

Yes they at least need more protection of the aux generators and batteries.

And maybe a stock of portable generators nearby uphill and a truck load of batteries available on call.

Heh, heh, maybe even a few backup windmills and solar plants nearby or a steam engine generator.

It does seem some of those nuke folks aren't putting a whole lot of thought into backup for unexpected disasters.

Seems they crow about containment resisting an airliner hit when really all a bad guy needs to do is cut the electricity off from the grid and then mess up a diesel generator.

I'm stunned.

Carnut · March 15, 2011, 07:38:38 AM

This whole idea of 'redundancy' that is being spouted about the nuke plants is totally offbase for me.

Guess they had what I would call serial redundancy, kinda like a different levels of backup power for one system of cooling.

In my world redundancy would have been something like 3 separate cooling systems for the reactor, each independently able to cool the core down after a shutdown. Then each of those separate cooling systems would then have had the UPS or uninterpretable backup power systems, just like my web servers, the battery pack that in of itself should have been able to last till a cool down was completed and then aux generator for the battery pack if the batteries couldn't get the job done and then a trailer located offsite with an additional generator that could be called on to deploy and plug in to power at least one of the cooling systems.

And all of these systems in an environment sheltered from any possible outside environmental damage such as the flooding of a tsunami or even a localized flood or forest fire of some sort.

That would have been my definition of backup of something so critical in a nuke plant.

And it would seem that even the expense of those multiple redundant systems would be almost negligible compared to the cost of losing the whole plant and the incalculable bad PR for nuke power.

Again I am stunned the designers didn't have more in place than I can even think of.

I really had some faith in the Japanese Nuke Engineers but I'm rapidly loosing faith in all nuke engineers from what I've been seeing in the news.